Of Hornblowers and Blumpkins

Now brace yourself for this startling revelation: your phone is listening to you. I know, right? But wait, there's more. There's always more. That's sort of the theme of the 21st century. Just when something sounds bad you wait a minute and find out it's much worse and no one's going to do anything about it. Climate change, the Mueller report and America's newfound love affair with internment camps. Welcome to the future!

Huh? No, we are going to talk about phones, but I just thought
I'd mention how we have internment camps again. Because we do.

Blow, blow your mighty horns!

Yup, our damn iPhones. A whistleblower came forward last week with-hey, can we stop calling these people whistleblowers? I think of of a whistle as piercing, shrill, obnoxious noise designed to get attention. Calling them whistleblowers makes them sound like hall monitors out to enforce petty and arbitrary rules. These are people who point out injustices and crimes at the risk of their jobs and sometimes lives. They're basically heroes sounding a call to action. I've got a better term: Hornblower. As in, holy shit, did you see that hornblower who revealed that Apple's been letting randos listen in on you having sex?

"The test results came back embarrassing,
so it's a good thing no one's listening in."

Because evidently they are. Listening to you. Having sex, talking to your doctor, planning a revolution. Everything. Yeah, Siri, the magical elf that lives in your phone is programed to 'wake up' whenever it hears the phrase hey Siri. But it's not perfect and will apparently activate when it hears anything remotely similar to the phrase hey Siri and then start 'listening' for instructions. That listening is the software recording what the phone hears and then trying to match it to a command. Ok, so your creepy sentient phone can hear you, big deal.

Pictured: a rando Lando.
Sorry, I couldn't not.

This is where the aforementioned randos come in. Apple, in there quest to make Siri work marginally better than it already doesn't (you heard me), is using outside contractors to analyze these recordings and Siri's responses and see where there's room for improvement. What our heroic hornblower has brought to light is that Apple doesn't tell us that they're sending recordings of our boning sessions to contractors who are under no obligation to maintain customer privacy. 

Holy shit, right? Well, yes. The slightly less alarmist side of this is that these recordings aren't associated with your name so really that could be anyone asking for a chili con queso honey bucket blumpkin.

Look, I'm not out to kink shame anyone, and I'm pretty sure that a chili con queso
honey bucket blumpkin isn't a real thing, but do yourself a favor and don't look it up...

"Apple: because resistance is futile."

-Apple's somewhat 

ill-advised new slogan

Anyway the point is that while Apple insists that there isn't really anyway to identify who's on these recordings short of recognizing the voice, the whistle-hornblower says: "These recordings are accompanied by user data showing location, contact details and app data." Soooo...like, which is it? Do we trust the concerned citizen who's putting their carrier on the line and possibly exposing themselves to legal action or the company that's been secretly making recordings of you having sex and sharing them with strangers?

I don't know, are we just supposed to take Apple at their word that they won't use this terrifying, god-like power against us or sell our private, most personal bumpkin-related secrets to the highest bidder? And before you answer, remember that this was the company that used to deliberately hobble your phone's battery life with updates every couple of years so you'd buy a new one.

Pictured: a chilling reminder that we are little more than
exploitable data points to the corporations that rule the world.
Also, did you know that you can make Siri British? 'ello 'ello!

Too old for this merde...

Didja see the Comic Con trailer for the New Adventures of Old Picard? Huh? Yeah, I'm still holding out hope that that'll be the title. For the time being anyway, it's the serviceable, if unimaginative Star Trek: Picard.

Does what it says on the tin, I guess.

Sir Patrick Stewat and showrunn Michael
Chabon seem eager to service the fans.
Wait, that came out wrong...or did it?

You know the drill. Buckle them nerd belts, because we're going to talk about Star Trek. If that's not your cuppa Earl Grey, bail out now. Still there? Thought so. If you haven't seen the trailer go watch it. I'll wait...well? Look, I don't have all day. There. Pretty good right? Now, if you're lying to me and you didn't watch the trailer or if you don't know what I'm even talking about, I'll sum up, but for real, it's like two minutes of your life. Cool, right? Yes. Although that might just be my nostalgia gland running at full tilt. The trailer is fan service incarnate. In fact, they should probably have called it Fan Service: The Trailer.

