(1) PARDON MY WTF. “Apple Apologizes for iPad Pro Ad After Criticism” – The Hollywood Reporter explains why they need to. (Though they can’t be too sorry because the kerfuffle has helped the ad draw 53 million views.)
Apple is apologizing for an iPad Pro ad that was widely criticized when it debuted earlier this week.
The dystopian spot, titled “Crush,” shows several instruments, including a guitar and piano, being crushed by a hydraulic press. Also among the items being smashed flat are balls that look like emojis and an Angry Birds statue….
Apple CEO Tim Cook posted the spot on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday (it also was posted on YouTube). His post and the YouTube video are still up, but the spot won’t run on TV, according to Ad Age.
“Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create,” Cook wrote….
[One of the many negative comments was,] “Crushing symbols of human creativity and cultural achievements to appeal to pro creators, nice. Maybe for the next Apple Watch Pro you should crush sports equipment, show a robot running faster than a man, then turn to the camera and say, ‘God is dead and we have killed him.’”
(2) KGB. Ellen Datlow has posted photos from Wednesday night’s Fantastic Fiction at KGB session where John Wiswell and Anya Johanna DeNiro read from their recent novels.
(3) CHOOSING CONVENTIONS. The new episode of Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing podcast is “Conquering Conventions; Crafting Confidence”. (There’s also an excellent transcript available – yay!)
In this episode, she shares her experiences and insights on convention attendance, from choosing the right ones to the art of mingling without the cringe. Plus, she tackles the ever-present concern of COVID safety in crowded spaces.
Whether you’re a cosplayer or a casual attendee, Mur advises on how to present yourself professionally, connect with industry pros, and enjoy the con experience while staying true to your comfort level. And for those not ready to dive back into the physical con scene, she discusses the merits of virtual conventions and how they can be a great alternative.
(4) LEVAR READS RAY. LeVar Burton Reads “The Toynbee Convector” © 1983 by Ray Bradbury in his latest podcast.
The world’s only time traveler finally reveals his secrets.
(5) ‘THE HUNT FOR GOLLUM’. “New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movie Coming in 2026, Andy Serkis Directing” – Variety has the story.
Warner Bros. will release the first of its new batch of live-action “The Lord of the Rings” films in 2026, which will focus on Andy Serkis’ Gollum.
Original “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy filmmaker Peter Jackson and his partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens are producing the movie and “will be involved every step of the way,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said during an earnings call Thursday.
The project is currently in the early stages of script development from writers Walsh and Boyens, along with Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou, and will “explore storylines yet to be told,” Zaslav said.
In a press release from Warner Bros. later Thursday morning, the studio revealed that the working title for the film is “Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,” and it will be directed by and star Serkis in his iconic titular role….
…A separate, animated Middle-earth movie, “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” is due on Dec. 13 via Warner Bros. and director Kenji Kamiyama. That movie is set 200 years before the events of “The Hobbit.”…
(6) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 109 of the Octothorpe podcast, “But Also a Worrying One”, John Coxon is middle, Alison Scott is even sadder, and Liz Batty is sorry.
We have a bumper mailbag in Octothorpe 109, and we continue our discussion about accessibility in Eastercon before segueing into a discussion of money and privilege with respect to conventions. We also mention the latest news out of Chengdu. Massive thanks to Ulrika O’Brien for the gorgeous cover art this week!
(7) SERLING’S TRUNK STORY. “A short story by The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling is published for the first time” reports NPR.
…Not long after he returned from the war in 1946, Serling attended Antioch College on the G.I. bill. There, in his early 20s, he penned “First Squad, First Platoon,” a short story which is being published for the first time Thursday in The Strand. It was one of his earliest stories, starting a writing career that Serling once said helped him get the war “out of his gut.”
“It was like an exercise for him to deal with the demons of war and fear,” said his daughter, Jodi Serling. “And he sort of turned it into fiction, although there was a lot of truth to it.”
