Hodgepodge: Chad Gable/Will Osprey/NJPW, Yum Brands Changes, D4 Update and AI/Spy Tech Pontifications

In another weird Kontroversial Keith pastiche morning/lunch time blend of things on top for today, I take a look at Chad Gable, who has caught my attention after his match in Mexico and return to the WWE as a celebrated hero, Will Osprey’s continual affirmation of being one of the biggest bozos in the industry, some major Yum Brands alterations, an actual update about an upcoming update from the D4(bad) developers as well as the latest AI/Tech things that caught my attention all while I’m starting to swelter in my apartment as the electricity bill soars in parallel with my grocery bills. I present to you another schizoid hodgepodge posting.

Chad Gable’s Fall/Redemption Arc

Chad Gable is a talent that seems to have various starts and finishes. The matches I’d seen him in remind me of a younger, smaller Kurt Angle. Despite his lack of height, Chad Gable does present himself as very athletic with a legitimate background in amateur wrestling as well as boasting a really good physique. I see him as a more vocal version of Dean Malenko to be frank visually. That said, I think the various angles he’d been involved in made him look like a goof mostly because he was paired up or against goofs.

Apparently, he had been injured a while back but started wearing the mask as El Grande Americano. Initially, I absolutely hated the angle because it involved stupid backstage type of skits/vignettes about his search for figuring out how to beat the luche libre stars. Then I guess in recent months, he had been the focus over in AAA where he was involved in a major feud with another El Grande Americano character played by Ludwig Kaiser. This feud got some major attention because at one point the situation became serious and heated down south, leading to a recent event where both faced off in a mask vs mask type of scenario that pretty much caused the internet to rave about it, especially giving praise to the Undertaker as one of the key bookers behind the story/match.

I had taken a glimpse at the match and thought the early part was a little boring for me but halfway through, I got involved. They did pull out all the stops with a lot of outside interference and gimmicks, some parts I didn’t recognize. But I was more amazed when these two could just focus themselves in the ring. I was actually more impressed by Ludwig Kaiser’s selling especially in a luche libre style match. But if you focused on the drama involved, it was one of the better “modern” wrestling matches lately along with a perfect post match ending that showed Chad Gable remove the mask, perform the ceremony respectfully along with having his family with him and mentioned that he would return. I think the audience gave him a great ovation mostly because they recognized the performance.

When he returned to the WWE, he received a massive pop and has been on a “redemption arc”. In fact, the WWE are calling this the “Chad Gable Redemption Tour” (which I fucking hate because it makes their shows sound more like a concert, which reveals their mind set about pro-wrestling). The latest incident involved Rey Mysterio Jr and someone else (Dragon Lee?) saving Chad Gable as payback for when Chad helped them when Rusev and Ethan Page tried to get the best of the luchadores.

I suppose this caught my attention more than anything in wrestling lately because wrestling has become incredibly stale to me. But this story actually has been going somewhere and it’s logical. I think people backstage are realizing just how much talent Chad Gable has (and hopefully Ludwig Kaiser down the line) where he might be taken seriously after all these years. There is one caveat in my mind though: the chance that Chad Gable turns. I know it doesn’t seem possible at this stage given the setup, but this is the WWE and the creative is stale and terrible and it wouldn’t surprise me that the writers think he should just go back to square one, kinda like those 80s/90s sitcoms where the main characters are about to get a break but something fucks up so they’re back in the hole. All I can think of here is WWE don’t fuck this up. The booking is so goddamn stale, no one changes, there’s too many turns, there’s no growth. Finally, you have a guy who got himself over and seems to be sincere. Let this be the start of a new chapter where he gets to be a serious wrestler and get pushed up the card. Just don’t fuck this up. It’s so easy.

Will Osprey Mouthing Off about NJPW

Speaking of ass clowns, one of the biggest around, Will Osprey, has been spouting off again, this time about NJPW, Gabe Kidd, etc. on creating stars, some guy now talking about defending the title, etc. The thing about NJPW is that they haven’t created real, money drawing stars for ages. I would argue that their last great batch of bookers were Riki Choshu and Jushin Liger. While the talent on top seem to be doing more, they aren’t over the same way the Great Muta/Keiji Mutoh, Masa Chono and Hashimoto were back in the day when NJPW was doing 65k at the Tokyo Dome in the 90s. I think a chunk of that was through interpromotional wars as well as the UWF stuff that made the UWF look bad.

