Congratulations, we’ve successfully installed your new toilet. I’m Gene, your Tushi technician, and—I hear you loud and clear: you desperately need to go number two. Let’s get you logged into your new toilet.
No, I’m afraid you can’t “just go fast and then log into the toilet”—you need to activate your Tushi subscription to enable flushing. Don’t think of it as a recurring monthly fee for standard toilet functionality; consider it the premium you pay for our constantly evolving suite of features.
All right, your toilet is ready for Bluetooth pairing. I promise, after this quick initial setup, you’ll think: “I can’t believe I used to poop the old-fashioned way.” Yes, you do need to enable two-factor authentication, or else your toilet lid won’t unlock.
Let me repeat back what you just said to me. You said: “Please, please, please, for the love of God, hurry up.” Did I understand your concern correctly? Great—I see the problem: you downloaded version 2.1.1 of the Tushi app, the version currently available in the App Store. We just need to manually override you to the unreleased nightly beta build, or the toilet will spit poop out backwards. I assume you’ve jailbroken your phone? Not a problem; I’m happy to void your iPhone’s warranty for you.
I understand you’re currently “groundhogging it,” a.k.a. “crowning.” Almost done: we just need to establish your butt fingerprint. I’m afraid it is necessary—that is, if you want to receive your sixteen-dimensional Gut Intelligence Report, including microbiome, inflammation, and other exciting metrics. I’m afraid it’s completely impossible to enable this feature at any time other than the initial setup—and it’s sort of the entire point of a Smart Toilet.
Perfect—you’re now 100 percent set up! And we just need you to pick your tier, which is technically not part of the setup phase. I recommend the Premium Plus Package, although the Gold Plus Premium Package does let you flush toilet paper. No, you cannot flush regular paper—only Smart Paper, which is currently impossible to find due to supply-chain issues.
I understand your poop situation is now at DEFCON-2, and yes, I am aware that lower DEFCONs are, for some reason, worse. I just need you to accept the terms and conditions—no, of course, we’re not sending your feces to the cloud. We only send your fecal data to the cloud. But don’t worry: it’s 98 percent encrypted.
No, we’re not a poop data-collection company. We’re a poop data-collection and monetization platform, but again, have no fear: we don’t sell your poop data to the highest bidder. We sell your poop data indiscriminately. Just imagine: by scanning your poop, we could detect you have Crohn’s disease up to two years before your primary care physician—and we’ll even tell you about it if you upgrade to the Certified Gold Members Tier.
Congratulations, you’re now ready to poop!
Oh… hmm… it looks like your toilet doesn’t recognize your butt fingerprint. Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal, but you should know your toilet is currently calling the police.
Now that society is collapsing, Everything Is Terrible! is reborn with their new and fantastical expedition into found footage... but this time the adults can stay home! EIT! has unearthed thousands of forgotten DVD & VHS tapes aimed at yesterday’s youth to bring you their most mind-melting movie to date. Watch in awe as all colors of the rainbow join forces to destroy the tyranny of adult civilization once and for all! All of your oldest friends will be there; skateboarding web-surfers, rapping math equations, gigantic baby ducks, and maybe even a wizard or two! And what EIT! show would be complete without a live experience that makes the Ice Capades look like a stupid piece of trash! Finally, an all-encompassing extravaganza created for kidz... by kidz!
The city of Rotterdam plans to prohibit people from feeding bread to ducks. The news organization NRC reports, on April 7, 2022, about the pushback on that, especially from the city’s most eminent duck biologist. Here is a machine translation (into English) of that report:
FEEDING BAN: A ban on feeding city birds in Rotterdam should prevent the animals from getting sick. Among the ducks near a canal, biologist Kees Moeliker is critical of the measure.
As soon as Kees Moeliker catches sight of ducks, he takes black, folding binoculars from his bag. Through the lens he studies the group sitting further down in the grass along the Rotterdam Westersingel. “They are mallards,” Moeliker says. He is a biologist and director of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam. “I’m glad we found them so quickly, because the mallard is in bad shape. The numbers are declining, by as much as 30 to 40 percent. Duck lovers are very concerned.”
From his shoulder bag, Moeliker, who became world famous as the duck man through his study of homosexual necrophilia among drakes, takes a bag with leftover bread. A corn sandwich is cut into neat cubes. “I got this off the breadboard this morning. Shall we see if we can tempt the ducks for a quick bite?”
