🎧 Lose Yourself (Sung by 331 Movies) /// The Unusual Suspect

Absolutely incredible. A must watch. Immediately.

📫 An Open Letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Who Thinks My Daughter is a Tragedy /// McSweeney’s

She’s not yours to pity. She’s mine to marvel at. She is herself, entirely. That is not a flaw. It’s a form of resistance.

Mic drop. Fuck RFK Jr. and don’t pardon my French.

🏀 The Celtics Will Just Keep Doing This Until We Are All Driven Insane /// Defector

But at least it would indicate that the Celtics were aware of what was happening around them, that they exist in Time, and it is moving, and the game’s result will be determined over the next short period of it and not by what happens when you simulate 10,000 contests between the two teams’ respective shooting tendencies and see who wins 50.1 percent of them.

What a whirlwind of a second round this has been—with all four road teams securing game one plus an overtime game and two buzzer beaters!

💻 EclairM0, the pocket notepad /// Mateusz Nowak

This is so cool, but I wish it had a Blackberry keyboard. That would make it absolutely perfect and I’d buy one yesterday.

🛰️ Welcome to Sam Altman’s Orb Store /// Wired

“I’m pretty afraid that they can actually do some stuff that we will not know about. That can be a little bit shady, but all in all, like most of the businesses and most of the activities that we participate in have some kind of shadier sides.”

Man, the dissonance you need to have to know better and just not give a fuck.

👕 The Häagen-Dazs T-Shirt /// Intramural

I don’t remember what I googled (probably ‘Häagen-Dazs t-shirt’ or something like that) and in the image results, after scrolling down a bit I came across a photo of Henry Rollins wearing one and the photo linked to an article from 2013 on Consequence.net titled ‘Henry Rollins used to work at Häagen-Dazs’ and then everything clicked immediately.

As much as I hate to be that guy, I love the when you get to be that person who is in the know on weird little shit like this.

🧮 Algorithmic recommendations are shit. /// Wrote This

I am 100% convinced that, nearly two decades into the age of algorithmic recommendations, we really have not progressed past “Other people who liked this liked that” and “Here’s a bunch more of what it seems like you like,” both implemented in the dumbest possible ways.

I don’t know that I could say it any better and AI is just here to pile the shit on even higher since AI is essentially just an algorithm that can give you a random result—and one that can’t discern fact from fiction.

🧃 Obey Your Third: How Sprite Became America’s No. 3 Soft Drink /// Adweek

Since 2004, Sprite’s market share of the U.S. carbonated soft drink category increased 2.4 percentage points. Pepsi’s, meanwhile, decreased nearly 3.5 points during the same period.

This doesn’t surprise me at all, but I had no idea Dr. Pepper was No. 2. I really want to know where Mtn Dew stands though as their fanbase is rabid like Dr. Pepper, but tends to lean younger.

⚽ Trent Alexander-Arnold confirms Liverpool exit and set to join Real Madrid /// Guardian

As much as TAA has been fun to have at Liverpool, he is one of the least important players that have been part of their core, especially since Gravenberch has come on as a strong six for them and Bradley has shown out at right-back when given the opportunities.

📹 Pretrial (Let Her Go Home) by Fiona Apple

Apparently Fiona Apple has been courtwatching these last few years, which inspired her next album and this track. As a protest song against the pretrial incarceration of women, this is worlds better than Neil Young’s recent song about the automobile industry. Not to mention the striking nature of the visuals of these women flashing across the screen.

🏀 Pop done coaching Spurs; Johnson takes over /// ESPN

Obviously a huge loss for the basketball world, but it will still be nice knowing he’ll still be involved with the franchise in the front office. Will be curious to see how the relationship between Johnson and Pop evolves as Johnson takes control of the locker room with Pop’s shadow hovering over, just a few feet away.

👺 My Dinner With Adolf by Larry David /// NY Times

But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.

Kind of reminds you of some of the attitudes on the fediverse recently, don’t it?

🤖 Time saved by AI offset by new work created, study suggests /// Ars Technica

The study revealed that AI chatbots actually created new job tasks for 8.4 percent of workers, including some who did not use the tools themselves, offsetting potential time savings.

Not a great article and/or study as they also mention over 60 percent of people have used it to save time. So we know some time is offset, but not how much. And without knowing the time saved, there could actually still be a benefit…

🤡 Donald Trump might actually believe these Calibri labels are real MS-13 tattoos /// The Verge

But after this interview, there’s nearly no doubt: Trump really believes — or at least wants people to believe — that Abrego Garcia really has MS13 tattooed on his knuckles in Calibri.

