Sumana

Belatedly realized I'd already made a front-page post to MetaFilter recommending a short story that I already recommended to you but without much fanfare! So I'll post here what I was gonna say there:

"Subject: 'Became a zombie' Life Event"

From 2013: "Feature Development for Social Networking" by Benjamin Rosenbaum, an epistolary zombie story set at a tech platform, exploring "how fantastical tropes might alter a familiar technology that many of us use every day". Tracy: "We decided AGAINST making it a Life Event! The point is to be able to tag other people as zombies. If you can log in to update your own status, you’re not a zombie, am I right?" Floyd: "There is a 24-hour incubation period, so you could set it in advance of symptom onset."

(Cross-posting, partially, from MetaFilter)

In the US and some other countries, Tubi is an ad-supported streaming service where you can watch some movies and TV for free, without having to log in. The catalog of course includes a lot of "that looks like dreck" stuff, but also 16 seasons of Columbo, classic films such as Stalag-17 and Fail-Safe, and other stuff you may have been meaning to watch.

Caution that selecting a film and loading the page will automatically start playing the movie, including audio. This doesn't seem to happen for TV shows, just movies.

Search, categorization, and filtering isn't very good, and the content is interrupted by commercials; this is a service worth checking if you prefer to spend time and patience rather than money. In my experience the ad breaks are, like, every 20 minutes or so, and vary from about 30 to 120 seconds of pretty mainstream ads for laundry detergent, cars, and stuff like that.

Tubi is owned by FOX (the Murdoch company).

I watch in a web browser. It's also available on a bunch of devices and smart TVs; here's the list within the US (except for Puerto Rico) and here's the list for other supported areas: Puerto Rico, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Panama.

It's worth checking the page of Tubi TV/movies that are leaving the service soon, which currently (in the US) includes Requiem for a Dream, 12 Angry Men, Hackers, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Cutting Edge, Carol, Tank Girl, UHF, and Desperately Seeking Susan.

My MetaFilter post lists several films and TV series currently available in the US catalog. Please feel free to signal-boost that post; I'd prefer you publicly reshare that one rather than this Dreamwidth post.

Folks here may particularly be interested in the fact that Tubi has Farscape. Batman (1966), the early (actually good) seasons of Project Runway, Tank Girl, Impromptu, and The Dawn Wall.