America: it's contagious!

I am given to understand that in the before time, if you got sick, you could go see a doctor and they would prescribe something or remove something and then you'd go on with your life unburdened by crushing debt.

"I prescribe red meat and a rigorous smoking regimen."

-Old timey doctor-which, fine, but

my point about the debt still stands

"The bad news is you're terminal, but the
good news is that Pfizer's up $3 a share."

-Our healthcare system

But now things are different and we're not so much people going to see doctors as we are consumers purchasing Kaiser Brand Healthcare or Blue Shield or whatever but it's ok because our pay through the nose until you can pay no more system is totally the greatest in the world and fuels innovation. Or something. And we should pity people in Japan and Canada who are subjected to a healthcare system that's not designed to pay shareholder dividends. I know, slow down there Bernie, but wait, I'm going somewhere with this.

What I'm saying is that America's healthcare system isn't broken. Broken implies that it's not working the way it's supposed to but none of this nonsense is by accident. And that's all well and good-well, no, it's terrible and exploitative and greed driven, but at least it wasn't hurting anyone other than ourselves, that is until now.

Yup, our shitty healthcare system is contagious.

Pictured: a typical shareholder.
Not pictured: shame.

The U.K. has something called the NHS. Republicans would describe it as a socialist plot invented by the Clintons and the gay agenda, but it's just their universal healthcare system. It's been in place since the 1940's and has served as a model for healthcare systems around the world. But unbeknownst to British people, Trump has been negotiating with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to gain access to the NHS which would be great for American drug company shareholders, but terrible for, you know, British people. 

Weird theory, I know, but I
think history will bear it out.

Despite Johnson's insistence that giving American healthcare pharmaceutical companies access to the British healthcare system was never part of these trade negotiations, it turns out that giving American healthcare pharmaceutical companies access to the British healthcare system was 100% part of these negotiations. At least according to Johnson opponent and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his reams of just released documents. Twist! It's a revelation that confirms a pet theory of mine that blonde men in power are the worst and will be the ruin of civilization.

It's bad enough that we don't regard healthcare as a basic responsibility of government like almost every other country on the face of the earth, but negotiating on behalf of the corporations that are gouging us to get them into other countries is indefensible. It's the international trade equivalent of deliberately spreading gonorrhea.

"Look, Boris, you knew what you were getting yourself into. It's not my
fault. All I'm saying is that you should probably get tested. Not my fault."

-Donald Trump, making a call

he's almost certainly made before

Elon Musk: Spin-Wizard

In case you missed it last Thursday, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and unstable genius, unveiled a hideous electric pick-up truck, dubbed Cybertruck because Musk evidently treats Snowcrash as a marketing textbook. In addition to saving our planet by being electric, the Cybertruck is also purportedly super-durable with thick-rolled steel panels and unbreakable, even bulletproof windows.

Of course there is only one cybertruck as far as I'm concerned. 

"I uh..wow, that's...that's a thing."

-Everyone

Unbreakable bulletproof windows that immediately cracked under the impact of a steel ball thrown by Franz von Holzhausen, one of the truck's designers. Wah-wah. Although in defense of Tesla, seriously, how many steel balls does one encounter running to the hardware store or helping a friend move a futon? And to their credit, the side panel did withstand a blow from a sledgehammer, although maybe think about moving out of that neighborhood.

Anyway, the Cybertruck's presentation was, or rather would have been if Musk possessed the ability to accurately simulate our human emotions, embarrassing. But now he have an answer as to why the truck, is both ugly and in no way bulletproof. According to Musk, Cybertruck is too awesome.

"Let's see, sixty percent shame, forty percent anxiety
and-there, is that...does that read as embarrassment?"

-Elon Muck, simulacrum

Pictured: one of SpaceX's space vehicles.

On Twitter, Musk explained that the general unpleasant-to-look-at-ness comes from the thick-rolled steel that the body is made out of. It's the same stuff that SpaceX makes their space vehicles out of and it's just so damn rugged that it would damage factory equipment to try and stamp it into more appealing shapes and that's why Cybertruck looks like something out of Star Fox. Thick-rolled steel is basically the automotive equivalent of those Chuck Norris memes from 2005 and it's also why the windows broke. Yeah, hang on.

I mean we hardly ever talk about how he
named his company after a eugenics fan.

You see, when Musk had that von Holzhausen come out and wail on it with a sledgehammer, the sheer, uncompromising indestructibleness of the door panel caused undetectable damage to the glass making it shatter when he then tried to throw a metal pool ball at it. And just like that, Musk has flipped the narrative from a fiasco of public humiliation and internet ridicule to a dramatic demonstration of Cybertruck's sheer indomitability. Cybertruck is so powerful, that it broke itself. No one can tame Cybertruck! Holy shit, Elon Musk is some kind of spin wizard.

