Humdrum Places - BlogFlock

📺 The Media Guide S5E17 - foofaraw

2025-04-29T05:06:13.000Z

Allergies have been on a whole different level for me today... so I'm going to keep this preamble even shorter than usual today.

But I'd be remiss not to mention all the amazing folks who came through and picked up ad spots, especially Adam, from our first week's sponsor omg.lol. Adam was the first person I floated the idea to and was immediately willing to help support this silly little publication. We have a bunch of other awesome apps and services we will be sharing in this spot in the coming weeks and months, each of whom I'm incredibly grateful to.

If you're interested in being awesome like Adam and buying an ad slot, you can find more info here.

Please consider giving our sponsors a look—the more people check them out, the more sponsors we might be able to bring on board in the future and ensure we can continue to publish original fiction every week. Or you can support us directly with a paid subscription and get an ad-free experience—along with the various other benefits that already exist.

A fun place for people who love the web.

Learn more

what's new on tv this week

📺 New Shows

🏨 The Four Seasons (Netflix) — 1 May

Our first show this week is from Tina Fey and 30 Rock and Mindy Project writing room alums, Tracy Wigfield and Lang Fisher. The cast is stacked too. Fey stars alongside Steve Carell, Colman Domingo, and Will Forte. It'll be funny to see Domingo opposite the slapstick comedians.

🚀 Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld (Disney) — 4 May

And then we have the third animated Tales of anthology from Star Wars and Disney+. I've yet to go back and watch the others, but I've heard nothing but positive things and animation from the likes of Dave Filoni seems to be a plae Star Wars actually excels while their movie and live action TV divisions (with the exception of Andor) flounders.

📝 What Else?

The Walking Dead: Dead City S2 (AMC) — 4 May
Adventuring Academy (Dropout) — 29 Apr

days based on streaming availability for the majority of people

Tuesday

The Studio (Apple) 1:7
Government Cheese (Apple) 1:6
Andor (Disney) 2:4-6

Thursday

Your Friends & Neighbors (Apple) 1:5
Hacks (HBO) 4:5
The Four Seasons (Netflix) S1

Sunday

Last Week Tonight (HBO) 12:10
Righteous Gemstones (HBO) 4:9
MobLand (Paramount) 1:6
Lazarus (Adult Swim) 1:5
The Last of Us (HBO) 2:4
Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld (Disney) S1

last friday's best new albums

💽 Release of this Week

👯‍♂️ viagr boy by Viagra Boys

What a whacky and wild punk record. I've heard the Viagra Boys before, but never really paid much attention. This album starts with a bang and continues the thrills throughout the entire album.

Current Favorite Track: Man Made of Meat

🏃 Runner-ups

👁️ Tunnel Vision by Beach Bunny

This is what I originally expected to be pick for the week before the Viagra Boys blew my mind. Beach Bunny's previous album, Emotional Creature, made my top ten in 2022. They always have a couple super memorable tracks, but as a whole they can fall short a bit, and that's the case here. Still a ton of fun to listen to.

CFT: Tunnel Vision

🐝 BUZZKILL by Lyn Lapid

And then one for the pop-heads. Had never heard of Lyn Lapid before, but it fits in that perfect indie/alt-pop sweet spot. Stays mellow, while bringing out some catchy melodies throughout the record.

CFT: coraline

📝 What Else?

Um Comma Jennifer Question Mark by Um Jennifer?
- If I came across this one sooner and had more time to digest, I'd have featured it as a runner-up as well...
Noble and Godlike in Ruin by Deerhoof
Horror Spectrum by Bunnies
Bloodless by Samia

by this weeks best comic releases

🦸 No. 1's

🪨 Lost Fantasy (Image)

Lost Fantasy is a new book from Curt Pires (Indigo Children) and Luca Casalanguida (The Displaced) and also one of our most anticipated new books of 2025. Even without knowing what's it's about, Pires history with Indigo Children, bringing an inventiveness to a story that's been done a bunch, along with the stellar cover art should be enough to get most people in the door. But if you need more convincing, it's set in a fantasy world 100 years after first making contact with the magic and monsters that live beneath the surface of the world.

🏎️ Giant-Size Wacky Races (Dynamite)

Then there's this Wacky Races one-shot. I was obsessed with watching reruns of the Wacky Races cartoon as a kid. Honestly, I could've watched the same episode over and over and probably wouldn't have cared or even noticed. This is nostalgia for me on another level.

📝 What Else?

