🍿 California Legislative Leaders Agree on $750 Million in Funding for Film and TV Credit /// Variety

The additional funding is projected to increase the number of film jobs supported by the program by 40-50%, according to the California Film Commission — or 4,400 to 5,500 jobs.

I think it’s great that they are working to reinvigorate a dying—but pivotal—industry, but I’d much rather see this money come from reductions in pay for the top end of CEOs and movie stars who are overpaid.

⌨️ How to build the best keyboard in the world /// The Verge

The build quality is astonishing, the Topre-style switches are better than Topre’s, the stabilizers are better than anyone’s, and the keyboard is beautiful and a joy to type on. The Seneca is a genuine technical accomplishment.

Holy. Crap. $3600?! Who wants to hire Humdrum Industries for 24 hours so I can snag one of these magnificent beauties. Still probably just going to pick-up an HHKB to replace my RealForce, but goddamn do I want this.

🪾 David Lynch’s Producer Says ‘Unrecorded Night’ Was “The Best Thing He Ever Did” /// World of Reel

And despite recent murmurs that the screenplay may eventually be published — possibly even novelized — nothing can replace the cinematic experience that could’ve been.

I know it could never be what Lynch imagined, but I so badly want Dern, Watts, and MacLachlan to find a director they like who is a bit earlier in their career—maybe Dream Scenario’s Kristoffer Borgli—and get this movie made.

🏪 New Digital Comics Store Takes Aim at Amazon /// NY Times

Next month, they plan to launch Neon Ichiban, a site they intend to be “a dedicated experience for comics,” Mr. Steinberger said, after raising more than $7 million from investors in the game and movie industries.

I have way too many thoughts about this. First Steinberger was a founder of ComiXology and along with Mosher, oversaw its collapse in Amazon’s hands. Also, these two recently founded DSTLRY, which readers of Foofaraw might know I despise because of their digital tactics. Then there’s the fact I’m not sure digital comics is a business that warrants $7mil in funding—unless you plan to sell to a tech conglomerate again. Lastly, Sweet Shop is a digital comics store coming from a much smaller indie team that also has Image and IDW lined up already. Competition is great, but I’m not sure I trust these guys to do what’s best for comics.

💸 Sam Altman says Meta has offered some OpenAI employees $100 million signing bonuses. /// The Verge

So far, “none of our best people have decided to take them up on that,” according to Altman.

Really, really hard to take Altman at his word on anything, especially something like this, but Meta did make $45b in profit (based on a quick search) last year… Still who is insane enough to turn down $100 million to work for one evil, shitty tech place over another.

🤖 The New Digg’s Plan to Use AI for Community Moderation /// Columbia Journalism Review

Content moderation experts seem to approve. “I don’t think it’s hype,” said Vaishnavi J, a founder of Vys, a trust and safety advisory firm that helps companies implement AI safeguards for youth harms.

I know people might think of me as a huge AI hater, but this is an area I appreciate being explored. Moderation is hard and having people stare at posts all day—some that may be disturbing—is an admirable thing to avoid. I’d use it similar to Clarkesworld’s filters¹, where everything goes through a funnel, and the items flagged are then reviewed by a human, and the filter is adjusted accordingly. With AI, maybe you could try to have it come up with its own confidence level, and review those with low confidence and only review the high confidence if there’s an appeal.

🖼️ Why it’s nearly impossible to buy an original Bob Ross painting /// The Hustle

All told, Bob Ross churned out ~30k paintings in his lifetime — nearly 3x the output of Picasso, a prolific painter in his own right.

It’s incredibly cool to just think about the fact most of those are hanging up in normal people’s houses. Too often it feels like art is an asset stowed away, but given Ross’s prolificness and “every man” nature, flips that on its head in a way few have.

👮 Comptroller Brad Lander released after dramatic arrest at ICE court hearing /// AMNY

City Comptroller Brad Lander has been released without charges after being arrested and accosted by masked federal agents at immigration court in Lower Manhattan.

Gestapo out in full force, I see. We really need better systems in place to hold cops and federal agents accountable for when they do shit like this. Arrest someone for no reason and then immediately release them? That’s harassment, at a bare minimum. You can’t just wipe this under the rug, because then the behavior is perpetuated and that’s why you have the ACAB movement—as even good cops feel like they have to “protect their own” instead of holding their peers to account when they cross the line.

🧱 Ah Fuck, They Painted The Brick /// The Onion

What kind of moron would paint brick?

This feels like it was aimed directly at me. My wife and I have an inside joke that whenever we see a brick building, she’ll ask me about it and I’ll say whether it’s “good brick” or not.

🤖 Meta Invents New Way to Humiliate Users With Feed of People’s Chats With AI /// 404 Media

But the text prompts were back Tuesday morning, including a full audio conversation of a woman asking the bot what the statute of limitations are for a woman to press charges for domestic abuse in the state of Indiana, which had taken place two minutes before it was shown to me.

This is fucking wild. And these are the types of people we are trusting with our future. Absurd. Why on earth did they ever think this would be a good idea?!?