And while Tanahashi would become their top ace and a pretty decent worker, I never really saw him as a real top guy. I do recall some earlier stuff in the earlier 2000s with him and he was good but over time that style just wore him out. Seeing him in a few times in AEW, it was clear this guy needed to hang it up. The guy was barely moving. Luckily, he didn’t Misawa himself and got out while he was still ambulatory.

But Osprey also talks about “performances” with Gabe Kidd and Kenny Omega as being the thing to push a guy to the top. I used the word “performance” to describe the El Grande Americano situation in AAA. But the difference is that the fans were completely vested into the performance and story. The story dictated how the performance would operate which is how you should portray pro-wrestling. When you hear about how Konnan just got his legs amputated, it makes you wonder what these “modern” wrestlers are going to be like when they’re in their 50s and 60s. And Osprey just got back from a major neck surgery. But I’m convinced this guy has the intelligence of an amoeba at best, which is why he can do the crazy stuff. It’s just that his body hasn’t connected to his brain yet to tell him to stop but that won’t happen until it’s too late.

Yum Brands Changes

Pizza Hut to Be Sold Off

As someone who keeps up with various major chains in terms of recent updates, I saw that Pizza Hut will get sold off. Apparently, there’s a Yum Brands in China which is separate and will just up the rest of whatever is going on out there. And the rest of it will, of course, in the states be sold to a private equity firm. No doubt, we’ll see the complete decimation of this brand once that part of the transaction completes and maybe what will be left are the small franchises that keep the old school decor (like one did) and return to their older menu (hopefully with the lunch time buffet)

But one of the interesting quotes was reading how the brand was underperforming or Yum Brands’ biggest loser in their portfolio. Here’s what their director of data revealed:

“Pizza Hut has long been the weak link in Yum’s portfolio,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, wrote Tuesday. “Despite efforts to revitalize the brand and shut underperforming locations, it has become increasingly clear that pushing the division back into growth will require a level of investment and patience that Yum is just not prepared to commit to.”

So the fact that this anus head called Pizza Hut part of a “portfolio” just demonstrates how these large corporate entities don’t give a shit about customers nor how their businesses operate. It’s just another thing they can show off to their investors in short. Also, he mentions “efforts to revitalize the brand.” What efforts? First, these numb nuts decided to pair with DoorDash for delivery, which means unreliable drivers. Second, changing the decor won’t do anything to alter people’s minds when prices are not competitive in 2026. The last time I ordered Pizza Hut was in August of 2024 through Uber Eats (because I hated DoorDash). Guess how much it cost back then? $76.31. At that point in time, I had still been employed so the cost was relative the inconvenience of the situation but the price obviously left me highly angry. I’m sure in 2026 that price might as well be $100 flat.

And to connect the situation to my recent Fat Tomato Pizza story, this rising cost is precisely why I stopped doing delivery pizza. Pizza Hut was a good niche type of thing for me where I could get wings, stuffed crust and some other sides with maybe a drink thrown in. Once the prices and inconvenience of unreliable deliveries mounted, there was no way I would continue. The closest Pizza Hut to me is on PCH and it’s in a strip mall next to a major busy street. Why go there myself when you can find dozens of better joints for cheaper if you’re just going to end up picking up?

The other thing that’s bugged me for a few decades is the closing of the eating area inside of Pizza Hut. There used to be on off of Hawthorne Blvd and Sepulveda Blvd that shared its location next to an old Wherehouse store back in the 80s and 90s. They ran a reasonably priced lunch buffet that had some favorites like your pepperonis, meat lovers, Hawaiian as well as some unique dessert pizzas with jelly on top of a graham cracker crust. Obviously, it wasn’t a healthy spot but it was nice to go there for the price, being able to sit down and enjoy lunch on an off day and walk off full. This type of spot would do exceptionally well in 2026 if the exact same setup was provided at the exact same prices as in the 90s. Of course, that won’t happen because private equity companies are what’s causing all the economic problems. But if you want to at least create a reason for customers to order from Pizza Hut, just return to something like this concept.

The point of a chain like Pizza Hut though is to have a reliable service with maybe some points to get a free pizza once in a while and not deal with driving to some spot. It’s just too competitive of a market with low margins but the increased cost of doing business (especially in a state lik CA) while not providing something that’s miles better or cheaper than what you can get in the frozen section of a super market. Obviously, if I’m craving pizza and want to avoid frozen, I’ll just get up on my own but it won’t be to some poorly located, hole-in-the-wall spot when there’s more options around with better quality and prices.