We're Taking Everyone Down with Us #2 (Image)
You'll Do Bad Things #2 (Image)
The Seasons #4 (Image)
The Good: Them That Don't Stay Dead # 4 (Dark Horse)
Copra #49 (Image)
Death of Copra #4 (Image)
Robot Tod #2 (Floating World)
Grim #22 (Boom)
Ultimate Spider-Man #16 (Marvel)
Nights #15 (Image)

movies hitting the big screen this week

🎥 New Movies

⚡ Thunderbolts*

I've been out on Marvel movies since Endgame. I think the only ones I've seen since then are Guardians 3 and Wakanda Forever. They started advertising it like an A24 movie because of the talent, including the creators of the fantastic Beef. Someone on social media questioned who that was for and I can't help but raise my hand. As someone who likes indie movies and comics, I've been looking for a reason to get back into Marvel movies and this appears like it could be the one. I'm really hoping it's decent.

🎸 Pavements (Limited)

This documentary looks wild—which feels par for the course for Pavement. It's part doc / part biopic and I just think you should watch the trailer to get a vibe for what they are doing—including the solid (and musical) talent in Joe Keery and Nat Wolff.

🏄 The Surfer

New Nic Cage about a surfer returning to his childhood beach. Some trouble ensues and it turns into a thriller. Directed by Lorcan Finnegan who hasn't done much and written by Thomas Martin, who also hasn't done much. Cage is hit or miss in these wild films, but also puts on a performance.

📝 What Else?

Rust (Limited)
Rosario (Limited)

🛍️ To Rent/Buy

Being Maria
Death of a Unicorn
Drop
The Friend
Sacramento
Another Simple Favor (Amazon)

🎉 Weekend Edition Vol.057 - foofaraw

2025-04-26T16:00:59.000Z

Ads are coming to Foofaraw... I've thought long and hard about whether it's a road I wanted to go down, but here we are. I'm only dipping my toes in the water for now and am working directly with cool, indie projects I personally use to ensure the experience here stays high quality. Plus you can always upgrade to get an ad-free experience.

If you might be interested in sponsoring a week, you can find more details on our Sponsorship page—the next few months are filled, but feel free to fill out the contact form if you have something you want to spread the word about.

Oh! And we launched a new middle tier for paid subscribers if you want to get some frivolous things in the mail every month.

Anyways, here's a quick example of what ads might look like moving forward.

Want to stay in the know while looking at a gorgeously minimal, yet quirky, little place on the interwebs? Then look no further and take a gander. Come for the links stay for the unhinged banter. And yes, we believe in the oxford comma.

Check it out!

First up this week we have a brand new webcomic from Matt Akos about a couple pooches and puns—absolutely delightful. Can't wait to see what Matt comes up with moving forward.

🐶 Barking Up the Wrong Tree

a moment of realization

foofarawfoofaraw

This weeks short story is about a severed clown head, but fear not, there's no horror here. It's a strange meditation on inherited trauma and is quite the intriguing story.

🤡 Greebee by Sean MacKendrick

a family companion looms

foofarawfoofaraw

And lastly, a new op-ed from L.N. Hunter. We published his short story, I was there when the singularity happened, back in February. This one's a satirical editorial about wealth distribution, billionaires, and how to handle their assets.

📝 A Modest Proposal for the Fair and Equitable Distribution of Assets by L.N. Hunter

a satire editorial about managing wealth and assets of the uber-wealthy

foofarawfoofaraw

Then there's The Media Guide where we covered Andor, Aussies, the Arcana, and so much more.

📺 The Media Guide S5E16

hang loose

foofarawfoofaraw

I've been slacking for the [+] subscribers this week, but for good reason—some exciting new things are imminent!

➡️

Next Week:
Time travel, video games, and Cavendish!

📝 A Modest Proposal for the Fair and Equitable Distribution of Assets by L.N. Hunter - foofaraw

2025-04-25T17:28:07.000Z

In principle, there is nothing wrong with being wealthy. The world needs the super-rich, as they’re the only ones who can afford hugely expensive, world-changing projects. Such projects used to be something governments undertook, but what are governments these days but a bunch of rich people striving to fill their friends’ pockets?

However, we seem to be struggling with the meaning of ‘world-changing,’ as it seems the excesses of the rich are aimed towards stroking their egos rather than benefitting the other 99.9% of the world. Where are the projects like solving world hunger, taming the climate, achieving world peace, or preserving nature? Instead, the wealthy build ever larger yachts and embark on missions to Mars and the Asteroid Belt—while space missions could help humanity in the long run, the priorities seem wrong. When the super-rich donate to charities, it’s more often than not a minuscule fraction of their wealth designed to optimise their tax commitments.

If only we could rely on the super-rich to do the ‘right thing,’ but evidence suggests the people who fall into that category are, with few exceptions, deplorable, attention-seeking individuals. Their purpose in life seems to be at odds with making the world a better place—instead, they seem to want to score as highly as possible on some ‘who’s got the biggest dick’ scale.

