Ivan K

Meme image of Frank Costanza from Seinfeld complaining about motion smoothing.

My Smart TV’s Settings are Making Me Insane An unhinged rant about unnecessary features, marketing buzzwords, and, of course, motion smoothing

New Newsletter!

I bought a new TV and made me insane: an unhinged rant about motion smoothing and AI buzzwords. #Hisense

Well, as a father of two, I have a theory: kids don’t so much like mac and cheese as they like the blue box that comes with the powder. The homemade stuff? Fancy gruyere and shredded cheddar? They ain’t having it. As a food snob, I refuse to submit to the altar of Kraft, and so I stubbornly always make mac and cheese from scratch. My homemade variation basically amounts to buttered noodles, some milk, shredded cheese, salt, and paprika, mixed together in a single pot. My kids like this okay, but they also don’t go bananas for it like I’m always secretly hoping (to be fair, it’s always a bit bland). And, of course, I have to suffer through their eye rolls when they discover the vegetables I try to sneak in there. Dad!? Are these frozen peas?!

This Isn’t Time to Make Macaroni and Cheese My quest to make “homemade” kid-approved macaroni and cheese

On this week's newsletter, I attempted to make kid friendly mac and cheese. It was harder than you think. #recipes #macandcheese

thereisnttimeforthat.substack.com/p/this-isnt-...

Yeah, sex is great, but have you ever just thrown a bunch of stuff away?

My hot take is just make a good movie.

People don't care about continuity and universe building nearly as much executives think they do.

A scribble of a stussy symbol I found in my sons bedroom

For any one wondering, yes, middle schoolers are still doing this 30 years later…

After the series’s inciting incident where Ron Trusper is humiliated by a faulty chair, we watch him deal with the mundane insanity of “normal” American life. Ron just wants to talk to someone on the phone, but alas, he’s forced to navigate stock-photo filled, corporate-speak laden websites, useless and infuriating AI Chat Bots (“you’re a fucker!”), an ouroboros of phone trees and bad on-hold elevator music. Is Ron Trusper crazy? Or, are we insane for living in a society that has normalized all this? Just yesterday I tried to buy groceries at an Amazon Fresh, only to find that my “smart cart” couldn’t recognize the store QR code on my phone, and thus, didn’t keep track of my scanned items, resulting in me having to wait in line for 10 minutes so that the check out clerk could just scan my items manually—you know, like they’ve been doing for the last five decades. It’s amazing that we all haven’t snapped already. Tim Robinson is clearly fascinated by the dumb rules and mannerisms of “polite” corporate culture—how we all comply with arbitrary guidelines or default into HR speak…the way off-hand comments can become obsessions, and, ultimately, how people at their core only care about their own wants and desires (a recurring bit where the father of Trusper’s daughter’s fiancé kept bringing up how often a dead dog used to bother him had me rolling). As I often glibly joke to my wife: Everybody is nuts about something. Robinson’s oeuvre, through the characters he plays or encounters, is emblematic of that idea.

Tim Robinson Isn’t Crazy. The World Is. How "The Chair Company" captures the mundane insanity of “normal” life

New newsletter! "The Chair Company" is terrific—Tim Robinson is our nation's luminary in expressing the mundane insanity of boring cubicle life. #TimRobinson #TheChairCompany

Trump is also evil, but it's all just so much dumber and louder now.

It's shocking how much of America's reform/conservative Jewish population has so easily bought into propaganda, whether it's about Mamdani or Israel/Palestine post Oct. 7th. I've really had to distance myself from certain folks in my congregation.

It's terrifying how we have essentially ignored the fact that this ghoul was responsible for the death and suffering of so many, all because his was able to exercise his evil under the banner of "civility" and "norms."

Guys, I'm super happy and all, but there's really no reason I should know this much about NYC politics.

Oh, no. Who are the Democrats going to run in 2028?

They’re actually called nuclear hoagies

The real question mark for me is that I have no clue how OpenAI or Meta or whomever else intends to make money off this garbage. And, let’s face it, all of these tech projects, at some point, need to figure out how to make money to satiate their investors. Social media is already a tremendously difficult industry to monetize; people won’t pay to use the service, so you are reliant on advertising or other avenues for revenue. In other words, the currency is eyeballs and the content itself—created by users—is free. But, with AI slop video apps, the content is no longer freely generated…it costs money and time—compute, energy, server usage, whatever—to make these things. So, now, literally the only selling point of social media as a business—the fact that users will self-generate the stuff that people will want to click on, and thus, appeal to advertisers looking for eyeballs—is gone. Silicon Valley has managed to make an unprofitable industry, less profitable? Amazing. We thought the future was flying cars? No, it was computers burning hectares of rainforest in order to get enough compute power to generate facsimiles of existing social media videos, which are then being commented on and viewed by other computers. Gosh, our technodystopia is way more boring than I thought it would be.

Who is the Slop For? AI generated social media is here. I don’t know who its audience is supposed to be.

"It's on the kids to reject this sh!t!"

