So a lone 23-year old decided to make a Scooby-Doo fan film. To do this, he used computer generated stop-motion to replicate the look of a Rankin-Bass holiday TV movie from back in the day… and an AI voice generator. This latter was due to the fact that this project had no budget to afford voice actors. The resulting dialog is a *little* stilted and stiff, but it really does sound like the original Scooby cast, and if you didn’t know it was done by AI, you might not pick up on it. Well, ok, who cares. It’s just a little fan film. However, some professional voice acting units got in a snit, pitched a fit… and basically ticked off the majority of those who gave a damn. The result of *that* is some blowback against the actors strike. The end result will likely be *more* acceptance of the use of AI for voices.
Right now the professional writers and actors don’t want to write or act. But they also don’t want the *amateurs* to do their thing, either. This sort of attitude is exactly the sort of thing that irritates the public. This sort of thing will accelerate the obsolescence of actors and writers… and studios as well.
There is an ongoing spat between two YouTubers. The details don’t really matter; the YouTubers don’t really matter. Like a lot of these things, their spat is boooring. However, sometimes these sad little moments result in other people trying to explain the situation, and making something interesting and useful out of it. Below is a video from yet another YouTuber; in the process of explaining why one of the combatants is wrong, he devotes the majority of his video to explaining how 1930’s/40’s German National Socialism is indeed far leftist ideology, and actual *socialist* ideology. This is not a new concept, but some people persist in believing that Funny Mustache Man was actually a right winger, and it’s always important to correct them.
I posted a reply and was *instantly* locked out for twelve hours. Why? Because I pointed out that in Star Trek, society is post-scarcity (not socialist, as was claimed by the guy I was replying to) and that mental illness is largely a thing of the past (as evidenced by “Dagger of the Mind” and “Whom Gods Destroy”) and the whole gender madness we’re currently experiencing is long past (see “Enterprise” episode “Cogenitor” where it is made repeatedly and abundantly clear that humans have a grand total of two genders, and that a third is weird and alien and really kinda disturbing to a lot of folks). The vague Twitter message said something about violating the rules on advocating violence or some such nonsense.
So either the sensitive little soul I replied to was lightning fast on his “my feelings are hurt, make the bad man and his opposing viewpoint go away” button, or Twitter has a bot that does it automatically. In either case, the “Twitter is a free speech zone” claim looks a little dubious to me at the moment.
Update: Now Twitter says it could take more than a week for my account to be restored to functionality.
A Sam Jackson-starring movie about money laundering via crappy paintings. Hmmm…
This is, of course, not a new idea. It’s actually a pretty obvious one; the value of art is about the most subjective form of monetary valuation you could dream up. Even more than a dollar bill, a painting is objectively nearly worthless, with it’s “value” being almost purely determined by what people *believe* it’s worth. A painting that was slapped together in ten minutes could sell for a million dollars if you can persuade someone that it’s worth it. Or it could sell for a million dollars if, say, you want the Chinese government to give you a million dollars without being clearly seen as taking bribes.
Hmmm. Can I interest anyone in a million-dollar cyanotype?
As you can see, there was a moderate positive correlation between cognitive ability and support for freedom of speech, and a moderate negative correlation between cognitive ability and concern for political correctness. (The asterisks tell us these results are statistically significant.)
North Americans with higher cognitive ability are more supportive of free speech and less concerned about political correctness. They’re less woke.
It’s a single study and not a terribly comprehensive one. But with a sample size of a single Kamala Harris or AOC or Swalwell, it’s easy to conclude that wokism leads to a massive case of brain rot.
Academic researchers condemned students’ irreverent and offensive responses to an LGBTQ survey, claiming the pushback indicates “fascist ideologues” are “living ‘inside the house’ of engineering and computer science.”
In an article for the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, academics from Oregon State University wrote about their shock at receiving sarcasm and mockery in response to their research into undergraduate LGBTQ students studying in STEM fields. …
According to the article, when the “malicious” subjects were asked to fill out demographic data, “12 respondents (24%) indicated their gender as being related to a helicopter or aircraft” ranging from an “Apache Attack Helicopter” to a “V22 osprey.” In the section declaring one’s disabilities, responses ranged from claiming to be “illiterate” to lamenting “My country is run by communists,” or even declaring that identifying as transgender is a disability in itself due to “the inability to come to terms with biological reality.”