From what we can glean by obsessively dissecting the two minutes of carefully edited footage-and we will-it looks like an older, retired Jean-Luc Picard is still haunted by Data's pointless death at the end of Star Trek: Nemesis and I can't say I blame him. That movie sucked. Even the cast says so.

Pictured: That time Data shoved Jean-Luc out of
the way and hogged the heroic sacrifice for himself. 

Move over CG Grand Moff Tarkin.

So bringing a CG de-aged Brent Spiner back, even if he's just playing ghost Data or Lore or Data and Lore's dumber, prototype brother B-4, is still huge for fans. But wait, there's more! Jonathan Frakes is directing some episodes, and he'll be reprising Riker along with Marina Sirtis as Counselor Troi. Seven of Nine from Voyager shows up and we get glimpses of Romulans and even a Borg cube. This whole thing is like a big Star Trek stew.

I am pretty sure what I don't want though.

Is that a good thing? I don't know. Things like sequels and reboots and re-imaginings are on some level the exact opposite of creativity. I mean, paradoxically Star Trek is a show about exploring strange new whatevers and boldly going, but as a whole it's spent a lot of time reminding us of Star Trek we've already seen and based on the trailer Picard is leaning into that history pretty hard and I'm good with that. I guess I want new old experiences? I don't know. Like any good fan, I'm not sure what I want.

But retread or not, I'm there for it, even if it is just a greatest hits of Star Trek. Yes Picard is a spin-off of a spin-off and is 100% relying on my fond memories of Star Trek in the 90's to rope me in, but it's working. Huh? Yeah, earlier it was stew, now it's a greatest hits. I'm not great at metaphors.

You know who is though? These guys.

From the inventor of train in a tube:

So I have mixed feelings about Elon Musk cyborging people and I-huh? Oh, yes, Elon Musk, the ultra-rich crazy person who, like a pot smoking space Moses once wanted to lead humanity to Mars, has now turned his attention to jacking us into the collective via surgically implanted computer interfaces.

Pictured: that time Elon Musk shot a Tesla to Mars proving that just because
someone has money, doesn't mean they should be trusted with money.

Truly this is an age of miracles. 

Ok, let me walk that back a bit. So Elon Musk started up a start-up company, presumably with whatever spare cash he found under his sofa cushions, called Neuralink, and it's been working on brain machine interfaces. That is, technology that can link brains-just rats and monkeys so far, with computers. If that sounds like sci-fi nonsense, it's because it is. But then so were antibiotics, the moon landing and the technology to make old Robert Downey Jr. look like young Robert Downey Jr. so in some ways Elon Musk is a visionary.

But in other ways, he's a monster. I mean, he is essentially sticking USB ports into monkeys just to see what happens and in addition to the ethical concerns I'm just not sure monkey borg aren't just the worst idea in the history of bad ideas.

Is this what you want Elon? Is it?

Yeah, we're like on to you.

Ok, I guess in the interest of fairness, I should mention that if it proves viable, the BMI (their acronym, not mine) could have life-changing applications for people with diseases or injuries that damage their motor functions. And I think that's super, but you have to admit: Elon Musk wants to put computer chips in your brain is an unsettling prospect at first blush. I mean Neuralink is a business and Elon Musk is a business person. So this is about making money first and foremost.

Pictured: the President tweeting
something dumb, racist or both.

And I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the commercial aspect of all this. Again, no beef with people being able to walk again, but how long before Neuralink is selling this technology? Alexa could soon be literally in our heads and suddenly our every stray thought will be buying us Fire Sticks and Instant Pots whether we want them or not. And Twitter will basically be telepathy and do we really want everyone's constant, unfiltered running commentary clogging up our-oh, right...

Seriously though, If human history has taught us anything it's that we have a knack for turning every great technological advancements into either something that kills people or sells them shit. And this will be no different. But I guess that's all a ways off, I mean, remember the hyperloop? Where are we on that?

Like, for real, it's just a train in a tube. What's the hold up?

Our Rapid Spiral

Oh, I think I see the problem. The President is a racist and the GOP is a bunch of cowards. Here, let me explain.

Yup, the math checks out.

Yesterday as the House mulled whether or not to call the President's racist comments out as racist, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said:

"I mean, what's it going to take? A white
robe and torches? Because I give it week."

