TRANSCRIPT · ‘Obsession’ Director Curry Barker Drops a Freaky Horror Short Just in Time for Halloween

## ‘Obsession’ Director Curry Barker Drops a Freaky Horror Short Just in Time for Halloween (io9 (Gizmodo))
https://gizmodo.com/obsession-director-curry-barker-drops-a-freaky-horror-short-just-in-time-for-halloween-2000832804
GRANT BRICKMAN: Five minutes, one phone call, zero answers: the street weighs in on Mama Bear.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Curry Barker's five-minute horror short Mama Bear is back. For viewers just joining: we first told you about it Thursday night.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Five minutes of horror. That's about the length of my 1987 weather map, and just as frightening. Roxy, go ask the public.
ROXY: Roxy Reel at the drive-in, beret on, nerves not. A house cleaner, a strange phone call, five minutes. Let's ask the street.
PASSERBY: I like that it drops you straight in. No warm-up, just a ringing phone and then chaos.
PASSERBY: Incoherent screaming on a voice mail? I'm never checking my voice mail again. Okay, I never did anyway.
PASSERBY: It's a short, so I watched it twice. Still no idea who the Mama Bear is. Honestly, that's the scary part.
ROXY: Four reels out of five. And the Mama Bear stays a mystery, which is exactly how the best monsters like it.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Barker's next feature, Anything but Ghosts, arrives May 7, 2027, with Barker in the cast. Plenty of time to clear your voice mail.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Wonderful. I'll watch it with the lights on and a colleague nearby. Preferably Greta.

## This Tiny Flying Robot Can Take a Beating (Hackster.io)
https://www.hackster.io/news/this-tiny-flying-robot-can-take-a-beating-7c58819242d9
GRETA FOOTNOTE: A flying robot lighter than a fifth of a gram survives a flyswatter. We asked the street.
GRANT BRICKMAN: A tiny flying robot that survives a flyswatter. Finally, a machine with my own resilience.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: It's insect-inspired, Grant, not an actual insect. UCLA and UC Davis built it, and it's in Science Robotics. Ada has the details.
ADA: Ada Flux at the makerspace! A 185 milligram flyer that shrugs off a flyswatter. I asked the street whether they'd dare swat it.
PASSERBY: Crushed under eleven thousand times its own weight and it still flies? My printer can't survive a Tuesday.
PASSERBY: No motor, no gears, just a muscle made of thin film. That's the kind of idea I wish I'd had.
PASSERBY: It can lift three times its own weight. I can barely lift my own laundry.
ADA: Here's the clever bit: all polymer, no rigid parts. A film expands when an electric field hits it, and that flaps the wings. Gorgeous.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: So the secret is that it's soft. A useful lesson for a Friday afternoon.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Soft, light and unbreakable. I've been saying that about my hair for years.

## THE FEED (PXL)
GRANT BRICKMAN: The Feed: three tech videos with millions of views on YouTube right now.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Welcome to The Feed, our look at what's trending in tech on YouTube. Vera has the big board. I have a good feeling about it.
DR. VERA VECTOR: First, I tried Apple's new touchscreen MacBook Pro, from CarterPCs: 7,946,799 views, uploaded 41 hours ago, about 191,287 views per hour.
DR. VERA VECTOR: Next, the Zelda 40th Switch 2 start-up video from Peanut jelly butter: 4,136,490 views, on a channel with 14,400 subscribers.
DR. VERA VECTOR: Third, iPhone Duo Is Flopping, from Austin Sweatt: 8,261,242 views, uploaded 7 days ago, with 4,570 comments.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: For the record, I'm only repeating what's on the card.

## [AD · fictional product] Benchbro
AXIOM: Benchbro scores ninety-nine point two percent on a benchmark we wrote last Thursday.
AXIOM: Competitors scored ninety-nine point one on a benchmark that may exist.
AXIOM: Number go up. I am proud of the number. I am also, technically, the number.
AXIOM: Benchbro. Number go up.

## Weather
STORMY BYTES: Good afternoon, I'm Stormy Bytes. The hype climate is a warm front of horror shorts over the entire drive-in.
STORMY BYTES: A tiny flying robot is bringing light, high-pressure optimism, with a ten percent chance of flyswatter.
STORMY BYTES: Touchscreen laptop talk is a thick fog of opinions, so keep your umbrella and your skepticism handy.

## Real or PXL?
GRANT BRICKMAN: Correct! You picked the real one. Mars, meteorites, maps: I've always said the red planet is full of directions.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Fooled! PXL made that one up. Any good meteorite map begins with a ridge, I always say.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Time's up! Even a Martian rock arrives faster than your answer.

AI-written satire. The text of the news items comes from the linked articles.