Holy Fucking Shit
See more posts like this on Tumblr
#hot off the queueMore you might like
[image ID: screenshots from CNN live updates on the SAG-AFTRA strike. The first one shows the headline, "SAG-AFTRA negotiator says studios' proposal allowed for actors' digital likenesses to be used forever."
The second shows the text, "SAG-AFTRA's negotiator pushed back about an alleged claim made by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) that its proposal would offer protections surrounding the use of AI likeness of actors.
"During Thursday's news conference, a reporter asked Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief SAG-AFTRA negotiator, about an alleged AMPTP news release that claimed that a "groundbreaking AI proposal" would protect an actor's digital likeness.
"Crabtree-Ireland said that proposal would allow background performers' likenesses to be used repeatedly and indefinitely — all while the performers are paid for only one day of work.
"But this groundbreaking AI proposal that they gave us yesterday — in that groundbreaking AI proposal, they propose that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day's pay and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and to be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation. So, if you think that's a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again," he responded."
end ID.]
If that ever goes through, there's going to be "Yellow shirt guy" and "woman in a red dress" in every scene that requires a background character for 50 years, and then some uppity director will hire new background actors and be praised for his inventive idea instead of being seen as normal.
This is also why CGI Animators need to go on strike. Who do they plan to have making all these scanned background images move and pretend to talk? CGI people. It'll all be done on the computer. The AMPTP is looking at potentially saving hundreds of millions of dollars in the long run by not having to pay day rates and associated costs while still giving CGI Animators shit for compensation. Now is the time for the CGI people to stand up and demand their fair share as well.
CGI animators should unionize next. normally, their jobs would be too precarious to strike, since studios would replace them without a second thought, but if it's part of this larger general film strike, they might finally have meaningful power to better their working conditions
if CGI animators unionized, it would kill the MCU. straight up. the the entire business model is built on exploiting CGI animators
Baross Square underpass, Budapest, 1973. From the Budapest Municipal Photography Company archive.
ALTStrike is on. Actors will be joining the writers on the picket lines. This is the first strike in 60 years for SAG, and essentially shuts down the entire US film and television industry.
Read some actual comics, Kyle.
Superman is an incredibly kind and tender character. (If he’s not being written that way, then he’s not being written well.) He inspires hope not just through his heroics, but also through his kindness toward other people. That’s his thing. Don’t you DARE call tenderness a “weakness.” Get your toxic masculinity the hell away from me and go read a badly written Batman comic if you want a “tough” male character.
Why on EARTH would someone think Superman being tough and Superman being kind are contradictory?
Is that a Snyder fan telling someone that “you’re wrecking the character, create something new instead of making an interpretation that’s so off-base”?
Because Snyder is the guy who wanted the Greek Gods to all be Kryptonians and the Amazons to be descended from them.
Where's that comic where Superman comforts Billy?
I saw that tweet by Gunn and thought “So, like regular Superman?”
Kyle sounds like Lex Luthor who believed that Superman doesn’t have a Civilian identity because such a godlike being would see it as beneath him. Also here you go @simon-newman
These few pages legit make me cry
That's not just for acting, that's life advice. Seriously deep wisdom right there.
Only the strong can be gentle, because the weak don’t have the option of causing harm. Gentleness is the virtue that Superman can best exemplify, by being so strong that the only thing stopping him is himself.
I am so glad that someone who actually likes Superman is writing Superman now
Superman is a power fantasy. But he’s not a power fantasy about being tough and mighty. He’s a power fantasy about being strong enough to save and protect everyone.
Drone Dragon 1500
1,500 drones light up the sky over Shenzhen on June 22 with a flying dragon
this amazing display kicked off China's Dragon Boat Festival, taking place on the 5th day of the 5th month of the Chinese calendar, commemorating the ancient poet Qu Yuan
Alessandro Volta's Electric Eels
Okay so, it turns out that your cell phone battery is a basically a homunculus of an electric fish.
These are the same thing. Let me explain.
@fishteriously, a paleoichthyologist, told me that Alessandro Volta invented the electric battery after studying electric eels and rays. This sounded like a fun science factoid! I wanted to know more! I saw the claim repeated on any number of pop science articles from the last century or so, but none that quoted from primary sources.
The voltaic pile is one of the most important inventions, ever, of all time. Before Volta, electricity could be stored in Leyden jar capacitors, which would discharge in a single, brief burst. Volta's pile was the first method of producing a continuous electric current, which launched the modern era of electricity as we know it. His explanation for how it worked was incorrect, but it was still a massive breakthrough.
