I'm really curious about how this prop came about, in the mediocre 2019 Jean Reno movie Cold Blood Legacy where Ukraine stands in for the ass-end of British Columbia. Do I get an IMDB credit for this? In case you were wondering, that is not my phone number.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

Es gab mal wieder einen Massenrücktritt bei einem Elsevier-Journal.

All but one member of the editorial board of the Journal of Human Evolution (JHE), an Elsevier title, have resigned, saying the “sustained actions of Elsevier are fundamentally incompatible with the ethos of the journal and preclude maintaining the quality and integrity fundamental to JHE’s success.”

“Elsevier has steadily eroded the infrastructure essential to the success of the journal while simultaneously undermining the core principles and practices that have successfully guided the journal for the past 38 years,” the journal’s “joint Editors-in-Chief, all Emeritus Editors retired or active in the field, and all but one Associate Editor” said in their resignation statement posted to X/Twitter yesterday.

Das ist ja schon eine harte Ansage. Was genau passiert ist, findet man in Fußnote 2 in diesem PDF:

In fall of 2023, for example, without consulting or informing the editors, Elsevier initiated the use of AI during production, creating article proofs devoid of capitalization of all proper nouns (e.g., formally recognized epochs, site names, countries, cities, genera, etc.) as well italics for genera and species. These AI changes reversed the accepted versions of papers that had already been properly formatted by the handling editors. This was highly embarrassing for the journal and resolution took six months and was achieved only through the persistent efforts of the editors. AI processing continues to be used and regularly reformats submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and require extensive author and editor oversight during proof stage.

Wow. Es wirkt! Weiter machen!! (ars technica dazu)

It’s my 15th anniversary of doing these annual wrap-up posts (following 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2024), and yes, I still really enjoying creating them. For me, it’s not just about looking through what I consumed during the year and figuring out what was my favorite in each category, but it’s also a way of coming across everything that I missed out on (during my research), and that I will want to take in when I have time. As always, a reminder that this is not a “best of” list, since I don’t have the luxury of taking in everything. Instead, from everything that I had a chance to watch, read, play, and listen to during the year, it’s a compilation of the things I enjoyed the most — I include an alphabetical top 5 for each category, and then include a few honorable mentions if warranted.

Favorite Games
As usual, I spend a lot of time playing games that were released in previous years (this year alone I played through the two Star Wars Jedi games and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, for example), so there’s still a lot I want to play that I haven’t gotten around to yet, but this is what I enjoyed the most that came out in 2024. I include The Crew Motorfest because I continue to play it weekly.

• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
• Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
• Star Wars Outlaws
• The Crew Motorfest
• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Honorable Mentions: Akka Arrh, Balatro, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, Princess Peach: Showtime!, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, The Rise of the Golden Idol, Still Wakes the Deep

Favorite Movies
I watched 179 movies in 2024, and so of course a lot of time is spent watching not just new releases, but also on my year-based movie marathons, etc. It was a good year for film though I think, and interestingly, a lot of my favorites were horror.

• Alien: Romulus
• Dune: Part Two
• Kinds of Kindness
• The Substance
• Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In

Honorable Mentions: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, In a Violent Nature, I Saw the TV Glow, Longlegs, Love Lies Bleeding, Maxxxine, Rebel Ridge, The First Omen, The Shadow Strays

Favorite Movies of 1984
Here are my five favorites from my 1984 movie marathon, which also marked the end the 80s for me (I had started with 1985).

• Beverly Hills Cop
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
• Sixteen Candles
• Spinal Tap
• Top Secret!

Favorite Movies of 1994
Here are my five favorites from 1994, although I’m not done that one, and still plan on watching another dozen or so.

• Amateur
• Chungking Express
• Natural Born Killers
• Pulp Fiction
• The Shawshank Redemption

Favorite TV
Although I feel like I enjoyed watching movies more than TV shows this past year, there were still a lot of great series that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I think my favorite five are a solid choice.

• Arcane: League of Legends
• Ripley
• Shogun
• The Gentlemen
• The Penguin

Honorable Mentions: A Man on the Inside, Black Doves, Citadel: Diana, Creature Commandos, Dark Matter, Drive to Survive, Dune: Prophecy, Fallout, House of the Dragon, Monsieur Spade, Only Murders in the Building, Secret Level, Sugar, The Bear, True Detective: Night Country, Welcome to Wrexham, X-Men ’97

Favorite Anime
I watched a lot less anime this past year, not really searching hard for stuff to check out each season anymore and instead mostly sticking to what was available on Netflix (or that I watch with my wife). So shorter list this year (no honorable mentions), and I even include a movie, which I include here instead of my movie section (it would have been in my honorable mentions there normally).

• Dandadan
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
• Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
• Kaiju No. 8
• Mononoke The Movie: The Phantom in the Rain

Favorite Web/Sports
The two additions this year are the Maigomika and Sam and Victor channels on YouTube, that I became quite addicted to, and quickly binged all their videos (although I’m still making my way through Sam and Victor’s channel).