"...the President's comments about our collegues this weekend show that he does not share those American values. These comments from the White House are disgraceful and disgusting and the comments are racist." 

-Nancy Pelosi, being objectively 

correct about this one

Pictured: where they came from.
Which, incidentally does need their help.

She's referring to his racist suggestion that Congresswomen Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Pressley and Omar don't love America because they don't like him and that they should go back where they came from and fix those countries. Which was great because they are all of them Americans and with the exception of Ilhan Omar, born in the U.S. So like, yeah, what he said was undeniably based in his own, racist assumption that non-white people are by definition not American.

And then the House had like an hour long debate about whether or not Pelosi's comments were inappropriate. Wai-what? Because evidently the rules say that House members can't impugn the honor of fellow Congresspeople or a sitting President on the House floor. Holy shit, if only that rule cut both ways, right?

"We don't need to put something in here about the President maintaining a 
 sense of decorum when discussing members of the House, right? I mean it would
take a colossal miscarriage of the electoral system to put in someone so uncouth
and ill-suited to the office of President to need such a regulation, right?"

-The Founding Fathers, not seeing Twitter coming  

Pictured: Conway taking questions
from reporters yesterday.

Anyway, after a party-line vote-because we can't even agree on how openly racist a President should be-Pelosi's comments will stay on the record, and that's super. The President's comments were totally racist, and anyone who says otherwise is a shrieking Ringwraith lying to the nation's collective face. Huh? I didn't say Kellyanne Conway. Who said Kellyanne Conway? If you took my comparison as a slight against Kellyanne Conway, then that's on you. Although she did insist that a reporter disclose his ethnicity after asking her about the President's racist comments.

Anyway, I mention all this because the feigned outrage on the part of Republicans, the insistence that we're all overreacting, and the rationalizations given for his dumb tweets and shitty, thinly-veiled white nationalism are because they're a bunch of cowards. Fancy feckless cowards who can't let themselves admit for even a second that maybe letting Donald Trump hijack their party was the biggest mistake of their lives.

"We're quite happy with the direction all this is going, in
fact, I think we could lean into the open racism some more."

-Mitch McConnell, on America's 

rapid spiral into racist dystopia

Le Board d'Hover!

Remember that time we went to the moon?
That was 50 years ago. Now we're inventing
fried chicken and Cheeto sandwiches.

As if we needed another indicator of America's declining status as a nation of innovators, yesterday the French military showed off the latest in menacing, armed and faceless figures hovering over the populace in a grim portent of the dystopic future to come. Yup, they've got hoverboards. Not those gyro-stabilized motorized skateboards that they try to pass off as hoverboards, but actual hoverboards. Ok, let me walk that back a little, it's more like a jetpack, but still. Advantage: France.

Yes, he's a grown-ass man who still
calls himself Franky, but then he
did invent a hoverboard so shut up.

I mean look at this. Did you look at that? Well, you should, because stills don't quite capture the je ne sais quoi of this thing. At the country's Bastille Day celebrations, Zapata CEO Franky Zapata flew over the gathered crowd on his company's flyboard. It's a sort of chunky, gas-powered hover board/jet pack that can go up to ninety miles per hour and reach altitudes of three thousand feet. And for reasons still unclear, Zapata was brandishing an assault rifle. Wait-wha? Yeah, I guess it had something to do with flexing French military muscle, I mean, our idiot President was so impressed by last year's Bastille Day military parade that he wasted millions of dollars trying to out do it (he failed, unspectacularly), but still, a rifle? 

I don't want to tell the French Military how to propagandize at a crowd, but it seems like he could have whipped up a similar nationalistic fervor just waving a French flag or some thing.

Pictured: Franky Zapata soaring magestically over the crowd,
waving his assault rifle about as if to say: "I can end you at any moment."

"Zat racist orange goon is going to how you
say, lose his merde? When he see zees!"

-President Macron

Wait...you don't suppose...could this whole thing be an hoax? Like, I'm not saying that the footage was faked. I 99.9% buy that this is a lunatic French jet ski enthusiast (no really, he is) turned inventor zipping around on a flying footstool of his own design, but part of me wants to believe this is French President Emmanuel Macron trolling Donald Trump. Like, he saw that Salute to America bullshit and is trying to trick him into thinking that France has mastered jetpacks so that he'll try to one up him next year. Probably with lasers.

Anyway, as much as I'd like to believe that Macron just screwing with Trump, the flyboard is almost certainly real, and I suppose it's only a matter of time before flying French Sky Troopers® invade America, nationalize healthcare and vastly improve the quality of our bakeries. And really, if I'm being honest, I'm looking forward to it.

Above: one of our future French overlords seen here brandishing
 the very pastries with which she will one day enslave us all.

Don't make me choose!

I've been placed in an impossible position. I will soon be forced to choose between my heart and my convictions. These are the times that test the soul and this is-huh? Yes, it's about a video game thing. Yes, again.

Don't look at me like that. Thomas Paine
was totally talking about video games.

Above: Johnny about to gun down
the competition. No, really.

Like I was saying. There are times in one's life when one must go after what one truly-fine! I'll get to the point. The Turbo Grafx 16 mini console has a release date and-wha-what now? Right, I'll explain. The TurboGrafx-16 is a video game console that came out back in 1989. You've probably never heard of it because it was quickly overshadowed by the Sega Genesis. The TG-16 was huge in Japan, but doomed in the U.S. by a lame pack-in title and terrible marketing campaign featuring Johnny Turbo, a bearded super hero with a gun whose power was warning kids about how the TurboGrafx-16 and not the Faka (Sega) was the first 16-bit game console. Even as a nine-year old, it was pretty insulting.

Because there is no photographic
evidence of anyone actually owning a
TG-16, here's some kids playing Sega.

But still, I asked for one for my birthday and so was the only kid I knew with a TG-16. Some of the games were pretty good, but it was clear that I'd made a terrible mistake so I swapped it in at the game store for a Genesis. Anyway, I mention this because in super original move, Konami, the company that now owns the rights to the TG-16 is doing exactly what Nintendo, Sega and Sony have already done and is sticking a bunch of emulated games on a novelty, tiny version of the console and selling it to people like me.

Like the other mini consoles, there's a decent line up of games and while a hundred dollars is kind of an ask, I'm helpless before its nostalgia stroking powers. Or at least I would be if for not a single poison pill: you can only buy it on Amazon. And to add to the already deal-with-the-devil prospect of giving Jeff Bezos more of what little of the world's money he doesn't already have, the pre-order goes up on Prime Day.

"What? The devil? That's just unfair. And to prove it, how
about I challenge you to a friendly fiddle-playing contest? If I win,
I get your soul, if you win, I'll give you a year of Amazon Prime."

-Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO

Sure it'll mean the death of
American retail and an unchallengeable
monopoly, but what are we supposed
to do? Not buy Boss Baby on Bluray?*

Yup, Amazon's self-proclaimed global observance of how wonderful they are celebrated by a two-day 'parade of epic savings.' Which, first of all, two days is not a day. It's two days. It should be Prime Days. Secondly, Beowulf is an epic. Amazon's just slightly reducing their profit on specific items in order to drive web traffic and generate more profit. They're not saving you anything, they're tricking you into buying more shit from a company that would like very much to be the only company in the world. And they're basically there already. I mean, there's nothing to stop it. Everyone buys things off of them. Need cat food, a pack of tent spikes and Boss Baby on Region 2 Bluray? On your doorstep in forty-eight hours. How can we possibly resist? Or more to the point, how can physical stores resist? You want me to get up off the couch, get in my car and drive somewhere for the basic necessities of life? What is this the 1800's?

They're the economic equivalent of a cancer and the only treatment is to not buy stuff from them which I'm not sure we can even do at this point.

Although in defense of cancer, at least it doesn't dodge
taxes, oppose unions and engage in differential pricing.

"Join you and rule the galaxy as
father and son? Ehhh.....ok."

-Me, if I were in that movie

They have to be stopped and nothing short of a total boycott will-huh? Yeah, I've got a Prime account. I'm only human. I enjoy their wide selection of on demand videos and free shipping on millions of-goddamnit! So I've been trying to extricate myself from their iron grip on my life and it's not easy. Also, my will is fairly weak. I have managed to stop using Audible and have only bought things from the site that I absolutely can't find locally and-yes, I'm rationalizing. I know. And now this! I don't need a TG-16 mini console. I want one, but can I honestly say I need one?

