Believe it or not, I have not seen this previously. It's relentless. It's uncomfortable. It's horrifying. That was quite the trip, seeing it at the cinema.
🎬 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
🎬 Bad Taste
Well, this was just the right desert after TCM that evening. Bad Taste was one of my earliest splatter/underground movies I've seen. It was great seeing this again after all these years. Splendid splattertainment!
Disney, Immediately After Partnering With OpenAI for Sora, Sends Google a Cease-and-Desist Letter Accusing Them of Copyright Infringement on ‘Massive Scale’
Todd Spangler, reporting last week for Variety:
As Disney has gone into business with OpenAI, the Mouse
House is accusing Google of copyright infringement on a “massive
scale” using AI models and services to “commercially exploit and
distribute” infringing images and vid...
🎬 Berberian Sound Studio
…or The Italian Vegetable Massacre.
Toby Jones - which I really didn't know before - is absolutely fantastic. He truly transports how one might feel in such a menacing environment. And the film leaves no doubt it criticises these types of people, and hence the production of ...
America Is an Unserious Country Filled With Unserious People. “We’ll tolerate this...
America Is an Unserious Country Filled With Unserious People. “We’ll tolerate this just like we tolerate everything else. Because this is who we are, collectively, as a country.”
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens....
Roomba Maker iRobot Declares Bankruptcy, Falls Into Chinese Hands
John Keilman, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link):
The company that makes Roomba robotic vacuums declared bankruptcy
Sunday but said its devices will continue to function normally
while the company restructures.
Massachusetts-based iRobot has struggled fin...
2025 Word of the Year: Slop
Slop lost to "brain rot" for Oxford Word of the Year 2024 but it's finally made it this year thanks to Merriam-Webster!
Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen slop as the 2025 Word of the Year. We define slop as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”
Tags: definitions, ai, generative-ai, slop, ai-ethics
Alan Sepinwall wrote a lovely remembrance of Rob Reiner and his career....
Alan Sepinwall wrote a lovely remembrance of Rob Reiner and his career. “A legend. No doubt about it.” Reiner and his wife Michele Singer were found dead at their home in LA yesterday. Which Reiner movie are we watching tonight?
Jaho Coffee Roaster
My thanks to Jaho Coffee Roaster for sponsoring last week at DF. Great coffee changes the day. Since 2005, Jaho’s family-owned roastery has taken the slow and careful approach, sourcing small-lot coffees, roasting in small batches and shipping every bag fresh. Award-winning coffee delivered to your home or office, shipped fresh nationwide.
Jaho was kind enough to send me a few bags of their beans, and I can vouch that they roast excellent coffee — the kind of tasty beans where, when I finish my last morning cup, I’m tempted to brew a little more even though I know I’m fully caffeinated.
Holiday gifts? Fresh coffee is a gift that never misses, easy to give, even better to receive. Give better coffee this season. Even better: DF readers get 20 percent off with code DF.
Link: jaho.com/s/df
Rob Reiner and Wife Found Stabbed to Death at Home
deadline.com/2025/12/rob-reiner-two-reported-dead-at-home-lapd-1236648185/
Deadline:
The bodies of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Reiner have been found in their Brentwood home, sources confirmed to Deadline.
It appears the acclaimed director and his wife were slain by knife wounds.
The LAPD are on the scene, but have not issued an official confirmation yet. A press conference is expected to take place tonight.
Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were killed by their son, Nick, multiple sources confirm to People.
So it goes.
Link: deadline.com/2025/12/rob-reiner-two-reported-dead-at-home…
JustHTML is a fascinating example of vibe engineering in action
I recently came across JustHTML, a new Python library for parsing HTML released by Emil Stenström. It's a very interesting piece of software, both as a useful library and as a case study in sophisticated AI-assisted programming.
First impressions of JustHTML
I didn't initial...
The Global Story: The murders that moved a nation: Italy’s new femicide law
**This episode contains descriptions of abuse and violence**
In November, the Italian parliament voted unanimously to introduce the term “femicide” into the country’s legal code. The murder of a woman – on account of her gender – is now a distinct crime, punishable with a li...
Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry
Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry
Brian Merchant has been collecting personal stories for his series AI Killed My Job - previously covering tech workers, translators, and artists - and this latest piece includes anecdotes from 12 professional copywriters...
‘Pluribus’ Becomes Apple TV’s Most Watched Show Ever
9to5mac.com/2025/12/12/pluribus-most-watched-show-ever-on-apple-tv/
Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac:
Now, on the same day that F1 The Movie debuted at the top of
Apple TV’s movie rankings, the company confirmed that Pluribus
has reached another, even more impressive milestone: it is the
most watched show in the service’s history. Busy day. [...]
...
Lucas de Groot, Designer of Calibri, on the State Department’s Switch Back to Times New Roman
From the LucasFonts account, in a comment on Hacker News:
Professional typography can be achieved with both serif and
sans-serif fonts. However, Times New Roman — a typeface older
than the current president — presents unique challenges.
Originally crafted in Great Britai...
Pondering Middle East Petrostates as American Media Owners
businessinsider.com/paramount-warner-discovery-larry-ellison-saudi-arabia-qatar-wbd-deal-2025-12
Peter Kafka, writing at Business Insider:
And last: It’s possible that Middle Eastern countries are
investing in an American media conglomerate solely for a financial
return, and would have zero interest in the content that
conglomerate makes and distributes. But that’s ...
The Infinite Loop of One LLM Talking to Another
This is very funny, but also a good indication of just how far away these things are from actual intelligence. First, a reasonable human being would never get caught in a loop like this. Second, only humans can not only recognize what’s going on here, but also see the humor in it.
Paris Buttfield-Addison’s Apple Account Is in Kafka Mode
Paris Buttfield-Addison:
A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple
seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID,
effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple
Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and I ha...
Quoting Obie Fernandez
If the part of programming you enjoy most is the physical act of writing code, then agents will feel beside the point. You’re already where you want to be, even just with some Copilot or Cursor-style intelligent code auto completion, which makes you faster while still leavi...