Titans of industry want to possess the shiniest, most expensive yacht, car, space rocket, or other penis extension; leaders of various countries divert money which should serve their citizens into production of ever more macho weaponry; royalty and religious leaders need the largest, over-staffed palaces to show off their exquisite glistening royal jewels. Dick waving on the grandest scale.

The rich are deaf to the needs of others, perhaps because they can’t hear anything over the clanging of their massive gonads. A simple snip could be the very thing to get their attention.

Without further ado, my modest proposal is that becoming a billionaire should require castration.

If a member of the ultra-rich wants to hang on to his assets, all he has to do is give everything above that first billion to the world, which would surely help a lot of people. The question of where the money goes needs to be addressed: a central charity or bank is not a viable solution, as that simply moves the money from one hoarder to another. Instead, thousands of smaller charitable organisations will come to the fore, built around specific projects and held accountable to the world.

Now, if money is worth more than testicles, maybe the testosterone reduction will make the uber-rich less repulsive people. And the rest of us can take some pleasure from the fact we (well, the male half of us anyway) have something they don’t.

Wealth inequality is inevitable, but this proposal seeks to address it in two ways: someone at the upper end of the money scale will either give his money away, or he will be subjected to a procedure which is known to make the male of the species less aggressive and more considerate of others.

It should also be noted that the offspring of the super-rich are often obnoxious people—though it’s not clear if that’s hereditary or a social construction. Either way, losing his knackers means Daddy can’t spawn as many children in the first place. (Preserving sperm before the snip occurs is not permitted nor preserving the testes for future use.)

Of course, this process is not without its problems. For a start, it’s not going to be simple to police. The super-rich haven’t achieved that status without some level of sneaky cleverness (at the very least by their accountants), but widening the scope of the snip to all those involved in managing vast wealth should help ensure compliance.

Now, it’s true that some of the world’s richest are perfectly nice people, and some are women (is there a causal link between niceness and gender?), but one has to start somewhere.

What about those ‘unfortunate’ enough to be caught out by sudden wealth? The stock market’s caprice might cause some nine-hundred-millionaire to accidentally become a billionaire overnight—but overnight success takes years to achieve, and that person will surely have had plenty of advance notice. Likewise, the poor grieving person bequeathed an excess by a recently deceased relative—such changes in fortunes are easy to avoid, and I maintain there is no excuse for poor financial planning by the super-rich. You might protest that the lottery winner merely seeking to better himself surely shouldn’t suffer emasculation, but the obvious way to avoid that is to limit prizes to well below a billion.

One objection is that this unfairly attacks the rich—there are other less financially well-off people unfairly oppressing others in the pursuit of their own needs. Yes, this is true, so I would extend this proposal to include all world, religious and corporate leaders: any role where a person is responsible for the wellbeing of millions of people, to help them prioritise the good of the many rather than, say, nation state nuclear capabilities or magnificent, treasure-filled buildings.

And that is my modest proposal.

Give your support to Bollocks for Billions right away.

L.N. Hunter’s comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside works in anthologies such as Best of British Science Fiction 2022 and Ghostly, as well as several issues of Short Édition’s Short Circuit and the Horrifying Tales of Wonder podcast. There have also been papers in the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, which are probably somewhat less relevant and definitely less entertaining. When not writing, L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.

Find additional links here.

We are open for op-ed submissions. If there is a topic you'd like to write about, you can submit here.

🤡 Greebee by Sean MacKendrick - foofaraw

2025-04-24T16:00:05.000Z

🤡 Greebee

by Sean MacKendrick

After her graduation party, when the house was empty again, Mika’s parents gave her a severed clown head. Mr. Kovacs said, “His name is Greebee.”

Mika sat on the couch, surrounded by the remnants of the party with this strange clown head in her lap. It twisted in her grip, moaning. White grease paint from his face smudged her pants. “Thank you,” she said. “What do I do with it?”

“You don’t do anything,” Mrs. Kovacs said. “He’s not a toy, he’s a companion. He’s part of the family. Has been for a while.”

Greebee was old, not quite mummified, but dry and stiff and bony. The red around his mouth flaked into her lap as his mouth opened and closed, opened and closed.

“Thank you,” Mika said again, unsure what else to say.

Greebee sat on a shelf, watching Mika sort her clothes while emitting small sounds somewhere between laughs and coughs. His eyes bulged comically.

“I don’t know where I’m going to put you.” Mika laid her favorite shirt on top of the take pile. “The dorm rooms aren’t very big. I won’t have much space.” She considered an old sweatshirt before adding it to the larger leave pile.