Batteries use the same principle to this day, just with different materials (e.g. cobalt oxide, graphite, and lithium salts rather than silver, zinc, and brine).
But is it a fish?
This is Volta's first schematic of a battery, or "voltaic pile" – at the time, "battery" referred to a bunch of Leyden jars linked in series, the term wouldn't come to refer to piles until later. "Z" and "A" stand for zinc and silver ("argentum"), with brine-soaked paper disks between. It does look a bit like an eel?
But is it truly?
Surely, if Volta modeled the pile after electric fishes, I’d be able to find a citation! Wikipedia is usually a good place to start when hunting primary sources, but no luck. No mention of fish at all. I trust fishteriously more than wikipedia, however, so I went digging. Looks like Volta first reported his discovery in a Letter to the Royal Society in 1800.
Found the letter!
Aw beans, it’s in French. I haven’t studied French since high school.
BUT WAIT. WHAT WAS THAT.
Une commotion électrique? A trembling eel???
Okay so now I NEEDED to read the letter in English. I found an English-language summary published by the Royal Society, but it looks like the only English translation of the full letter was in the appendix of an out-of-print book called “Alessandro Volta and the Electric Battery.”
So I bought a used copy. Let's see what Volta has to say about this:
"To this apparatus ... I have constructed it, in its form to the natural electric organ of the torpedo or electric eel, &c, than to the Leyden flask and electric batteries [battery = linked Leyden flasks], I would wish to give the name of artificial electric organ."
Yes! The voltaic pile was explicitly modeled after electric fishes – torpedo rays and electric eels. Fishteriously was 100% correct. Volta never even calls it a "pile," it is always "artificial electric organ." A significant portion of the letter is devoted to electric eels and torpedo rays, in fact.
But also, the rest of the letter is bonkers.
He wrote pages on painful experiments with the artificial electric organ – touching it, poking it into his eyes and ears, making other people touch it, generally just shocking the ever loving hell out of himself over and over. He routinely shocks himself so hard that he has to take breaks. And of course, he licks it.
But that's not the best part:
He says that the artificial electric organ can be turned sideways and submerged in liquid...
"...by which means these cylinders would have a pretty good resemblance to the electric eel ... they might be joined together by pliable metallic wires or screw springs, and then covered with a skin terminated by a head and tail properly formed, &c."
There you have it. One of the most important scientific discoveries of all time, and it includes a crafts project for building an authentic electric eel puppet.
In summary, next time you charge your phone, take a moment to thank the soul of the electric fish inside of it.
the uncommon allergy haver to anticapitalist pipeline
in January 2023, companies became required to label sesame on all products it was present in, and undergo rigorous cleaning procedures to prevent sesame contamination, after it was declared the 9th "major" food allergen in the United States.
so, instead of considering this a mandate to give a single shit about people with sesame allergies, almost all American companies decided to just add sesame flour to all their relevant products. because apparently that was cheaper.
it's almost impossible for me to find hot dog and hamburger buns without sesame now. and I am one of the lucky ones. I'm someone who just so happened to notice the label updates, not get caught unawares and have a severe allergic reaction. I'm someone lucky enough to be surrounded by multiple choices of supermarkets, and someone with the incredible privilege to have parents who'll help me search the shelves, and cover those costs that my allergies rack up. not everyone with allergies/other intolerances has all or any of those privileges to begin with.
most food allergies will never be prevalent enough that under capitalism, it will be profitable to give them the level of accommodation that they deserve. I speak from experience with a wide portfolio of hypersensitivity quirks when I say that the rarer the food allergy, the worse it gets.
and here's the thing: I can live without hamburger buns, with only superficial decreases in my quality of life. but sesame isn't my only rare allergy, and ever since this legislation hit, I've been lying awake at night, afraid of what I might lose access to next.
I've been lying awake at night wondering what I'll have to do to live, to obtain enough safe food to survive, if any of my other allergies get this same treatment. and I reiterate. I am one of the privlidged ones.
what these companies have done is completely legal. what these companies did has also cut off up to over a million people from what were previously safe, affordable staples of their diets. a system that has any incentive not to accommodate the dietary needs of any population is not a system that can be allowed to exist. this is the uncommon allergy haver to angry, fuming anticapitalist pipeline.
if i see a single one of you pissed that your faves canceled an event or a con appearance because they're striking for fair wages then imma come for you in your sleep 🔪🔪🔪
