Hodgepodge: Good Death and Sad Death, an Undeath and other Random Pontifications

This weekend proved eventful in that two deaths occurred; a sad one related to actor Sam Neill and the other to the less than savory Lindsey Graham. In addition, apparently our good old (and I emphasize OLD) buddy Mitchy boi continues to communicate across time and space where somehow he was able to provide a statement and image of him being alive with his blood sucking leech of a wife, having a fall that took him out and hospitalized him for an indefinite period. And they say that Americans have bad healthcare; nope only if you’re poor, powerless, ugly and unwanted, which means the bulk of the people out here. AI continues to persist across headlines whether you want it or not. More attempts to prevent the Warner Bros – Paramount merger by state issued lawsuits. Despite all these things, the thing I actually care about are upgrades for my couch space.

Sam Neill Dead at 78

In all honesty, when I saw the photo of Sam Neill, I didn’t recognize him. Perhaps, it was the beard, the gray hair but I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that this was the lead guy from Jurassic Park (1993) nor even Event Horizon (1997) as I hadn’t followed his career nor the subsequent Jurassic Park movies (the others flat out seemed bad). I can tell you one thing though: he’s all over my IG feed. Almost impossible to scroll at the moment in the search (formerly explore) section without encountering a few dozen images or if I doom scroll the normal feed portions. Also, I noticed that he’s in The Hunt for Red October (1990) which I’ve been interested in seeing as it’s on TubiTV right now. Perhaps, it might be a great movie to watch as a kind of tribute to him for myself.

I read that Sam Neill had been undergoing chemotherapy in dealing with cancer. While at some point he was declared cancer free, his demise was deemed sudden. So it’s quite possible that it cropped up and took his life. Yeah, fuck cancer.

Lindsey Graham Dead at 71

In one of those “I didn’t have that on my bingo card” moments of 2026, Lindsey Graham had suddenly passed away on Saturday night after returning from Kyvy, Ukraine. The verdict was aortic dissection, a similar condition that took John Ritter’s life back in 2003. One of the doctors mentioned that the trip may have caused or aggrandized this condition. In the meantime, in an act of actual nepotism, apparently his sister is going to replace him until the election comes up.

That said, if we’re going to speak truthfully here (and you know I always do that), only a section of the populace are going to actually mourn him. This guy can easily be described as a lightning rod for various issues. He seemed like some wingnut and an embarrassment to the US. I would call him one of the Big 4 out of the main guy in charge who are probably some of the worst infestations in American politics right now. But my belief is this: the devil is coming to collect on all those souls he made a Faustian bargain with to be moved into power. A person’s guilt, lies and corruptions eventually will eat them alive and I think this guy was definitely one of the top people on that list.

There’s an article that I won’t link writing about the cynicism and coldness regarding his passing. Let me say this, perhaps if he too hadn’t been a wretch in denigrating certain groups with his backwards, outdated, neanderthal thinking, maybe he would get as much love as Sam Neill is receiving right now. I’m sure when people walk their dogs to take a piss on this guy’s grave, the piss will evaporate because Hell is burning this guy’s corpse up still.

Mitchy MickeyD’s Issues A Statement

When I write some of these politician’s names, I’m almost afraid that it’s similar to that movie Candyman where if you type their name 3x in a row, you’ll eventually summon them from the dead. Anyway, the real Weekend at Bernie’s star and of actual Walking Dead fame, Mitchy McD has made some sort of statement that floated in the air like a lingering fart that crept from his anal crack into the public. Supposedly, he fell leading him to be hospitalized for sometime (a month???) In addition, an image of him in blue jeans with his wife at his side smiling was released. The KY governor though is demanding that an interview or video is conducted to confirm whether this being actually functions since reports were that he was effectively brain dead (add jokes as necessary here) In response to this sad state of American affairs, Jimmy Kimmel posted an image of himself imposed on the same bed with Mitchy’s wife using AI to demonstrate how easy anyone these days could fake a photo.

Mitchy is one of the best excuses to prepare for a zombie apocalypse. I mean, if there was a zombie leader type, that’s it right there. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day his skin falls off and we see the remnants of an Egyptian pharaoh underneath. I figure the only way he’s managed to survive these centuries is pure life draining tactics, possibly from that vampiric entity attached to him called a wife.

Now, normally I hate writing about politics because it generally upsets me. In this case, I’m not writing about politics but about politicians, people I genuinely despise because their existence is a literal and metaphoric divider (in opposition to a multiplier effect). Also, I’m not writing directly about their policies but them as this plague upon mankind. I disqualify individuals such as these as part of the human race because they lack anything bearing the resemblance of an actual human worth dignifying. But I suppose if there is a bright side, they do provide us with entertainment on occasion and me with enough vitriol to allow vituperous diction to flood from my mind.