“I’m not sure why my family has you, to be honest.” The sounds from Greebee grew higher in pitch and volume. “Maybe you could stay out of sight?”

Mika picked up an old jacket and draped it over the severed head. The clown head let out a shriek that pierced Mika’s own skull. She pulled the jacket away. “OK, forget it. Just stop, already. You’re free, see?”

Greebee’s scream continued, unabated.

Jackson’s wide beaming face startled Mika as she hurried from her room pulling at the tangles in her hair. “Hey there, Mika, how’s it going?”

“Hi, Jack. Just running late for class, as usual.” Jackson either missed or ignored the hint slowly nodding as he leaned against the wall.

“Yeah, I hear ya. Looking pretty tired there,” he said as Mika stifled a yawn. “Not sleeping great? Your mime head keeping you up?”

“He’s not a mime, he’s a classic whiteface clown. Like Ronald McDonald.” Mika checked the time on her phone in as obvious a fashion as she could manage.

Jackson nodded. “Well, sure, I guess he wouldn’t be a mime. Mimes are silent, aren’t they? Your guy is anything but. I hear your roommate requested a transfer.”

Mika had nothing to say.

“Yeah,” Jackson sighed. “I guess the screaming keeps her up at night. Keeps a few people up on this floor. With these walls you can hear just about everything happening around here.”

Mika squeezed past Jackson’s bulk and jogged towards the stairs. “I’ll get him under control,” she said over her shoulder. “Promise.”

Mika placed a heavy ceramic bowl on the table in front of her grandmother. “Would you like some cucumber salad, Nagyi?”

Decades of practice had honed Grandma Kovacs’ ability to convey judgment with ruthless efficiency. She could disapprove with a sharp blink or by exhaling through her nose in a certain way. She peered into the salad bowl and said nothing, but the tilt of her head spoke loud enough.

Mrs. Kovacs set a platter of stuffed cabbage rolls next to the salad. To Mika she said, “I’ve got the other dishes handled. Why don’t you go study until lunch is ready?”

“It’s Thanksgiving, I’m not going to study on Thanksgiving.” Mika regretted mentioning her academic struggles. She assumed everyone complained about the difficulty of university life when they went home, and that everyone’s parents took it in stride without trying to fix it.

“I always studied on break,” Mr. Kovacs said as he passed through the dining room to grab an olive. “I studied whenever I could.”

Mika straightened the chairs, just for something to do. “I’ll study after we eat. I promise.”

“You’ll nap after we eat,” Mrs. Kovacs said. “You and your father always fall asleep after.”

Mika said, “I wish. I’d love to sleep. Greebee won’t let me. He keeps me up every night. Can I leave him here, just until I finish the semester?”

“No,” Mrs. Kovacs said. “He’s yours to take care of. We took care of him for long enough.”

“I really don’t remember him being around when I was younger.”

“He was.” Mr. Kovacs spat an olive pit into his palm. “Greebee has been in the family for generations. You were too busy playing to notice, is all.”

“But where did he even come from? Why do we have him in the first place?”

Grandma Kovacs turned to face Mika. “In my time, we did not talk about such things,” she rasped. “And children did not ask so many questions.”

“I’m not a child,” Mika muttered. Grandma Kovacs exhaled through her nose.

A crunch woke Mika in the middle of the night. She listened for a moment but couldn’t hear anything or quite remember what the sound had been, so she closed her eyes again.

Soon something tugged on her blanket and pulled Mika out of her half-asleep state. She turned her side lamp on just in time to watch Greebee scream into her face.

Teeth marks gouged the floor between the bed and the closet where Mika tried to muffle the head under multiple blankets. A large hole had been chewed through the bottom of the closet door. White and red grease paint smeared the floor, the nightstand, and Mika’s pillows.

“You still have that thing?” Eric nodded to Greebee, who sat in the corner watching the old friends reconnect.

Mika yawned hard enough to make her eyes water. “What do you mean, still? My parents just gave him to me at graduation.”

“Yeah, but it was always there. Around. It used to scare me as a kid whenever I came over.”

“He was?” Greebee rocked back and forth, smiling. He hummed a tuneless song. “I don’t remember that. You didn’t say anything when we were kids.”

“I don’t know…” Eric said, “I guess I didn’t want to be rude.”

Boxes stacked high on Mika’s childhood bed. “You can move those,” Mr. Kovacs said. He didn’t look at her as she lugged in her boxes. “If you want help tomorrow, we can look for jobs together.”

Mika wiped the dust from her eyes. “Just part time. I’m going to study hard and get new scholarships so I can get back in. Or I’ll apply to other schools this summer.”

Mr. Kovacs nodded. “OK. Part time.”