Of course on the other hand this seems like something they should have tried this out offstage first. Oh, and maybe the owner of the company and one of the people who designed it should have been aware of its limitations. But sure, well played Elon, well played.

Anyone who could turn a PR disaster like this into a story about
how awesome his ugly future truck is, is someone you want to follow
to Mars...just not in a spaceship designed by his engineers.

Finally, a rich white guy running for office...

Look, I don't want to tell Michael Bloomberg how to self-fund an almost certainly doomed bid for the Democratic nomination but maybe don't do that?

Please? I mean, for all our sakes, please don't.

Never forget...to mention 9/11
in your campaign ads.

Yeah, evidently Michael Bloomberg, seeing a crowded field of candidates tripping over each other to prove how progressive and not rich they are and thought to himself, you know what this needs? A rich white man who used to be a Republican. He even put together a campaign video in which he touts how middle class he was, how rich he is now and how his being rich was great for everyone because jobs. Oh, and then he brings up 9/11. Remember 9/11?

"These are great. I almost forgot
about all the racial profiling."

-Cyclists in NYC

Admittedly, I don't know a lot Michael Bloomberg as a politician. I looked him up on the internet which is sort of like being informed, and on the one hand while he was mayor of New York he pushed for gun control and bike lanes. But on the other hand he was the stop and frisk mayor. That was a policy under which the NYPD could stop, detain and question anyone they deemed suspicious so...non-white people. Yeah, the practice was used disproportionately against black and hispanic New Yorkers and was later ruled super-unconstitutional.

He says he regrets it now, but it kind of sounds less like an "I regret that" and more like a "I'm running for President now, so sorry about my racist, fascist tactics. #votemike."

Is there a "Sorry I violated your civil rights" card and
if so, do you suppose there's enough time for him to send
  out a few hundred thousand of them before the primaries?

Pictured: some of the thirty or forty
Democrats running to defeat Trump.
Not pictured: room for one more.

Yeah. Anyway, he's running on a two-plank platform: being super rich and not being Donald Trump. In fact the first line of his announcement is: "I'm running for president to defeat Donald Trump..." And I guess we can all get behind that, but it seems to me that most of the Democratic candidates are running in order to defeat Donald Trump. He's the incumbent and that's how elections work, so in many ways, I think we need more from Bloomberg which brings us back to his first plank: how rich he is.

Above: Our grim future.

How rich is Micheal Bloomberg? I'm glad you asked. Incredibly. Recklessly. He's so rich, he's not even asking for us to donate to his campaign. He's self-funding it so...thanks but no thanks. And...is anyone else skeeved out by this? Like, I know we live in a dystopian, post-democracy nightmare where wealth is everything and truth is dead, but should he be so openly talking about how he's going to go ahead and just buy high office? No? Yeah, I thought not.

"Good luck with that."

-The woman most of us voted for

Look, we want Donald Trump out of office. And we're all just clinging to some shred of hope that somehow, despite themselves the Democratic party will get their shit together and put up a candidate who can win the sixty or seventy percent of the popular vote we now need to override decades of gerrymandering and save democracy, but you know what's not helping? Even more candidates joining the fray.

If Micheal Bloomberg is as dedicated to defeating Trump as he says, maybe instead of jumping into Democratic Thunderdome and beating up on other candidates he could take some of his vast fortune and buy some ads for Warren or Sanders or whoever wins the nomination? That would be helpful.

Or he could just do this.

No, not the one with the whales...

Star Trek 4 is back on again and we should probably talk about it, so buckle up those nerd belts. In fact, no, wait, full power to the structural nerd-tegrity field because that's how in the weeds we're going to get, so if that's not your space jam, better bail out now.

No, like if it's not your jam, but in space because Star Trek is set in-look,
I think that line was doomed from the beginning, so I'm just going to cut
my loses and walk away from it now. That ok with you? Super.

But here we are...

So this week, a writer for Deadline announced that writer and producer Noah Hawley would be directing a new Star Trek movie in collaboration with J. J. Abrams. The fact that J. J. Abrams is producing suggests that this would be a fourth movie in sorta-reboot series, following on from Star Trek Beyond. Which, I'm not a film industry person, but I gather that the general sense was that the series was dead because Beyond didn't do well financially. That perhaps the studio would be better off from a business perspective doing something safe and guaranteed to make money like another Mission Impossible or letting The Fast and the Furious present something. Huh? No, I don't know how a movie can present another movie either.

