Friday, December 22, 2023

Good morning and welcome back. This week we have, well, just a bunch of random stuff as usual. But I hope you like it.

Item 1: a link

Jen Glannon at Kotaku writes about a fun game where you try to fool a pedestrian-detecting AI. As someone who moonlights as a pedestrian, I find this game alarmingly easy.

[W]atching people play this game in real life is hilarious, and that’s no small part of its appeal. It’s not every day you see folks lining up for the chance to roll around on the ground like a potato bug, trundle sideways on all fours while covered in a coat, or scurry like a crab while covering their arms with parking cones.

But it also makes the idea of suddenly unleashing this technology on the streets a pretty horrifying prospect. What about folks using wheelchairs, or pushing a shopping cart? What if a kid dashes into the street in a Halloween costume? Winning in How (Not) To Get Hit By A Self-Driving Car makes you realize just how rudimentary much of this technology still is.

Item 2: a list

Best TV shows I watched in 2023, ranked:

1. The Bear (Hulu)
2. The Bureau / Le Bureau des Legendes (AMC)
3. Succession (HBO)
4. Reservation Dogs (Hulu)
5. Drops of God (Apple TV+)
6. The Last of Us (HBO)
7. The Devil’s Plan (Netflix)
8. Slow Horses (Apple TV+)
9. The Gold (Paramount+)
10. Jury Duty (Freevee aka Amazon Prime w/Ads)

I also quite enjoyed the last season of Atlanta (FX/Hulu), Top Chef (Bravo/Peacock), The Righteous Gemstones (HBO), Foundation (Apple TV+), How To with John Wilson (HBO), Poker Face (Peacock), What We Do in the Shadows (Hulu), 100 Foot Wave (HBO), Black Mirror (Netflix) and of course For All Mankind (Apple TV+).

Item 3: a media recommendation

Item 4: word of the week

Demit

A fun thing about the free speech brigade is how their primary goal in life is to force people who say things they don't like to demit their positions via an endless series of death threats.

Item 5: a photograph

See ya!

Thanks for reading. I hope you have a restful end of the year. We'll finish up next week when, as is tradition around here, we won't be ranking this year's Wolmania issues. See you then.