RatChella

Internet round-up for the week of May 20, 2024

Hey fam! Happy Friday!

I’m back in Chicago!! 😎 The weather’s been lovely this week, though it looks like we’re going to have some rain this afternoon. It’s been wonderfully warm, and we actually turned our A/Cs on for the first time since we moved in! Drastic change from Ultimate Humidity™ and 10,000 degree afternoons in Texas.

I got back on Sunday morning in time for us to cruise through the Renegade Craft Fair on Clark Street (just a few short blocks away!), and then I completely crashed for like a day and a half.

Me all day Monday

I haven’t been that exhausted in a LONG time. I also realized I spent 8+ hours in the car over that week driving around to visit folks and riding to/from the airport. Living in the city for so long has made me completely forget what it’s like to have to take your car everywhere you go, and for everywhere you go to be at least an hour away. Houston is too big and needs more trains.

The default hour long drive even made me miss the Cherry Cobbler Porch Party I mentioned last week! I arrived at my grandparents’ place about 15 minutes after it ended. I did get to spend a couple of hours hanging out with them and hearing about their retirement community drama, though, which was absolutely perfect.

Otherwise, I’ve been fairly busy this week preparing for two interviews I had for a job I think would be REALLY cool, so please send good vibes!! I’m hoping to have a very rad announcement to make this time next week. 🤞🏻 This means not finishing a bunch of writing work I need to get done, but hey — that’s what “next week” is for, right?

And get this — would you believe we’re up to NINETY NINE (99) subscribers today?! That’s literally one person away from hitting the goal I set for myself at the end of last year. If you feel up to it, I’d love for you to share this newsy with friends! My ultimate goal in life is to annoy as many people as possible on a weekly basis, so thank you all for helping me attain my dreams.

With that out of the way, let’s get in to the goodies I’ve compiled for y’all this week:

Faux Vid-e-aux

WELL WELL WELL turns out last week’s Hammock Boy video is staged! 10 points to the well cast Man in Hammock because he was just wild enough to be believable. To be fair, the video had left me with some questions, so this makes sense.

Rolling Stone did a pretty solid write-up on the video and how it went viral that’s worth reading. It’s also kind of interesting to note that Lexi and Ocean, the couple that filmed the video, imply that they were the only ones in on the “prank.”

Rat City, Bitch

New York City (reminder: a city that came in a measly 3rd place in America’s Rattiest City Rankings) is having a Rat Summit™ this fall:

via CBS News.

Upon seeing this headline, my first thoughts were: HELL YES. RAT CON. RAT FEST. RATCHELLA. I’m in. Where do we buy tickets, and how much are they?

But after reading further, I discovered that this isn’t a celebration of rats, but instead, a bunch of jagoffs hoping to “bring together a wide range of experts and leaders from across the country to better understand urban rats and how to lower their populations.”

SIGH. Okay, but maybe you should quit using quotes like this that make it sound like something I definitely want to attend:

"The Urban Rat Summit is an opportunity to share best practices as the 'Trash Revolution' marches forward," Department of Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch added.

Excuse me?! Not even an invite to be a part of the Trash Revolution???

I would have been so good at Trash Revolution 😭

Is anyone protesting at this? Should I go and stand outside with a sign as a pro-rat supporter? Maybe we should just do a pro-rat counter-convention in Chicago (#1 Rattiest City!!!).

Anyone interested in going in with me on a rental of McCormick Place? We’ll borrow the original Rat Hole and we can dress up in rat costumes and invite Gabrielle Drolet. We’ll get tons of cheese vendors and play Target: Rats The Board Game and put Scabby out front. Please???

Me and karma vibe like that

You know, me and my ex (employer) have kind of been on almost speaking terms in the last few months. I’ve just been using my Gmail and doing searches and storing things in Drive like the old days.

Then this week, Google decided to release AI generated search results, and…wow. They are…not good.

via @MyNamesAidan

Yum! via @dril

via @edzitron

Here’s a compiled thread of tons more examples from this week, and it’s also worth reading this article from The Verge.

Look. I obviously didn’t work on AI when I was at Google, or anywhere near it. But I have a hunch that their near-constant embarrassment since my layoff is karmically induced because of what they did to me personally. Somehow, not firing me could have fixed this (at a minimum I could have assured them that drinking your own urine will not help you get rid of kidney stones).

I’m just saying. 👀

Honestly, though, this is a hot mess (so much so, in fact, that someone has already created a workaround for the AI Generated search). I can’t believe any company would roll something like this out to end-users when it clearly needs a lot of cleanup — much less a company that’s spent years building up user trust as the place to go for search — but I guess it’s a result of every company trying to “do AI” before everyone else. My prediction? Someone eats glue on their pizza, sues, and Google takes this down and does some actual in-house testing before rolling out answers based on data pulled from Reddit and The Onion.

And speaking of tech companies doing dumb things, this week, Microsoft announced a new feature designed to record and save every single thing you do on your computer. That seems helpful and not at all creepy, Satya! Things are fine, right? We shouldn’t be worried that our experience on our little screen boxes is going to degrade beyond our comprehension, right? RIGHT?

Randomly selected animal cutie(s)

I’ve got two for you today! First up, a clip of some ducks being livestreamed on Twitch when some comet fragments went over Portugal last Saturday:

I really need to know what the post-comet-sighting duck conversation is about. My guess is it’s a lot of “wow, very cool,” like me and my neighbors watching the eclipse last month.

And second, a high-fiving Chihuahua:

@wheresgizzieHigh-five by a chihuahua 👏🏻

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This is the cutest thing I’ve seen in WEEKS. LOOK AT HER TINY PAW!!

That’s it from me this week! I’m off to finish unpacking my suitcase, start on a massive pile of laundry, and work on all the writing I should have finished two weeks ago. Have a great weekend!
K