To be clear, this Star Trek 4 is not the same as Star Trek IV: The One With The Whales and is also evidently not the Star Trek 4 we heard about last year with Chris Hemsworth reprising his role as Chris Pine's father and it's not-huh? Time travel I guess, the actors are like the same age. That one was sunk by some kind of salary dispute with the two Chrises.

I feel like there's a joke there about similar looking-white male
actors named Chris...Oh! Plenty of Chrises left in the sea?

If you need visual aides to explain
your continuity, you're doing it wrong.

It's also not the R-rated Quintin Tarantino has been threatening to make for a couple of years either. This is instead a whole new thing Hawley-who also created Legion and writes Fargo-is writing himself. And I say a whole new thing, but I mean, it's a whole new sequel to an alternate universe reboot of a TV show that itself already had like six or seven spin-offs and a bunch of more or less unrelated movies already. Still with me? Of course you're not. It's confusing and kind of unnecessary. Yeah, you heard me, unnecessary.

I know this is nerd blasphemy as conventional nerd wisdom is that more Star Trek is, by definition, a good thing, but holy shit enough's enough. There are going to be, I'm not kidding you, three Star Trek series on CBS's streaming service in 2020 with more promised to be coming down the pike and that's fine. Huh? Yeah, down the pike. No, I'm not better than that.

Seriously though, like five Star Trek shows and none
of them are about Pike and Number One? C'mon.

How many different versions of the
same character will audiences accept
at the same ti-goddamnit CW...

I mean, I think it's a bit much, but then I'm not trying to convince people to order a streaming service that's ninety percent NCIS and Big Bang Theory. But whatever, the point is that Discovery is great and Picard looks like it'll be fun and Star Trek is a thing again and that's super. So why go back and do another Abrams-verse movie? That series kind of wrapped up nicely-if not super-successfully-with Star Trek Beyond and between Chekov actor Anton Yelchin's sudden death and Discovery casting their own Mr. Spock, it seems like maybe it's time to let that series go.

And to answer your next question, yes, I'll totally go see Star Trek 4 or whatever it's called. You see despite all this, I'm still a fan and they had my ten bucks the minute they said it was back in production. Still though, there comes a moment in any long running-ugh, I hate this word but-franchise, when you have to look forward.

Ok, obviously I'm not talking about these two.
I mean, I'm only human. Here CBS, take my money. 

Nowhere near cookie-worthy...

I'm sorry, does Chick-fil-A want like, a cookie or something? Because they're not getting one. Nothing they've done or will ever do is cookie worthy. Huh? Why do I ask?

No, not even coconut macaroons, the
traditional cookie of reluctant aqueisnce.

Scholars and theologians agree
that Jesus was super into UFC.

Because starting next year, the fast food company will no longer donate money to two anti-LGBTQ organizations. Specifically the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes who both-huh? Yeah, I have no idea what thrift stores, athletes for Jesus and fried chicken have to do with each other or why they're so famously anti-gay, but here we are. Regardless, these organizations have been vocal opponents of marriage equality and gayness in general and Chick-Fil-A loves to give them money. Or rather loved.

Sorry, shrieking and honking.

Chick-fil-A's hateorade has been-wait, do kids still say hateorade? Their let's say, firm and vocal opposition to staying out of other people's business earned them some criticism back in 2012 when marriage equality was still up for debate. And by debate I guess what I mean is a rational argument for the long overdue expansion of civil liberties on one side and the shrieking pseudo-religious nonsense of bigots on the other. Nonsense that also earned them some fans.

Fans including folksy also ran Mike Huckabee who briefly clawed his way back to relevance when he organized a Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. It was an event wherein homophobes gathered at the restaurant to shove breaded, fried chicken in their hate-holes and bask in how gay they and everyone in their family is not.

Holy shit, remember when Sarah and Todd Palin were the most
embarrassing Americans? Those were the days, right?

Pictured: Dan Cathy dressing up as a cow.
Which, doesn't the Bible say something
about that too? No? Probably should...

I dredge all this up again in order to emphasize how pointlessly embroiled in national politics this fast food chain became for five minutes back in 2012. At the time, Dan Cathy, Chick-fil-A CEO and animal roleplay enthusiast, had this weirdly menacing thing to say:

"We're inviting God's judgement on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say we know better than you what constitutes a marriage."

-Dan Cathy, fast-food chain

CEO and armchair theologian

What a shit heel. Anyway, I think we can all agree that Monday's announcement came as something of a betrayal for Huckabee who tweeted:

There, are you happy Chick-fil-A? You made Mike Huckabee so upset
that he had to exaggerate the number of people who showed up to his
dumb anti-gay chicken party. I mean really, millions? 

