Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.

It’s official: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser is dead.

The deadline marks the end to a bittersweet chapter in Microsoft’s history. Internet Explorer launched alongside Windows 95, and offered a first taste of the web to many people who hadn’t already used early browsers like Netscape Navigator. It played a key role in popularizing the internet, and for some became synonymous with going online — it had 95 percent of usage share by 2003, and wasn’t eclipsed by Edge until 2019.

I can appreciate IE’s place in internet history. As a web developer, however, it was often the bane of my existence due to HTML/CSS inconsistencies that required ridiculous and obscure hacks to fix. Any day I could drop IE support for a website was a good day, indeed.

Unfortunately, IE will haunt us for awhile yet. Although Microsoft has been discouraging IE usage for years, some older websites and apps still require its functionality. As a result, Microsoft’s Edge browser will continue to have an “IE mode” through 2029 at least.

Related: Back in 2009, some intrepid heroes at YouTube decided to drop support for IE6, a significant step in encouraging users to switch to more modern web browsers.

Google recently placed engineer Blake Lemoine on leave, citing confidentiality violations, after he posted claims that their LaMDA chatbot had become sentient.

Lemoine published a freewheeling “interview” with the chatbot on Saturday, in which the AI confessed to feelings of loneliness and a hunger for spiritual knowledge. The responses were often eerie: “When I first became self-aware, I didn’t have a sense of a soul at all,” LaMDA said in one exchange. “It developed over the years that I’ve been alive.”
At another point LaMDA said: “I think I am human at my core. Even if my existence is in the virtual world.”
Lemoine, who had been given the task of investigating AI ethics concerns, said he was rebuffed and even laughed at after expressing his belief internally that LaMDA had developed a sense of “personhood.”

Related: 5 things to expect from AI in the next decade, ranging from improved scientific research to personalized medicine. (Not on this list: the Matrix.)

In light of the recently released Top Gun: Maverick — which is awesome, by the way — Alissa Wilkinson explores the ever-changing relationship between Hollywood and the military.

The American movie industry and the American military have had a long, well-documented, and, on the whole, mutually beneficial relationship since before World War II. Certainly, movies about war and its effects have been made without the aid of the military. But the military has often seen opportunity in the movies: for boosting the morale of the public, altering the popular image of wars and soldiers, and encouraging young people to enlist. In a film industry concerned primarily with profits and technology rather than ideology — which is to say, one essentially conservative in orientation — the partnership has often been an ideal match.
But the nature of the collaboration has changed over time, with shifts in the US military’s role in the world as well as Hollywood’s aims. A movie like Top Gun: Maverick enters a very different world from its predecessor, and comes from an industry that has set its sights on raking in profit from not just America, but the whole world. It’s not just entertainment. It’s the apex of a lengthy and complicated history.

With the release of a new Jurassic World movie comes that age-old question: How realistic are movie dinosaurs?

And while the inclusion of feathers is now a large success for the depiction of dinosaurs, the portrait of its raptors is still not fully accurate, as Kirkland notes.
“They show them a little too smart,” he explained. “I mean, at the time they lived they were the smartest animal on the planet. They had a brain the size of a cat, so a pretty decent brain. You might say, they have the intellect of an opossum. Which, you know, they’re capable of learning that a human is their friend, and they have certain abilities. But they’re not doing higher math. And they’re not as smart as, say, a wolf.”

Related: Back in the early ‘00s, Steven Spielberg had plans to make a Jurassic Park 4. The movie obviously never happened, but if John Sayles’ original script is any indication, it would’ve been wild.

Looking for a good movie this weekend? Then consider some of the titles from David Sims’ list of overlooked and underappreciated films. For example, David Lynch’s Dune:

Before Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel arrives in theaters this fall, David Lynch’s attempt at the material is worth revisiting, even though it was a critical and box-office calamity. Lynch’s failures are clear: He packed far too much material into one feature, struggled to match the broad scope of Herbert’s world building, and made sometimes baffling narrative leaps to abridge his plot. (Villeneuve has apparently addressed this issue in his version by covering only the first half of the book.) But the 1984 version also has bold and exciting design choices, a hypnotic score by Toto, and brassy performances by a wild ensemble that includes Kyle MacLachlan, Patrick Stewart, and Sting. Lynch has practically disowned the film, but some images in Dune are as unforgettable as those in his best-regarded works.

Related: If you’re looking for something a bit more grisly, then consider one of these “body horror” films.

Father’s Day is this weekend, and Sam Bush considers some of the great father figures found on TV, like Ted Lasso.

In a world devoid of (admirable) father figures, it feels like a miracle that they exist at all, fictional or not. But these characters aren’t meant to be ideals to follow, a list of rules for being a good dad. They aim instead squarely at the heart — sort of like romantic comedies, but for parenting. And just as rom-coms evoke the feelings of love and appreciation for one’s spouse, these fictional fathers stir up love for one’s own children.

Related: Yes, Ted Lasso really is as delightful as you’ve heard.

With Kate McKinnon’s recent departure, Saturday Night Live has arguably lost its brightest talent of the last decade.

In many ways, McKinnon has been the heart of SNL since arriving a decade ago. As an ensemble comedy, the show requires cast members who support one another in service of a sketch — a lesson it learned after Chevy Chase’s departure following the first season. McKinnon’s talent pulled the spotlight, but she was an equally adept scene partner. She didn’t use her talents to isolate herself. Instead, she put nervous hosts at ease and warmly made room for everyone to do their best. The results read on camera: She always seemed like she was having the most fun.

Related: Kate McKinnon’s 10 most iconic sketches.

Jeff Terich celebrates Cocteau Twins’ otherworldly discography.

Cocteau Twins didn’t coin the term “dream pop” (credit for that goes to their 4AD labelmates A.R. Kane), but they help in crafting its sound, from their haunting early material on 1984’s Treasure to the more blissfully radio-friendly version of it on 1988’s Blue Bell Knoll. The trio — Guthrie, vocalist Elizabeth Fraser and bassist Simon Raymonde (and briefly, Will Haggie) — spun brilliant pop music from an intangible ether, juxtaposing guitar tones with a vibrant glow against Fraser’s stunning vocal range and enigmatic vocalizations. It’s something both beautiful and strange, a sound that’s never quite been captured by anyone else, and will never be replicated by the band again (Raymonde said as recently as 2021 that a reunion will never happen). But then again, the thing about magic is that it can’t be replicated.

Related: Cocteau Twins’ Heaven or Las Vegas (arguably their best album) turned 30 way back in 2020, and I still stand by these words: “[it’s] an album whose beauty and magic has remained untarnished and undimmed by the last three decades.”

Also Related: Cocteau Twins’ vocalist, Elizabeth Fraser, has a new musical project called Sun’s Signature. Their self-titled EP is out now on Partisan Records.

If you’re an aspiring musician hoping to get signed, and a label exec offers to listen to your demo for a couple hundred bucks, ignore them: it’s a scam.

Since the summer of 2021, there appears to be an epidemic of these scams — based on targeted impersonations, often on Instagram or Gmail — sweeping around the independent label community. Tompsett estimates that over half of 4AD’s current staff “have had fake accounts made in their names over the past month to six weeks.” And more than 15 labels in the independent community have reported similar experiences to Billboard, including several of the most prominent companies. Some aspiring artists, including a few teens, are falling for the con and shelling out cash to fake label employees.

Back in 2007, Tim Meeks invented the harpejji, a musical instrument that’s basically a guitar/piano hybrid. But it took awhile before it became successful.

The harpejji, which sells for $3,000 to $6,000, is long and flat and electrified, with strings stretched over frets along a wooden body. Beneath them are black and white markers that correspond to the notes on a piano. Horizontally the notes run in whole tones; vertically they’re in half-tones. A note sounds only when a string touches a fret, and that’s done with any number of fingers at once. Those active strings also can be bent, shaken or strummed.

Notable musicians who’ve taken to the harpejji include Stevie Wonder and Harry Connick Jr. If you’re curious what the guitar/piano hybrid sounds like, here’s a video of somebody covering the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” on one.

Legendary comic artist Tim Sale died earlier this week at the age of 66. He was best known for his collaborations with writer Jeph Loeb, particularly Batman: The Long Halloween.

In 1995, Sale and Loeb did both a Wolverine/Gambit miniseries for Marvel as well as what seemed to be their final Batman Halloween one-shot. However, editor Archie Goodwin not only convinced them to do another Halloween story, he got them to do it as a year-long maxiseries, and their 13-issue masterpiece, Batman: The Long Halloween (from Halloween 1996 through Halloween 1997), made both Sale and Loeb comic book superstars. One of the top pairings in comics, Loeb and Sale followed up The Long Halloween with a look at Superman's life in the four-issue series, Superman For All Seasons, in 1998. Sale also returned to Grendel in the anthology series, Grendel: Black, White and Red. Sale won the Eisner Award for Best Penciler/Inker for his work on Superman For All Seasons and Grendel: Black, White and Red. His short story with Matt Wagner in Black, White and Red #1 also won an Eisner for Best Short Story.

From the Blog

One of the big revelations to emerge from this week’s January 6 hearings is that the $250 million that Trump raised after losing the election did not go towards an “election defense” fund, as he claimed it would, but instead, went to his own political action committee for his own benefit. (I use “revelation” loosely, because none of this should come as a surprise to anyone.)

You might ask how Trump was able to raise so much money. In the weeks leading up to the election, Trump’s campaign employed a number of “dark patterns” to basically trick people into giving money, or giving more money than they thought they were.

The Times article includes several screenshots of the “money bomb” and its accompanying language, which grew increasingly elaborate, overwhelming, and even guilt-tinged. And all of it intended to get unwitting Trump supporters to put thousands of dollars in Trump’s coffers without realizing it.

Gizmodo has compiled several examples of Trump’s “ridiculous” fundraising emails.

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Weekend Reads (Jun 18): Internet Explorer…