KFC Updates

Yum can’t seem to keep things simple as we see how KFC is going to undergo some changes too. One thing they mentioned was retaining the familiar Colonel Sanders image after the Cracker Barrel incident that caused Cracker Barrel to revert their logo. The sad reality is that Colonel Sanders really is all that KFC has left in terms of the nostalgia factor, which is what fast food brands can use to sell anymore. Before I rant even more on the fast food problems, I have to paste this quote from their CEO:

“We have a history of keeping pace with the consumer, and now everything we’re doing is in service of making sure we’re setting the standard for the modern chicken quick service restaurant.” – KFC Global CEO Scott Mezvinsky

What the heck is “modern chicken quick service”? I get that companies are trying to digitize things with mobile ordering or using contemporary payment systems but the quick service part is what got me. Also, what is “modern chicken”? Yes, I know that there’s the “restaurant” portion I left out, but doesn’t that whole line and that particular section just come across as someone who has some cushy job in an ivory tower while collecting a monster paycheck for doing absolutely nothing useful in the world?

It is interesting where the article talks about their competition in naming Raising Cane’s, Dave’s Hot Chicken, Chick-fil-A, and Popeyes as far as them being in the US. The sad truth is that KFC is considered some of the worst fried chicken around, only slightly above something you can find in a Hungry Man frozen dinner. What makes matters worse is that the price for KFC doesn’t match the quality. Back around 2018 or so when the chicken sandwich war happened, KFC was one of the least remarkable especially when Popeyes decided to become king. And Chick-fil-A had their own niche with their simple but reliable chicken burger and waffle fries. The others just blew up in the past few years. I think Dave’s Hot Chicken is another niche but I haven’t tried it. Raising Cane’s though isn’t a bad offering; I’ve been going periodically because they’re open late at night and fulfill a specific craving for me.

Another point the article makes is about failing to capture younger consumers’ attention while remaining being left in the dust compared to Chick-fil-A, Popeyes, Raising Cane’s, and Wingstop in US consumer spending. My two comments here is that KFC is probably more associated to an older crowd like myself because there were limited choices for fast food style chicken growing up. For me, we had KFC, Pioneer (which barely is around) and Church’s. Church’s was one spot we never hit up because I heard it wasn’t good (another Hungry Man-like quality). Pioneer though was my favorite. I thought they did a better skin and still do. So KFC kinda won by default.

Chick-fil-A was a thing but operated only in a mall growing up and wasn’t open on Sundays. But they focused on the sandwich and nuggets, which made them unique compared to KFC’s offerings. Popeyes came up later and truthfully, I wasn’t a fan until people talked about their sandwich. The one place the article failed to identify which has become a major hit out here in California is Jollibee, which does a Filipino version of fried chicken with sandwiches, mash n gravy as well as spaghetti. But it’s got a unique flavor that’s growing a nice cult around it. Better yet the food always is hot when I get it. Then there’s El Pollo Loco which does grilled chicken and was considered the “healthier” option between the two.

When it comes to the specific changes KFC management are talking about, they’re looking at a new global beverage platform, called Kwench, boneless chicken products with regional sauces like Chimichurri Ranch and Hot Honey Habanero. Interestingly enough, another key quote talks about the foundation of KFC:

“Our brand was built around buckets of chicken,” Kubizniak said. “That’s not how people eat today.”

So I think this pivot is going to fuck KFC up. I honestly have hated all the changes places like Taco Bell made over the years where their current line up resembles stuff you’d find in 2001: A Space Odyssey all mashed together rather than the old ground beef, freshly grated cheese, etc. I think KFC had two major issues that has plagued them over the years that they cannot admit: 1) the morbid obesity crisis; 2) the increase in prices. I haven’t talked about the chicken crisis that happened a few years back either. But the morbid obesity crisis kinda killed a lot of the fast food market because of the stigma of how the ingredients, heavy amount of processing and quantity led to various health issues, including Type 2 Diabetes. KFC has to be partly to blame for that issue based on the nature of what they serve.

The increase in prices though are the biggest problems they’re facing now. The idea of “building a brand around buckets of chicken” don’t work when you’re charging anywhere between $30-40 for a family meal. And even if they pivot, the type of food they serve for the price might not be what people really want or need. Like in an urban zone, KFC would be one of the least appealing type of meals especially if you work in a corporate office (or even at home) where you’d get into a food coma right after.

While they may think they understand the problem, I think that the issue is the core audience for what they had sold has evolved. KFC worked for nuclear families back when there was little competition, the parents needed a night off from cooking and they could have leftovers for another meal (maybe the dad or children might have some the next day; at least, that’s what my family did). When you’re asking families to spend $40-50 for a bucket that barely last a day in conjunction with shrinkflation, people are going to search for alternatives.

