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Kevin Kortum

167 posts

Posts by Kevin Kortum

Stephen Colbert’s next epic quest? Writing a new Lord of the Rings movie

npr.org

He will co-write a new movie with his son, screenwriter Peter McGee, and LOTR veteran screenwriter Philippa Boyens. Its working title is Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past.

I like that they call his son a screenwriter even though he has zero writing credits on IMDb. Colbert also has no features to his name, but obviously everyone knows his fandom. Either way Boyens is still involved so I’m sure she will be able to keep the ship steady.

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1 Picasso 100 Euros

1picasso100euros.com

Non-profit raffle. Buy a ticket for 100 euros for a chance to win a Picasso valued at 1 million euros. All proceeds go to Fondation Recherche Alzheimer, the leading organisation in France dedicated to research on Alzheimer's disease.

This is pretty incredible. There are 120,000 tickets, so chances you win aren’t super high, but that means the Opera Gallery gets its million for the painting and then 11 million goes to Alzheimer’s research. Hard to think of a better way to donate than this.

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The Merlin Bird ID app is now the Merlin Fight ID app

mcsweeneys.net

Whether you’re a frightened child wondering if your parents are teetering on the precipice of divorce, a hard-of-hearing person worried about missing the nuances of under-the-breath barbs, or simply fed up with listening to your coworkers bicker, our app will do the work of listening to and analyzing any argument for you. We plan to add more categories of arguments, culturally specific approaches to conflict resolution, and, eventually, a Polymarket feature that lets users live-stream a fight in progress while others gamble on the outcome in real time.

As I've gotten older and gotten into birds a

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Instagram and Facebook are about to be filled with affiliate content

theverge.com

The new shopping features come a few weeks after a dustup in which influencers caught Instagram adding shopping links to their content without their permission. The “Shop the look” feature added links to cheap lookalike products and not the actual items, an influencer who discovered the feature said. Meta said at the time it was a limited test and that the company was “exploring various changes” to the feature.

I don’t really care about the actual meat of this. It’s already flooded with ads and affiliates and people just trying to make a buck. I think

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Pentagon’s ‘Attempt to Cripple’ Anthropic Is Troublesome, Judge Says

wired.com

Hamilton acknowledged that Hegseth has no legal authority to bar military contractors from using Anthropic for work unrelated to the Department of Defense. When asked by Lin why Hegseth would have posted that, Hamilton said, “I don’t know.”

It’s 100% punitive. You don’t go from using the product and negotiating a new contract to expand capabilities to declaring they are a supply chain risk and can’t be used by any government contractor. It’s ridiculous.

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