Not that we needed any additional proof that this man is clearly an imbecile…

🎮 Polygon Acquired by Porn Mogul Who Co-Founded Brazzers /// 404 Media

Valnet media owns several entertainment sites including Screen Rant and Collider, as well as a number of video game sites like TheGamer, DualShockers, and Game Rant. In March, The Wrap published a story which accused Valnet of exploitative working conditions. Valnet filed a lawsuit against The Wrap over the article which it claimed was inaccurate and defamatory.

Well, it seems like an end of an era in video game journalism—bad owners running trying to get a monopoly on the market so they can turn it all to slop.

🤖 Mark Zuckerberg: If You Need a Therapist, Try Meta’s AI Bot /// The Wrap

“One of the uses for Meta AI is basically, ‘I want to talk through an issue,’ ‘I need to have a hard conversation with someone,’ ‘I’m having an issue with my girlfriend.’ ‘I need to have a hard conversation with my boss at work,’ ‘Help me role-play this,’ or, ‘Help me figure out how I want to approach this,’” he added.

Not only does this sound like a huge privacy issue that I’m sure Meta can’t guarantee, but also we’ve already witnessed some crazy responses from AI and now we want to trust it to give us life advice. Soon enough it’s going to start telling people to jump off a bridge.

🦄 Sonic Drive-In Has Announced New Unicorn Dreams Slush & Straw /// Bleeding Cool

Fine, yes… it’s true… I’m a child. But I want to try this so bad.

🧛 How Did ‘Sinners’ Really Do This Weekend? /// The Town

I’ve been out on podcasts the last couple of weeks, dedicated my ears for music, but I put a few on at night for my wife and I to fall asleep to, and this was superb. I loved the pushback here.

⛰️ Mountianhead/// Trailer

Jesse Armstrong, creator of Succession, is back with his first feature film, which is oddly going straight to HBO. But it looks perfect. It’s like Succession but instead of going after right wing media, he’s going after tech billionaires.

🤼 The Smashing Machine /// Trailer

The fact we are getting one movie from each of the Safdie brothers this year is incredible. And the fact The Rock is in one of them, shocks me to this day. It looks like he’s actually playing someone different from the same character he plays in every movie; although I guess playing a UFC fighter isn’t that much different than what he did in the WWE… still he actually looks incredible.

🤖 Sam Altman Admits That Saying “Please” and “Thank You” to ChatGPT Is Wasting Millions of Dollars in Computing Power /// Futurism

“Using polite language sets a tone for the response,” Beavers notes. The argument can certainly be made; what we consider “artificial intelligence” might more accurately be described as “prediction machines,” like your phone’s predictive text, but with more autonomy to spit out complete sentences in response to questions or instructions.

First, there has never been a person/thing in my life that deserves a “thank you” more than my espresso machine and second, if saying please and thank you costs OpenAI a lot more money so they burn through it quicker, I’m struggling to see the down side…

📺 This Massive Screen for Live Sports Puts You in the Best Seat in the Stadium /// Wired

Cosm can put you courtside for NBA games, both at center court and on either baseline. The NHL program feels a touch more immersive than that, even, particularly a corner view that’s technically from outside the glass, but truly makes you feel like you’re standing on the rink itself.

All I want to do in life is watch basketball games in one of these places with an ice cold beer.

🕍 Nathan Fielder Reveals Why Paramount+ Removed ‘Nathan for You’ Episode /// THR

I think about learning from our history a lot. The fact Germany pushed to remove an episode because it put their past in a bad light and then that policy spread around the world? Despicable. Especially considering the brand does charitable work to this day.

🪐 Scientists Believe They’ve Witnessed ‘Planetary Suicide’ for the First Time /// Wired

They believe a Jupiter-sized planet, orbiting at the same distance as Mercury does from the Sun, gradually approached its star until it was destroyed by the star’s outer layers.

The universe is pretty crazy isn’t it?

💸 Kickstarter Introduces ‘Tariff Manager Tool’ to Add Charges to Already Fully Funded Projects /// 404

“We now face a $14.50 tariff tax for every $10 we spent on manufacturing with our trusted long-term partner in China. For Stonemaier Games, that amounts to upcoming tariff payments of nearly $1.5 million.”

Playing catch up on links again… It’s quite obvious the impact bad economic policy will be for the average American citizen, but with the news about Amazon backing down from labeling price increases from tariffs do to Trump calling Bezos is a clear sign they know it’s bad policy, but don’t care.