It's like Pon Farr for
conservative asshats.

I'm sorry, bullying? Militant hate groups? Did he...did he forget that the whole point of his Chick-fil-A appreciation day or whatever was to protest equal rights for an entire segment of the population? A segment who to this day face discrimination and violence at the hands of the very same people who-you know what? Never mind. I just have to accept the fact that Mike Huckabee will pop up every seven years or so, spout some garbage onto social media and then disappear back up his own ass. 

Anyway, does this mean we should all run out and stuff our arteries full of Chick-fil-A? No, of course not. The company's press release in no way recants or apologize for their previous support of anti-LGBTQ organizations. Yes, it does say that they'll be focusing exclusively on education, homelessness and hunger and that's super, but this isn't some miraculous change of heart. It's just a grudging realization that homophobia is bad for business and that doesn't get you a cookie. 

Cookies are for companies who see the error of their ways,
apologize and make amends. Then and only then, they get just one. One.

Fact: Hover > Non-Hover

I'm...no. I mean, I'm not an architect, but no, right? Like c'mon. Huh? Yeah, I'll explain. This story about some Georges Kachaamy, an architect who thinks that the future is floating buildings. And no, not like floating on water, just floating. Like hover buildings?

Because future.

Soon the promise of 70's rock
album covers shall be fulfilled.

Yeah, Hover buildings. Kachaamy, a professor at the American University of Dubai, believes that the future is in buildings that float above the ground...somehow. Why? Well, resistance to natural disasters like flood and earthquakes for one. Also, floating buildings would allow cities to expand upward rather than outward. Oh, and according to Archdaily, an architectural website, these magic floating buildings will "provide the opportunity to disconnect from the city and reconnect with nature on a higher plane." Which is gibberish, but I think a better question might be how are these buildings supposed to float now?

Well, maybe proof that the Dubai 
mall still has a Spencer's Gifts... 

The answer, of course, is no idea. No, really. At this stage this whole floating building thing is more like an art installation than actual hover buildings. He has built some prototypes though. Well, I say prototypes, but models is probably a better word. And yeah, they do float thanks to magnets or something, but there's a long walk between floaty magnetic office toy and hover buildings. Think of these as a proof of concept that doesn't actually prove anything. The buildings, should they ever be realized (they won't be), would be suspended in the air via a scaled up version of the models' magnetic levitation. Sort of like maglev trains, but even less practical. Oh, and the affirmative power of belief. Did I mention the affirmative power of belief?

Pictured: nonsense. 

Because according to Kachaamy the affirmative power of belief is vital component of the floating sky cities of tomorrow. You'd think it'd be more about the magnets, but no, it's belief. 

"When you realize the possibilities you truly believe it is not so far away. This is not science fiction."

-Georges Kachaamy, that annoying
friend on Facebook who's constantly
posting meaningless motivational quotes

Wait, it's exactly science fiction. I mean the definition of science fiction is something that draws on speculative science and technology, so Kachaamy's floating buildings are literally science fiction. But look, I'm not here to nay say (although nay, I say), but I would like to question the practicality of future urban planning that involves building structures on complicated and expensive maglev bases for no reason other than it would look totally rad.

I think a certain Sir Isaac Newton would have something to say
about all this. Specifically something like "Wiiiiiiitch! Burn him!"

No fury like a fanbase scorned!

Can we just...look, I know everyone's already dog-piled on this, but I'd like to add my dog to this pile and-huh? Hang on , I'm going somewhere with this and it's about the Simpsons and this dumb Disney streaming thing and why don't they fix this glaring issue that-but I'm getting ahead of myself.

So one of these, but with fan ire instead of, you know, dogs.

I'm not going to lie, it's a fair amount.

In the interest of full transparency, I'm not paying for Disney's streaming service, I'm using someone else's login. That's not to say I wouldn't pay for it. Sure, they're a gross corporation that's spent the last decade buying everything and rolling it into one giant monopolistic Katamari ball of-sigh-content, but I'm not made of stone and they have Darkwing Duck. I mention this because I'm about to complain about something, and I want to be upfront about how much salt you should take me with.

So The Simpsons is on this thing. Like, all of it. I'll spare you the tired old screed about how the show sucks after season ten or whatever, but I do want to talk about aspect ratio.

Last time it was patent filings. This time: aspect ratios.
The fun never stops on Onward Stranger Fiction!

I mean, look at this? Can you even-huh?
What do you mean you can't tell the-trust
me. It's terrible and worthy of your scorn.

