Powderhorn

Original Naked Gun director David Zucker has gone back on the attack over the recent reboot starring Liam Neeson, after appearing to soften his tone in the wake of its release.

In an interview with Woman’s World, Zucker said that Seth MacFarlane, producer on the new Naked Gun and previously director and co-writer of the Ted movies “totally missed” the spoof-comedy style that Zucker, along with collaborators Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, made famous in Airplane! and the three original Naked Gun films.

“My brother, Jerry, and our partner, Jim Abrahams, started doing spoof comedies 50 years ago, and we originated our own style – and we did that so well that it looks easy, evidently. People started copying it, like [producer] Seth MacFarlane for the new Naked Gun. He totally missed it.”

He added: “It can look like we’re just throwing stuff up against the wall to see what sticks, but we’re not. There’s thought behind it.”

After stepping down as Amazon’s CEO four years ago, Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder and former chief executive of the online shopping company, is going to be a CEO again. This time, Bezos has appointed himself co-CEO of an AI startup called Project Prometheus, the New York Times reported, citing anonymous sources.

The startup, which will focus on developing AI for engineering and manufacturing in various fields, has already received $6.2bn in funding – more than many companies are able to raise in their lifetimes. Leading the company alongside Bezos is his co-founder and co-CEO Vik Bajaj, a celebrity tech executive in his own right. Bajaj is a physicist and chemist best known for his work at Google’s moonshot factory, X, where he founded the health startup Verily.

So, my dad died Friday. This is not your problem, but I navigate cacti while my mom and I wrap up what was not already arranged, while I enjoy acting like I'm the sort to be able to pay for a $300 hotel.

I have no issue with most cacti. What there is to deduce here is that I'm originally from Arizona, and if you'd like to jump in cholla, you're welcome to at your peril.

Some may note that was not accidental wording.

See, the thing about cholla is you really don't want to have gotten that close.

I always hate being back in Arizona to hear banalities about whatever the fuck it is now. Give me the 5Cs or GTFO.

No one is from here. So to attempt to speak as a native is generally useless. I fucking am. Sorry, Wisconsin and Minnesota -- you don't get it.

Yay! More saguaros. Tucson seems to prefer "sahuaro," as evidenced by street names and more than one school name. I won't speak to why I was ever here in high school.

I will tell you that the "g" was central to branding.

I guess this is my immediate reaction to being here for my dad dying. It also means the last time I have to come here.

Well, penultimate. I have to fly out here again for the spreading of the ashes, so we're not quite done yet. Death certificates can apparently be a bitch.

What's odd is I'm now spending my own money to be here. Mom kept reminding me as I was making decisions that related to my own possessions.

I'm not rich, and it will be a month or so before I can take control of what's left. But, you know, this is not my current worry.

Meanwhile, I'm in my room at the Westward Look. Don't assume what I can do thereafter, as I'd never like to be back here. When I fly out, I have zero intention to return.

Want to buy a new shirt from your friendly neighborhood small business? In some cases, be prepared to pay out 2.5% more as a “financing” fee because you’re using a credit card. Enjoying that meal at the local diner? Better have cash or you could be subject to the same fee. Grabbing a bag of chips and a soda at the local convenience store? Oops … Unless you’re prepared to spend a minimum of 10 bucks you can’t use your credit card, sorry.

I’ve always been irritated by these practices. And I know I’m not alone. Who carries cash any more? Why are we, the customer, being shamed because we choose to buy something using what has become a standard form of payment over something that’s clearly a thing of the past?

Merchants have been fighting the credit card companies about these fees for years. And now they’ve won. This past week, Visa and Mastercard ended their battle, and now future fees will probably be lower for consumers that use some cards, particularly the ones that offer fewer rewards. But did these businesses really win? I’m not so sure. Be careful what you ask for.

When then Tropical Storm Melissa was churning south of Haiti, Philippe Papin, a National Hurricane Center (NHC) meteorologist, had confidence it was about to grow into a monster hurricane.

As the lead forecaster on duty, he predicted that in just 24 hours the storm would become a category 4 hurricane and begin a turn towards the coast of Jamaica. No NHC forecaster had ever issued such a bold forecast for rapid strengthening.

But Papin had an ace up his sleeve: artificial intelligence in the form of Google’s new DeepMind hurricane model – released for the first time in June. And, as predicted, Melissa did become a storm of astonishing strength that tore through Jamaica.

Forecasters at the NHC are increasingly leaning hard on Google DeepMind. On the morning of 25 October, Papin explained in his public discussion and on social media that Google’s model was a primary reason he was so confident: “Roughly 40/50 Google DeepMind ensemble members show Melissa becoming a Category 5. While I am not ready to forecast that intensity yet given the track uncertainty, that remains a possibility.