He throws a handful of pieces of bread into the water. A flying seagull discovers the loot first, but continues to circle above it without fishing the bread out of the water. As a result, the ducks’ attention is quickly aroused: two drakes – drakes – rise from the grass and swim towards the leftover bread.
“With small pieces of bread you can feed in a targeted manner,” says Moeliker as he squats down by the water’s edge. After a few bites, the ducks climb ashore and snatch the bread from his hand. “This is the fun of feeding ducks, the direct contact with the animals. And there is much more bird life to discover.”
Ban from 1 July
Whoever wants to feed bread to the ducks must hurry. From 1 July, the municipality of Rotterdam wants to ban the feeding of urban animals, following a motion by the Party for the Animals (PvdD). The decision still has to be approved by the city council in June, but that will probably not be a problem.
The feed ban is intended to prevent city birds from becoming ill or dying earlier due to bread and other food residues, the municipality writes in the statement.press release . The measure also prevents nuisance from pests that come to the food leftovers – in 2020 there were four thousand reports of rat nuisance. “Because these problems affect the entire city, the municipality has opted for a city-wide feed ban,” says a spokesperson for Stadsbeheer.
Moeliker shows himself critically among the ducks along the Westersingel. “The municipality uses the argument that bread is unhealthy for ducks. That is partly true: bread contains salt and is an unnatural food. If ducks only eat bread, it’s bad for them. Combined with other foods – the insects and aquatic plants they normally eat – it’s not much of a problem. That’s how ducks live in the big city.”
The just-fed ducks set a good example. After a few bites of bread they switched to the duckweed that floats along the bank. Then they dive back into the water and start ‘gobying’ just before the bank: head in the ditch, butt just above the water’s surface and kicking with the orange legs.
“This is how ducks get their food from the water,” says Moeliker. “Because of the treading water and rooting with the beak, the bottom clouds up and all kinds of things – water snails, crustaceans, seeds – come up to eat. So you see that after the sandwich they switch back to other food. Ducks take care of their own disc of five.”
No scientific evidence
Moeliker is not worried about duck deaths from bread: “I have not seen any scientific evidence for that. The current decline in the mallard population is not due to food, but to high chick mortality.” Ruud van der Velden, leader of the Rotterdam PvdD, cannot provide scientific evidence when asked, but does not agree with Moeliker. “We do see deaths from eating too much or unhealthy food. We are drawn to this by residents, for example in the Bloemhof district. The Bird Protection also says that bread is bad for ducks.”
Rotterdam is not the first city to introduce a ban. As early as 2016, the De Dommel Water Board banned feeding ducks in a pond in Vught in Brabant, after whole loaves of bread were thrown into the water a few times. This was followed by Amsterdam, The Hague, Leiden and Utrecht. The amount of the fine varies between 70 and 140 euros. According to Stadsbeheer, the fine in Rotterdam will be 100 euros.
“Sin,” says Moeliker. “The feed ban of the municipality of Rotterdam is actually a ban on dumping food leftovers.”
He walks to a pile of white rice further up in the grass, right next to a large black rat trap. Four ducks, an Egyptian goose with a crippled left leg and a city pigeon take turns pecking at it. “This inverted pan of rice, you have to provide information about it. That is not good for the birds and attracts vermin. But feeding sliced pieces of bread is quite different from overturning a supper.”
Van der Velden does not want to distinguish between feeding children and people who dump leftover food. “All feeding is bad for the animals.” The municipality does not intend to make any exceptions. “A ban is a ban,” says Stadsbeheer.
According to Moeliker, the municipality ignores the educational function. “Feeding ducks is an accessible way in which city children come into contact with nature. You can count ducks and other birds, discuss their behavior and view the different species. It’s basically biology class in the middle of the city – thanks to a crust of bread. We shouldn’t ban that.”
The Duck Guy
There is a sentiment expressed in the Christian bible: “Man does not live by bread alone.” Moeliker is pointing out that neither do ducks.
When we first learned about plants in school, they seemed so straightforward: Make sure they have the right amounts of soil, sunlight, and water, and they’ll grow. Then we learned that it’s a little more complicated than that, and many different factors determine whether and how well a plant will grow.
In March a 44-year-old librarian at Pennsylvania's Bucknell University saved a copy of a web site about a 16th century Ukrainian politician and patron of the arts. One month later, "the original website is lost," reports the Washington Post, "its server space likely gone to cyberattacks, power outages or Russian shelling."