📹 She is Afraid by Motion City Soundtrack

Based on this first single, I feel pretty confident in saying this appears like it might be the best pop-punk return from the 2000’s. MCS was always a bit underrated and overshadowed by their peers, but they put out 2 stellar albums and 2 really great albums. New album coming out mid September.

👺 ‘Extremely disturbing and unethical’: new rules allow VA doctors to refuse to treat Democrats, unmarried veterans /// The Guardian

Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.

This is fucking lunacy. It’s more evidence that Trump and the Republican Party don’t actually care about our veterans. And then there’s this headline form Axios: Trump orders ICE to hit Democrat-run cities in expanded deportation blitz. What are we doing here? This shit is unconscionable.

🤖 OpenAI awarded $200 million US defense contract /// The Verge

The new one-year DoD contract is antithetical to earlier versions of OpenAI’s terms of service that banned its technology from being used for “military and warfare” — a prohibition removed by the company last year.

Boy, oh boy! I can’t wait for some AI-powered drones to start hallucinating who the enemy is. This administration would probably throw em out there with the military in LA to “make our streets safer…”

🫂 Largest trans survey ever: Top reason trans people stop transitioning is transphobia /// Erin in the Morning

Its findings reaffirmed what many academics, health care providers and trans people already know: gender-affirming care saves and improves lives, but transphobia often dissuades people from pursuing or continuing it when they need it most.

I’ve decided my new phrase is “cynically optimistic” because as much as I want to be positive about the world—just look around… It’s great to have these studies back up what most of us already knew, but the idea this convinces any of the evil powers that be to be more compassionate seems far-fetched…

🤴 Blue Prince is coming to Mac /// The Verge

Blue Prince released earlier this year and quickly became an early GOTY candidate with folks (i.e. me) drawing comparisons to the runaway hit Balatro.

This is incredibly exciting news for me after hearing so much positivity around his game early in the year. No release date, but I’m still stoked to get my hands on this for Mac whenever the time comes.

📸 Mood.camera recipe - Cuban Neg 📷 /// Gobino

With mood.camera I tried to create my own inspired Cuban Neg version. The result I came up with is perhaps a bit brighter, warmer and more colourful, but I’m very happy with how it looks.

I’m loving mood.camera right now. It’s encouraging to shoot with my phone more and since I set-up a film sim that’s a bit retro, grainy, and blurry, I’m just shooting rather than trying to get a perfect photo.

🏓 Tennis star Andre Agassi joins $20 million investment in Ballers, a multisport members’ club /// Fast Company

It will include courts where members can play pickleball, squash, and padel. There will also be a golf practice area with real sand traps and a large turf field where members can play soccer.

It’s called Ballers, but no basketball courts???

🔠 Creating the Fontstand Cooperative /// Fontstand

Love this kind of stuff.

🤖 Seven replies to the viral Apple reasoning paper — and why they fall short /// Gary Marcus

One is left simply having to test everything, all the time, with little guarantees of anything. Some model might be big enough for task T of size S and fail on the next size, or on Task T’ that is slightly different, etc. It all becomes a crapshoot.

While fun, I’m of the opinion the LLM model isn’t a pathway to AGI. It may lead someone to stumble on the right path, but complex algorithms with random output does not directly lead to it.

🤖 Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task /// arXiv

Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI’s role in learning.

This is why the calculator comparison makes zero sense. Kids still learn the concepts of math so they understand what the calculator is actually doing—it’s why teachers make you show your work. Oh, and a calculator is always right if the input is.

🎙️ Saluting Marc Maron, a Podcast Pioneer Who Unlocked the Gates /// GQ

I realize now that this was some of the first real public talk I had heard about sobriety; it was a massive part of his story, and it often came up with his guests. Of course, they traded war stories, but they also normalized it and got pretty open, an approach that stuck with me, even if subconsciously.

A true end of an era. I never got huge into WTF, but I was addicted to podcasts in those early days and would always throw an episode on here or there when I either liked the guest or plowed through my queue.

🧑‍💻 Hard Mode and status /// Baty

Apple Notes is surprisingly capable, but I don’t enjoy using it. So what did I do? Yesterday, I re-installed Bear. I’ve always liked using Bear. It’s beautiful and simple and gets right to the point.

Biiiig same. Simplifying all of my apps right now to things I can’t tinker with too much. Setting themes to black and white and utilizing Untitled Serif for titles and Untitled Sans for body fonts wherever I can to reduce distractions.

🏄‍♂️ The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson Dies at 82 /// Pitchfork

The beloved musical auteur, who helped pioneer the studio-as-instrument, influencing generations of musicians in pop and beyond

A true legend. I had the opportunity to see him live about 8 years ago when he was on tour with Jeff Beck. While I was definitely there for Beck, it was a fun bucket item list to knock off to see Wilson with Jardine.

🎤 Tha Carter VI /// Pitchfork

The first problem is that there aren’t any good songs.

I try to avoid negative reviews, but damn… The writer of this review nails the comp to Eminem and how they seem hyper-focused on making these weird pop hits that haven’t been relevant for over a decade.