The story is set on Leyte Island in “heavy jungle foliage” and a “hostile rain that caked mud on weapons, uniforms, equipment.” Each of the five chapters in the 11,000-word story is about a different soldier and how they died….
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born May 9, 1936 — Albert Finney. (Died 2019.) I’m very, very fond of British performers and among them is Albert Finney. So let’s look at the career of this most talent actor.
His first genre performance is as Ebenezer Scrooge in Scrooge. Scrooge is my favorite Albert Finney film and it is benefitted immensely by the many extraordinary strong performances by actors like him. To give a good sense of him in that role, I feel obligated to show him in his full Victorian regalia.
That’s followed by being Dewey Wilson in Wolfen, a deeply disturbing film. Wolfen to me is the perfect werewolf film as it is a police procedural firmly within the horror genre. His character here Detective Dewey Wilson along with Diane Venora as Detective Rebecca Neff unraveled the grisly murders that turn-out to be based in First Folk reality.
He plays Edward Bloom, Sr. Big Fish in the wonderful Big Fish. He’s central character here. He is a story-teller but his only son, Will, doesn’t enjoy them because he believes they are simply not true. Of course, they are, but they’re just exaggerated. Or are they being so?
He voices Finis Everglot in Corpse Bride. Now I’d love to tell how he was in that role but I’ll confess and say that I’ve not see that film as I am not a big fan of Tim Burton’s animated work at all.
He was Kincade in Skyfall. He’s the gamekeeper of Skyfall Lodge and the ancestral Bond family estate in Scotland. He’s got a major role in that film.
He was Maurice Allington in The Green Man based on Kingsley Amis’ novel of the same name. He’s the somewhat inebriated owner and landlord of The Green Man, an inn that he says is haunted by ghosts. He tells tales of these to scare guests as it amuses, or trying to seduce them to no avail as he’s not at all handsome. But it may be that The Green Man is truly haunted and those ghosts are happy with him… it’s a great role for him and he play it quite well.
Lastly, I’ll wrap up with Murder on the Orient Express, the 1974 version. I have that poster, an original, not a reproduction, framed and hanging here as I truly love this film. Christie, who lived just long enough to see the film get released and be a box office success, said that Murder on the Orient Express and Witness for the Prosecution were the only movie versions of her books that she liked although she expressed disappointment with Poirot’s moustache as depicted here was far from the creation she had detailed in her mysteries.
She’s misremembering her detailing of that moustache which I confirmed checking the many such novels I have on hand in Apple Books. Most novels have no detailed description at all, and this in The Mysterious Affair at Styles being typical: “Poirot seized his hat, gave a ferocious twist to his moustache, and, carefully brushing an imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve, motioned me to precede him down the stairs; there we joined the detectives and set out for Styles.”
Finney made a most excellent Poirot though many later critics compared him to David Souchet who they consider the definitive version of the character. I always wondered what Dame Christie would have thought of Souchet.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- Free Range might not be teaching what the student wants to learn.
- Carpe Diem has an unexpected Egyptian traffic sign.
- Heathcliff’s latest in a week-long series of guest appearances comes from Star Wars.
- Nathan W. Pyle emphathizes with creators.
(10) GLIMPSE THE NEXT CHAPTER OF NEIL GAIMAN AND MARK BUCKINGHAM’S GROUNDBREAKING MIRACLEMAN SAGA. Miracleman By Gaiman & Buckingham: The Silver Age #1-7 is now available as a complete collection. Catch a glimpse of the action in the new trailer, featuring artwork from all seven issues.
In THE SILVER AGE, Miracleman has created a utopia on Earth where gods walk among men and men have become gods. But when his long-dead friend Young Miracleman is resurrected, Miracleman finds that not everyone is ready for his brave new world! The story that ensues fractures the Miracleman Family and sends Young Miracleman on a stirring quest to understand this world — and himself. It’s a touching exploration of the hero’s journey that ranges from the top of the Himalayas to the realm of the towering Black Warpsmiths — and into the secret past of the Miracleman Family!
(11) X-MEN ONE-DAY SPECIAL ON LEARNEDLEAGUE. [Item by David Goldfarb.] LearnedLeague just had a One-Day Special quiz about the X-Men. It focused more on the comic books than the various adaptations, which suited me just fine. I’m currently scored at 11/12, but I’ve submitted an appeal on the one answer where I was marked wrong. We’ll see if that goes through.
You can find the questions behind this link, although nearly all of them have pictures that people who aren’t LL members won’t be able to see. None of the pictures are absolutely necessary, but at least a couple of them have valuable clues.
(12) VIDEO GAME ANIMATION INSIGHTS. “’Harold Halibut’ brings with handmade charm and stop motion inspirations” on NPR’s “Here and Now”.
“Harold Halibut” is a new sci-fi video game set in an underwater space colony. But it’s got a novel look; all of the characters and sets in the game were made by hand, then 3D scanned and animated digitally….
(13) BRAINS DON’T GROW ON TREES. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] 1 cu. mm of brain tissue. 5000 slices. 23 cm of blood vessels. 57,000 cells. 150,000,000 neural connections. Lots of surprises. The Guardian reports “Scientists find 57,000 cells and 150m neural connections in tiny sample of human brain”.
… “The aim was to get a high resolution view of this most mysterious piece of biology that each of us carries around on our shoulders,” said Jeff Lichtman, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard. “The reason we haven’t done it before is that it is damn challenging. It really was enormously hard to do this.”
Having sliced the tissue into wafers less than 1,000 times thinner than the width of a human hair, the researchers took electron microscope images of each to capture details of brain structure down to the nanoscale, or thousandths of a millimetre. A machine-learning algorithm then traced the paths of neurons and other cells through the individual sections, a painstaking process that would have taken humans years. The images comprised 1.4 petabytes of data, equivalent to 14,000 full length, 4k resolution movies.
“We found many things in this dataset that are not in the textbooks,” said Lichtman. “We don’t understand those things, but I can tell you they suggest there’s a chasm between what we already know and what we need to know.”
In one baffling observation, so-called pyramidal neurons, which have large branches called dendrites protruding from their bases, displayed a curious symmetry, with some facing forwards and others backwards. Other images revealed tight whorls of axons, the thin fibres that carry signals from one brain cell to another, as if they had become stuck on a roundabout before identifying the right exit and proceeding on their way…
(14) INSULIN PUMP ISSUE. “FDA Warns on Insulin Pump Problem” at MedPage Today. “This has been a plot point in several movies and tv shows lately,” says Chris Barkley.
A mobile app used with an insulin pump that led to 224 injuries was recalled by Tandem Diabetes Care, the FDA announced today.
The recall is for the 2.7 version of the Apple iOS t:connect mobile app, used in conjunction with t:slim X2 insulin pump with Control-IQ technology, the agency said.
The FDA identified the action as a Class I recall, the most serious type. The recall is a correction, not a product removal, and was prompted by a software glitch that may cause the pump battery to drain sooner than expected. Users are being urged to update the app to the latest software….
(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Adam Savage tells “How Star Wars: Ahsoka’s Jedi Shuttle Filming Model Was Made!”
During the production of Star Wars: Ahsoka, Adam Savage visited the miniatures filming stage set up at Lucasfilm to watch the practical model of Ahsoka’s T-6 Jedi Shuttle being filmed. Modelmaker John Goodson and machinist Dan Patrascu spent four months building the 30-inch model of that T-6 ship for the show–an incredible hero ship model not only equipped with lights, but was fully mechanized with a rotating wing!
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Lise Andreasen, David Goldfarb, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
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So where is everyone? I see Pixels, lots of Pixels, they’re purring, and are looking for your laps.
Good morning!
Reading Carousel Seas by Sharon Lee
WtF indeed. (“I’ve got nothing to say and it’s okay, Good morning! Good morning!”)
4) Speaking of Levar Burton, my school district tells me he will be the guest of honor at the annual PTA convention this summer. It was weird, like worlds clashing when I got that email
10) O yes—I have been waiting for new Miracleman for so long! ????