But thanks to that librarian, the site "remains intact on server space rented by an international group of librarians and archivists." Slashdot reader nickwinlund77 shared the Post's report:
Buildings, bridges, and monuments aren't the only cultural landmarks vulnerable to war. With the violence well into its second month, the country's digital history — its poems, archives, and pictures — are at risk of being erased as cyberattacks and bombs erode the nation's servers.
Over the past month, a motley group of more than 1,300 librarians, historians, teachers and young children have banded together to save Ukraine's Internet archives, using technology to back up everything from census data to children's poems and Ukrainian basket weaving techniques. The efforts, dubbed Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (or SUCHO), have resulted in over 2,500 of the country's museums, libraries, and archives being preserved on servers they've rented, eliminating the risk they'll be lost forever. Now, an all-volunteer effort has become a lifeline for cultural officials in Ukraine, who are working with the group to digitize their collections in the event their facilities get destroyed in the war....
They banded together, and amid sleepless nights across multiple time-zones, they recruited, trained, and organized scores of volunteers wanting to help archive Ukraine's historical websites. Large parts of the Internet get periodically archived through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which partners with the organization, but SUCHO's organizers also needed something more advanced, said Quinn Dombrowski, an academic technology specialist at Stanford University. In many cases, the Wayback Machine can dig into the first or second layer of a website, she added, but many documents, like pictures and uploaded files, on Ukraine's cultural websites could be seven or eight layers deep, inaccessible to traditional Web crawlers. To do that, they turned to a suite of open source digital archiving tools called Webrecorder, which have been around since the mid-2010s, and used by institutions including the United Kingdom's National Archive and the National Library of Australia...
SUCHO's organizers receive tips from librarians and archivists across the world who may know of a rare museum in Ukraine that needs to have its work backed up. Other volunteers have become sleuths, using Google Maps to take a digital walk down Ukrainian streets, looking for any signs that might say "museum" or "library" and trying to find out if it has a website that needs archiving. In other cases, when a shelling happens somewhere, a group of volunteers dedicated to "situation monitoring" alerts any volunteers that might be awake to look for institution websites in that region that need backing up, for fear they could go offline any minute.
Or, as that Bucknell librarian told the Post, "We're trying to save as much as possible."
Obsessive Pac-fans of a certain age may remember Ms. Pac-Man's cameo appearance in Pac-Land, the 1984 side-scrolling spin-off that first gave Pac-Man legs. This week's re-release of the game on the Switch seems to have thrown the "miss" down the memory hole, though, an odd retcon that may be the result of the complicated legal history surrounding Ms. Pac-Man's creation.
Pac-Man book contributor Ryan Silberman and artist Nick Caballero were among the first to note the apparent change on Twitter this week. They highlighted Pac-Land Switch screenshots in which Ms. Pac-Man's iconic bow and high, red boots have been replaced with a character sporting pink high heels and a matching hat. The sprite for the baby-sized Jr. Pac-Man has been similarly changed to remove the trademark red bow that was first seen in 1983's Jr. Pac-Man.
Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man as they appeared in the original release of Pac-Land. The pair have been edited out of this week's Switch re-release. (credit: @nickisonlinet / Twitter)
Leaving the sprites in their original form would have obviously been the simpler choice for Hamster, which publishes the Arcade Archives series on Switch. And the description for Pac-Land's Arcade Archives re-release notes that the "series has faithfully reproduced many classic Arcade masterpieces," making such a minor change even more bizarre. What's going on here?
LaQuedra Edwards had put $40 into a lottery vending machine at a supermarket in Los Angeles when "some rude person" bumped into her, causing her to buy a different lottery ticket than she intended.
The vote on the historic nomination was 53 to 47, with three Republicans voting with Democrats. When sworn in this summer, Brown will be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
I’m currently interviewing for new jobs, and the entire process is remote. I’ve noticed that the number of interviews for a single position is way higher than in previous years when I’ve looked for a job. In one position I’ve been through seven rounds of interviews, with no indication that a decision is coming soon. A lot of these are just repeats of the same questions that others have asked. I’ve been asked “what’s one word that describes you” and “why do you want to work here” by almost everyone I’ve been interviewed by, and my answer doesn’t change so I doubt this is an effective use of their time. For another position I’ll be in interview 4 later this week, and have already been told there will be at least two more…
All of this interviewing is becoming very time consuming, even though it is remote. I have a demanding full-time job, a family, and obligations outside of meeting every member of a company. Taking four hours a week to interview and several additional hours to prepare is not sustainable.
