Never News: New Year, Same Newsletter
Hello and welcome to the new year from me, Producer Georgia. We haven't even gotten into the double digits in January yet, and already news events have continued to pummel us with unflinching severity. And there will be more – you know this, I know this. But there will also be surprises and sweetnesses coming, too. As always, it's up to us to fight back the urge to freeze up when times are scary, confusing, infuriating, all those things. We have each other, and there's no better way out of that comatose state than reaching that hand out and grabbing on to someone else's.
Now, on to the news.
THE VERGE: that viral Reddit post about food delivery isn't real
This came across my virtual desk in the way a lot of stuff does lately – via a video of someone talking about a post, presenting me with a kind of game of Internet telephone that leaves me at least two degrees away from the original content. In this case, the video I saw was about a Reddit post (which has since been removed) from someone claiming to work at a major food delivery company, defying their NDA to unveil the truth of their company's predatory business model. Righteous fury ensued from many, with some skeptics asking for more proof that this poster was who they said they were. And the more folks scratched at the story, the more paint peeled away, ultimately showing that this post and further posts by this user....were likely AI-generated. Now, the food delivery service model is rife with exploitation, this is known. But this incident put that familiar bad feeling in my stomach – the worry that the loudest, most foolish of us will somehow obfuscate the actual, real-life problems that need fixing.
SHOW NEWS: help me pick what games to stream!!!
As part of our exciting new plan for the new year, I'm interested in streaming more games for you beautiful angels on our Twitch channel. But...what shall I play? I have a short list, and I encourage you to pick the game you would most like for me to play on this Google Form. I'll also include the option of writing in a game that you don't see on my list if you so choose. I tried to pick from a range of options that sounded fun to me, but I'm open to suggestions!! My only criteria is that it's a game I can play for you over many streams and that it's available on the Switch or my regular laptop. Also for what it's worth, I like scary games but I don't want to play anything that's super gross. I am, after all, a delicate and beautiful flower!!!
THE ATLANTIC: reacting to reactions to the attack on Venezuela
Speaking of that Internet game of telephone...turns out that the United States government is just as interested in the online reaction to their actions as the actions themselves. As this piece in The Atlantic explains, look no further than this photo taken during the U.S. attack on Venezuela from a few days ago. At first blush, this looks like any other tense command center photo that we've seen in previous presidencies...until you look at what's on that monitor in the right side of the image. There, you can see that – yes, of course, naturally – the folks in this Mar-a-Lago conference room are monitoring...X posts about the ongoing attack on Venezuela. Though, is anyone surprised? Trump's crew of reality television stars and open-faced grifters know to cheat out to an online audience, and do so at every possible opportunity. It's not surprising that the opinions of Twitter users matters to them while they're doing international crimes. But still, it's ludicrous to behold.
VULTURE: Cinephiles, the world of online gambling is coming for you
I can't believe I'm saying this, but FILM BROS, GET BEHIND ME! MoviePass is trying to trick you into getting into virtual gambling!!! And indeed, that's exactly what's going on. In a newsletter, MoviePass's CEO Stacy Spikes revealed that the company is beta testing a new entertainment betting platform called Mogul. Users would bet on box office events like the Rotten Tomatoes score of an upcoming film, along with stuff like box office earnings and awards season wins. In the world of online gambling, this isn't entiiiiirely new – as the article says, DraftKings has accepted bets on the Oscars for years. But Mogul would be something new – far more tailored toward the movie lovers among us, and meant to open up the world of entertainment as fertile ground for betting. But don't listen to the siren song, Paul Thomas Anderson fans! Heed not the call, Club Chalamet devotees! I WILL SAVE YOU! I WILL PROTECT YOU! DAVID LYNCH WOULD NEVER LET YOU DO THIS AND NEITHER WILL I!!!!
And thus we reach the end of the news, at least in this newsletter. A note from your humble producer: try not to stress yourself out too much about New Year's resolutions. Whether or not you read 50 books or go to the gym every week, time will pass anyway. My advice? Go get a lovely dessert somewhere. That sounds nice.
Here's a song I heard last week in the movie O Agente Secreto and really liked