One respondent claimed to identify as a gift card as their gender. Under racial and ethnic identities they said, “I’m an ethnic gift card,” and for disability the answer was “I don’t have enough gift cards.”
There is hope for the future; these kids have their heads on right.
Are you questioning whether there is increased mental illness in Certain Special Groups? Maybe this bit will help you make up your mind on the subject:
The research team declared that the mockery they received “had a profound impact on morale and mental health,” particularly for one transgender researcher who was “already in therapy for anxiety and depression regarding online anti-trans rhetoric.” The paper claimed that “managing the study’s data collection caused significant personal distress, and time had to be taken off the project to heal from traumatic harm” of having to read students’ responses in the survey.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
The whole article is entertaining as hell; the “researchers” are so screwed up that they think any mockery of their views is down to “fascism.”
The article is pretty much what you’ll think it’s going to be. A lot of yammering about religion, history, privilege, blah, blah, blah. The usual buzz-word salad that’s all too common in any piece that can be used to denigrate white people, white culture, white anything.
But throughout all of it, an obvious point was left unmentioned. Why do a lot of people like “bland” food? Maybe… because they *like* “bland” food. I am one such. I am perfectly capable of making a satisfying meal out of little more than noodles. *Just* noodles. Or plain rice, a mashed potato, an unadorned chunk of chicken. A fine meal can be made from mixing peanut butter with oatmeal. Is it because I like “bland?” No. It’s because the flavor is perfectly satisfying. What people like the author of the linked article don’t seem to grasp is that people’s senses are on a spectrum. Women, for example, apparently see colors far more clearly than men do. Some people can hear a pin drop, and would be in physical agony to be subjected to the conversational level of the average Friday night at the local bar. Some people can’t smell much of anything and thus drown themselves in perfume; others can pick up the slightest hints of odor from across the room.
Foods that this author, and apparently many others, would find completely lacking in flavor would be a riot of taste sensation to someone else. Subjecting that person to a pile of seasoning would be to simply overload their senses for no good reason.
I am comfortable in temperatures others might find frigidly cold. I like the lights turned a little dimmer than standard; a nice sunny day is blinding. Some of this is doubtless due to random chance; some of it doubtless due to the northern European portions of my muttly breeding. And perhaps that plays into food: while spices have been present in northern Europe since forever, they were not as plentiful as elsewhere. Many of my ancestors were probably lucky to survive on simple grain, mutton, chicken, that sort of thing. Their foods were likely less “foody” than people from the Mediterranean, the Middle East, India, Africa, etc. Thus they evolved to deal with that. That was normal for them. One might wonder if that made their sense of taste sharper, more keen compared to some others.
So if you’re like me and a bowl of mac and cheese actually sounds pretty good, don’t let goons like the author of the piece shame you. Take pride in the fact that you don’t *need* to shower your food with extravagances in order to be happy and satisfied.
Photos have emerged from the next Disney live action remake of one of their classic animated films, “Snow White.” You know, the one about the Germanic princess with skin so white it looked like snow, who ended up running around with seven dwarves? Well… about all that, Disney has decided to continue the unprofitable trend of de-whitening European folk tales.
There are claims that these *aren’t* the actual “dwarves.” But given that “Snow White” is to be played by a Hispanic woman… why assume that these *aren’t* an accurate depiction? And remember, Hollywood is hardly above lying to the public’s face. Remember when Benedict Cumberbatch *wasn’t* playing Khan? Or when all the remakes and reboots of classic animated series were supposed to be faithful continuations that the existing fans would recognize, love and appreciate? Yeah… lying liars who lie have a tendency to lie.
And… it turns out that those claims of “fake” are probably themselves fake:
Asked for comment on the brouhaha, a Disney spokesperson initially told The Daily Beast “the photos are fake and not from our production” and added that the Mouse House wanted a correction from the Mail.
Hours later, however, Disney’s PR shop completely backtracked and said the photos were from the production but were not official “photos”—chalking up the earlier statement to a misunderstanding.