And to make it even worse, the pre-order date, which is also the day of their dumb, made up holiday, is also a walkout day for Amazon workers demanding better pay. So if I want to swallow my pride, put on my extra large hypocrite hat and order one, I'll not only be perpetuating the Gibson-esque Mega Corp but I'll also be a scab.

It's like the end of The Good Son and Macaulay Culkin is a mini TurboGrafx
and Elijah Wood is my conscience. I mean, I have to drop Macaulay Culkin, right?
Sorry, I should have said 'spoilers for The Good Son.' Oh, like you're going to watch it.

*to be clear, I was doing a bit. I would never buy Boss Baby on Blu-ray or any other format for that matter.

Finally, a surmountable problem!

I don't want to complain about a free thing but-well, ok, it's not really free you have to sign up for the online shrive and I actually do want to complain about-huh? Oh, right. This one's going to be about video games. Wha-? Yes. Again. Yes, I know there are bigger things going on in the world right now.

Me talking about video games today isn't going to
make the Water Wars happen any sooner so...

The NES games are an appealing feature,
not playing video games as an adult.
I'm not saying that stops me, but...

Some background if you're not into video games-although, if that's not really your cuppa, I'd suggest bailing out now, because I'm about to get into some pretty picky nerd stuff here. Still with me? Super. So if you sign up for Nintendo's online service, you get access to some NES games you can play on the Switch. Great, right? Yes. If you're a grown ass adult like me that not only plays video games but still plays video games you played when you were ten, it's an appealing feature.

A couple of days ago, Nintendo announced that they'd be adding a rewind option to the service. That means that if you screw up or miss something in a game you'll be able to pause, back-up and try again. "Why would anyone want to do that? Isn't that cheating?" You ask. And sure. It's totally cheating.

Anyone asking that question has evidently never had to put up with this nonsense.

"Here just...just take it."

-Me, to video game

companies, for decades

And I'm ok with that. Games from that era were like, super-hard. War crime hard. It has something to do with developers wanting to justify to kids' parents a fifty dollar purchase (something like a hundred dollars in today's money). Also, game rentals were big then and manufacturers wanted to make sure you couldn't finish a game on a three day rental. The harder the game, the more likely you were to buy it. Then as now, creative decisions were driven by cold, cynical corporations. I know this, yet I continue to give them my money.

I mean, I ask you...

Anyway, I am pro rewind, but as you might recall, I had some complaining to do. So the Switch NES games app is ok, but not perfect. Flawed is the word. Like, the trickle of games is excruciatingly slow, the games are permanently surrounded by a frame with the menu controls permanently listed on it just in case you forgot, but whatever, I can live with that. What I can't live with is the way the buttons are laid out. For reasons passing understanding, you can't remap the buttons, and B and A on the NES games are mapped to B and A on the Switch which is wrong.

Oh wait a minute, maybe
they do just hate their fans.

Wait! Where are you going? No really, it might not sound like much, but hear me out. For decades the buttons have been side by side so the tip of our calloused thumbs could rest on the B button while the joint landed on the A button. You could hit either without having to move your thumb. In some games, you even had to hold the B button while hitting A, making this layout essential. The Switch on the other hand asks you to either let go of one to hit the other or to contort your hand into some kind of arthritic claw to simulate the correct layout. Like, do they just hate their fans or something?

I'm bringing all this up because it's great and all that they're adding a rewind feature. Love to cheat. But for serious why can we not remap the controls to be less, I don't know, deliberately frustrating? Button mapping has been an option on like everything else, why not here? And look, like I mentioned before, there is plenty wrong with the world right now, but this. This is something that can be fixed.

Have they seen the news? Things are pretty screwed. We need a win here.

Today in stepping in it:

Well, he's stepped in in now, hasn't he? He who? Stig Asmussen. In an interview he-huh? What has he stepped in? Another internet controversy. And in anticipation I'll answer your next question with: by poorly explaining a dumb decision.

At this point, the internet is something
like 40% video-game related controversies. 

"It's a video game that exists."