As I continue to apply and (hopefully) get asked to interview, I’m thinking about telling the HR recruiters from the outset that I can only commit to a maximum of four interviews, due to other demands on my time. If they want to pack three or four people into these interviews at a time, that’s fine with me, but I don’t want to invest 8+ hours into an interview process and then get ghosted, which is unfortunately quite common. The positions I’m applying for are mid-level and would not involve managing a team, and I just think that they’re going to learn all there is to know about me within four interviews. Is there a nice way to express this limit to a recruiter or will it just make me seem difficult?
It depends on how reasonable the company is, how strong a candidate you are, and how you say it.
To be clear, it’s a reasonable thing to say. There are very few positions where you can’t learn what you need about a candidate in four interviews (or at least all you’re going to learn), and a mid-level, non-management position probably isn’t one of the rare exceptions.
Companies that do crazy numbers of interviews do it because they’re disorganized and haven’t planned their process sufficiently from the start … or in some cases because they’re overly reliant on consensus and are involving an excessive number of people in the process, at the expense of the candidate’s time and energy.
That said, some companies will bristle at a candidate setting limits on their process. In most cases, those companies will be telling you something valuable about themselves, and it’s reasonable to decide you’d prefer to screen out companies that think they should have an unlimited claim on your time. But it’s like anything with job-searching — if you have options, you have the luxury of being pickier about what you are and aren’t willing to do. If you desperately need a job, you’re not in a position to exert as much control.
As for how to do it … I’d be reluctant to declare it at the very outset. If the company typically just does, say, two interviews, it’ll come across oddly to preemptively announce that you won’t be doing more than four. So there’s not an ideal way to bring it up at the very start.
However, at the point where you’re invited for a second interview, you could say, “I’d be glad to set up another meeting. Can I ask what the process will look like from here and how many steps you anticipate it having?” If they tell you there are a ton more interviews to come or if they’re vague about what they might want, you could say, “My work obligations make it difficult for me to commit to a large number of meetings. Is it possible to plan around that? If we can structure it so we both get what we need from no more than four interviews, that would let me commit to your whole process.”
What you’re likely to run into, though, are companies that describe a shorter process but then ask for more and more of your time anyway — because they keep thinking of additional people they want you to meet with or other areas they want to probe. If that happens, at that point it’s reasonable to say, “Because of my schedule, it’s getting tough for me to keep taking time away from my job. If this is the final interview I can make it work, but I want to be transparent that it won’t be easy to continue being available after that.”
That’s not quite the hard-line “I will only be available four times” statement that you were contemplating — it’s softer. But it’ll get the basic point across, and if they do come back and ask for more interviews after you’ve said that, (a) you’ll be learning something about how they respond to people who try to set reasonable boundaries (unless they have a very good explanation like “everyone involved in the interview process has been killed in a horrific llama attack and all their notes were lost with them”) and (b) you can always say no if you want to.
Now that society is collapsing, Everything Is Terrible! is reborn with their new and fantastical expedition into found footage... but this time the adults can stay home! EIT! has unearthed thousands of forgotten DVD & VHS tapes aimed at yesterday’s youth to bring you their most mind-melting movie to date. Watch in awe as all colors of the rainbow join forces to destroy the tyranny of adult civilization once and for all! All of your oldest friends will be there; skateboarding web-surfers, rapping math equations, gigantic baby ducks, and maybe even a wizard or two! And what EIT! show would be complete without a live experience that makes the Ice Capades look like a stupid piece of trash! Finally, an all-encompassing extravaganza created for kidz... by kidz!
Now that society is collapsing, Everything Is Terrible! is reborn with their new and fantastical expedition into found footage... but this time the adults can stay home! EIT! has unearthed thousands of forgotten DVD & VHS tapes aimed at yesterday’s youth to bring you their most mind-melting movie to date. Watch in awe as all colors of the rainbow join forces to destroy the tyranny of adult civilization once and for all! All of your oldest friends will be there; skateboarding web-surfers, rapping math equations, gigantic baby ducks, and maybe even a wizard or two! And what EIT! show would be complete without a live experience that makes the Ice Capades look like a stupid piece of trash! Finally, an all-encompassing extravaganza created for kidz... by kidz!
Many items are added to the Internet Archive’s collections every month, by us and by our patrons. Here’s a round up of some of the new media you might want to check out. Logging in might be required to borrow certain items.
This month we’ve added books on varied subjects in more than 20 languages. Click through to explore, but here are a few interesting items to start with:
The audio archive contains recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Explore.
Founded in 2005, Librivox is a community of volunteers from all over the world who record audiobooks of public domain texts in many different languages. Explore.
The Live Music Archive is a community committed to providing the highest quality live concerts in a lossless, downloadable format, along with the convenience of on-demand streaming (all with artist permission). Explore.
This collection hosts complete, freely downloadable/streamable, often Creative Commons-licensed catalogs of ‘virtual record labels’. These ‘netlabels’ are non-profit, community-built entities dedicated to providing high quality, non-commercial, freely distributable MP3/OGG-format music for online download in a multitude of genres. Explore.
I’m in the Trader Joe’s frozen aisle, a section of the store that I love to peruse but hardly commit to. I’m frugal, and a firm believer in the notion that I can use my spice cabinet to make even the most rudimentary ingredients taste like one of these microwavable meals for a fraction of the price. But sometimes I treat myself, I can’t make Thai Tea Mini Mochi or Pepperoni Pizza Macaroni and Cheese at home, after all.
Something catches my eye. The box is bright yellow, displaying three spring rolls atop a banana leaf. They’re crispy, as if fried by the hues of the sunset background. They’re called “Kalua Pork Spring Rolls,” so it suddenly makes sense to me that they’re being marketed like a Hawaiian vacation. I’m looking at a family of three little spring-roll people tanning on their banana leaf towel under a tropical sun, where I want to be. I buy them.
Kalua pork is a traditional Hawaiian dish, and it continues to exist as a key part of the resort luaus of today. They’re shows meant to dazzle the audience with whimsical (though false) acts that leave tourists thinking that native Hawaiians do things like eating fire on a regular basis. At one point, an entire glazed pig is carried out for the guests to marvel at. It’s cartoonish in the way that its facial features stayed intact through the entire barbecuing and smoking process. Its eyes are closed like it, too, is playing a role in the grand spectacle. (It’s entirely possible that it was: I never actually saw anyone eat the luau pig.)
The spring rolls are in my apartment’s oven. My radiator sizzles, and I pretend that it’s the pig spit roasting.
“Kalua” actually isn’t just a fancy Hawaiian word. It’s a way of cooking, native to Hawaii that occurs in an underground oven called an imu. Kalua literally means “to cook in an underground oven.” My oven is above ground. This is false advertising, and potentially insensitive to Hawaiian culture. Unless their test kitchen has its own imu, but I don’t think they come in a large enough size for mass manufacturing.
I open the oven to flip the spring rolls and I’m hit with the pungent smell of hot dogs. It seems that this pork is going to be closer to the Americanized version than what’s on the box. They’re not as crispy and brown in the actual pan either. They’re a translucent fleshy color that teases the insides of the rolls: shreds of carrots and purple cabbage running like wrist veins against an unassuming log of pork. One is stuck to the pan. My fork shreds part of the wrapper, but the cylinder of spring-roll insides stays structurally intact. I guess this is closer to a hot dog than I thought.
I put them back in the oven for a few minutes because the suggested cooking time on the box has left them unappealingly finger-like. It takes ten minutes for them to develop any sort of tan like their modelesque siblings on the box, an eternity in frozen-meal time (and that doesn’t take into account the purgatory that is waiting for them to cool).
I first ate kalua pork among the same tropical kitsch as the box I’m staring at right now. It was called “Hawaiian Barbecue” (straight to the point) and it had the layout of a greasy-spoon style diner, but it was filled with fake palm trees and inflatable pool floaties in a plastic tropical paradise. Coupled with the dust and harsh fluorescent lighting, it was like I was in the comfiest room in the Big Island’s sanitarium for the criminally insane. The menu had a few options: chicken, pork, or beef. All barbecued various ways and served with macaroni salad and rice. It was here that I discovered that “kalua pork” is Hawaiian for “pulled pork” (served on a banana leaf for authenticity!). I admit it was a bit of a letdown, but I was paying for the tropical façade as well. Though there were no fire eaters this time.
