This reminds me of when the Ukraine blackmail story first broke. Even before the impeachment push, it seemed like the story was far more riveting – entirely because of the whistleblower angle. I remember thinking at the time that if all the transcripts being shown on the news with the reactions and dramatic highlighter effects had instead been a public statement by Trump that “yeah, we’re withholding weapons until Zelensky gives us dirt on Biden,” the entire thing would have blown over in a week. Maybe this could be similar?

(You know what else has the cachet of secrecy and coverup? The Epstein files.)

One of these days AI skeptics will grasp that spelling-based mistakes are an artifact of text tokenization, not some wild stupidity in the model. But today is not that day.

I’m wary of the hype over this gambit because it’s been tried several times in the recent past and has always ended with a few key legislators caving and returning to the capitol for no real concessions. Hopefully they realize that people are not in the mood for token resistance (and Abbott’s threats against them will steel their spines).

I have – I had high hopes for it, but the vocals are still pretty bad. They all have this metallic, tinny quality, liked they’re subtly vocoded or being sung into those little toy spring microphones for kids. It’s a constant reminder that it’s artificial and just completely takes me out if it.

I don’t know how Suno has become so much more popular than Udio. Every Suno track I’ve heard has sounded like the same generic pop, and the vocals always have this noticeable “synthy” quality.

What are you talking about? Yang dropped out before the CA primary, and Harris dropped out the December before the first primary happened. She wasn’t even on the ballot.

GEORGE IS IN WEIRD TROUBLE!

At first I thought the quoted text was just him having ChatGPT write his tweets for him. But then I clicked through and saw the video of him actually speaking it to the camera. He was probably just reading it off a screen, but seeing a dead-eyed person earnestly parroting ChatGPTese like that was one of the creepiest things I’ve seen this year.

“How do you kill that which has no life?”

Beyond parody (for nearly a decade at this point).

During lockdown I played ECHO, which had been in my backlog for a few years after a stray recommendation I saw on MetaFilter. It was a surprisingly tight integration of beautiful and intriguing environmental/UI/sound design, gorgeous music, compelling yet minimalist storytelling (and voice acting), and a really strong gameplay loop of stealth, puzzle-solving, and the occasional panicky run-and-gun. Imagine my surprise when I read up on it after and learned it only sold a few thousand copies!

I strongly recommend playing it blind, but this trailer gives a good overview of the style and mechanics.

One of the greatest games of all time from a design and gameplay perspective. There’s a reason it’s in the MoMA. The soundtrack is an all-timer as well.

It’s also relatively new as a federal holiday, only added in 2021. Before that it was largely officially observed only in Texas and a handful of cities.

It’s literally the name of the bill.

Apparently in many developing world cities with shaky property records it’s known for fraudsters to make fake real estate deals using buildings they don’t own, to the point that in Google Street View it’s common to see “this property is not for sale” or similar painted on house walls near the entrance. I’ve never seen it on a building this large though!

I wonder if this would include on-screen notifications.

Katamari Damacy. It has a reputation for being silly Japanese nonsense, but the gameplay is brilliant, the graphics are timeless, the soundtrack is incredible, and it has some surprising thematic depth.

GIVE ME MORE SOLDIERS, NOBLE LEADER, SO WE MAY SHEATHE OUR SWORDS IN THE BEATING HEARTS OF OUR ENEMIES

• Katamari Damacy
• Halo 2
• Civilization II
• SimCity 2000
• Crazy Taxi