Brennan Sarich

Cookie Monster reacts to 12 tons of KitKat bars stolen: “Me not approve, but me understand.”

BREAKING: Police have released a sketch of the alleged ringleader of the Kit Kat heist.

There's no concern for safety because they ate them all! 😅

Mark Carney at the JUNOs?? Discussing Joni Mitchell?? Wow. #junos2026

Our deepest condolences go to the families and friends of the Jazz crew of Air Canada Express flight AC8646 on March 22. Read full statement: aircanada.com/media/air-cana…

George Lucas traded $350,000 in directing salary for something Fox executives thought was worthless: the right to sell Star Wars toys. It was 1976. Over 40 studios had already passed on his script, including Disney. Fox only greenlit the project because they wanted Lucas for other films. Nobody at the studio expected to make money on a space opera with no stars, so when Lucas offered to cut his directing fee from $500,000 to $150,000 in exchange for merchandising and sequel rights, Fox said yes on the spot. Movie merchandise was a dead business. Fox had lost money on Doctor Dolittle lunchboxes a decade earlier. They thought they were getting the better deal. Lucas couldn’t even find a toy company that wanted in. Kenner, a division of cereal company General Foods, finally bought the licensing for a flat $100,000. Then Star Wars opened. Between 1977 and 1978, Kenner sold $100 million worth of toys off that $100,000 investment. They couldn’t make enough for Christmas ’77, so they sold empty boxes with IOUs inside, promising to mail the action figures later. Parents paid real money for cardboard and a promise. Nobody around the production saw any of this coming. Alec Guinness, who played Obi-Wan, privately called the script “fairy-tale rubbish.” But he was shrewd enough to negotiate 2.25% of royalties instead of a flat fee. About 20 minutes of total screen time earned his estate somewhere between $50 million and $100 million. Lucas himself was so convinced the film would flop that he offered Spielberg a bet while visiting the Close Encounters set: swap 2.5% of each other’s profits. Spielberg took it. That handshake has paid him around $40 million. And then the money started compounding. Lucas poured his Star Wars profits into ILM, the effects house he’d built for the film. When its computer graphics division got too expensive to maintain, he sold it to Steve Jobs in 1986 for $10 million. Jobs renamed it Pixar. Disney bought Pixar twenty years later for $7.4 billion. Then in 2012, Disney came back for the rest, buying Lucasfilm itself for $4.05 billion. Total franchise revenue today sits around $46.7 billion, over $20 billion from merchandise alone. The filmmaker 40 studios passed on is now worth $5.3 billion according to Forbes. Fifty years ago today, cameras rolled on a desert in Tunisia. The $350,000 pay cut that made it all possible might be the best trade in business history.

@SandyofCthulhu That is wild!!! She stole the moment!!! A moment thief!!

When I moved to California in 1981, my game Call of Cthulhu had just come out. My pals at Chaosium told me that Games of Berkeley (which they called "gob") was the best game store in town. So my wife & I went over super-excited to see my game on the shelves. I walked up to the clerk and said, "I wrote this game! Want me to sign some of them for you?" He replied, "No need. Sandy came in last week and she signed a bunch." Me & my wife: "She?" Clerk: "Yeah. Sandy Petersen, like it says on the game cover. A woman." I eventually managed to convince him that I was the "real" Sandy Petersen, but there are apparently about a dozen copies of the Call of Cthulhu 1st edition signed by a fake female version of me. If you own one, it might be extra valuable? I just saw a first edition go for $120 so I suppose one with a fake signature might be even better.

