The trash version of the Criterion Closet
I own a lot of DVDs and a growing number of Blu-rays. I've been collecting physical copies since I was a teenager; when everyone else started ditching their libraries in favor of Netflix, I steadfastly refused. Considering how little of what I want to watch is available to stream these days, I feel completely vindicated.
I left a lot of my movie and television library in a storage locker when I moved to the UK, but now that I've got a multiregion Blu-ray player I've been digging those discs out of storage. I've also been buying movies and box sets from charity shops over here, usually for less than £2 apiece.
On one occasion I found two different unrated cuts of Saw in the same shop. I can't help but wonder if they came from the same person, or if two separate individuals decided it was time to let go of their precious extended edition of the movie where Cary Elwes cuts off his own foot.
All of this is my roundabout way of letting you know that my parents sent me the entirety of Babylon 5 on Blu-ray for my birthday, and you may not hear from me for some time.
Smashwords End of Year Sale
We're into the last week of the End of Year sale over at Smashwords. A lot of my books are on sale for 50% off or more, and my novelette "Jay Moriarty Violates the Official Secrets Act" and short story "Move Fast and Break Things" are both currently free to download!
You can find my books on Smashwords here, and sale prices are valid through to January 1.
This Week's Links
Defining AI
Defining AI along political and ideological language allows us to think about things we experience and recognize productively as AI, without needing the self-serving supervision of computer scientists to allow or direct our collective work. We can recognize, based on our own knowledge and experience as people who deal with these systems, what’s part of this overarching project of disempowerment by the way that it renders autonomy farther away from us, by the way that it alienates our authority on the subjects of our own expertise.
The Ghosts in the Machine
Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform. The program’s name: Perfect Fit Content (PFC).
Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam
Always good to remember that if someone is telling you something that's too good to be true, that's usually because it is. In this case: the free browser extension that finds coupon codes for you has to be getting its money from somewhere.
The grand tragedy of my life is that I could make infinitely more money if I were merely, like, 30% more of an asshole than I currently am.
-K
