In other news: he’s still scum

One of these men is a president, and it’s not the clown currently infesting that office. But we shouldn’t be too surprised, of course; Mushroom Cock is an evil-spirited cunt at the best of times, but he was bound to have a higher than usual degree of venom for Robert Mueller… ungrateful of him, given that Mueller basically let him off on that obstruction of justice charge, but Mueller had displayed unforgivable temerity by investigating him at all, so it’s hardly surprising if Krasnov vented in the way he did. It also doesn’t make him any less ghoulish for doing so, of course, and he has been roundly and rightly condemned for his choice of words… and I feel that a lot of people will be using those words against him when his time finally comes.

Loaves and fishes…?

Another book I spotted online. I don’t know what we can say about the diet of someone who may or may not have even existed in the first place, but, even if we assume that he did, Jesus’ diet didn’t make him, you know, live longer… unless, of course, you accept that he is still alive in heaven and/or has always existed as the second person of God, in which case(s) I don’t think his diet has had much to do with his longevity. And he certainly wouldn’t have been eating those tomatoes on the cover, given they didn’t make it to the middle east until the 1800s…

Possibly not

Found on Tumblr:

Jeane Dixon was a psychic who became notable for predicting the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1956, in that she predicted the Democrat candidate would win the 1960 election but be murdered in his first term. Which, of course, is what happened, except that at some point before that election Jeane changed her mind and said Richard Nixon would win. Whoops. Apparently several years later, when Nixon finally did become president, she further predicted Nixon would survive the Watergate scandal and stage a great comeback. Whoops again.

Dixon apparently had a ton of similarly unsuccessful forecasts; her Wiki entry notes that she was right about Robert Kennedy’s assassination (wish she could’ve warned us about his worthless son, THAT would’ve been useful), but also there’s no source given for that story so it could be about as believable as her prediction that world war 3 would kick off in 1958. I don’t know whose “rise” she was predicting in the above book, apparently published in 1975, but history suggests she was wrong there too, cos 1999 was not a notably peaceful year (but there was another Kennedy death). She went on to be one of Nancy Reagan’s astrologers in the 80s; I can only assume Nancy was unaware of Jeane’s track record…

RIP Texas Ranger

Death got Chuck Norrised… er, Chuck Norris has left us a few days after turning 86. I’m not going to expend many tears over the news, cos he was frankly a piece of far-right shit (I don’t think anyone who wrote for World Net Daily could be described any other way) who produced his own martial arts system that included a code of conduct he didn’t live up to himself. He did some decent philanthropic things and was obviously an icon of martial arts and movies; shame he was so happy to tarnish his legacy the way he did.

Well would you look at THAT

I spotted this on Bluesky a couple of months ago but I’ve been oddly slack about posting it here. I don’t know exactly where or when this was taken, though there is, shall we say, a certain sign of the times in it… but obviously we know who that is in the shot, young man by the unlikely name of Elvis Aaron Presley, captured in his godlike youth. Also there’s some black dude at the edge of the frame, and some other guy looking astonished in a door frame. Hard to tell what had him more transfixed here; was it the culture-changing hip-shaking icon he’d probably seen on TV, or was it THAT GODDAMN DARKIE behind him, walking about in public as if he had a right to be there? Hard to tell from the angle, but I feel it might as easily have been the latter as the former…

A what of what?

I have so little interest in the Oscars these days that I didn’t even realise until the results came out this afternoon that it even was Oscars time. That said, however bored I am by them unless Will Smith punches someone or there’s a Best Picture announcement fuckup, I nonetheless offer full acknowledgement of when something historic happens. And something did tonight: not only the first female cinematographer to win an Oscar, but a woman of person. Doesn’t that make a refreshing change from all those men of people who’ve monopolised the award for nearly a century?

Sinners didn’t do anywhere near the business I think people were expecting it to do, having earned a record number of nomiations; Slate magazine then ran a piece about how it made by then losing the most number of nominations (16 noms, 4 wins). I haven’t read the piece cos it’s paywalled and I can’t be arsed breaking it, so for all I know it might actually be a perfectly well-meaning piece about the Oscars shafting a worthy contender because a black dude made it and that’s why losing so many nominations was bad… but I kind of doubt that for some reason, and people on Bluesky are roundly slating (ho ho) it for being an essentially mean-spirited take… I mean, yeah, it didn’t win 12 of its nomination, but the four it did win were pretty major ones (original screenplay, cinematography, score, best actor). And one of those was a woman of person, too. I think celebrating that is better…

How the “mighty” have fallen

Ah, Buzzfeed, once upon a time you were so ubiquitous… now you’re just catastrophically in debt, and you should be:

In January 2023, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced in a memo to staff that the company was making a hard pivot to AI — years before the word “slop” was added to the public lexicon.
In the memo, which was published roughly two months after OpenAI unveiled its groundbreaking ChatGPT chatbot, Peretti said BuzzFeed would be using the software to enhance the company’s infamous quizzes by generating personalized responses.
The company’s stock price jumped aggressively, from around $3 per share to north of $15. But longer-term, neither insiders nor the public were particularly compelled by the move. Nonetheless, Peretti doubled down, promising in May 2023 that AI will “replace the majority of static content” on the site, just a month after shuttting down its Pulitzer Prize-winning BuzzFeed News division.
Reality soon set in. The AI quizzes were underwhelming, and the site was soon caught publishing entire AI-generated articles that were sloppy and repetitive. After the initial spike in enthusiasm, the company’s stock took a massive beating; as of this week, its shares are hovering around 70 cents.

Woof. I think Buzzfeed was already long past its peak anyway when Peretti was making the shift to AI, and the latter clearly failed to achieve what I assume was the goal, i.e. get people interested in BF again. The company has now admitted outright that they probably don’t have the wherewithal to meet its financial obligations over the next twelve months. And, as the first article ominously notes…

The brutal reality check seemingly hasn’t put Peretti off from pursuing AI, though. He now says he’s hoping to bring “new AI apps to the market” this year.

…Peretti doesn’t seem to have learned anything from the last few years. If Buzzfeed does go under, it will have deserved it if its founder couldn’t come up with a better idea…