Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 3/21/25
It's Only Theft if They Get Away With It edition
As a follow-up to last week’s directive, we are pleased to report that no member of the Bunker Administration Staff arrived for work on Tuesday reeking of beer vomit and daubed with green poster paint and gold stripper glitter. Similar reports from the other Texas-based Apocalypse Bunkers filed similar reports, to great relief. The only Apocalypse Bunker we haven’t heard from yet is the satellite compound located just south of Shamrock, Texas. We have sent a forward recon team to assess the location and will act accordingly based on the sitrep.
Podcastery Notice
There must be something in the air. I’ve given a number of interviews lately, of which this fun interview with Jason Waltz is the first to drop. Jason is a great guy; you should check out his line of books, anyway, as I have undoubtedly mentioned them over the years. It was a cool interview; we talked about a lot of my creative DNA. I should warn you, though, that my interview goes over the 42 minute mark.
If you want to learn more about what makes me tick as an author, you can watch/listen here: 24 in 42 with Mark Finn. Also, hey, don’t forget to like and subscribe to Jason’s channel and check out some of his other interviews. I’ll bet you know a few more of the interviewees. Any love you could show, a thumbs up, a forwarded link, etc., would be appreciated.
Did Anyone Else Get Their Art Stolen?
So, this was fun. I’m sure you all have at least one or two published authors in your feed, so you very likely have seen the post from The Atlantic called The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated Book Problem. It’s got pop-ups in front of it, so let me summarize for you: Zuckerberg’s Meta was trying to train its AI using books. They thought about licensing them, but decided that would cost too much money...for Mark Zuckerberg...and so their elegant solution was to take the 7.5 million or so unlicensed, pirated books from a known Russian website and simply scrape their already stolen millions of books from them instead.
And yeah, they scraped a couple of my books, too. One of them is an older book, not currently available and has been broken down into separate pieces and projects by now. The other book: Blood and Thunder.
Yeah, the Ruskies swiped my shit. And then, Meta swiped the shit that the Ruskies swiped. Because they could. Because Zuckerberg didn’t want to pay people for work they already did.
Maybe you don’t care right now. Maybe it’s a petty crime to you. I can only hope that Stephen King and a few other Big Name Authors, with Money To Burn, decide to hang a Class Action Lawsuit on Zuckerberg’s media empire.
These guys? They are bereft of morals, ethics, and scruples. They’d rather steal from Russian gangsters than pay a pittance for the books they intend to train the AI on so they can put people out of work.
At what point are you gonna flip out? I’m genuinely curious. And when you do finally flip out, what are you going to do about it? Please, share your thoughts with me below.
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Note: we’d like to thank HBO for taking last week’s suggestion seriously regarding the content warning labels on The Righteous Gemstones title card. Evidently, we weren’t the only ones with notes, the Sunday episode (season 4, ep 2) was labeled “Nudity,” quite clearly. I guess that they assume if you made it through three seasons of The Righteous Gemstones, then you know there’s going to be persistent adult language and situations, because Danny McBride is involved, and he’s made entirely out of F-bombs and junior high sick burns.
And while I was prepared for the state of nudity to be present in the show, I was not prepared for Walton Goggins’ shaved dong swinging this way and that, with commentary, like Leatherface dancing with a chainsaw. I have great respect for Goggins’ as an actor; I really like him in everything I’ve seen him in, including the aforementioned show. That admiration was never dong-dependent, then or now. For the life me, I can’t figure out if this was some misguided attempt to bring gritty realism into the satire, or if the higher-ups at HBO are sending me a message not to push back on them, or they will double down. “Oh, you want to see ‘nudity’ labeled, Mr. N.T.A.B.? Well, let’s see how you like Walton Goggins’ bald dong in your face for a much longer than necessary shot that adds nothing to the story! Say something now, I dare ya.”
Real mature, HBO. Real mature.
Adolescence (Netflix)
Stephen Graham co-wrote and stars in a four-part miniseries about a 13-year-old boy accused of stabbing a classmate to death.