I’m reading Bowling Alone and I’m laughing at the fact that every single one of the things Putnam lists a frequent point of “informal connection” is going (or has already gone) extinct drinks after work coffee with regulars at the diner poker night gossip with neighbors etc

Hi, it’s Guido, and we are in an AI crisis. This morning I began a hunger strike as I set out on foot from Oakland, California to the State Legislature in Sacramento. I’ll be hunger striking as I walk about 70 miles to the state capital over the next few days to mobilize immediate government action to end the unacceptable harm that a handful of tech oligarchs are inflicting on our loved ones and communities. I’m calling on Governor Newsom and the California state legislature to take immediate emergency action to permanently ban the development of artificial general intelligence throughout the state, and to implement an immediate permanent statewide ban on the construction, use, or operation of all data centers in California by companies pursuing the development of artificial general intelligence, and to use their voices to call on Congress to extend these bans nationally and internationally through global treaty. I will be individually calling on each and every member of the California state legislature and Congressional delegation personally to join this call as I maintain my hunger strike outside the offices of the state legislature. Given the immediacy and magnitude of the risk from continued unrestricted artificial general intelligence development, I am also calling on the legislature to immmediately act to decriminalize nonviolent direct action by the public to directly stop artificial general intelligence development and the construction, use, and operation of data centers by companies pursuing the development of artificial general intelligence within California and for Attorney General Rob Bonta to announce his intention to decline to prosecute such action and to drop all charges associated with such nonviolent direct action by members of the public. Our entire future is at stake. Direct action to end this threat today is our power, our right, and our responsibility to those we love. If you would like to help join in or support this campaign, please send me an email at: reichstadter.g@gmail.com or feel free to direct message me here. If you would like to donate to help support the fight, please consider subscribing here: patreon.com/wolflovesmelon Thank you, and I’ll see you on the road!

There's no excuse for AI apathy among policymakers. No off-ramp where AI doesn't matter. Either a) the largest private-sector spending project in history fails to pull along revenue, in which case the odds of an industrial/financial bubble are too high too ignore; or b) the revenue comes along, which implies AI deployment in the economy will be absolutely furious. And it's hard to imagine that companies shift hundreds of billions of dollars of annual spending toward tokens and agents without reducing spending, at the least in the short run, on labor, implying meaningful labor market displacement The Goldilocks scenario—no bubble, no job loss, the entire economy just seamlessly coordinates the addition of 100s of billions of dollars of additional annual spend without any dislocation for workers—is possible, I guess, but it's really really hard to imagine. Important piece from Noah here.

Not so fun fact, the organizers of the games were so unprepared for a Ukrainian to win gold that the ceremony was delayed for an hour. They initially hung the Ukrainian flag upside down and realized they didn't even have a recording of the national anthem. After Ukrainian team refusing offers to play the russian or soviet anthem instead (!!!), a Ukrainian team official had to rush back to the Olympic Village to retrieve a recording found in the bag of fellow skater Liudmyla Mykhailovska for the Ukrainian anthem to be played.

Who was it that said "if you live in a 15 minute city but your barista has an hour-long commute you don't live in a city; you live in an amusement park"

@Millicentsomer That is a great silver lining!!! Where is Ms. Piggy to karate chop whoever made this decision??

My job at the Washington Post was just eliminated along w/the whole Books section, most of Sports, Post Reports, and many, many others. Silver lining: my last piece was on the Muppets.

@VendettaMaximus @siomoCTV @Metrolinx I am on the train behind the disabled train. Managed to hit all the delays this week. 🫠

@siomoCTV Another disabled train issue now on the lakeshore East line leaving union (5.20pm train) leaving people stuck on the train for multiple hours. Train conductor on loudspeaker calls it "an act of God". So @metrolinx you experiencing multiple "acts of God" in the same week?? joke

We have a multi-day disruption at the country's busiest transit hub with no immediate and no one from Metrolinx can find their way in front of a camera?

Feel the same

My heart breaks for the families of the three young hockey players killed in a car accident near Stavely, Alberta.   Canadians are keeping the entire Southern Alberta Mustangs community in our thoughts as they face this unimaginable grief.

The software I make Salad Fingers with..

Absolutely facts.

One of my former research assistants was killed by ICE in Minneapolis today😢 Alex was the kindest, sweetest human and a ICU nurse with a bright future ahead of him May his soul rest in peace and this senseless carnage stop💔

This will forever be the greatest email.