Also, I mentioned Raising Cane’s as a spot that I occasionally go to. One thing I did notice was how there’s a lot of young workers and kids inside the restaurant eating after 10pm. I think part of the problem with these fast food spots is that they’ve been optimized to death and forgot what their core audience is in favor of shareholders and quarterly profits. Yes, there’s the experience factor but the only reason to eat at a fast food joint is to get out of the house anymore. And I think with KFC, they’re missing the bucket (pun intended) when it comes to the price and open hours factor. But I wouldn’t compromise on the OG selling points. I don’t think a rebranding is going to help much. Prices and convenience will though.

Gaming Stuff

Diablo 4 Scheduled Next Developer Livestream for Season 14

On June 23, 2026 at 11am PST, Blizzard is going to have another Diablo 4 related livestream based on the Season 14 content. This comes after the PTR so I’m guessing that they’ll address the various changes coming up for S14 on Twitch, etc. I have to wonder based on some of the feedback on PTR I’ve read on reddit whether further adjustments will be made. The big problems to me is that there’s a ton of nerfs with nothing given back. Some people think these nerfs are to improve the health of the game but I argue that they’re wasting their time making percentage differences on their slider based so-called “game development” rather than focusing on adding more content like skills, nodes for the new skill tree, modifications for the paragon board, etc. While I might watch, I don’t expect the chat for the livestream is going to be positive though.

Stop Destroying Videogames Movement Denied in the EU

There’s an ongoing movement for video games where people are demanding that the government step in to compel companies after a game no longer is being sold. The high level concept is that publishers should not “makes games unplayable after ending support, especially when those games were sold to customers as complete products.” However, the EU made it official that they won’t enforce anything, despite the 1.3 million signatures requesting for this action.

I do think the situation is a slippery one mostly because live service games has become more or less a standard. I can understand that a company shouldn’t have to continuously support software after a certain period; that’s simply part of end-of-life agreement. I know there’s exceptions such where additional support get special cases (like say hardware for a bank). Otherwise, such software becomes something akin to COBOL where you end up having to maintain something that just becomes vastly out of date and the knowledge is specialized while the cost isn’t worth it.

However, I think with game publishers, the problem has been the advent of always-online, which is something that I think companies like EA pioneered as a means of combating piracy. I remember one of the Sims games (I believe) being controversial when it was clear that nothing in the game itself really needed an online mode to work. Now, I can understand games that need an online component such as social games like MMORPGs, but you’re pretty much taking on a liability in building such a game. First, you need to hire a server team and either build your own server farm or outside it from the cloud. Second, you need people on your team who are willing to commit to terrible schedules. Game studios tend to already have major issues since publishing is rough and there’s a high degree of stress. Then you have to deal with problems like security and other legal issues down the line as we’ve seen with the various child protection laws.

I kinda knew this would come down the line eventually when I saw the way games like WoW were being built. Wildstar is the perfect example of why doing an online game is so risky. I think it’s better to make games offline and just suck up the piracy problem. It’ll exist but you can just let the federal government do their job for that rather than put additional resources on the problem. Likewise, I think if people have issues with the way games are made, the better option might simply be to avoid buying them at all or going to a game archive like GoG where you can find cheaper but still relevant games that you’ll own and can play.

Tech News

Zuckerberg “Ordering” Employees to Have Fun

I think this latest PR move is nothing more than the meme of “the flagellation will continue until moral improves.” I’ve always seen Fuckerberg as being this inhuman, selfish, freckled faced, beady eyed twerp that had zero social skills and as much integrity as rotting shit floating around in an unflushed toilet boil at Taco Bell. He’s probably getting a ton of backlash from all the layoffs, the Machiavellian-like oppressive dystopia inside of Meta and the fact that nothing they’re producing anymore is any good, despite all their expenditure. But let put it to you Zitberg: people won’t have fun unless they want to. More importantly, no one likes being told to have fun when they’re under the gun. That said, I’ve tended to think the people over at Meta were mostly these backstabbing types that just would Carter J Burke everyone for a goddamn percentage.

SpaceX Acquiring Cursor

Two seemingly unrelated entities are going to merge; or rather one is going to be consumed for $60 billion into the thing that just went IPO. Most people are looking at this situation as xAI’s way of increasing the portfolio despite it and X being major money losses for Elon Musk. I have no idea why Cursor is worth $60 billion because to me it’s just a plugin to Visual Studio Code with a prompt integration. But I’m guessing the other part of this deal is to allow xAI to “steal” code getting written from a variety of sources since Cursor has to understand a project at scale. Most people probably have been using Github to place their repositories and that place has prevent AI bots from scouring their code base.