• AEW Collision/Dynamite/Rampage/PPVs (Triller TV)
• AEW Hey! EW/Zero Hour/Media Scrums (YouTube)
• F1 TV (app/website)
• Maigomika (YouTube channel)
• Sam and Victor (YouTube channel)

Favorite Songs
After not including songs for a few years and then bringing it back last year, this year I’m breaking a rule for this annual list for the first time, and I’m including 10 picks instead of five, because I just couldn’t narrow it down to five. This year I started “favoriting” tracks I loved in Apple Music when I discovered them, and then spent a lot of time listening to a smart playlist of those tracks (which includes 46 songs). Below is a selection from that.

• “Boom Boom Back” (Hinds & Beck)
• “Broke My Heart” (Caribou)
• “GLICK” (XXXXY)
• “Honey” (Caribou)
• “Itch” (Porches)
• “Midi l’ennui” (Charles Collé)
• “One Note House” (Soichi Terada)
• “Saturnine” (Justice & Miguel)
• “Tuesday” (Toro y Moi)
• “Walk In, Walk Out” (Nice Girl)

Honorable Mentions: “Crystal Breath” (Kim Gordon), “Football” (Youth Lagoon), “High School Boyfriend” (Mandy), “I’m a Man” (Kim Gordon), “I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying” (English Teacher), “Heavy” (Sprints), “Lives of a Cat” (Tahiti 80), “Mareuil” (Charles Dollé), “Pruning” (Fraulein), “Split Me Open” (Mannequin Pussy)

Favorite Albums
Even though I would say I surprisingly turned into someone who listens to playlists and compilations more than albums this year, these are still the albums that stood out for me — and that collection from Rick White is one of my favorite things, and can be purchased (or downloaded for free) via Bandcamp.

• Adieu le reste – EP (Charles Dollé)
• 20 Golden Hits of the 90s (Rick White Archive)
• Hello Hello (Tahiti 80)
• Honey (Caribou)
• Micro Plstc House Dustt (XXXXY)

Honorable Mentions: Fairweather Friend (The Umbrellas), Hole Erth (Toro Y Moi), Hyperdrama (Justice), Melt the Honey (PACKS), Nobody Loves You More (Kim Deal), Owase Bushi – EP (Omodaka), Rock Machine (La Femme), Yummy (Nice Girl)

Favorite Podcasts
The big omission from previous years is NPR’s All Songs Considered, which I stopped listening to because they changed the format for their shows, and I didn’t like the new format (focusing on less new songs/albums).

• 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s: The 2000s
• Pop Culture Happy Hour
• Pure TokyoScope
• The Video Archives Podcast
• Whatculture Wrestling (AEW Dynamite/Collision reviews & previews)

Favorite Comics
I feel a bit bad about filling up my five favorites list with the new “Absolute” series from DC, that only just started in November, but they truly are the comics I’ve enjoyed the most in 2024.

• Absolute Batman
• Absolute Superman
• Absolute Wonder Woman
• DC All In Special
• Outsiders

Honorable Mentions: Batman: Off-World, Batman: The Long Halloween – The Last Halloween, Geiger, G.I. Joe (and Cobra Commander, Destro, Duke, and Scarlett mini-series), G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, Grendel: Devil’s Crucible – Defiance, Groo: Minstrel Melodies, Justice League Unlimited, The Ministry of Compliance, The New Gods, Usagi Yojimbo (various mini-series)

Favorite BDs
I still read a ton of BDs (bandes-dessinées, or French-language comics) during the year, but it looks like I didn’t get around to reading that many 2024 releases, and while looking up the big releases of the year while preparing this post, I saw there’s a ton I want to read.

• Bellatrix – Épisode 2
• Moscow – Spaso House (XIII, Tome 29)
• Rouge Alcatraz (XIII Trilogy – Jones, Tome 2)
• Scotland – Épisode 2 (Kenya, Saison 4)
• Wendigo (Thorgal Saga, Tome 2)

Favorite Magazines
The exact same list as last year, but it will change next year, as Total Film stopped publishing a few months ago.

• Edge
• Empire
• Monocle
• SFX
• Total Film

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
We could make it even more informative by adding location and season.

Today's News:

Another year?

Michael Kalus posted a photo:

Almost two years ago, Louisiana passed a law that started a wave that’s since spread across the entire U.S. south, and has changed the way people there can access adult content. As of today, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina join the list of 17 states that can’t access some of the most popular porn sites on the internet, because of regressive laws that claim to protect children but restrict adults’ use of the internet, instead.

That law, passed as Act 440, was introduced by “sex addiction” counselor and state representative Laurie Schegel and quickly copied across the country. The exact phrasing varies, but in most states, the details of the law are the same: Any “commercial entity” that publishes “material harmful to minors” online can be held liable—meaning, tens of thousands of dollars in fines and/or private lawsuits—if it doesn’t “perform reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of individuals attempting to access the material.”

To remain compliant with the law while protecting users’ privacy, Aylo—the company that owns Pornhub and a network of sites including Brazzers, RedTube, YouPorn, Reality Kings, and several others—is making the choice, state by state, to block users altogether. 

Pornhub is currently blocked in: