💀Weird Youtube,AI Horror Newsletter, and The Portable Desktop

Weird Youtube is fun

Dec 04, 2023

Hey friends!

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Land of Random.

The Christmas season is here . . . we haven’t gotten our tree yet, but will soon hopefully.

Have you gotten your tree yet?

We usually buy a new ornament or two each year to go on the tree . . . This year marks the first year of “craft” ornaments.

We already have two that the children have made - and likely more to come soon!

Did you see that the Twitter personality Beff Jezos got doxed by Forbes?

Wild stuff - I imagine all the other “anon” personalities will try and tighten up every little detail they share.

I thought about making “The Land of Random” an anonymous thing years ago, but when I ran OSINT on myself, there were too many holes. lol.

If you run - or ever think about running an anon account - read about ole Dread Pirate Roberts.

RIP to the Popular Science magazine - first I heard National Geographic is giving up on print next year, and now Popular Science is completely done with print.

When do you think magazines will make a comeback a la vinyl? (Yes i know about zines)

My Spotify Wrapped this year had an inordinate amount of Phonk, but ended up being a pretty good mix of genres if I do say so myself.

2023 is my last year in the phonk genre - I’m moving over to more Synthwave vibes next year (or perhaps a new undiscovered genre).

Let’s hop in shall we?

Own your very own second at 24 Hour Homepage! This delightful website features a different link/image every second - with MANY links to explore. Own a second, and share a link/pic with the world. (Sponsored Ad)

💀Weird Youtube

I found a really bizzaro youtube video the other day.

Think Monsters Inc, but in the multiverse.

It’s a fun clip - the second is arguably even better. (Let’s hope Doom Guy never makes it to Monsters Inc).

There’s something so delightful about finding unhinged videos on Youtube.

I recently read an article in “The Conversation” about the effect of “Salad Fingers” on weird youtube.

Ahhhhh. that’s a throwback.

Have you ever seen Salad Fingers? It’s one of the granddaddies of weird Youtube. Slightly disturbing with language possibly not suitable for children.

Here’s a quick quote from the article.

Salad Fingers . . .highlights how this weird YouTube mode continues avant-garde and surrealist art, film and television traditions.
The barren landscapes in which the character exists have links to the dark portraits of painter Francis Bacon, to the filmography of auteur David Lynch, and to the grim animated characters of cult art-rock opera Pink Floyd: The Wall. The show’s apocalyptic ethos was also indicative of post-Y2K pessimism and rebellion against aesthetic, cultural and political norms.
The series aligns such traditions with the gleefully disruptive generic ambiguity of early 2000s online video sharing cultures - an ambiguity made possible by the web’s freedom from the constraints of the formal production and distribution structures of film and television.
The series would go on to influence a vibrant and globally beloved genre of “weird” YouTube content committed to derailing cultural expectations about the distinctions between children’s and adult content. (source)

Ah yes - the uncomfortable bridge between childrens and adult content.

As a young person, Salad Fingers was just a weird video - now when I’m older, I try to decode all the weird symbolism.

Back in the day - Charlie the unicorn and CARLLLLL the llama were hilarious.

They still hold up in my opinion.

(CARLLLLLLL that kills people)

Looking back - dang those were dark and morbid for how young I was.

To this day - weird youtube continues to astound at even more unhinged levels.

Here’s some examples to wander through if you’re curious.

I’m sorry John content - Gorefield is fun.
Ethereal Snake - Mickey + Goofy in Vietnam
The entire Llamas with Hats series
Any of these absurd cat cartoons

Go read more about Salad Fingers at the link!

Salad Fingers

✉AI Horror Newsletter

Have you ever gotten the feeling you might be reading an AI-generated article?

I definitely get the vibe sometimes - especially when I hit the “weird clickbait SEO websites” at the bottom of every internet research bin.

There are likely some newsletter writers out there using AI to write and send their emails.

I discovered a service called NoozCraft that allows you to use AI to summarize links.

Personally, I would never use such a tool - but as a newsletter writer - I find great interest in seeing what sort of tools other newsletter writers might use.

And - I think it’s important to give others a peek behind the curtain, so to speak.

These are the kinds of tools being used to make the live internet a cold dead place full of lifeless robotic drivel.

It’s quite a basic tool - all you have to do is enter a link, choose the subject matter and writing style, and give it a writing sample.

Hmmmm. Let’s try a link to this article - “VOICE-OVER-LTE: THE REASON WHY YOUR PHONE MAY SOON STOP WORKING“ on Hackaday.

This is the interesting sort of link I’d typically put in “The Land of Random” section.

I chose Subject Matter “tech”, Writing Style “casual” and fed it my Dark Patterns article from last week as a writing sample.

Here’s what it spit out.

“Hey, tech fam! You know how 3G, 4G, and 5G aren't just about internet, right? They've got a voice component too. Up until 4G, we used traditional circuit-switched telephony service, but 4G brought us VoLTE (voice-over-LTE), a packet-switched version like Voice-over-IP. But here's the kicker: not all phones support it, even some newer ones like Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016). And as 3G networks get shut down, we're gonna see chaos. Especially in places where people keep their phones for more than a few years. So, keep an eye out, folks. This could get messy.”

…….. It’s not horrible. The first and last two sentences are rather cliche, but the “meat” of the summary could work.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we started seeing a decent percentage of newsletters start using stuff like this.

(Probably more automated - with prompts to correct + humanize particular sentences).

My optimistic self hopes it might be used sparingly for headline summaries that don’t need much “human feeling” but - I fear those will be far and few between.

Example - UNLOCK MY METHOD TO MAKE 10K A MONTH WITH AUTOMATED NEWSLETTERS.

Oy Vey.

The Dead Internet Theory marches on towards cold hard truth!

Check out the tool at the link!

NoozCraft

💻The Portable Desktop

Back in 2021 Lenovo released a desktop all-in-one that had a rotating screen.

Huh. That’s cool I thought.

Now HP Envy has a portable desktop.

Portable Desktop - what?

The HP Envy Move is designed to . . . move (lol).

After absorbing all the product details, I think I’d define this as the evolution of the family computer. It needs to be more than just a stationary computing device for email browsing or the occasional YouTube video.

It needs to have the flexibility of a tablet!

So - it has a