Now, the thing for me is that Cursor is a nifty tool and has become one of the leading IDEs when it comes to AI agent integrations. But there’s still plenty of competitors that are as good. Most of the time for myself, I don’t use Cursor for the agent aspects because it’s heavy and costly. The main features I use for coding with regards to AI are code completion and even then that’s to a limited amount. I do feel that Cursor has enabled a whole new generation of “vibe coders” to emerge but from what I’ve seen the output generally is a mess for the less experienced. So if it turns out that this acquisition leads to more distrust of AI, I’ll be more than happy to ditch it and just stick with my Visual Studio Code with some code completion plugin/integration. The only people that will suffer are larger businesses that are demanding their employees use agentic coding at scale to do huge chunks of projects.

Snap with Augmented Reality Glasses

In the latest “I haven’t heard fuck all from you in the past decade,” apparently Snap is attempting to make some news headlines with what I’m guessing has been a project they’d been working on for a while in the form of augmented reality glasses. The project is slated for the fall and is on preorder at a whopping $2,195. The key features of note are:

• Audio and video playback
• AI assistance
• Bluetooth notifications

From what I’ve read, Apple’s Vision Pro wasn’t a hit whereas Meta’s Ray-Ban version was. The real question to me in all of this is: who the fuck needs this in 2026? None of those features appeal to me especially at over $2.1k. I mean is this supposed to be a fashion statement? Why would I want audio and video playback on my glasses? That seems like it would only fuck my poor eye sight up even more. And why would I want or even need AI assistance? If I’m that desperate, I can get it from my phone.

Here’s the thing: I don’t need my goddamn computer on my head. What I would’ve preferred are things that help my vision since I now have to use two separate forms of glasses for reading and outdoors/driving. Stuff like auto tint or screen protection and digital focus would be cool. Or how about infrared and night vision? And with the video part, if the intent is pr0n on my glasses, I’ll say this: I ain’t jacking it while wearing my glasses, augmented or not augmented.

So this just sounds like a rich boy’s fantasy toy. There’s no real world purpose that I think is worth spending this amount of money. Not for someone like me.

Google to End Adblockers for Chrome

In their never ending quest to Do Only Evil as opposed to their original company slogan, Google has announced the end of adblockers, most notably UBlock Origin. I’ve been a dedicated Firefox user since the Mozilla days and only use Chrome for a small set of features (which involves a single Facebook group). My personal Chrome can no longer be updated because I purposefully keep my MacOS out of date. I don’t know if this change will impact my version of Chrone as it won’t self update anymore. But I’ve already moved a good chunk of stuff from Chrome back to Firefox.

But Chrome has been a lousy browser for sometime. Outside of killing AdBlock a while back, Chrome just eats up memory like crazy and most people consider it spyware. Sites like Facebook have been getting around ad blockers by having horribly structured pages with deeply nested div tags that cause their pages to run like a slog, even worse than the old tables within tables designs from the late 90s. The few websites I do go to aren’t places I cannot live without as most of the web practically is dead now for one reason or another. The things that I was using that kept coming back like Instagram are incredibly niche because the content is all crap except for the few celebrities I follow. I stopped using Facebook for any friend related activities. Twitter/X is long dead. So all the stuff I enjoyed is gone.

It does make me think that the web might be dying. Instead, I have a feeling that mobile applications or at least heavy peer-to-peer/client based networked systems are going to become a thing. With the rising cost of data centers, there’s almost no reason to build server side software anymore. Maybe this is a good thing and that along with the trend of protests against online service games seeing EoL situations, maybe the end solution is the return of packaged software. I do miss the Egghead Software days I must admit.

The French Spies Drop Palantir

This is almost a no-brainer where the French are distancing themselves from Palantir because of fear of overreliance. Anyone who works in software should be familiar with the idea of placing all your eggs into one basket. Now, that we have a bunch of crazed cucks in charge, the rest of the world is waking up and pulling away from their dependence on all things made American, especially software. I think what we’ve seen with TikTok and the separation might end up happening for many of these multi-national corporations that have become ingrained inside various foreign countries.

I think this is going to be a great thing. My one hope in all of this is an increase in demand over seas for software engineers to rebuild these platforms or better ones as well as new investments in sovereign nations own technical infrastructures. It would be great to see the other parts of the world really pushing software engineering and having alternatives where perhaps people in the US would be willing to switch over. But the world as a whole definitely needs to start ditching the ugly old guard like Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, etc.

Final Thoughts

That was a long one for today. But I think some of these issues were compelling enough to give more than a few paragraphs. I suppose that some news sometimes is better than no news.