Prince Harry: Release the List!
The Harry & Meghan doc, ChatGPT and AI-generated selfies, Jonah Hill's therapist, and SNL Highlights
We will get to Prince Harry & Meghan further down this post, but first, I must address the bull elephant in the room:
Tonight is the SEASON FINALE of White Lotus!!! Will Lucia get paid? Will Harper and Ethan finally split? Will Laura Dern show up? Will Jennifer Coolidge do an oopsie murder? I CAN’T WAIT.
Ben is in Boston but has graciously waived our White Lotus-watching contract so I can watch the finale without him. [That’s what the Bible calls dying for your spouse, people!]
Last month Rolling Stone published “The 100 Greatest TV Theme Songs of All Time,” and White Lotus was noticeably, appallingly missing. Cancel them!!
I feel like I may have asked this already [I did ask which TV intros you never skip!], but — which are YOUR favorite TV theme songs? Mine are Succession and the clubby White Lotus S2 remix! The drop at one minute (1:00) in: That’s appointment television!!
In the News
Three lucky winners will get to stay in Hobbiton via Airbnb!
It’s just $6/night [how!??], and booking opens December 13th at 1:00 pm PST. No idea how they decide who wins the booking! First come, first served? Highest follower count? Richest daddy?? Hairiest feet??
Honestly, sounds like another Ticketmaster nightmare in the works—the only fans more frightening than Swifties are Lord of the Rings nerds!! [Yes, I am both.]
Oxford’s word of the year: “Goblin Mode.”
Defined as “a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”
In other words, the only people who have never experienced Goblin Mode are Enneagram 1s and 3s and all those Virgos and Capricorns!
Also, I almost titled my post from October 9th: “Tom Brady + Alaskan Bears: Goblin Mode.”
On trend!
TikTok shared its most viral videos of 2022
And the top one is from an account we talked about a few weeks ago! These viral videos have more viewers than the Super Bowl.
Nat’s sister-in-law’s big moment on Stephen Colbert!
Please enjoy this delightful Stephen Colbert video where he visits Space Force’s Thule Airbase. My friend Natalie shared this with me because her awesome sister-in-law Loriann is in it! Right around the 5:40 mark, she’s the dark-haired lieutenant who makes the fantastic joke about “hopefully somebody.”
The whole thing was f***ing crazy and terrifying and entertaining!!
Science Corner - Artificial Intelligence
If you haven’t noticed, AI hysteria really popped off this week.
1) ChatGPT.
An updated version of the chatbot technology GPT-3, ChatGPT was released publicly last week, and all my news podcasts existentially collapsed.
Ask ChatGPT a question, and it will answer like an actual human. Ask it to write an essay on any subject, and it can. ChatGPT could have scanned all my writing and then written this blog post in my own voice better than I did! Or, at least one day, it probably could.
The implications of ChatGPT are both incredible and terrifying. We used to imagine robots taking over manual labor, but in actuality, robots are much, much better at taking over “intellectual” jobs: writing, science, math, graphic design, etc. After all, a robot can barely pick up a spoon, but it can write a “poem” with ease.
Take me, for example, someone who writes for a living. ChatGPT opens up incredible possibilities. Imagine if SpellCheck could also prompt me with a paragraph when I have writer’s block, could suggest my next sentence, could write the best titles for my articles, could scan and summarize sources for me! But also, could I then become obsolete?
In the end, I’m an optimist [sorry], and I think AI could become a huge leap forward as a tool for artists/writers/scientists.
But I admit to the dark side. To quote Cornelius Fudge, “The trouble is, the other side can do magic too.” Imagine AI like this in the hands of a neo-Nazi or an authoritarian government or, hell, diet culture.
2) AI Photo Generators.
You may have noticed friends, influencers, and celebrities sharing their new AI-generated self-portraits this week. From the app Lensa, the images span dozens of styles of digital art, created by scanning millions of real artists’ work online, copying the artists’ styles, and using YOUR uploaded photos to recreate your selfie into a specific style of digital art.
The Controversy(ies): There are obviously some privacy concerns when uploading several selfies to a random app, but I’m not that worried about it since all our faces are already out there anyways! The baddies got ‘em, ya’ll!
Also, as you can see from how it literally changed my brown eyes to blue or green every time, the AI seems to have internalized some deeply racist beauty standards.
And, finally, you can now pay $5.99 to get 50 new images of yourself based on what an AI learned from artists around the web who DID NOT give their consent or get compensated for what the AI “learned” — aka stole from them!
And that’s kind of tough! If an AI started writing MY blog in MY voice without asking me or paying me for it, I’d be pissed! So there’s a lot of ethics and ownership and licensing to figure out in this “brave new world,” and it’s likely that artists and creators will get kind of screwed, as always.
But here’s the thing: Lensa is fun. People are going to use it. [Like I did! Just to see what it’s all about!] I think a happy medium, for now, is to avoid using the service for anything you could be paying actual artists for. Like headshots, profile pictures, published artwork, etc. Pay a professional for professional work!
And then send those weird blue-eyed, sex-bot photos to the group chat!
Watching - The Harry & Meghan Documentary on Netflix
In the new, highly anticipated Harry & Meghan tell-all, there is one BOMBSHELL REVEAL that stands out.
…Prince Harry had a list.
Not a grocery list, not a to-do list, not an Enemies of the Crown list.
A Mr. Malcolm’s List list! A Mr. Darcy Before Elizabeth “Embarrassing Family” Bennett Walked Into His Life list! A “Requirements for a Lady-Wife” list!
When Meghan brings The List up, Harry gets very serious, very defensive, and refuses to talk about it—thereby confirming its existence!! He says, carefully, “This is the list” as he gestures at his wife. WOW! That may be “sweet” and all, but this is a DOCUMENTARY! A TELL-ALL! We demand you live up to your promises, sir.
RELEASE THE LIST!!!
Anyhoo, here are a few other things to know about the Harry + Meghan doc on Netflix:
I am equally annoyed by and protective of Harry and Meghan after watching this. Is the way they call each other “H” and “M” kind of like nails on a chalkboard or loud chewing to my ears? It is! On the other hand, can everyone just let them LIVE!??!?
The British tabloid media is trying to paint this documentary as a shocking attack on the Royal Family, but it’s definitely NOT. It’s very obviously a FAIR attack on British tabloid media and their racist, stalking, unethical, horrific practices. Burn them!
H&M didn’t have any bombshell reveals [yet?], and that was really a letdown! But it was an occasionally interesting pulling back of the curtain. Part of it felt like a silly little rom-com about a British Prince and his American girlfriend, and part of it felt like an actual documentary about the inner workings of the British press and the British Commonwealth. The third episode was probably the best in that sense.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: Meghan might be annoying, but Harry didn’t prepare her AT ALL?! A lot of people blame Meghan for not knowing much about the royal family or royal etiquette. But isn’t that Harry’s job? He literally admitted that he once asked her five minutes before she met the Queen: “You know how to curtsy, right?” Then in the documentary, he says, “Well, how do you explain that to people? How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother?” Oh, I don’t know, Harry, seems like you put all the words together fine just now!!!!
Only Part 1 is out, and it includes three [3!] hour-long episodes. Part 2, with another three episodes, comes out this Thursday. This is just one woman’s opinion, but they did not need this many episodes or hours to tell this story!
Anyhoo, I will watch the second half later this week, I guess.
Also Watching - Stutz on Netflix
Stutz is Jonah Hill’s documentary about his therapist. Does that sound weird, meta, and confusing?
It is! In the absolute BEST, most resplendent way!
I don’t want to ruin anything, but I thought, “Why would I watch a black-and-white documentary about therapy,” and then I couldn’t turn it off. It’s good from the very beginning, but at about 27 minutes in, it gets REAL.
It’s vulnerable, beautiful, funny, and I actually learned something.
Saturday Night Live Highlights - Steve Martin & Martin Short
”The Holiday Train” — this was dumb, but I loved the White Christmas re-creation!
”A Visit with Santa” — also dumb, but I love it when they can’t stop laughing
The two Weekend Update interviews were great: Ego Nwodim on Holiday Shopping and ”Kurt and Deb from Wyoming Rekindling the Spark.”
“Father of the Bride #8” was not well executed, but Kieran Culkin showed up.
Brandi Carlile!!! Always!!! And on her second one, she brought out LUCIUS!!!
Hey I just stopped in to see what you had to say about Harry & Megan. First, the "H" and the "M" -- so weird, I'm glad you brought it up; I'd forgotten how it irked me! It reminds me of that horrible bride Mr Elton brought home in the Gwynneth Paltrow Emma movie, remember how that bride kept calling him "Mr E"?
I've only seen the first installment, but I thought it was super sweet. I hadn't realized it was going to be "our story." I didn't know what to expect, hadn't seen any trailers, thank goodness. And I didn't know the story so it was all fresh, how they kept their secret for months, how they spent that time in Botswana so all-alone, and how almost immediately, upon its becoming public, the vitriole began. We saw how hopeless Harry was to ever find anyone because the media would ruin their lives. I'm so happy for those first sweet months, so happy H found M, so hoping they can find some peace.
Okay all of this is great (event he stuff I know nothing about, including The White Lotus), but Rolling Stone's lists! They can be frustrating as hell! But this one is...kinda alright and generally correct, at least in the themes it includes. I wrote two "Unskippable Intros" pieces for Tor and many are featured here, so I'll take it.
Back to White Lotus, the only thing I know about it is Mike White...because he was on Survivor and I love that for him.