The Magpie #012: Minions snuff films
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Magpie, a wire service for the weird compiled from the open tabs of writer Alex de Campi. Here’s what’s going on:
Happy 2025, it’s only been a week and already this year feels eternal. Many, many stupid things have happened, mostly involving AI. Let’s talk about them!
First, let’s check in on our friend Justin Baldoni, who has responded to the big New York Times exposé on his attempted PR war on Blake Lively by launching a $250m lawsuit against the NYT. Everyone expects the lawsuit to be dismissed under NY’s anti-SLAPP laws or for it to quietly be witdrawn right before discovery (the very expensive and potentially most embarrassing part). This guy’s never going to work again. If he’d just sat there and ate his food (aka adhered to the 30-point agreement he signed with Lively after she brought up her issues with his behavior) none of this would have happened.
Speaking of people who no longer have careers, Hollywood sex pest and manchild Brett Ratner is back, directing Amazon’s $40 million Melania Trump documentary.
In other totally unrelated news, WaPo cartoonist Ann Telnaes is quitting the paper (along with several colleagues) after management refused to run the above cartoon. Subscriber numbers are yet again in freefall, allegedly.
I think about this chart a lot:
I also think about this article a lot, especially in conjunction with the n+1 article on Netflix’s muzak-style content (and Spotify’s!) that I linked to last newsletter. Big data was the last giant business trend before the blockchain but you cannot predict what consumers will like in the future purely by what they watched/bought in the past—look at Barbenheimer!
Now to the wacky world of AI, where a festival of AI-made short films happened and unsurprisingly they were all terrible even though a ton of human effort had been undertaken to make them not terrible. But the real place AI filmmaking is taking off? Ultra-violet Minions snuff films. I want you to know that every time I write this email I type at least one phrase that is truly cursèd, and here we have it.
Meanwhile, some brave idiots have submitted a court case written by OpenAI’s o1 pro. (Lawyers can read the brief here, it is very long and very bad). I bet you’re thinking, “could this get worse?” Yes! The case is about crypto and it’s Winkelvii-adjacent! Specifically, these two former gifted children set up an LLC to get around Gemini Earn’s individual maximum deposits so they could put 90% of their assets into an internet ponzi scheme! When Gemini Earn collapsed, they sold their crypto at way under market value and wound up the LLC. Now they have seller’s remorse (Bitcoin is over 100k) and are trying to sue Genesis/DCG (which ran the Gemini Earn program) even though New York State is already handling that and so is the SEC.
Meanwhile, Sam Altman claims AI will replace human workers within the year while also admitting that ChatGPT Pro is losing money hand over fist, while Meta enshittifies by the day. Oh, and if you’re wondering what AGI is, it’s officially defined as “when OpenAI makes $100bn in profit.”
UTenn researchers create Glaze for music (prevents AI from being trained on it).
Tesla cybertruck sales are abysmal. Womp womp. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s doppelgänger Adrian Dittman, who is apparently a real person but just a very tragic one, guested on Fortnite Friday and took more hits than a birthday piñata.
Great year-end list of Jstor’s favorite 2024 articles, Jezebel’s top beefs of the year, and Defector’s things people have put in their rectum (or their penis) in 2024. This is the most American accident in existence: “SLIPPED ON DOCK TRYING TO EXIT BOAT, HAD ABOUT 6 BEERS, FELL FACE FIRST IN WATER, HAD GUN IN PANTS POCKET THAT FIRED. GUNSHOT WOUND TO PENIS”
It’s awards season, know your stars!
Relatable content: whales live much longer when left alone.
Gosh there is so much to get through this week, I’m barely going to have time to talk about how bullet train noses are modelled on kingfisher beaks, this cool article on gender relations and the ol’ fish/bicycle argument and how it relates to falling college admission numbers for boys, this older essay on the joys of the day job for creatives, or even research on a 14th-century Italian woman’s grave in China. Related to that, how should we write about historic misogyny?Oh, and the Mersey’s got sharks in it now, and that’s great! Also: PEACHES! (A Japanese-American farm preserves endangered fruit varieties). And archaeologists discover golden tongues in Egyptian grave site, which enabled the dead to talk in the afterlife.
Bad science dept: no, autists are not telepaths, and please let’s not bring giardia and dysentery back.
Lovely essay by Josie Reisman on 2024’s best trans films: I Saw The TV Glow and The People’s Joker.
You know how mid romance novels and fanfic have miscommunication and/or hiding a painful truth as their main plot point? Here is a real-life version where a failson ended up tens of millions of dollars in debt to keep up appearances (and his wife’s influencer hobby). Just horrifying.
Speaking of romance novels, we can’t get enough fanfic, its adjacent trad-pub genre of romantasy is becoming a sweatshop of rehashed tropes and plagiarism accusations sprint writing a book with your agent and editor writing too is not!!! normal!!!) and, most importantly, is fairy porn disrespectful to Welsh culture?!?!
Related: the subtle joys of reading books you don’t fully understand. Lovely interviews with authors Alan Garner and Allan Gurganus (whose book of short stories White People I am reading at the minute. It’s annoyingly great. The other book I’m adoring right now is Dorothy Dunnett’s swashbuckler The Game of Kings, which I stayed up until 1:30am to finish. So good—and I’m told the series just keeps getting better.)
Bad Star Trek episodes as the perfect conversation starter, an essay and appreciation.
Earliest known two-color dress found in Netherlands grave—2800 years old. Neato!
This week’s Wikipedia page of interest: The Erfurt Latrine Disaster.
This week’s recipe: Red Pesto Pasta, because it’s time kiddo learned that anchovies are great
MUSIC:
Housekeeping: I’ve added an affiliate links section at bottom where maybe you can find a nice discount on something you want or need.
As always, thanks for reading, consider forwarding this to a friend (friendo you can subscribe for free right here) or mentioning it on social media, and I’ll see you next week! (Oh—I’m travelling Tuesday and Weds, newsletter may be late.)
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