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July 2024 News

July 2024 Gwern.net newsletter with links on TODO

July 2024’s ⁠Gwern.net newsletter is now out; previous, ⁠June 2024 (archives). This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with my ⁠Changelog; brought to you by my donors on Patreon.

Writings

Books

Nonfiction:

Fiction:

Film/TV

Live-action:

Animated:

  • Ultraman: Rising (American Hollywood adaptation by a co-creator of Kubo and the Two Strings; not being an Ultraman fan, or indeed, having ever watched anything involving Ultraman, it was mostly lost on me, coming off as painfully predictable in a save-the-cat sense—it avoids the obvious beats like the protagonist falling in love with the single-mom journalist only because there is not enough time, and those story beats are presumably deferred to the sequel it sets up. Much of the rest is derivative of Neon Genesis Evangelion like the antagonist (a Gendo Ikari) or the robotic kaiju he uses as his weapon (like an Evangelion, actually a monster in armor)—which borrowed twist renders the third act nonsensical (there is no need to trick the baby into going home to the hidden kaiju island if you have already captured the mom & can just track her!). This copying is especially ironic considering that Hideaki Anno is himself such an Ultraman fan that he’s already directed his own movie.)

Music

Touhou:

Vocaloid:

MLP:

Doujin:

Misc: