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Why Luke Skywalker Might Have Weirded You Out
The Unbridled and Mildly Horrifying Evolution of CGI Luke Skywalker
Read this horrifying description of Respeecher from a sound editor who worked on the series, Matthew Wood: "It's a neural network you feed information into and it learns," Wood says. "So I had archival material from Mark in that era.
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What College Students Really Think About Cancel Culture
What College Students Really Think About Cancel Culture
Though self-censorship is a problem in academia—more than 80 percent of college kids say that they self-censor at least some of the time, according to one study—not all students agree with the adults who are catastrophizing.
I don’t really understand this metric,
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Take The State of Switch Survey!
Chris Brandrick does a weekly (week #268 just went out) newsletter called Switch Weekly, and it covers all the Nintendo
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WordleForever is a Gift from the Heavens
Federico Viticci and Finn Voorhees have teamed up to make something amazing:
So in the spirit of game preservation (a topic I care deeply about) and out of skepticism regarding the future of Wordle as a NYT product, I teamed up with Finn Voorhees to create WordleForever, a shortcut that lets you back up the
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I Hope the AirPods Max Don’t Lose the Crown
AirPods Max 2 could feature touch controls instead of a Digital Crown
Touch controls on AirPods Max 2 could make it easier to jump songs, invoke Siri, turn the volume up or down, and more. As of now, having the Digital Crown is still a pretty clever and unique feature to Apple’s premium headphones.
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The ’80S Are Back, Baby
The ’80s Are Back, Baby
VHS grain, airbrush art and officecore prop use is too widespread to list every occurrence, though one particular spot of interest is how fully these motifs form the backbone of Coach’s Spring 2022 social campaigns, including ’80s- and ’90s-era details as specific as faux 1-800 numbers and
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Why Denmark Is Done With COVID (for Now)
Why Denmark Is Done With COVID (For Now)
On Wednesday, Petersen and I talked about Denmark’s decision, how the country maintains the trust of the public during confusing times, why it’s smart to announce an expiration date for COVID restrictions, and why so many in Denmark are strongly pro-vaccine but also strongly
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You Don’t Want to be the Last to Buy In
Mapping the celebrity NFT complex
One reason the clip is so weird and funny is that it's not all that different from Hilton going on The Tonight Show and talking about her favorite penny stocks, while Fallon enthusiastically confirms that he's invested, too.
What’s the web3 version of, “if you’
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The EARN IT Act Is Back, and It’s More Dangerous Than Ever
The EARN IT Act Is Back, and It’s More Dangerous Than Ever
At first blush, that might sound like a good thing, which is why it will be hard for members of Congress to resist – who could ever vote against child safety? But make no mistake: this was a dangerous bill two years ago,
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Don’t Like Joe Rogan on Spotify? Then Pay More for Music.
Don’t like Joe Rogan on Spotify? Then pay more for music.
The price of Netflix’s mid-tier subscription plan went from $8 to $15.50 during the same time, and everything else has become more expensive too: Adjusted for inflation, $10 in 2002 is equivalent to about $15.50 today.
Also mentioned in
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Where’s the Fun?
Charlie Warzel: Lessons From the Retro-Future of the Internet
So far, my experience with Web3 is different. A lot of its projects seem like unnecessarily complex and theoretical financialized tools in search of broader utility; “play-to-earn” blockchain-based games such as Axie Infinity represent, for me, a dystopian vision of leisure, if
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What's Your Number?
From a Hacker News thread on Joe Rogan:
I don't really understand why anyone who claims to be a proponent of a free market economy has an issue with a private corporation deciding what type of content they want to broadcast.
Like any Hacker News thread, there is some good stuff here, but
What Would an Apple Point-of-Sale Look Like? How Far Would Apple Go?
Filipe Espósito on 9to5Mac:
Square, one of the most popular payment platforms, offers products that turn iPhone and iPad into POS (point-of-sale) terminals. The company has a great app that lets vendors use iOS devices to keep track of all their sales. Specifically speaking of the iPad, there are also very well built
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The Blessing and the Curse of Native Apps
Marco Arment in a Twitter thread:
Native apps can be FAR more creepy (always-on-in-background, cameras, mics, screen recording, etc.), especially on phones (constant location). We lucked out that Macs never really got that kind of “attention” from these asshole companies. But on iOS, they’re ALL native apps.
If I could chuckle
goodie
Swift Desktop Wallpapers
I made these a few years ago, but I've updated them for modern resolutions, and that's
📖 Read some banned books! (Newsletter #101)
Hello and happy…Thursday? Listen, it's a busy week over here are Birchtree headquarters, and I got time to make this so it's going out early. I hope you'll forgive me 🙂
The Links
* What better way to respond to banned books than to read them? Here's 14
Owning Nothing, Selling Nothing, Making a Quick Buck
Musicians are furious at website HitPiece, which listed their music as NFTs without permission
Musicians have taken to Twitter today to complain about a website that is ostensibly selling their music as NFTs without permission. HitPiece claims to sell one-of-one NFTs, meaning each one is singular and unique (as opposed to the endless
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Mac Power Users with Austin Evans (podcast notes)
Listen here.
It's really remarkable to me the number of geeks I know that started with some form of, “I just wanted to customize things.” Going back to the old Macs, to me, it was trying to make it do things. You know, customizing the original Mac, you’d go in and alter