The series switched to 16:9 about ten years ago to keep up with flat panel screens, but everything before that was 4:3 like old CRT television. To compensate, the versions on Disney are cropped and I think even stretched to fill the entirety of today's rectangular, wall-sized flat panel televisions and it looks terrible. Like objectively terrible and even cuts out some sight gags. So what I want to know is, who wants this? I mean, who? When you run something formatted for 4:3 on a 16:9 screen you get black bars on the side it's not great, but it's better than the alternative.

Yet history tells us that there is some segment of the population out there who find these bars so offensive that they demand the imperfect and I dare say, idiotic solution of a zoomed in and stretched image. Something similar happened back in the 80's and 90's when to accommodate televisions they cropped the left and right side of the movie and then panned side to side if this cut off an actor or part of the action.

Here. This is a movie-shaped movie.

And here's some pan and scan nonsense for chumps.

Now, that's the soulless, focus-group
tested corporate mascot we all remember
from like three good games thirty years ago!

It wasn't great, but those were barbarous times and we didn't know any better. But now we do and Disney should know that hell hath no fury like a fanbase scorned. Have they not learned the lesson of Sonic the Hedgehog? Remember back when the trailer for the movie was released and we all recoiled in horror at the half-human chimera that punched our nostalgia right in the creepy human teeth? Well, the production company cowered at our might and delayed the film's release so the CG department could replace the titular corporate mascot with something less unsettling.

It's easy to feel powerless nowadays. The climate is spinning out of control, everyone's being crushed by debt and the Republican party openly steals and rigs elections, but when it comes to the entertainment industry trading on our nostalgia, at least we have a voice. A shrill, demanding voice that we seem to only use to give our opinions about TV shows, but still, you know, a voice.

"Hey, we were just workshopping a new slogan: vote
Republican. Or don't. Doesn't matter, because you're stuck
with us no matter what. So uh, what do you think?"

-Mitch McConnell,

being a little on the nose

Today in Brazilian patent filings:

So if you're anything like me-that is, a grown-ass adult who still plays video games-news about the next generation of consoles is the kind of thing that makes you rush to your dumb blog to talk about it especially when that news comes in the form of cartridges being a thing again. But you're probably not like me so I invite you to either bail out now or buckle up for some thick nerdery.

To gauge your potential nerd-tolerance,
it involves software storage media patents.
Yeah, I thought so. See you next time!

If I were to guess though, maybe it's
because you're out living an active
social life? And probably drinking so...

Ok, so yesterday the kind of people who pour over Brazilian patent registrations noticed-yeah, evidently someone does that. And they're Dutch. Anyway, someone from LetsGoDigital, a Dutch technology website, noticed a patent filed by Sony for a Playstation Cartridge which, if you follow the video games industry is kind of weird. And if you don't follow the video games industry, trust me, it's kind of weird, and I'll explain why. Why it's weird, not why you don't follow video game news. I can't help you there.

Even casual video game players probably remember blowing on an NES cartridge which, incidentally, did nothing but spray the copper contacts with corrosive saliva and, if we're being honest, Dorito particles.

We, as a generation, grossly overestimated the cleaning power of our own spit.

No, they're not and anyone who says
they are is a hipster trying to come
up with something to write about.

Cartridges were, from the first home consoles up until the first Playstation, the medium of choice for the industry. Then it was CD's, the DVD's and finally Blu-rays but this patent begs the question are we going back to cartridges? The answer of course is no, of course not. That's like saying records are making a comeback-huh? Oh. Sorry, bad example. It's like saying cassettes will make a comeback. Sure, the Nintendo Switch use little SD cards instead of optical media, but most people think the future is digital downloads or streaming.

Maybe the service was too expensive, or no
one uses it because American internet sucks. Hm?
Oh, that's a pic of Google Stadia. Why? No reason.

Which itself isn't great. Not to sound all get off my lawn, but the thing about digital and streaming media is that whomever you're buying it from probably still owns it. It's not as big a deal when it comes to something like a movie you pay fifteen bucks for and watch the one time, but a newly released game can cost sixty dollars and if you downloaded or-god forbid-are just streaming it and that service goes away for some reason, you're just out of luck.

So no, whatever this weird patent a Japanese company filed in Brazil which was then dug up by a website is, it's almost certainly not what we think. Sony's already announced that the PS5 uses some kind of fancy Blu-ray for games. But my vote is yes, let's bring back cartridges. Not just because physical media is more secure and has shorter load times, but because we gamers need our obsolete technology thing to fire back about whenever someone comes up to us at a party yammering on about how great vinyl records are.

"I really just prefer the feel of actual game cartridges.
They're just so much more, real, you know?"

-Some gamer as everyone

else's eyes glaze over