AI Continues to Highlight Headlines

It’s impossible to by a day without reading the latest bitchfest about something AI has done or has not done as though it were Madonna being overplayed on the radio back in ’88 (which is partly why I became a metal head; and I do like Madonna but not to the point where it drives me crazy). Normally, I simply would ignore most of these as the posts come from angry people who probably have no idea how AI operates or have their own insecurities and just need a place for their version of a 2 Minute Hate (cf 1984 by Orwell). Regardless, there’s a few things that popup worth doing some rapid fire comments on.

• Half of LinkedIn posts are AI generated – This isn’t surprising to me considering that LinkedIn’s feed has been a graveyard of just randomly liked post rather than actual content from people I know. The people I know who post are using LinkedIn to get karma since they’re probably unemployed or are being forced at gunpoint by their CEOs to like whatever crap their company is pushing. So I’m not surprised that a few entrepreneuring individuals are attempting to sound pithy in making post that get liked by their colleagues in trying to seem like some SME (subject matter expert). Oddly, the article itself that I’ve linked here mentions that the tool that made this finding uses AI to make this finding. In short, there’s no real telling what the actual percentage is. The only truth in all of this is that LinkedIn sucks and most of us wish we could just trash our accounts if we didn’t anticipate an eventual rebound in the market.
• Samsung Threatens to Delete Your Health Data – For not being allowed to be used to train its AI. I’m perfectly fine with this because I refuse to use an app that monitors my health in the first place. The ironic part is that, despite the click/ragebait nature of this article and its title, Samsung’s so called controversial stance to me really isn’t that controversial because they’re kinda warning people about the usage rather than forcing an opt-in. The real question people ought to be asking is why would Samsung, a manufacturer of devices, would need to train its own AI on human’s health? That to me is the buried lead here.
• AI Replaces Nurses in NY Hospital – There was another article that covered the same issue but went into more detail about the union rather than examine what functions are being replaced. This article points out that the jobs being replaced are for utilization nurses where the piece of software from a vendor called Datavant handles the “examination (sic) patient records and demonstrate to insurers that the care provided is medically necessary and eligible for coverage.” Truthfully, this does not sound as bad as the headlines appear since manual process can be equally error prone. The bigger issue isn’t the jobs lost to me but that the person is eligible for coverage. That part is far more alarming just because insurers to me are flat out evil and the whole system is corrupt. But I don’t think AI should be the thing to really blame and be angered about in this. Look at the symptoms.
• Christopher Nolan Rants on AI Slop – I’m sure that his movies employed a high degree of CG. But I think his rant just shows to me how most people have no idea how AI works and have generally just bucketed together various tools that help generate images and movies as slop. He shouldn’t talk though; that Interstellar movie was quite unforgivable as Nolan slop to me. But the kids will praise him because there’s this generational backlash coming. Don’t worry, I already knew the kids were stupid but now they’re getting even dumber if that’s possible. Eventually, they’ll make Beavis & Butthead appear as geniuses.
• Meta’s AI Glasses Cause Users to be Embarrassed – Forget most of the title for that article. Here’s the keypoint that I honed in on here: “Influencers, mostly men, have been using the glasses to inconspicuously — and non-consensually — capture footage of themselves approaching women and attempting to hit on them.” So if we were to examine the movie Idiocracy with the thesis on how man’s smartest people are being employed to develop things catered towards the lowest common denominator of our species (i.e. sex toys), then we can say hey we’ve fulfilled Mike Judge’s horror prophecy to a T. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see the ‘ol Zuck doing the same with these things.
• LAPD Ending Agreement with Flock – Citing privacy concerns as the main issue from citizens (surprisingly), LAPD is cancelling it’s agreement with Flock. Apparently, they don’t even own the cameras but homeowners associations and some “organizations” that permit the police in using them. So these must be NIMBY types of spots and gated communities who fear some random homeless person wandering in. But I read that a lot of these cameras misidentify cars license plates as the car being stolen, causing issues. Personally, I think this whole thing smells like some backdoor deal made for a bunch of hidden funds/bribes. There was some video of people destroying these cameras in protest. I think those people are stupid and if they managed to obtain the camera, they should’ve reverse engineered them and figured out how to manufacture them for their own purposes. The lack of imagination from these heathens…

AI almost seems like a vanity project to me where it’s meant to replicate human intelligence or actual intelligence. At this point, I’m not so much afraid of a Skynet revolution but just a bunch of horny men attempting to conceive a very perverse reality. The reality is that humans are lazy as fuck so even if this coming generation rejects AI, once AI improves (and it will) and all the lawmakers are bought out and more of Hollywood converts because they see dollar signs, it’s just going to continue rising.

But again, you can’t blame the actual AI itself for any of this. It’s merely the effect. The cause again is human laziness. I’m dead sure that if money weren’t an issue, no one would question allowing AI to grow because god knows that humans need slaves. Perhaps, the interim solution since that last statement is inevitable is we should just ditch money and see how that goes for a while. It’ll de-empower that assholes on top and perhaps give some leverage for what would’ve been the working class person.

Warner Bros – Paramount Merger Continues with Controversy

About 12 states are going to sue to prevent the Warner Bros – Paramount merger. Along with that Paramount is considering leaving California in terms of its HQ and the $30B in “funding” along with it. One comment was how the situation is going to lead to a big job loss similar to the Microsoft – Activision merger. I won’t doubt that the HQ probably will end up going to a more tax friendly zone with a cheaper cost of living and that a ton of layoffs will happen with possibly an increase in H1B visas to replace the previous workers if we’re looking at parallels in these mega mergers. Heck, I believe that eventually the HQ will end up in Saudi Arabia considering that they’re putting in a good deal of this money.

But it does make me wonder if this situation occurs where and how are movies going to end up being made? I don’t doubt that there will be a handful of directors and cast that will continue to make movies on behalf of the Saudis and the Ellison empire. But what happens to a good chunk of Hollywood since there will be a much more limited number of people that get employed? I can’t bluntly see a new generation of Saudi actors taking to the big screen; even as greedy as Hollywood is, they’re also highly racist if we want to be fair. So is this where AI comes in again to save the day?

At the same time, I have to wonder why doesn’t a new group form to create a brand new studio? I’m sure that these multi millionaires in Hollywood could pull their funds and oust the old generation of executives and come up with a brand new system. Also, what happens to the lots for these places? Are they going to just disappear? Or maybe this whole system is about to collapse and expose this complex network of corruption all around such that it needs a complete revamping from ground up?

My True Wishful Project – Couch 2.0

I might sound angry in all of my rants from above but in truth those are mostly observations and my natural verbiage to describe what I see at the moment. Of the things I care about in the moment are an improvement to my couch. Although I’ve made numerous upgrades to my computer desk, the truth is that I don’t use it for much at the moment mostly because I haven’t done a great deal of programming nor gaming lately. Sadly, my computer desk is mostly used as a spot where I eat and watch old He-Man episodes.

Most of my day is spent on my couch where I perform all my writing activities. Occasionally, I nap on this thing as well but I think part of that is caused from bad positioning. And while I have a nice little cart/desk where I can set my laptop upon whenever I take a nap or need to take a break, I still end up sitting on my couch with my laptop burning my legs at an awkward angle or use one of my larger stuffed animals as a cushion. But it does point to an issue where I’ve started looking around on Amazon for one and haven’t seen anything that really stands out. Most have at least one questionable review and the designs make me wonder if they’ll be a waste of money. I think I wouldn’t be as concerned if I had a reasonably paying job because these things look handy but I’d probably have to go through 1-2 before finding something I’d like. Some features that I like are places for my phone (which ends up getting lost under the sofa cushions), adjustable positions and legs and side pockets. I think if these were $20 less, I would consider picking one up just to give it a try. But I’m wary of junk that ends up not getting used.

Along the way, I discovered this narrow console table for the rear of a couch. I bought a headboard with a rear shelf that I really like a while back, which is similar to this narrow console table concept. The thing I like about these things is the addition of the charging station. My wall has a few ports that are hard to reach. I have a small table to the left side of the couch which I use for charging my laptop and light, but the charging station is loose (nails got lost). And since I use the top of the couch as a spot to place various things, I think that this item might be really good for me. I could move the laptop charger to this table and put things like my old Soundbar there which I don’t use at the moment.

Another item I’m considering is a small monitor arm for my portable monitor. I found one that looks like a good fit for my ViewSonic. The ViewSonic is actually a really nice monitor extension for my main Mac but it tends to fall over a lot and can be a pain to use because of how it’s connected to my laptop. With a monitor arm like this one, I could attach it to the rolling cart desk, which would give me more room on the desk itself as well as allow me to adjust the position of the monitor. Most of the time, I use the ViewSonic for certain games like Wizardry 6 (because of the mapping/hint book). It’s not a great monitor for Hi-Def but it’s good as a supplemental screen when I’m not at my computer desk.

Finally, I’m thinking about getting a reading pillow for my sofa. The reason I want one of these is because I’ve got these two nappy, old pillows that have no give and probably should be tossed at some point. But they’re absolutely awful for my poor back/posture. I would prioritize the sofa desk first though because I feel bad at using poor Momma Giraffe as my current desk. Honestly, getting this reading pillow probably would make more sense just because I have a bad back. If I could get one with neck support too, that would be great.