“Hey, Dad? I’m sorry. I’m going to do better.”

“I know you are.”

“I love you, Dad.”

Mr. Kovacs said, “I love you, too.” He closed the door behind him.

One of the boxes thumped and shivered. Mika pulled out Greebee’s withered face. He opened his mouth and howled. Mika took him in both hands, held him by his greasy curly hair and shook him violently. She screamed back.

Greebee grew still. For the first time in a long while, he watched her in silence, his expression confused and curious. Mika sobbed until she choked, and tried to find the strength to stop crying even though she just wanted to lay down and sleep and not be strong about anything. She and the clown head stared at each other, Greebee not making a sound.

As soon as she caught her breath, though, he started wailing again.

Sean MacKendrick splits his time between Colorado and Texas. When not writing fiction he writes code as a software engineer. You can follow him for updates on Twitter/X (@SeanMacKendrick) or BlueSky (@SeanMacKendrick).

📺 Running Point S1 - A Humdrum Life

2025-04-24T01:55:15.000Z

It’s fine. As someone who just loves basketball, it’s hard to hate this. But there’s not much there, there. Still, I had enough fun with it to eventually make my way through the whole season and will probably watch season two as well.

🐶 Barking Up the Wrong Tree - foofaraw

2025-04-22T16:00:58.000Z

Matt Akos can be found on Behance and on Instagram @mopeygrail

📺 The Media Guide S5E16 - foofaraw

2025-04-22T02:48:43.000Z

Welcome back to your favorite Monday newsletter that covers tv, music, movies, and comics! If that very specific statement isn't true then we are definitely doing something wrong.

The NBA Playoffs continue as Detroit just upset NY in game two, but that doesn't mean we are going to leave you hanging as there is a bunch of great stuff this week including some killer albums and movies. And Andor is back!

Lastly, we are giving the whole social media thing a go again, so maybe go give us a follow on Instagram if you are so inclined...

what's new on tv this week

📺 New Shows

🚀 Andor S2 (Disney) — 22 Apr

The best show to come out of the Disney+ era has returned for another season—which will also (most likely) be it's last. Season one was admittedly a slow burn at first—I had fallen off after an episode or two before diving back in and devouring it—and I hope for much the same with this season.

🔪 You S5 (Netflix) — 24 Apr

I don't watch You, but my wife does and loves Penn Badgley—apparently. I believe this is also the final season so we can all finally say goodbye to this one for good as the whole season drops on Thursday.

📝 What Else?

WondLa S2 (Apple) — 24 Apr

days based on streaming availability for the majority of people

Tuesday

The Studio (Apple) 1:6
Government Cheese (Apple) 1:5
Andor (Disney) 2:1-3

Wednesday

Dope Thief (Apple) 1:8

Thursday

Your Friends & Neighbors (Apple) 1:4
Hacks (HBO) 4:4

Sunday

Last Week Tonight (HBO) 12:9
Righteous Gemstones (HBO) 4:8
MobLand (Paramount) 1:5
Lazarus (Adult Swim) 1:4
The Last of Us (HBO) 2:3

last friday's best new albums

💽 Release of this Week

🏄‍♂️ Do What Ya Wanna by Beddy Rays

I'm not sure it's quite as good as their last record as they fell into a common trap for second albums where you over popify a bit. While first full-length had a gritty, grungy feel, here they feel like they are grasping for a catchy hook a bit. Still, it's a fun summer alt-rock album that I wouldn't mind throwing on at anytime.

Current Favorite Track: Red Lights

🏃 Runner-ups

🕳️ The Pit by Arcy Drive

After listening to Louie, I though Arcy Drive was about to deliver exactly what I wanted from Beddy Rays on their follow-up. In the end, while The Pit is a big fun alternative record, it feels like they recorded 12 songs and just decided that was it without workshopping or looking for extra tunes that might work better as a whole together.

CFT: Louie

🔥 You Can't Put out This Fire by The Bennies

What a magnificent piece of punk/ska/party/stoner/alternative. There is just so much energy throughout this album that it's impossible to dislike. And it's far from being a one-note kind of punk ska record as they explore different sounds and forms throughout to make something wholly unique.

CFT: Cocaine

⚡ Thee Black Boltz by Tunde Adebimpe

And I had to mention the first solo album from the TV on the Radio frontman. I'm honestly not sure why this is a solo album and not a band album because it doesn't sound all that different... Still, it's enjoyable with the way rock and electronic come together here.

CFT: Pinstack

📝 What Else?

Like Cartoon Vampires by The Convenience
I Heard That Noise by quickly, quickly
Send a Prayer My Way by Julien Baker and TORRES

by this weeks best comic releases

Really struggling to find noteworthy new comics to talk about again this week... plus there were some delays last week so we've got some repeats in the What Else? section...

