727: Merry Slopmas

Welcome back to another hour of digital cynicism. We kick things off with a FOLLOW UP on Amazon’s Fallout recaps, which were apparently so hallucination-heavy they made the actual wasteland look organized; naturally, they’ve been nuked along with the "Video Recaps" feature. In a massive dose of IN THE NEWS, Tesla is finally getting a legal side-eye in California for its deceptive "Autopilot" branding, while TikTok is performing a corporate shell game by selling a 45% stake to Oracle and friends to keep the feds happy. Reddit is fighting Australia’s under-16 ban like it’s a constitutional crisis, Louisiana’s age-verification law just got benched by a judge, and Merriam-Webster officially crowned "slop" as the Word of the Year—which is fitting, given that OpenAI is selectively hiding chat logs from murder-suicides while their Chief Scientist warns that recursive AI self-improvement might end the human experiment by 2030. If the "intelligence explosion" doesn’t get us, the CRASH Clock says we’ve got roughly 2.8 days before Elon’s satellite swarm turns low-earth orbit into a permanent scrapyard.

In our MEDIA CANDY segment, we mourn the transition year of Star Trek, which was mostly a series of unmitigated disasters and corporate retreats, though the Oscars moving to YouTube in 2029 means we can finally ignore them in 4K. Meta is testing a "pay-to-share-links" feature because they clearly haven't alienated creators enough, and a new study suggests Amazon’s "dynamic pricing" is basically just a high-tech way to gouge public school districts for pencils. Moving to APPS & DOODADS, iOS 26.2 is here with a "Liquid Glass" slider—groundbreaking stuff, really—while Microsoft’s Copilot+ push is effectively killing the laptop market by making 16GB of RAM a luxury item only a data center could love. Meanwhile, iRobot has officially sucked its last bit of dust into a Chapter 11 filing, proving that even a twenty-year head start can’t save you from a 46 percent tariff and better Chinese competition.

AT THE LIBRARY, we find out that librarians are ready to quit because people keep demanding books that only exist in a ChatGPT hallucination, proving once again that the "Information Age" was a lie. We descend into THE DARK SIDE WITH DAVE with the tireless Dave Bittner to discuss why modern movies feel like plastic, the bizarre paradox of James Cameron’s Avatar dominance, and a bittersweet farewell to Rob Reiner. We wrap it up with the return of The Muppets, a look at plug-in solar panels for the budget-conscious prepper, and the Sedaris siblings proving that even grief can be a podcast topic. It’s all the tech "progress" you never asked for, delivered with the appropriate amount of Gen-X side-eye.

Show notes at https://gog.show/727

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hHnGD4lIFzA

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FOLLOW UP

Amazon pulls its bad AI video recaps after Fallout fallout

IN THE NEWS

Tesla used deceptive language to market Autopilot, California judge rules

TikTok agrees to deal to cede control of US business to American investor group

Reddit sues Australia over underage social media ban

Judge blocks Louisiana's social media age verification law

Murder-suicide case shows OpenAI selectively hides data after users die

Trump orders creation of litigation task force to challenge state AI laws

'Slop' is Merriam-Webster's word of the year

Anthropic’s Chief Scientist Says We’re Rapidly Approaching the Moment That Could Doom Us All

Model collapse

OpenAI Is Going Into the New Year With Some Real Loser Energy

New ‘CRASH Clock’ Warns of 2.8-Day Window Before Likely Orbital Collision

A Facebook test makes link-sharing a paid feature for creators

Study links Amazon's algorithmic pricing with erratic, inflated costs for school districts

MEDIA CANDY

A Man on the Inside S2

Oh. What. Fun.

The End of an Era

The West Wing

F1® The Movie - Apple TV

The Running Man

Welcome to Derry

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Is it Cake?

Apple TV releasing Pluribus season finale early next week

Warner Bros. Discovery rejects Paramount's hostile bid

2025 Was a Turning Point for ‘Star Trek’, Whether It Knew It or Not

THE ACADEMY PARTNERS WITH YOUTUBE FOR EXCLUSIVE GLOBAL RIGHTS TO THE OSCARS® AND OTHER ACADEMY CONTENT STARTING IN 2029

APPS & DOODADS

iOS 26.2 is here with another Liquid Glass tweak, new Podcasts features and more

Oh, the Irony: Microsoft’s Push for Copilot+ PCs Could Stall Laptop Sales

iRobot has filed for bankruptcy and may be taken over by its primary supplier

AT THE LIBRARY

Flybot by Dennis E. Taylor

Making Space (The Time Traveler's Passport) by R. F. Kuang

For a Limited Time Only (The Time Traveler's Passport) by Peng Shepherd

Librarians Are Tired of Being Accused of Hiding Secret Books That Were Made Up by AI

THE DARK SIDE WITH DAVE

Dave Bittner

The CyberWire

Hacking Humans

Caveat

Control Loop

Only Malware in the Building

Why Movies Just Don't Feel "Real" Anymore

The Avatar Paradox - Why Nobody Talks About These Movies

Don't F**k with James Cameron

Every James Cameron Movie, Explained by James Cameron | Vanity Fair

‘The Muppet Show’ Returns for One Night Only Next February

The Muppet Show | Official Teaser | Disney+

Small plug-in solar panels gain traction as an affordable way to cut electricity bills

'You don't know what it's like till you lose a parent': Sedaris siblings share their grief story

CLOSING SHOUT-OUTS

“Enshittification” YouTube

“Enshittification” Spotify

“Enshittification” SoundCloud (with a direct download)

Len (a.k.a. Funny Name)

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