I mentioned before what a big fan I am of Stephen Graham, ever since his debut in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch, years ago. He’s one of those utility players, those character actors that turns up in a bunch of stuff, unnoticed, until you give him a bigger role to play and suddenly, you’re all “Where’d this guy come from?” He’s great in this show, make no bones about it, but considering how it was filmed and the way the story unfolds, I have tremendous respect for everyone involved. This isn’t the first show to utilize a lengthy tracking shot, but all four episodes are filmed in a single take, in real time, and it’s not only seamless, but really fascinating, and gives the story a noticeable “theater in the round” atmosphere.
Adolescence also doesn’t talk down to the audience; you have to pay attention to what’s going on and make your own conclusions about what happened, at least, initially, and this is where the acting becomes crucial. This ain’t no Law & Order: SVU nonsense, here. It’s also interesting to see how these kinds of crimes are handled in the UK, and we can see here that many of the same problems plague our special friends across the pond, the same as here.
I don’t have trouble with thick accents, but others might, so if that’s you, turn on the subtitles. But don’t let that keep you from experiencing this sober and fascinating crime drama. Adolescence has a somewhat expected message about teenagers and parents, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth repeating with some nuance, especially when you consider other points of view in a tragedy like this.
The Electric State (Netflix)
Millie Bobby Brown is on a quest to find her kid brother, aided by a shady scrounger and a strange robot from a beloved kid’s cartoon series. The Russo Brothers produced and directed the movie, based on the graphic novel of the same name by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag.
The premise is one of those alt-history things that I like. What if, somewhere in the 1940s, Walt Disney created independently operating robots, like a precursor to Westworld, only fun, you know? Like Disneyworld? And eventually, the robots become self-aware enough that by the alternate 1990s, they were demanding equal rights, and then there’s a war that ends only when we figure out how to upload our frail bodies into powerful robot exoskeletons, but the new technology turns us into, well, pretty much who we are now in the Internet Age.
That’s the set-up, and from there, things vary wildly from the graphic novel, so much so that the die-hard fans are flipping out that the two-hour long movie from the guys who made Captain America: Civil War didn’t have all of the quiet beauty, subtlety, and nuance of the source material. For everyone else, The Electric State feels like it took some of its dystopian aesthetic from Fallout 4, most particularly from the Nuka-World Amusement Park. I do not say this as a negative, okay? But it’s really hard not to look at some of the more character-oriented robots in the movie and not think about the walking, talking Nuka Cola bottles in the game.
Setting aside that this was never going to be the graphic novel, not ever, does it work as a movie? Heck yes, it’s a lot of fun; the story itself is pretty light fare, but they take what’s going on seriously, which is always nice. Chris Pratt co-stars as yet another former solider of some kind who is now retired, but has some kind of reason for wanting back into the action. Millie Bobby Brown can no longer pull off teen-ager. She is twelve seconds away from looking too old to play a college kid, so maybe this is a final hurrah for her and once Stranger Things wraps up, she can start playing adults.
Technically, it’s easy to see where that 300-million-dollar budget went; all into the robots, making them look and move in a mechanically convincing fashion. The cast is also top-notch, if only as voice actors. I’m assuming if they aren’t onscreen, you don’t have to pay them as much.
The Electric State is a well-made, light bit of dystopian science fiction that doesn’t break new ground, but makes good use of the already plowed field. It’s a great palate cleanser between heavier fare. Ignore the online chum and see it for yourself.
The class action lawsuit has been churning for quite some time. We have Richard Kadrey, Christopher Golden and Sarah Silverman (of all people) to thank for the discovery which has laid Meta's egregious behavior bare: https://www.wired.com/story/new-documents-unredacted-meta-copyright-ai-lawsuit/
All I have to say about the Goggins dong is, “FINALLY”!! We have had female nudity shoved at us for decades. Now, I love nekkid chicks, but I always felt it was way off kilter, unequal, and unfair that a good 90-95% of movie nudity was women. It’s TIME for the swinging dong and all the straight boys better get used to it! 😆🤘🏻