🦸 No. 1's

🐐 Arcana Royale (Dark Horse)

New one from Cullen Bunn and AC Zamudio that's billed as a supernatural thriller—The Sandman meets Rounders—which, honestly, is an awesome comp. I've never been a huge Bunn fan, but he's been putting out a ton lately, and when he hits, he really hits and I actually have good feelings about this one.

🛡️ Medieval Spawn (Image)

And then Rory McConville launches the new Spawn book with artist Marco Itri.

📝 What Else?

Minor Arcana #6 (Boom)
Nullhunter #7 (Image)
The Power Fantasy #8 (Image)
Assorted Crisis Events #2 (Image)
Absolute Martian Manhunter #2 (DC)
Epitaphs From the Abyss #10 (Oni)
Black Hammer: Spiral City #5 (Dark Horse)
The Mummy #2 (Image)

movies hitting the big screen this week

🎥 New Movies

🐒 The Legend of Ochi

A24 does The Goonies in this one that looks exactly what that sounds like—and honestly, I'm here for it. It's an adventure movie with a little monkey critter and it has Willem Dafoe! This is the first feature from Isaiah Saxon as writer and director after tackling some music videos and shorts before this. Would be really fun to see if A24 can find some success with this one in a similar manner to Everything Everywhere All At Once.

🔫 Havoc (Netflix)

I feel like I've been talking about Havoc for half a decade at this point. It was on my most anticipated list for 2023. But it's finally here from writer/director/action choreographer of The Raid movies, Gareth Evans. And it stars Tom Hardy, who is having a bit of a moment right now after being stuck as Venom for the last decade (or at least that's how it feels...)

🍄 Cheech and Chong's Last Movie

And I feel like the title for this one is self-explanatory.

📝 What Else?

🛍️ To Rent/Buy

Ash
Freaky Tales

Post on The Independent Variable - The Independent Variable

2025-04-21T22:38:00.000Z

📹 The Hidden Geniuses Behind A$AP Rocky’s Wildest Music Video /// Offline Media

Friend of the Variable and the mastermind behind The Outer comic on foofaraw launched a new video podcast looking at video from a post-production perspective and this episode was superb.

Post on The Independent Variable - The Independent Variable

2025-04-21T19:54:00.000Z

💥 The Movie Mistake Mystery from “Revenge of the Sith” /// FX Rant

Really, really fun look at visual “mistakes” in movies.

Post on The Independent Variable - The Independent Variable

2025-04-21T19:53:00.000Z

🥪 Giving a Small Sandwich Shop a BIG Rebrand…For Free ///SuprOrdinary

Some absolutely stunning filmmaking. Wish there were more short videos of this quality for fictional stories.

Post on The Independent Variable - The Independent Variable

2025-04-21T19:51:00.000Z

🧑‍🏫 How I, a non-developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me, a beginner /// annie’s blog

I almost gave up but then I realized: If I connect the backside Snarfus stagnator to the backside shamrock Klingon troglodyte emulater, it’s good! Everything beep-boops and ding-dongs and I get the Actual Topic of the Tutorial, which lets me do the Very Simple Thing the way I want after all! Pretty cool.

Couldn’t capture my feelings better about some of this stuff if I tried.

Post on The Independent Variable - The Independent Variable

2025-04-21T19:23:00.000Z

🍷 The Pour-igin of Species /// Pudding

Since my wife works on wine, I had to mention this. I don’t think you should ever pick a wine based on the animal, but if you do, I guess you can follow this. Still an awesome visual site as always from these folks.

Post on The Independent Variable - The Independent Variable

2025-04-21T19:23:00.000Z

🗞️ Business Insider Founder Henry Blodget Launches Regenerator /// Ad Week

With Regenerator, Blodget aims to provide a “rolling analysis” of broad, timely subjects, such as the trade war, stock market fluctuation, future of Google, and durability of the artificial intelligence hype cycle.

I’m not subscribing quite yet, but I’m keeping my eyes to see if this becomes something interesting to check out.

Post on The Independent Variable - The Independent Variable

2025-04-21T19:21:00.000Z

🎧 Crucial Tracks the app, the intro post /// End on End

So that got me thinking — what if I combined these ideas with my love of blogging and created an app where anyone can share their Crucial Tracks with the world? And the Crucial Tracks app was born.

I already mentioned this once, but I’ve been really digging Crucial Tracks already and love the idea of these niche communities.