I know they’re ready to eat when the grease doesn’t sting my hand when I try to wipe it off the roll. Each has a crunch that gives way to juicy, smoky pork (though distinctly American in its saltiness, like the spice blend was copied off of the ingredients list on a bag of beef jerky). I’ve never had “authentic” kalua pork so I don’t have an appropriate model for comparison, but it tastes unlike any other barbecued recipe I’ve ever eaten: Korean, North Carolinian, Texan, each with their own distinct flavor profile. I can’t tell if this one is more “Hawaiian” or “grocery store.” Maybe it’s both, the result of a recipe intricately formulated to facilitate the sale of tropical exoticity to me. It worked. They’re delicious. The four spring rolls that fit in the box are gone soon. Maybe I can nibble the grease from my fingers. Or just buy some more.
There’s a charred aftertaste to the rolls—maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to take their cooking time into my own hands—and I can’t help but think about the roast kalua pig. They’re a likeness of a collective myth of Hawaii, and something I’m willing to buy.
Dear Drivers of Uptown Manhattan Who Honk as My Son Gets on His School Bus,
First off, I want to thank you for a fantastic performance this morning! The symphony of horns, the yelling, the speeding, all made my son’s commute to school truly memorable. So memorable was your production, we were all moved to tears.
Let’s start with the staging. Parking your cars, even momentarily, at the fire hydrant is a brilliant way to make lowering the wheelchair lift a precision feat on our crowded street. Today’s scene left just enough room for the driver to demonstrate his exacting skills to the amazement of all.
As the bus driver inched up and back to land his exact mark, your quick moves to speed around were inspiring. Even when the stop sign was out, you zipped past, as if laws or common decency did not apply to you. Such bravery and irreverence are hard to muster so early in the day. Bravo!
But let’s not stop at the staging and choreography. The score this morning was superb. There is nothing my son loves more than the cacophonous twelve-car horn salute as the wheelchair lift raises him to the bus where he joins his peers on their way to the daily pursuit of knowledge and skill (and perhaps a little empathy and compassion, but I’ll only use vocabulary that might alienate some of you parenthetically). His eye rolls, the type that only a thirteen-year-old can muster with casual ire, betrayed the depth of emotion we all experience when hearing your opus.
We have titled your daily performance “The Ascension of the King” and we thank you for your raucous reverence to his royalty. As he rises in his wheeled throne, you boisterously beckon the entire neighborhood to their balconies and windows so they too can bear witness to this deeply revealing display of human heroism and honk-loving haste.
While your ensemble grows louder, we hear from the choir.
“The honking won’t make it go faster!” one passerby yells.
“It’s a kid in a wheelchair!” a dog walker cries.
“Shut the fuck up!” we hear from a window.
“Honk if you’re an asshole!” (Even I have a line!)
We trade beeps and barbs until he is safely on the bus, the lift door is closed, the stop sign folds back, he is on his way to school, and you bring your incredible selves, as you are, to the rest of your day.
Kudos to your entire company for the collective faith that this artistic achievement—equal parts emotion and commotion—might somehow restore my son’s ability to walk, and, heaven help us all, lessen your commute by whole minutes!
I would be remiss without adding a special shout-out for today’s command solo performance by NY AHV 9013 (a barely altered stage name I’ll use to protect this performer’s privacy). Thank you for showing us just how nasty the villain can be.
I sincerely hope that you all reached your destinations safely and without regret.
And ahead of tomorrow’s 8 a.m. show, let me say, break a leg!
We’ve covered a variety of recent copyright lawsuits against songs that sound vaguely similar, noting this ridiculous war on genres, and basically outlawing the idea of an homage. Even in cases where the lawsuits fail (which is frequently, though not always), it’s still an extremely costly waste of time that can still have massive chilling effects on creative people. Ed Sheeran has been sued a few times with these kinds of claims, and thankfully, just won a case in the UK.
But, perhaps even more importantly, with the announcement of the win, Sheeran put out a really fantastic video statement that is worth watching about the state of vexatious copyright lawsuits these days.
Ed’s been dealing with a lawsuit recently and he wanted to share a few words about it all pic.twitter.com/hnKm7VFcor
In case that video disappears (or you’re not able to watch it), here’s a transcript:
Hey guys. Me, Johnny, and Steve have made a joint statement that will be a press release on the outcome of this case.But I wanted to make a small video to talk about it a bit, because I’ve not really been able to talk about it whilst it’s been going on. Whilst we’re obviously happy with the result, I feel like claims like this are way too common now, and have become a culture where a claim is made with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there is no basis for the claim. It’s really damaging to the songwriting industry.
