Okay I know we're all pretty deep into the nerdweb here, but let's not lose the thread of reality here. ABC still pulls close to 5 million individual viewers every night, JUST on broadcast and cable rebroadcast. That ain't fuckin nothing; TV is still an important and influential medium.
Smart! I occasionally run into Chinese tourists over here at Independence Hall (where the country was founded), and every single time I pass I am like, "good lord, you all put your lives in your hands for Philly?"
Millions of small retail or craft businesses now out of business: "haha so true bestie!"
In the way humanity can study the structure of the brain despite being inside one, consciousness is just the means by which the Universe discovers itself. Or something, I don’t know, I’m high.
It's like a monkeys paw bit.
WISH: I want a piece of software that can look at ANYTHING and then describe it in real-time detail for blind or hard of seeing people.
REALITY: Blind people can navigate streets but also now it's possible to conduct fraud on a cosmic level.
Congressperson: “Okay, so, let me get this straight. Your company has spent over 20 billion dollars in pursuit of a fully autonomous digital intelligence, and so far, your peak accuracy rate for basic addition and subtraction is... what was it, again?”
Sam Altman: leans into microphone “About 60%, sir.”
[Congress erupts in a sea of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’, as Sam Altman is carried away on top of the cheering crowd of Congresspeople wearing a crown of roses and a sash reading, “BEST INVESTMENT”]
Well, it's not like Ted Nugent is writing any new music. He probably doesn't have anything better to do anyway.
My unpopular opinion is that Flash was perhaps one of the greatest media standards of all time. Think about it — in 2002, people were packaging entire 15 minute animations with full audio and imagery, all encapsulated in a single file that could play in any browser, for under 10mb each. Not to mention, it was one of the earliest formats to support streaming. It used vectors for art, which meant that a SWF file would look just as good today on a 4k screen as it did in 2002.
It only became awful once we started forcing it to be stuff it didn't need to be, like a Web design platform, or a common platform for applets. This introduced more and more advanced versions of scripting that continually introduced new vulnerabilities.
It was a beautiful way to spread culture back when the fastest Internet anyone could get was 1 MB/sec.
Hank Hill recognizes 152 Pokémon total. The first 151, and then Stunfisk.
Black American civil rights were struggled for by a rich tapestry of direct action, intellectual analysis, Christian pacifism, liberation through Islam, and Leftist theory and influence. It is not and never was any one thing. Violence was not the only ingredient.
I thought that Ukulele was a pretty nice way to learn the foundations of string instruments
I saw Loren say once that the basic premise of the show is that "Bob can't win." Like, that's the rule. He has to lose, because that action is what endears us as an audience, but also creates a plyable space to inject the kind of schmaltz that the Simpsons used to be known for in its earliest seasons.