sgclark

[sgclark]

Marauder's Map

There are all sorts of fun stories about people acting up or putting on some sort of a show when the Google Maps van and cameras are passing through town. However, this story may top them all: A Google Street View image of a man loading a large white plastic bag into the boot of his car has led to the arrest of two people on suspicion of murder. The alleged crime took place in the sparsely��

[sgclark]

This Is America

An interesting collaboration from, of all places, WeTransfer and specifically, their arts platform WePresent, and the Dutch photographer and film maker Robin de Puy. American. “AMERICAN” is a collection of audio, film and photographic portraits by Dutch photographer and filmmaker Robin de Puy. The series was created in the US between 2022 and 2024. Her images invite us to look closer at and…

[sgclark]

Free Fall at WaPo

The fall out from The Washington Post’s (really Jeff Bezos’) decision to not endorse a Presidential candidate has been swift and severe. From the AP: The Washington Post has lost at least 250,000 subscribers since announcing last Friday that it would not endorse a candidate for president — roughly 10 percent of its digital following, the newspaper reported Wednesday. The Post would not…

[sgclark]

America's Abusive Daddy Issue

An absolutely stellar rant by Cat Valente on how the perception that the media is liberally biased may be a falsehood perpetuated by financial and ratings driven manipulation tactics, dating back to the Iran-Contra Affair in the mid 1980s: Honestly, I’m not even sure how the idea is believable to anyone for more than a minute or two. First of all, exposing Trump and honestly reporting on his…

[sgclark]

AI Comes To Hollywood. And Everyone Freaks Out.

Lions Gate Entertainment studios signed a deal with AI company Runway that provides the AI company with access to the studio’s library, with the goal of using Runway’s generative AI capabilities to help augment and support the studio’s film development and production. Lions Gate Entertainment has agreed to give Runway, one of several fast-evolving AI startups, access to its content library in…

[sgclark]

A Memorabilia Collector's Playground

Image via The NY Times Tim Banazek was, like many of us, bored during the heights of the Coronavirus pandemic and decided he’d assuage that boredom by buying several boxes of old baseball cards. After sharing his purchase on his Facebook feed, a friend from his daughter’s softball team said “You should see my Dad’s collection!”. And woah, was this some sort of a collection! It was so massive…

[sgclark]

Say Your Name

A great site – appropriately named Title Drops – that analyzes all the movies that state the title within the dialogue of the movie itself. Interestingly, about a third of all movies fall into this category according to the site with the trend steadily rising over the past few decades, most noticeably since 2020. The trend of movies falling into this category since 2020 may be skewed a little…

[sgclark]

Timelapse of Plants Growing

You always see how your plants change over time but this video of time-lapse video and photos of multiple plants, fruits, and vegetables is super cool.

[sgclark]

Trainwreck

As is often the case, Jon Stewart says out loud what we all saw last night and now can’t unsee.

[sgclark]

A Museum For 'The Bard' Reopens

In a small basement museum in the shadow of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., sits the Folger Museum and its unprecedented collection of 82 copies of Shakespeare’s “First Folio”. For the past four years, this small museum has gone through a redesign and renovation in an effort to make it more welcoming to visitors who may, or may not, be familiar with the works of Shakespeare and the…

[sgclark]

Championship Bling

Interesting article profiling Jason Arasheben, a celebrity jeweler who has created many of the more outrageous and amazingly intricate championship rings that pro sports teams earn . For years, the company Jostens has dominated the ring industry – remember the Jostens tables on your college campus where you could order your senior ring? – but these days, Jason Arasheben has been encroaching into…

[sgclark]

Give Us Something New

The cost to watch TV and Movies at home continues to escalate as streaming services figure out how to compete with Netflix and make their services profitable. In many ways, they are coming to the cold reality that, in hindsight, the cable bundle was not that bad of a deal for them. Counterbalance this with some recent news out of Hollywood: As has been previously reported, the show is not a…

[sgclark]

Cool with a side of Creepy

Yesterday, Microsoft released VASA-1, which uses AI to generate video of people talking that is generated by nothing more than an audio clip and a still image. From an article on Ars Technica: The VASA framework (short for “Visual Affective Skills Animator”) uses machine learning to analyze a static image along with a speech audio clip. It is then able to generate a realistic video with precise…

[sgclark]

OJ is Dead

For those of a certain age, the spectacle of the OJ Simpson trial in the mid 1990s was the start of reality TV. From the LA Times obituary: With no murder weapon or eyewitnesses, the evidence was purely circumstantial. But Clark promised the jury that a trail of blood evidence would lead them directly from the gory crime scene to Simpson’s mansion. The prosecution presented DNA findings that the…

[sgclark]

Caitlin Clark Is Not Done Yet

I watched this whole game last night. What a moment for college sports to witness this. She has been doing this for four years now and as her college career comes to an end this March, folks need to take a step back and appreciate the moment. Similar to what Jay Bilas recently wrote in a nice appreciation of her Clark is now the all-time scoring champion of NCAA women’s basketball. She is the…

[sgclark]

Nice write up on the Apple Vision Pro https://spyglass.org/eye-dont-have-vision-pro-yet/

[sgclark]

Another Siri Fail

I had a fun little interaction with my iPhone, Messages, Apple Maps, Car Play, and Siri last night that sublimely illustrates how broken Siri is. The scenario: My wife took a drive last night to drop off one of our cars to my son who goes to college nearby. The plan was that my wife would drive drive the car that was to be dropped off and then I would leave home about an hour later and drive…