There’s only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music. Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify—that’s 22 million songs a year—and there’s only 12 notes that are available.
I don’t want to take anything away from the pain and hurt suffered from both sides of this case, but I just want to say, I’m not an entity. I’m not a corporation. I’m a human being. I’m a father, I’m a husband, I’m a son. Lawsuits are not a pleasant experience. And I hope that with this ruling, in the future baseless claims like this can be avoided. This really does have to end.
Me, Johnny, and Steve, are very grateful for all the support sent to us by fellow songwriters over the last few weeks. Hopefully, we can all get back to writing songs, rather than having to prove that we can write them. Thank you.
That’s a really fantastic statement. Copyright has long been a complete mess, and one that, in its current form, has done way more damage to creativity than helped it. And Sheeran is no stranger to recognizing this as it’s not the first time we’ve talked up his views on these things. Five years ago, we wrote about how he explained that piracy is what made his career possible. And not in the sense of this lawsuit, which falsely accused him of “pirating” someone else’s work, but he recognized that fans sharing his songs is what made it possible for him to build a devoted fan base.
Furthermore, when his big record label pulled a video down of someone singing a Sheeran cover on Facebook, causing her to lose her account for infringement, Sheeran stepped in to say he supported people singing his songs and got his label (Atlantic/Warner) to remove the copyright claim.
But this is not just about Sheeran. In the video above, he correctly notes that he’s a human being, not an entity or a corporation. But he’s also an enormously successful and wealthy human being who is able to weather these attacks more easily than nearly everyone else impacted by a copyright system run amok. For most people today’s modern copyright system is not doing anything to incentivize new creations or to “protect” artists. It’s doing the opposite. It’s great that Sheeran seems to understand all this, but it’s not enough for a few musicians (and the wider public) to recognize it.
We’re still living in a world where the record labels, like Sheeran’s, and other legacy players in the copyright industries, are pushing for ever more ridiculous copyright laws. In the EU they have Article 17, that is going to make things much worse, while in the US, we have a new bill, pushed for by the record labels to basically break the internet in support of their (not the actual artists) business interests.
The copyright system is broken. It’s great that Ed recognizes that and is willing to speak to that fact, but these lawsuits aren’t going to go away just because he won this one. It needs real change in terms of fixing our incredibly broken copyright system. And it certainly doesn’t need politicians playing to donors making it worse.
The Crow is preparing the stalk the city once again on his quest for revenge. The underground comic created by James O'Barr way back in 1989 has continued to be a pop culture phenomenon. Many know of the character from "The Crow," a 1994 film that's notable for being the final performance of Brandon Lee, who died on set. Since the successful box office release of the film, "The Crow" has made a sizable dent in pop culture. There have been three sequels, several novels, and a terrible video game in the years. Hollywood has been doing its best to produce further sequels and reboots since the 2005 release of "The Crow: Wicked Prayer." Jason Momoa, Jack Huston, Luke Evans, Tom Hiddleston, and Bradley Cooper have all been attached or in talks to star as The Crow. Unfortunately, none of these projects were able to crawl from their graves.
Recently, a new iteration of the character was announced, starring Bill Skarsgard in the title role and helmed by "Snow White and the Huntsman" and "Ghost in the Shell" director Rupert Sanders. Will this one actually happen? Only Eric Draven knows. Prior to many of the sequels and attempted reboots, however, there was a single-season television series that most folks probably haven't heard of.
Getting On The Stairway
You'll find the television show smack dab in-between 1996's "The Crow: City of Angels" and 2000's "The Crow: Salvation." Entitled "The Crow: Stairway to Heaven," the show follows the same plot and premise as the original film. One year after being murdered alongside his fiancée, former rock star Eric Draven returns to life seeking revenge. His postponed death gives Draven additional powers to enact his revenge, including the ability to heal his wounds.
In the film and its sequels, each iteration of The Crow is brought back to life for a limited period of time; once they get revenge, they return to the grave. That wasn't going to work for a television series, though. Instead, Eric Draven in "Stairway to Heaven" has a less specific mission to put right what went wrong, which extends beyond those that caused his death. Once he completes his mission and finds redemption, Draven will be able to move on to the Land of the Dead where he'll be reunited with his lost love, Shelly Webster.
