So, California is on fire again. This is due to several reasons… drought conditions, winds, refusal to build breeder reactors and desal plants, bad forestry management, etc. But if you want a truly screwed up read of the situation, one that blames laser beams for the fires… well, here ya go (video dates from a while ago but… meh, crazy lasts forever):
Feh.
The Racine Street Bridge in Menasha, Wisconsin.
As rumors and tales spread of yet more Star Trek series on CBS All Access that will probably suck because they ignore the message and canon of Trek, I found this photoshopped image that, if someone could pull it off (give it five years and a decent research budget and I bet a modern network would be able to use a Deep Fakes-like AI to make this work), would result in the most substantially badass possible Trek timeline.
This is claimed to be one of the Antifa terrorists who surrounded Tucker Carlsons home while they knew he was away in order to scare his wife:
Notice how the press, such as CNN, is going nuts over the White House yoinking Jim Acosta’s press credentials for being an unutterable buffoon? They don’t seem to be expressing quite as much outrage over a political operative threatening to *jail* reporters for trying to cover the dubious goings-on with the Florida recounts and miraculous discoveries of new votes.
It seems like only yesterday that Democrats were making a whole lot of noise about how decades-old unsubstantiated accusations were sufficient cause to derail careers. But today? Well… nevermind.
Rep. Steven Roberts, D-St. Louis was accused a mere two years ago, and his political star continues to rise.
Bonus round:
Once again, a rant about pop culture and our common cultural heritage (similarly ranted about HERE). The video below is a general breakdown of how and why 1978’s “Superman” is Really That Good of a movie. But among the discussion of how casting and cinematography and writing came together to produce a movie that still stands up more than 40 years later, there is also the recognition that Superman is more than just another comic book character. Superman is, to an important degree, vital to American culture, informing us of who we are, who we can be, who we should be, who we want to be.
Personally, I like the likes of Iron Man and Batman more, morally conflicted imperfect Normal Humans who are able to save the day from bigger threats due to their use of engineering, technology and smarts. And… money. Lots and lots of money. Because, while hideously unlikely, I theoretically *could* become Stinking Rich, but gaining superpowers ain’t gonna happen. Still: Superman is much more distinctly “American” than either Batman or Iron Man, despite the fact that all three were created by Americans, for Americans, as Americans. Superman, like the founding documents of the US, is a vision of idealism. Heck, think back to the climax of “The Iron Giant.” That is one of those few movies in the pantheon of Guy Flicks where it is universally accepted that it is perfectly acceptable for Manly Guys to shed a tear at the end. At the climax, the Iron Giant sacrifices himself to save a town full of people who fear and hate him, and as he does so he murmurs “Superman” and you know *exactly* what that means. It would have made precisely no sense for him to have murmured “Batman” or “Green Lantern” or “Iron Man” or “Spawn” or virtually any other hero, real or imagined. The phrase used in the video below, “guiding moral philosophy,” applies to Superman in a way that it doesn’t to a great many other characters. But of course, Superman is not exactly unique there.
History is full of characters, real, fictional, mythological, who a great many people have built their own moral philosophies around. Not just Superman, but the likes of Luke Skywalker, Captain Kirk, Spock, Robin Hood, King Arthur, John Galt, Sherlock Holmes, Doc Brown all have their adherents, along with more archetypical “types” like Cops and Cowboys and Space Captains. Characters that kids want to dress up as and pretend to be, and as they grow up, continue to wish to be or at least be like.
And so when people come along and take a dump on those beloved characters, either by just doing a poor job of writing/portraying them, or intentionally “subverting” them, they are doing more than putting their own brand on a fictional character. They are burning the flag, defacing the statue, scrawling a mustache on the Mona Lisa. There are certain things that Superman (or Luke Skywalker, Spock, etc.) *has* to be , or it ain’t Superman. And it’s fine to not be Superman. The Punisher isn’t Superman. Wolverine isn’t Superman. Blade and Judge Dredd and Doctor Manhattan aren’t Superman. But then… they’re also not pretending to be. If you want a “subverted” Superman… go for it. Just don’t say it’s Superman. This would seem obvious. But some people don’t get it, and some people don’t get it about a whole range of things. They don’t get it in such a consistent way that you can now see well in advance what “subversion” there’s going to be. A businessman shows up? Oh, he’s the bad guy. A scientist? Either a pawn, a villain or a dumbass. Is it even faintly an allegory about America? America will be portrayed as corrupt, immoral, evil, racist… all the things that by *any* rational metric, we are not.
Feh. Rant over. Enjoy the video.
When someone threatens your life… believe them.
the man posted, “I’m utterly disgusted with any Trump voter. You are the most un-American. You are filth, You are slime.”
It goes on to say, “I’ll start asking if you are a Trump supporter — if you are, ya’ll [sic] will die in my ambulance.”
A Chinese news agency has introduced an English-language computer simulated “news anchor.” I’m honestly a bit befuddled. What’s the point? What does an AI anchor bring that simply reading text does not? Shrug. Anyway, here it is:
The interesting thing here is that the video is more convincing than the audio. If you just glance at the video with the audio off, you might not noticed that this isn’t a human (though you also might, as the movement of the mouth is still well within Uncanny Valley… the “anchor” seems to be talking with his teeth almost clenched). But if you just hear the audio, it’s blisteringly obviously a synthesized voice. At first thought you’d likely think that the video should be far harder to do convincingly than audio. but really, all the “anchor” needs to do is sit there and move its mouth, while providing a few other seemingly randomized movements to simulate the living; but human speech is *all* over the place. An actual human would put pauses and inflections all over in a way that would sound natural to another human, but a voice synthesizer would have to be specifically programmed to produce those. And apparently that’s hard.