(13) This description of a sliced (5000 times!) piece of brain reminded me immediately of Cordwainer Smith’s short story, “Think Blue, Count Two.” He imagined 7000 laminated slices of a mouse brain that was “going to go on thinking forever” as a failsafe in a hibernation ship.
It also brought back seeing human brains in jars in Dr. Wilder Penfield’s lab in Montreal. That was quite the event for an eight-year old, and probably contributed to an early love of genre fiction.
(1) A lot of people hate that ad. I have avoided watching it, but I think the idea sucks. There are kids out there who can’t afford a new musical instrument or camera, and yet they’re crushing those items to advertise an expensive tablet.
OTOH I’ve seen so many responses that complain that people who hate it are a sign that we’ve all gone “soft” or whatever. Yeah, right. The people who use the word “soft” this often are so annoying. And they’re usually the ones who couldn’t last a week in a creative profession.
(8) So many favorite Finney performances… I liked him in “The Wolfen,” even if he wasn’t how I imagined that character after reading the book. One of my favorites was the decidedly non-genre “The Dresser.” (The makeup deserves an award. Finney was just a year younger than Tom Courtenay!)
(10) Gasp! I still remember when I learned that the Alan Moore run on Miracleman had come to an end — and that he would be replaced by some writer named Neil Gaiman. I worried that it would hold up. Oh boy! I found myself preferring the Gaiman run?!
5) Coming in 2050: Peter Jackson presents The Lord of the Rings: That Coffee Stain on Page 23 of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Final Draft.
14) I’m very reluctant these days to buy any piece of hardware that requires an iPhone app to function – I’ve had one too many devices rendered unusable when the required app was abandoned. I’d be even more reluctant to put one in my body.
5) Mr. Gollum goes to Washington.
8: Naming conventions for Dames are exactly the same as for Knights, so (Title)(Personal name) or (Title)(Personal name)(Family name), but never ever the title with just the family name. In the context Dame Agatha would be the proper useage.
(5) OK, hear me out. Here’s how they should do it. The whole thing should tie in with another great franchise: Where’s Wally (or as they say in North America: “Where Is Waldo At?”). Each scene of the Gollum movie is a big chaotic mix of characters, many of whom are little goblin people and the film audience have to shout out “there’s Gollum!” when they see him. Also, in the spirit of the tradition of British pantomime, various Lord of the Rings characters pop up from time to time and say “where’s Gollum?” and the audience shouts “HE’S BEHIND YOU!” but when Viggo Mortensen turns around to look, Gollum hides behind a troll.
Thanks for the Title Credit!
(13) reminds me of a scene from Reynolds’ House of Suns
Camestros: Brilliant!
For those waiting for the second season of My Adventures With Superman, the wait ends May 25th, midnight EDT on Adult Swim. A sneak peek has already been released.
5) Lord of the Rings meets Godzilla! King Kong! Beyonce! Barbie!
Do we reeeeeealy need another LOTR film? Is PJ so hard up for money that he has to milk this franchise to death? I think not. I doubt Sir Ian will want to tramp around Middle Earth again as Gandalf.
A Thelonious Monk song was on the radio. T. Monk. That reminds me of a Tea Monk who lives on another world and befriends a robot. I wonder if the future T. Monk knows about the past one. Do they have any of his records?
If they want to do a LotR movie, something involving Angmar would be much meatier. Or the Blue Wizards.
Love the title! (What’s the melting point, btw?
@Daniel: Glad you liked it. Couldn’t find the melting point (something less than 233 C), but did find this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Melted_Jack_Dann
I’ve been listening to Andy Serkis’ readings of Tolkien – The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion – and he seems genuinely deeply invested in Tolkien’s legendarium. And he’s a very fine actor. I don’t know how he is at writing or directing, but I’m certainly curious and interested in further news. I won’t be surprised if something comes along to make me think I’d rather pass on the project, but I doubt it’ll be anything about his part in it.
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