The television show expands on the mythology of the films, with more Crows, anti-Crows called Snakes, and secret organizations that want to utilize the power of the Crow to achieve immortality. It's a crime-of-the-week show centering around our supernatural hero kicking bad guys in the head.
Heaven Ain't Hard To Find
"The Crow: Stairway to Heaven" was developed for television by Bryce Zabel, starring martial artist and actor Mark Dacascos. Dacascos has had a long career in genre projects, including supporting roles in "Brotherhood of the Wolf," "Double Dragon," "Crying Freeman," and "John Wick: Chapter 3." Some may even know him as the Chairman in "Iron Chef America."
The show ran for a full season of 22 episodes, enjoying critical success and decent ratings. Over the course of its run, it had some interesting supporting cast members and guest stars, including Kadeem Hardison as Draven's guide the Skull Cowboy, Corey Feldman as Draven's estranged brother, and Anthony Michael Hall as a serial killer. A mix of martial arts, mood, and music video cinematography carries the show. It sports the wonderful B-tier magic of a late '90s genre television show shot in Vancouver; "The Crow: Stairway to Heaven" would later run on the designated home for such shows, The Sci-Fi Channel.
The second season was in pre-production when everything was shut down due to a change in management, as producer PolyGram Productions was purchased by Universal. "The Crow: Stairway to Heaven" sadly ended on a cliffhanger, meaning we'll never know if a powerless Eric Draven ever got his strength back from the leader of the Lazarus Group. Maybe the upcoming "The Crow" reboot will be bold and just continue the TV show's plotline. We can hope and dream.
It might be a stretch to call games like The Secret of Monkey Island and Lemmings "modern", but compared to the Apple II they're decades in the future. And yet they and other newer titles are being "demade" to play the old hardware—a painstaking process of compromise, ground-up reimagining and deep expertise in ancient technology. — Read the rest
Through the years, as GOG evolved, we explored many directions, and developed in ways that supported the needs presented by them. As mentioned in the first 2022 update, one of the things we’d like to do this year is to come back to our classic games roots, with the knowledge and experience that we gained during GOG’s existence.
Originally, GOG stood for Good Old Games. The idea for the company was born from the wish to play older games in a legal and easy-to-use way. As the classic games hold a special place in our heart, we’d like to devote more attention to highlighting them. It means that our goal is for GOG to become, once again, the best place for the classic PC games.
Our job isn’t to simply release the games that are already on the market. It’s to make them available to everyone - that oftentimes means fixing them, and making sure that they will run on the modern systems that you have. So far we achieved that by our internal work, and various cooperations with DOSBox or ScummVM, among others. Did you know there are a few titles on GOG that the DOSBox crew prepared special, dedicated versions of their great software? Our efforts to bring back some of the beloved games go beyond technical fixes.
To help those classic games shine again, and get discovered by more people, we also do our best to support our releases with initiatives like Throwback Thursday, interviews with developers and other ways to look behind the scenes. If you like to collect the extra goodies connected to the games, such as guidebooks, wallpapers, concept arts and much more, there is a good chance that some of the ones you’ve gotten on GOG are thanks to our cooperation with The Video Game History Foundation.
But you know most of this already – so what’s next?! The newest development in the area of classics’ visibility and discoverability is the revival of Good Old Games concept. We’re starting with adding the “Good Old Game” tag, which will showcase over 500 games that our Team has deemed iconic classics – games that are older than 10 years and are critically acclaimed, stand the test of time, defined certain mechanics, or simply created new genres. You’ll find there games like Bioshock, Baldur’s Gate, Fallout or Gothic. Of course, this is in part our subjective choice, but we hope to inspire you to check them out for yourselves, have fun with them, and see if you agree with our assessment.
Why did we decide to pivot in this direction? Because we believe that celebrating and preserving classic games is important. They have the power to connect generations. They have the power to evoke nostalgia. They have the power to teach us about what came before and shaped the games we enjoy today. And they deserve to be remembered, and available for everyone to enjoy.
This is just another step to give Good Old Games a well-deserved spot on GOG. The invitation is here and it’s waiting for you! Rediscover with us the games that have been universally loved or search for hidden gems that didn’t get their time in the spotlight. Whatever you choose, we commit to bringing you the best classics experience out there: playable offline, compatible with new OSs, packed with additional digital goodies, and with the ability to back up anywhere at any time to ensure that the games we offer are playable for years to come.