Ironically, AI is getting better at predicting disasters.

My god, what have we become as a society?

Labubus could be headed to the big screen. Sony Pictures has acquired the screen rights to the plush toy sensation and is in early development of a feature film which, if successful, would anchor a new franchise.

The deal, first reported by the Hollywood Reporter, was signed this week between the Chinese toy makers and Sony Pictures, whose animation division is fresh off the global success of KPop Demon Hunters. No producer or film-maker is attached to the project yet, and it’s still unclear if the film would be live-action or animated.

The toys, designed by the European-based artist Kasing Lung and initially sold as part of a line of monster figurines by the company How2 Work, first took off in south-east Asia in 2019, after they were marketed by Chinese retailer Pop Mart. The popularity of the dolls, which Lung says were inspired by Nordic fairytales after moving to the Netherlands from Hong Kong as a child, has been fueled by social media posts of live unboxings that showcase rare collections, as well as their adoption by prominent celebrities.

OK, well I guess there's some backstory, but ...

Just this week, Sony and Mattel announced that they had partnered for a film based on the game View Master.

is View-Master a game? I seem to recall it being clicking between still images.

Don't get me wrong, it was cool. But god help us if this gets released in 2D.

Iceland’s former prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, has said that the Icelandic language could be wiped out in as little as a generation due to the sweeping rise of AI and encroaching English language dominance.

Katrín, who stood down as prime minister last year to run for president after seven years in office, said Iceland was undergoing “radical” change when it came to language use. More people are reading and speaking English, and fewer are reading in Icelandic, a trend she says is being exacerbated by the way language models are trained.

She made the comments before her appearance at the Iceland Noir crime fiction festival in Reykjavík after the surprise release of her second novel of the genre, which she co-wrote with Ragnar Jónasson.

“A lot of languages disappear, and with them dies a lot of value[and] a lot of human thought,” she said. Icelandic has only about 350,000 speakers and is among the world’s least-altered languages.

“Having this language that is spoken by so very few, I feel that we carry a huge responsibility to actually preserve that. I do not personally think we are doing enough to do that,” she said, not least because young people in Iceland “are absolutely surrounded by material in English, on social media and other media”.

The prospect of chaos and war excited Jeffrey Epstein. The late New York financier and child abuser kept a keen eye on news about foreign conflicts that could be exploited for commercial gain. On February 21, 2014, Epstein sent an e-mail to Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, with whom he would partner the following year as investors in a security tech firm Reporty Homeland Security (later renamed Carbyne). Epstein wrote, “with civil unrest exploding in ukraine syria, somolia [sic], libya, and the desperation of those in power, isn’t this perfect for you.” Barak tried to tamp down his friend’s enthusiasm, noting, “You’re right [in] a way. But not simple to transform it into a cash flow.”

This exchange, which was reported by Drop Site News, gets at the heart of one of the more hidden aspects of the Epstein scandal. Epstein’s name is inextricably linked with sexual predation, as it should be. But it should just as readily be linked to global militarism and authoritarianism. Epstein trafficked not just in the bodies of the children he abused but also in social connections that could bring elites together. He well understood that the “desperation of those in power” could make them eager to buy what he was selling: connections with other powerful figures and security systems to clamp down on dissent.

The Epstein scandal has once again exploded thanks to the release this week by House Democrats of an immense cache of e-mails between Epstein and many of his famous associates. As my Nation colleagues Chris Lehmann and Joan Walsh have written, these e-mails are politically damaging to Donald Trump, adding yet more evidence that the president was close friends with Epstein for many years, aware of Epstein’s predations, and possibly a participant in some of Epstein’s crimes.

Reporty? They couldn't afford a competent brand strategist?

“People are just amazed and wowed at the optical blue that you see from pure water itself,” said Sudeep Chandra, a limnologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, who collaborates with Girdner. “That blueness is the reflection of the hydrogen and oxygen hanging out together without any material in it.”

Since 2010, however, Girdner and his colleagues have noticed an unexpected change in the Secchi data: Despite the day’s slightly cloudy reading, Crater Lake’s clear water is getting even clearer.

This might sound like a good thing. After all, the lake’s remarkable, glasslike transparency and brilliant hue are major draws for the half-million tourists who visit every year. But it might also indicate that something is going wrong with the lake’s physics, chemistry and ecology, and it could be a harbinger of changes to lakes across the world in the age of climate change.