Raves IGN

So what the hell am I talking about and why should you care? To the second part, you probably shouldn't. The easiest response is to just skip this game both to register your outrage and because everyone who saw it at E3 said it was kind of 'm'eh. Anyway, so Stig Asmussen is the Entertainment Director for video game developer Respawn Entertainment, the company working on the be-coloned Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

It's a game that shares elements of
Metroid and-wait, you don't care...

It's a news action adventure or 'Metroidvania' game set in Disney's Star Wars brand content universe. In it, players will take on the role of Jedi Knight Cal Kestris and in typical Star Wars brand video gaming, run around with a lightsaber. That's really all any of us know. Or was, until now. Speaking to gaming site Game Informer a few days ago, Asmussen took questions from fans-which is never good, but this time the shit show that ensued wasn't because of a fan question but rather a developer answer.

Amongst a bunch of nerd questions about Dark Jedis and Force Powers and how bright the lightsaber would be (no really), Asmussen was asked if he ever considered using a non-human character:

Pictured: Rey, seen here getting people
who make Star Wars off the hook for
including female characters forever.

"Yes, we talked about doing an alien creature. We talked about different genders. We arrived at where we were because at the time Rey was kind of the thing for Star Wars, and so it made a lot of sense for us to have a male protagonist. And ultimately we didn't go with an alien race because we felt like-no pun intended-that would alienate a lot of people." 

-Stig Asmussen, Entertainment Director

for Respawn Entertainment, stepping in it

Take for example almost every
sports game ever-although that also
seems like a problem with sports...

Yup, in a bold move for a video game, Cal Kestris is a generic white guy. Did I say bold move? I meant in a move seen in 99% of all video games. Do I have hard data to back that up? Of course I don't. But I have played a lot of video games. Like a lot. In fact, I probably have a problem, but where I'm going with this is that the vast majority of them feature male protagonists. Apart from the odd Samus or Shante or...(shudder) Laura Croft, female characters are an exception. Recently character customization has been the norm with an option to make the player character whomever you want, but that's not happening here.

"Finally, a video game where you
can play as a male character."

-No one, c'ept jerks

Ok, so it feels a little out of step to lock players into one character, but ok, fine. It's a game with a narrative and for whatever reason they want a single specific character. Cool. And that character happens to be a kind of dull-looking white guy...again. Whatever. What sucks is Asmussen's explanation that because the current Star Wars movies feature a female lead, 'it made a lot of of sense' to have a male protagonist. Does it though? Like, can you not have two things with a female lead?

I mean, the first two trilogies, six movies in total, were centered around male characters. Same same with the tie-in stuff. The books, the previous video games, the comics. Until very recently it's been something of a space sausage fest.

You see, I put the word "space" in front of the word
"sausage." It's called comedy. (note: no it's not)

"That's us! We never leave a
dime on the table. Ho-ho!"

-A Disney spokesrat

I say recently because there's been a noticeable effort to create new female characters in Star Wars and to highlight pre-existing ones. Rey, Jyn Erso, Rose, and even Hera and Ashoka from the animated series. It really seems like Star Wars as a thing is kind of rocking it. Ok, hang on. I need to walk that back, because the last thing I want to do is praise a soulless media conglomerate that owns everything. As a company that exists for the sole purpose of enriching its shareholders, Disney's/Star Wars' eager embrace of gender diversity isn't about social consciousness or making the world a better place. Disney saw a market for representation and has just been exploiting it. But my nieces get Star Wars movies with female protagonists so, win/win?

Aunt Beru, seen here as a smouldering
corpse, represented 25% of the original
trilogy's named female characters.

Anyway the ridiculousness of this controversy-yes it is, the internet says so-isn't that Jedi: Fallen Order features a male character. Like I said, lots of games do. It's that Asmussen seems to be suggesting that it should feature a male player character because Star Wars is like, full of chicks. In fact, there's no need to create female characters in the future, you know, because Rey. It's a logic that seems to forget that until Episode I, there were like four female characters in all of Star Wars.

What makes this whole situation even dumber was that the question was 'hey, why not an alien?' Not 'could you weigh in on gender diversity in video games?' So in many ways, Asmussen didn't even need to stick his foot in his mouth in so spectacular a fashion. Respawn could have just slinked along and released their game without anyone noticing how not interesting the lead character was.

Although, is it weird that when asked about aliens
Asmussen's mind went immediately to women?