Post on The Independent Variable - The Independent Variable

2025-04-21T19:20:00.000Z

🤖 Company apologizes after AI support agent invents policy that causes user uproar /// Ars Technica

Switching between machines instantly logged them out, breaking a common workflow for programmers who use multiple devices. When the user contacted Cursor support, an agent named “Sam” told them it was expected behavior under a new policy. But no such policy existed, and Sam was a bot. The AI model made the policy up, sparking a wave of complaints and cancellation threats.

I’m probably beating a dead horse at this point, but things like this are the reason jobs can’t be passed to AI. In the end, these kinds of mistakes, some of which the company will never even know about, end up damaging and costing more then they save.

🎥 Sinners - A Humdrum Life

2025-04-21T15:45:51.000Z

Sinners had a lot going against it for me and my personal tastes. First, I’ve never been a huge fan of vampires for some reason—they’ve just never clicked with me. Second, I hate when actors play multiple characters. With Sinners, Michael B. Jordan is at least playing twins so it makes sense here.

All that to say, I thought Sinners was really great despite those pet peeves at play. They spent a lot of time introducing the characters in the first hour, but ultimately, I still didn’t feel that invested in them. Still, the musicality, the action, and the last 20 minutes—including the credit scene—all were exceptional and made up for some of that stilted character building.

📺 Entourage - A Humdrum Life

2025-04-21T04:58:35.000Z

Just finished a complete rewatch of Entourage and the movie. It was a classic for me as I watched it growing up through high school and college. It has a lot of faults, but it’s the kind of hang out show where you just want to see what the guys are up to. Plus, my cousin dropped out of college to work on the last couple of seasons, which was pretty cool.

📺 Daredevil: Born Again S1 - A Humdrum Life

2025-04-21T04:55:09.000Z

It was fine. A bit overly self-serious and going in I thought we were getting an 18 episode season, so it felt a bit incomplete. But also, they stretched what felt like four episodes of story into nine, which made it drag a bit.

🎉 Weekend Edition Vol.056 - foofaraw

2025-04-19T16:06:15.000Z

Good morning! I typically try to get these prepped the day before, but here I am on this tepid Saturday morning in Napa with a double shot of espresso while I'm slowly waking and my puppy has all the energy in the world.

We are just an hour away from the NBA playoffs officially starting! I'm still considering writing up something about the playoffs, but we will see. Either way the Clippers/Nuggets game at 12:30 PT should be quite the match-up.

First up this week we had the latest installment in The Oral History of the Cavendish Mining Company from Joel Glover.

⚒️ The Price of Being a Woman

trying to leave the past behind

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This weeks short story was another fun one about deeply personal horoscopes and what happens when you ignore them.

♈ Your Horoscope for the Week by Mar Vincent

when the horoscope gets eerily personal

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And lastly, the Hiro Lab returned to look at eufy security cameras and how they handled their encryption kerfuffle.

🔬 eufy Security Cameras

Welcome to the latest Hiro Lab—a dark corner of the Hiro Report’s subterranean HQ, where I test exotic technologies that may or may not be appropriate for sharing with the broader public. These could be technologies that are dangerous, have security or privacy issues, or are of dubious value.

foofarawfoofaraw

Of course, The Media Guide came out Monday where music and movies really carried the show with Bon Iver, Valerie June, and Ryan Coogler's Sinners, which I saw last night.

📺 The Media Guide S5E15

greedy bloodsuckers

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And for [+] subscribers, the newest dumb comic, Grub in a World of Nonsense, about all the joy from adopting puppies.

🐛 Grub in a World of Nonsense #3

puppies!

foofarawfoofaraw

➡️

Next Week:
Comics and clowns!

🔬 eufy Security Cameras - foofaraw

2025-04-18T15:41:02.000Z

Welcome to the latest Hiro Lab—a dark corner of the Hiro Report's subterranean HQ, where I test exotic technologies that may or may not be appropriate for sharing with the broader public. These could be technologies that are dangerous, have security or privacy issues, or are of dubious value. Please remember these are not formal reviews, but rather first impressions. The goal is to determine whether or not these items are safe to leave the Lab.

The wildly successful Chinese electronics manufacturer, Anker, has a subsidiary named eufy that makes everything from autonomous robotic vacuums to home security cameras. In 2022, they were caught in a lie after claiming their home security camera feeds were end-to-end encrypted when in fact they were streaming unencrypted and openly available for anyone who knew the right place to look. Since then, they have undergone a major PR campaign and overhauled both their security and privacy setups. Now their home security cameras are local-first in order to avoid sending anything to their servers unless you explicitly choose to do so.