As the planet warms, summers are growing longer and winter nights aren’t getting as cold as they used to. As a result, the surfaces of many deep, temperate lakes are warming even faster than the air. This shift to the energy flux of the top layer of water can set in motion a series of physical changes that add up to a breakdown of lake mixing — a fundamental process that acts like a heartbeat for deep, temperate lakes that don’t freeze in winter. Lake mixing is driven by physical properties such as wind, air temperature, water temperature and salinity, and on seasonal or annual cycles it circulates water between the surface and the depths. When mixing stops, oxygen and nutrients don’t get distributed throughout the water column, which can kill fish, trigger unsightly and dangerous algal blooms and invite invasive species to take over.

I guess he really wanted to make it to 84.

One silver lining is my mom and I flew to Tuscon at the start of the week, so we got to see him only a few hours before he gave up.

He was in a vegetative state already when I first saw him Tuesday night, in bed, mouth agape, getting water via sponges, unable to close his eyes anymore, having trouble breathing and certainly unable to speak.

That was only 11 days after speaking with him on the phone to wish him a happy birthday, utterly unaware that would be the last time we spoke.

I'm still in shock, being less than two hours into getting the news. My planned Saturday departure has been pushed to Tuesday so we can tie up loose ends (thankfully, most arrangements had already been made in advance).

I don't know how I'm feeling right now, and I have the luxury of still being in my hotel room while Mom contacts people ahead of meeting up and actually having to face reality.

I can say that it's a relief that he's no longer in pain -- hospice upped his morphine frequency to every two hours just yesterday as he became "more agitated," whatever that means when you can barely move your hands and nothing else.

Mom and the care staff said that he hadn't so much as blinked in days, but he did upon seeing me, and then tears welled up.

You can't really prepare for the death of a parent, no matter how steeled you think you are.

The domain looked rather suspicious, and I'm not entirely certain this wasn't "written with the help of AI," but they actually list citations. The sheer scale of this across multiple sectors should put any fears that we're not in a recession to rest.

This many layoffs, reorgs and "flattenings" (while jettisoning underperforming products and services) doesn't say "economic growth." Middle management doesn't get the axe when the excrement is happily cooped up a full plane ride away from the oscillator.

And we're talking hundreds of thousands of layoffs at minimum in the U.S. alone. That's going to drastically alter the labour market while also reducing consumer spending.

We've only just begun.

The year 2025 has become one of the most turbulent periods for the global workforce in recent history. Across major industries, from technology and energy to automotive and pharmaceuticals, thousands of employees have faced layoffs as companies restructure to adapt to changing market conditions. Rising operational costs, slower revenue growth, and the accelerating shift toward automation and artificial intelligence have reshaped corporate priorities worldwide.

These large-scale job cuts highlight a broader trend in the global economy: businesses are redefining efficiency, focusing on digital transformation, and preparing for long-term sustainability amid uncertain demand. While some layoffs are driven by declining profits, others reflect a strategic move to reallocate resources toward high-growth areas such as AI, renewable energy, and cloud infrastructure.

This article reviews the most significant layoffs of 2025 to provide a clear overview of how global corporations are navigating a year marked by transformation, cost restructuring, and shifting workforce dynamics.

First, they came for the editors. And I was an editor, so I was fucked.

Then, they came for the designers. And I was a designer, so I was fucked.

Then, they came for the writers. And they used too many em-dashes.

Clear enough where this goes. This said, while music and language are obviously both artistic endeavours, the former is far more geared toward generative content.

Gibberish in iambic pentameter is useless, but an eight-bar hook with tried-and-true chord progressions, plus a few layers to keep things marginally interesting? And then a quick prompt for lyrics?

It's unsurprising that decades of formulaic label tripe can't be distinguished from generated music.

Three songs generated by artificial intelligence topped music charts this week, reaching the highest spots on Spotify and Billboard charts.

Walk My Walk and Livin’ on Borrowed Time by the outfit Breaking Rust topped Spotify’s “Viral 50” songs in the US, which documents the “most viral tracks right now” on a daily basis, according to the streaming service. A Dutch song, We Say No, No, No to an Asylum Center, an anti-migrant anthem by JW “Broken Veteran” that protests against the creation of new asylum centers, took the top position in Spotify’s global version of the viral chart around the same time. Breaking Rust also appeared in the top five on the global chart.

“You can kick rocks if you don’t like how I talk,” reads a lyric from Walk My Walk, a seeming double entendre challenging those opposed to AI-generated music.

Days after its ascent up the charts, the Dutch song disappeared from Spotify and YouTube, as did Broken Veteran’s other music. Spotify told the Dutch outlet NU.nl that the company had not removed the music, the owners of the song rights had. Broken Veteran told the outlet that he did not know why his music had disappeared and that he was investigating, hoping to return it soon.

A stat of note:

AI music has improved in quality from its early, clanking days. As part of its study, Deezer surveyed 9,000 people in eight countries and found that 97% could not distinguish between AI-generated music and human-written music.