Ummm….
It looks like a lot of things. Like MLK, though, is not one of them. Disembodied limbs doing naughty things, sure. What Starfleet got back from that transporter foulup at the beginning of ST:TMP, sure. But an actual recognizable human? Not so much.
Perhaps it was made specifically to get torn down. In recent years it has become standard practice to tear down statues of historical figures who have the slightest hint of unfortunate or problematic aspects… and, well…
A 14-minute short that’s better than pretty much any 2-hour Hollywood movie…
There is, I think, a lot of wishful thinking here, but interesting speculation nonetheless.
The author believes that the Russian Federation will collapse into dozens of independent states, Russia itself will become a minor rump state, and the world will be a happier, safer, more western place, with China somehow also reduced in power.
Ummm. Nice dream, I suppose, but wounded animals are bad enough; wounded *psychotic* animals with nukes are kind of a special sort of problem.
Also: the photo in the article shows part of a painting that appears to depict Satan setting Putin on fire. It’s not described in the article, but this is a mural painted at the St. Josaphat Church in Chervonograd city, Ukraine in 2017. This is well to the west of Ukraine, so it’s probably still standing. Looks a lot like a Jon McNaughton painting.
The title of this YouTube video claims that “Chrome Lords” was a 1988 movie that ripped off “RoboCop” and “Terminator.” But in fact “Chrome Lords” never existed. The video is ten minutes of “stills” from a movie that never was… all the images were produced by an AI. And other than places where it looks like AI/CGI, it *does* rather look like one of those schlocky 1980’s crapfest movies. So, well done. But here’s the thing… give it a few years (5? 10? 20?) and someone will have an AI take a few text prompts and spit out a full script, feed these images and the new script into another AI… and shazam, “Chrome Lords” will exist as an actual 90 minute horrible movie. But who – if anyone – will own the copyright?
Two separate projects to create virtual Discoveries from “2001.” Neither one is complete, both are interesting.
The last ten years or so have seen massive denigration of long-established fandoms. Star Trek, Star Wars, LotR, etc. These fandoms have deep and beloved lore, and many of the modern producers simply don’t care. Why respect the canon, when there is a message to deliver?
Fortunately, this is not always the case. Sam Witwer is an actor probably best known for voice acting. He’s voiced Darth Maul in the “Clone Wars” and “Rebels” series, and “Starkiller” in the “Force Unleashed” video game, where he also did motion capture. It’s that latter one that’s of interest here. Turns out that he was knowledgeable in Star Wars lore, and knew how to apply that knowledge… and the director of the game knew to respect that. (This was a 2008 release, before the modern age of garbage; but witness Henry Cavill’s love of Warcraft 40K secured him a post-DCU future.) Behold:
Something like 15-20 years ago I bought a 1/18 scale P-47D “Ultimate Soldier” toy. This line of large scale accurate fighter planes was sort of peak Golden Age Of Toys For Adults, even though they sold for a reasonable price at WalMart. They make great display pieces even without structural modifications or repainting, but they are generally screaming for such.
Anyway, the P-47D spent years on a shelf in my shop in Utah. From time to time it caught direct sunlight. This discolored the paint *slightly,* but it turned the originally crystal clear canopies milky white. I’ve left them in the dark for some years to see if that would help… nope. I boiled them… nope. I nuked them, if perhaps briefly, with UV; no change. Anybody got any ideas? Why did this happen? How can it be reversed? Scrubbing has shown that this is not a surface feature, but seems to be throughout the plastic.
At some point, recasting them with crystal clear resin might be the only solution, but it’s not one I’m fond of. None of the other canopies did this, so it would seem these two pieces of plastic came from a bad batch.
Here’s something interesting…
If AI created art is ineligible for copyright protection, that’ll set up a roadblock to the forthcoming artpoclypse. It isn’t complete protection, of course… I’m sure there’s some spectrum between “eligible” and “ineligible.” How much manual tinkering a bit of AI-art needs is yet to be determined.
Also… it appears that the US Copyright Office believes that copyright protection is available only for art created by humans. Right now that’s fair… but in the future, probably not. AI might change from an unthinking tool to actual entities, with civil rights and all that. Someone twenty years from now might get bored and genetically tinker with Bonobos or Bottlenose and uplift them to full human sentience; at which point granting *their* personhood would mean that any art they create should merit their copyright.
@conor902
3 hours ago