It baffles and distresses me to know that people who were born *after* the religious attacks of 9/11 are old enough to vote and join the military and be screwed over by the tax system. I didn’t see this now nearly year-old remastering of the Jules Naudet video of the first airplane impact until just now. This was one of the most astonishing things ever caught on video, now clearer than ever before.
Never forget. Never forgive.
Go die for Putin. Receive fish.
Bonus: According to the translation of the interviews below, conscripts are being given a “machine gun” (presumably an AK-47 or AK-74), “four rounds and a knife.” Way to build morale, Vlad.
Palpably mutinous moods among the Russian troops post Lyman. Auto translation via @vidtranslator pic.twitter.com/NQ3QW8dUUV
— Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) October 4, 2022
Bruce Willis, now famous for aphasia wiping out his ability to communicate and to act, has a new source of income:
The same company that bought the rights has previously added a Deepfaked Willis to TV commercials for a Russian phone company (before The War, of course). The results are… minimal:
It seems that the new agreement is based on “Die Hard” and The Fifth Element” era Bruce Willis… back when he had hair. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Well… it’s an inevitable thing, so it’s probably a good thing that we’re getting a precedent of a *living* actor signing up for this while they can do so willingly, and get paid for it. Soon there will probably be money to be made for regular folks to sit in a scanner and go through a range of motions and emotions and sell their Deepfake rights for X amount and Y royalties. Just the way it’s gonna be, I suppose, along with AI-created entirely original “human” actors. One presumed benefit will be a mangling of “celebrity culture,” since celebrities won’t be real people anymore. Some might argue that political campaigns will be able to Deepfake support from digital celebrities… but considering how consistently *stupid* celebrities are about politics anyway, it could hardly be worse. Will anyone *really* care what Marilyn Monrobot has to say about the 2028 Presidential campaign?
Of course, the article includes hand-wringing:
That doesn’t bode well.
…
While this should help Willis and his family earn extra cash, it’s an ominous precedent. With an already golden legacy and a filmography dense with classics like “Die Hard,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Sixth Sense,” is this really how Willis should be drawing out the end of his career?
…
But for the sake of both actors and moviegoers: let’s not have our stars replaced by lifeless reconstructions.
Meh. To my knowledge, there are no Deepfaked actors in “The Rings Of Power,” and Amazon spent a *billion* dollars to crank out a lifeless reconstruction of a psuedo-Tolkein story. So a sequel to “The Fifth Element” with a Deepfaked Bruce Willis? At this point I’d be far more likely to be concerned about a crappilly written story than a bad digital actor.
The budget for this movie was apparently about $50 million. Something like half of the domestic box office goes back to the studio… about $19.85 million. About a quarter of the international box office goes to the studio… about $0.325 million. For a total of $20.175 million. Add in anywhere from $25 million on up in advertising costs, and I’m uncertain that $20+ million will pay off an investment of $70 million, even given that it has weeks to months more run time. I can see it getting to $60, maybe $80 million domestically… which won’t be break-even on production, never mind marketing. If it truly fails, I wonder if we might get a sequel to THIS STORY.
“Inspired by true events.” In much the same way that “The Man in the High Castle” was, I suppose.
Huh. Who woulda guessed.
It kinda seems like Ukrainian interest in NATO membership has been on the rise for a while. One wonders why that might be.
Historical remark on historical day: It is Russia that persuaded Ukrainian people that the best security option is #NATO. Today, more than 80% of Ukrainians support it! #UkraineWillWin pic.twitter.com/TDjmDaM1ro
— Petro Burkovskyy (@PetroBurkovskyi) September 30, 2022
Interesting:
So Russia has blamed the west for sabotaging the pipeline; everybody else on the planet blames Russia for sabotaging the pipeline. But there is another possibility. Consider, for a moment, the fact that the same culture of corruption, arrogance and vodka that gave us Chernobyl was also responsible for maintaining the pipeline.
Yeah. No sabotage needed to explain massive mechanical failures.
An interesting read full of things you probably haven’t considered:
Might be advisable to figure out of this was just a maintenance fail before people start nuking each other over it.
For starters, it has the FBI actually doing its job. Shocking, I know.
Not so much “leak” as “sell.” The medical information seems to be medical records of military personnel and their families, a pile of data that does not immediately seem all that terribly useful. But then, the Russians do not seem to have actually been involved here; these people were baited by the FBI. And what people they are:
During an initial Aug. 17 meeting in a Baltimore hotel room, (Anna) Gabrielian told the agent she was “motivated by patriotism toward Russia to provide any assistance she could to Russia, even if it meant being fired or going to jail.”
Nice. But where it gets more interesting: the female doctors spouse, also arrested, has been in the news before:
(Jamie Lee) Henry received attention in 2015 after becoming the first known active-duty Army officer to come out as transgender. A Buzzfeed article from that time said she was also, to her knowledge and to the knowledge of LGBTQ advocates, the first and only active duty service member who had changed her name and gender within the United States military.
In the one photo in the article Henry looks like a dude. But I guess Henry considers Henry to be female. Shrug.
“My point of view is until the United States actually declares war against Russia, I’m able to help as much as I want,” Henry, 39, told the agent, according to the indictment. “At that point, I’ll have some ethical issues I’ll have to work through.”
“You’ll work through those ethical issues,” Gabrielian replied.
Henry also told the agent she had looked into volunteering to join the Russian Army after the conflict in Ukraine began.
Wonderful. *These* are the sort of people the military is hiring *and* promoting.
It seems that both of these characters consider themselves women. So the fact that they have some number of children is a bit unusual; once again, biology ain’t what it once was. But also:
Gabrielian did fear what might happen to the couple’s children if she put herself at risk of arrest, demanding that the kids be put on “a nice flight to Turkey to go on vacation” if arrest seemed imminent.
What the hell is in Turkey awaiting these kids? “Gabrielian” is an *Armenian* surname. I may not be a world-reknowned historian, but I do seem to recall some unpleasantness between the Turks and Armenians that would tend to suggest that they’re not real fond of each other.
This seems like a moment in time that won’t last. Cultural Enrichment is damn near certain to bring this practice to an end.
@annieineventyrland ♬ path of the wind ~ my neighbor totoro lofi – Closed on Sunday
Lots to contemplate here:
On top of everything else, the Library of Congress deemed it proper to hand over a priceless (and doubtless fragile) historic artifact to be used as a prop or a toy on stage by someone with demonstrated and clearly obvious impulse control issues.
“B****! I just twerked and played James Madison’s crystal flute from 1800’s!” she said, after handing the flute back to a representative from the Library of Congress.
Indeed.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/desecration