Culturevulturing

How Fault-Tolerant Is Your AE-35?

William TimbermanLeave a comment

According to Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001, fifty-eight years ago space agency functionaries talked like eunochs, robots, and none-dared-say-them-nay organization men. A year and a couple of months later, Neil Armstrong stepped off the LEM ladder’s final rung, and life imitated art.

A modest lifetime later, ChatGPT, HAL’s more or less legitimate grandchild, like his grandsire before him, only wants what’s best for you. No, really….

In between these two determinative fabrications, we had Brazil and Blade Runner. None of our best and brightest paid a damned bit of attention to them….

Orange Is the New Orange

William Timberman4 Comments

My new orange iPhone seems a lot bolder, its nubbly tech woven case a lot cruder than its svelte, steel-blue predecessor, now on its way back to Apple to be reincarnated. I’m afraid some fugitive from Miami Vice is gonna sidle up to me one of these days in Walmart and mutter “brown shoes?” as he reaches for a bag of Cheetos on the next shelf over. Anyway, like it or not, it appears I’ll be fencing with a claymore rather than a rapier for the next two years. Worked for Rob Roy, though, didn’t it?

I do wonder, though, if the damned thing is inevitably destined to become a MAGA magnet. You know, because it’s orange, because of the reptilian case, and because MAGA folks do so love to assert their cultural dominance over anything that attracts their ape-like curiosity.