Dear readers, consider this: somewhere out in the multiverse there’s a version of the Disney corporation that decided to do a live action remake of “Snow White,” and decided to try their hardest to make it look like the original animated classic. And somewhere else out there is another Disney that decided to do a “Snow White” remake that was faithful to the Grimm tale as written. And somewhere further down the multiverse line is a version of Disney that decide to say “Fark it” and make a truly messed-up remake that swaps out all the “disneyfication” for hard-core “let’s make this thing like Germans a thousand years ago would have made it, with friggen’ terrifying monsters and death and horror straight out of Teutonic legends and myths and folk tales,” likely directed by del Toro with the aid of the ghosts of Lovecraft and Giger.
Any one of those is something I would have been interested in. *This* worlds Disney? Nah.
Note: the “dwarves” from Norse/Germanic folk tales weren’t just short humans. They were a different order of being entirely.
Anyway, Hollywood is basically on strike now, with writers and actors on the picket line. I imagine this might effect “Snow White,” as well as every other movie and TV show out there. But you know what? Who friggen’ cares. Things have gotten so slow in Hollywood that people have come to expect *years* between seasons of shows… seasons with a tiny number of episodes. long gone are the likes of *good* Star Trek series where you could expect 20+ episodes every year. now… Eight? Ten? And with many shows, the gap between seasons lasting a number of years. When did season 3 of “The Orville” end? When will season 4 start… if it ever does? And let’s face it: there are a metric fark-ton of old movies and shows available for streaming, more than enough to tide most people over for the most extended of strike. And beyond even that… YouTube and the like are loaded to the gills with lone creators who are far more entertaining than quarter-billion-dollar productions. So you go right ahead and shut down production, Hollywood. if it strangles nonsense like “Snow White,” so much the better.
How long before I’m able to say “Hey, AI, make me a four-hour faithful adaptation of ‘Snow White’ Using the production team from “The Lord Of The Rings” and starring Marylin Monroe as Snow White’?” Because that’ll be the end of Hollywood.
On some level, “red flag laws” make some sense. On a perhaps more important level, they are a slippery slope that slides down into totalitarianism. Take, for example, a law proposed for the state of Tennessee:
Another “Red Flag” category of legislation has surfaced on April 20, 2023. This one is written as an amendment to House Bill 768 by Representative John Ragan and Senate Bill 522 by Senator Frank Nicely At this time, we have no information to indicate that either of these sponsors are cooperating with the proposed amendment or even willing to consider it.
This bill comes from a different angle. What it seeks to do is to create a new class of prohibited persons in Tennessee who will loose their 2nd Amendment rights, perhaps permanently, based solely on whether the individual is taking one of ten (10) specifically listed prescription drugs. The drugs listed in the legislation are:
As written, the proposed amendment would require that the individual receiving a prescription for one of these drugs would have to sign an acknowledgement that the person:
(A) Understands and agrees to be barred from the purchase of a firearm for at least the duration of the treatment regimen; and
(B) Understands and agrees that information concerning the prescription will be shared with the Tennessee bureau of investigation and that the patient waives the patient’s non-disclosure rights under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) (42 U.S.C. § 1320d et seq.) and other federal and state confidentiality laws for purposes of sharing information concerning the prescription with the Tennessee bureau of investigation.
All ten of those drugs are prescription anti-depressants. This article was written back in April; I can’t find whether or not the amendment has passed But the fact that it was proposed at all is Not A Good Thing. To have a natural-born citizen’s basic civil and human rights deleted at the stroke of a pen not because you’ve committed violence, not because you’re a threat to yourself or others, but simply because you’re depressed and under a proper doctors legally-prescribed care, is appalling.How about let’s start with “Have you committed arson? Shoplifting? Vandalism? Assault? Strong-arm robbery? Rioting? Looting? Then you lose the right to vote for a term of X years, along with all government benefits.” Start there, see how it goes for a generation, *then* start looking at laws against people who’ve done nothing wrong.
The pendulum *may* be beginning to swing the other way on some issues. For a number of years the bulk of the populace has been cowed into obedience over LGBTQ/Pride stuff with threats ranging from being called names to losing their jobs… but more and more people are ceasing to care. Some of this is doubtless due to the over-use of Cancel Culture tactics. And a lot of it is doubtless due to people being fed up with the utter insanity that many weirdos are trying to normalize. “Drag Queen Story Hour” may go down in history as the moment when people, parents of small children in particular, said “enough.”
The video below describes a *lot* of recent events, both of the weirdos trying to threaten people for not going along with the ideology, and with normal folk pushing back.