When my smart home video camera system failed recently, I went back to the market to find something with both high quality and a strong emphasis on privacy. I was surprised to see eufy was one of the only contenders that checked all of my boxes. So I dipped my toe in and bought their video doorbell. I was so pleased with the experience, I wound up buying several more cameras for my property. Having had them in place for a while now, I'm ready to share my thoughts. Have they made amends properly? Is the quality of the product worth the risk? Should it be let out of the Lab? Read on to find out.

Performance

Let me start by laying out the system that I set up— I started with the eufy Video Doorbell S330, then added a few eufy SoloCam S340's, and an eufy Floodlight Camera E340. The two standout features all three of these models have in common is they each feature two built-in cameras, and offer local storage and AI processing solutions.

Let's talk cameras first. For the video doorbell, there is one wide angle camera pointing up at anyone approaching, with another camera pointed down to monitor any packages left at your door or pets that may be pawing their way in. Meanwhile, both the SoloCam and Floodlight Camera feature a wide camera and a 3x optical zoom camera mounted on a rotating hub. This allows you to observe and track people and animals on your property in 2k with high detail optical zoom. I have found the video quality to be excellent in both day and night time recordings. The cameras are prone to less flaring and more aptly handle dynamic exposure better than previous security camera systems I've had. I particularly like having simultaneous wide angle and zoomed in video of subjects available.

As for local storage and AI processing, the application is fairly straightforward and does an excellent job of explicitly pointing out what features are available for Local Storage vs which ones would require you to send data to the cloud / eufy's servers. I do not recall a single instance of the app defaulting to cloud solutions, it was always opt-in. While the SoloCam's do feature a small amount of local onboard memory storage, and the Floodlight Cam will allow you to install a memory card to store recordings on device, real long term storage is made possible via the eufy HomeBase S380. The device offers 16GB of built-in storage, but is expandable to up to 16TB. This not only gives you added privacy by owning your own recordings, but also saves on the recurring monthly fees many camera manufacturers charge for streaming and storage.

I've found the caching, retrieval, and AI analysis of recordings to be excellent. The S380 even lets you even do locally-managed biometric analysis—you provide a photo of a person and their name, then the eufy app will notify you by name when that person is spotted on one of your cameras. The app also recognizes when packages or pets are spotted on camera and will notify you appropriately. Of note, notifications are opt-in, as they do require sending data to eufy's servers. However, not only can you choose whether to leverage notifications at all, but also how much data to send to eufy—so you can have your system just send a notification that a person was spotted, and your phone will get a push notification with a text alert, or you can choose to include a snapshot of the footage, in which case you will get a push notification with the alert and a photo of who/what was seen. This has all worked smoothly in my testing.

The last compelling feature for me for some of eufy’s devices is off-grid back-up. The video doorbell and the SoloCam both feature built-in batteries so they can continue to function even in a power outage, and the SoloCam features a solar panel that will constantly recharge its batteries, allowing it to be a completely wireless install. Given the flakiness of the Texas power grid, I particularly appreciate knowing my system will still run even when the lights go out.

In terms of complaints, my biggest gripe is that I wish the cameras integrated with Apple HomeKit—eufy does offer HomeKit Secure Video Kit integration on some of their cameras, but not these. It's my understanding that’s due to the high resolution streaming of these cameras—HSVK disappointingly does not support cameras that record/stream at anything over 1080p.

The Catch

So, let's talk about the catch. As alluded to in the preamble, in 2022 a security researcher discovered eufy was not encrypting its web streaming video feeds (while claiming they were), leading to a major showdown with The Verge in which they initially refused to acknowledge the issue, then removed some of their privacy claims from their privacy policy, before coming full circle and apologizing, fixing the issue, and promising to bring in 3rd party security auditors moving forward.

Frankly, this is a terrible look for a security company. Not only did they have a glaring security hole, but they actively tried to deny it, and refused to answer questions from reporters about it. Anyone would be completely justified in having their trust in the company completely eroded.

To eufy's credit, beyond acknowledging and fixing the issue, they have since started a bug bounty program and doubled down on making everything local by default. I was impressed by the very clear and transparent explanations they give throughout the product setup where the app makes it clear what options might require sending data to them versus keeping it local.

Like many of these things, whether or not that's good enough will ultimately depend on your threat model. For my own humble purposes, I'm satisfied that this is good enough—and in my own twisted justification, I'm more comfortable with the remote possibility that eufy is secretly grabbing video from my outdoor cameras than the absolute certainty that Google is with their competing offering. While Google claims they are no longer giving carte blanche, unwarranted access to their Ring customer's footage to the Police, they will still turn over your footage in response to a warrant or an ambiguously defined "life threatening emergency."

So, is this safe to take out of the lab? For a lot of us, I'd say yes—but go in with eyes wide open, and be prepared to pivot should there be new revelations.

—Hiro