Inspired by filmmaker Marcus Jones's quote on @bobbymillertime.com's newsletter, I wrote my own newsletter about AI social media slop.

Me dressed as Nathan Fielder for Halloween

My controls. #therehearsal

Screengrab of me beating Silksong

Remember: You are stronger than you know.

Such an insanely good combination of source material and director

Maron’s departure truly is the end of an era. The podcast boom has been punctured by the enshittification that always swallows any endeavor dependent on profit and constant growth. Honestly, I’m just glad Maron is quitting on his own terms…that he got out before selling out (albeit after uttering hundreds of ad-reads for Shari’s Berries). And, really, at this point, what more could I have asked for? Maron has talked to practically everyone—from guitar players to politicians who share my last name. Dude deserves a break. Still, though, it’s hard not to get a little weepy knowing that his familiar voice just won’t be there anymore: on neighborhood runs, when I’m cooking dinner, when I can’t sleep. Marc Maron has been the soundtrack of my life for nearly 15 years. Everything ends, I realize, but that doesn’t make it any easier to say goodbye.

A Tribute to Marc Maron and WTF Some thoughts on the end of a podcasting era

I wrote about the end of @marcmaron.bsky.social's
WTF podcast, and as a result, the end of a podcasting era. Thanks for everything, Marc. Boomer lives!
thereisnttimeforthat.substack.com/p/a-tribute-...

Penne is the garbage filler of pasta. There’s a reason it’s the only shape that Costco sells 8 boxes of. They can’t give this away.

Epson Home Cinema LS11000 4K PRO-UHD Laser Projector, HDR, HDR10+, 2,500 Lumens Color & White Brightness, HDMI 2.1, Motorized Lens, Lens Shift, Focus, Zoom, 3840 x 2160, 120 Hz, Home Theater, Gaming Welcome to the next generation of Home Cinema Projection.

I think you are looking at somewhere in the $1K - $5K range. The higher end of that range is a laser projector, which means you don't have to replace bulbs.

If you want to go laser, this is a good projector:
www.amazon.com/dp/B09TS2M1Z...

If you are fine with bulb, that BenQ one I posted is good.

BenQ HT2060 | 1080p HDR Home Theater LED Projector 4K supported | 2200 Lumens | Vertical Lens Shift | Keystone Correction, 3D, 1.3x Zoom | S/PDIF, HDMI 2.0 | Built-in 10W Speakers | 4K Compatible Buy BenQ HT2060 | 1080p HDR Home Theater LED Projector 4K supported | 2200 Lumens | Vertical Lens Shift | Keystone Correction, 3D, 1.3x Zoom | S/PDIF, HDMI 2.0 | Built-in 10W Speakers | 4K Compatible: Video Projectors - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

The short answer that you don't want to hear is that a "good" projector is expensive.

If you are looking for a good budget option, BenQ's stuff tends to be fine for most.
www.amazon.com/dp/B0BWGXHVR...

But, you can quickly go down the rabbit hole of home theater projector and budgets will balloon.

Cover art for Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park.

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

A John Green-esque heart on its sleeve, YA romance that I enjoyed. Sue me. Apparently, there is a lot of hate for this due to to how it handles race (or rather, how it doesn't), but that sort of went over my head. An easy, sweet read.

Screencap from my newsletter reading: "I very much believe that watching anything done well is inherently interesting. Obviously, the most common realization of this in modern life is sports—it’s fascinating to watch people in peak physical shape and ability face off against one another in athletic competition. But, this sense of wonder can apply to anything if there is enough skill or passion behind it: painting, model-making, sand castle building, and, yes, of course cooking. Not to derail this newsletter post too far into the weeds, but this fascination in the process itself is one of the main reasons why AI-generated material feels so soulless…we are denied seeing the struggle of creation. In watching true masters of the craft smoke brisket, I was often left slack-jawed at the effort these folks put into their work—an effort not driven by monetary reward, but rather, by a desire to be excellent at something…to make something delicious. In a world driven by capitalist incentives, I was moved by the sentiment."

There Isn't Time to Enter a Kosher Barbecue Competition I went into the mountains and learned how to smoke brisket.

New newsletter! I smoke some meat, make dubious life decisions, and form a newfound appreciation for any craft done at a high level.

I’m not suggesting that beating Silksong is actually an “important” endeavor: in the grand scheme of things, I know that completing a video game is literally childish. But, I do think there is something more to glean from all this self-induced thumb pain. You see, Silksong’s ultimate thrill comes not from collecting items or trinkets (none of the upgrades fundamentally make the game any easier), but rather from the vicarious joy of thinking something is impossible only to realize that it, in fact, actually isn’t—that you are capable of much more than you ever dreamed of. It’s a general aphorism, yes, but it proves there is some value in my struggle.

There Isn’t Time to Git Gud "Hollow Knight: Silksong" is my mid-life crisis game.

New newsletter: I wrote about #Silksong, being old, and how self-induced challenges can prove that we are stronger than we know.