(Thread IKs:
OwlFancier)
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Mebh posted:Speaking of, which were the actual named racist royals? (Other than all of them...) Every paper has said "we will not be naming them" Every paper seems to have decided today that the new approach is to offhandedly name them in the body of the article, describe their alleged comments as 'discussing the baby's skin colour' and then start furiously monstering the translator and biographer for defaming our King Charles and beloved Kate. It's all a bit berserk.
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Dec 1, 2023 13:09
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After two pages, I think we can all agree on the basic ethical principle that crimes should be forgiven if the circumstances are funny enough and the victims are unsympathetic enough. It's like when Jonathan Franzen got his glasses stolen at a book launch, or when Bart got Milhouse placed on America's Most Wanted and he had to jump off a dam, or when Peter Marsh became a beloved Come Dine With Me meme even though Jane did actually start the beef between them without provocation. Or what happened to Meredith in the Parent Trap. Those twins should have been arrested, dammit grobbo fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Dec 2, 2023 |
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Dec 2, 2023 10:30
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Nicholas Cage has said he wants to leave movie acting and move into TV so he can spend an hour making faces at luggage, and it's all thanks to Breaking Bad so for that reason I think we should be kinder to it.quote:“I have seen things that can be done now with characters and the time they’re given to express themselves. I saw Bryan Cranston stare at a suitcase for an hour on one episode of Breaking Bad. We don’t have time to do that in a feature film, so maybe television is the next best step for me.” The Wire is the show that will stand the test of time, though, which you can see in the fact that nobody has a drat clue how to replicate it.
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Dec 5, 2023 12:28
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keep punching joe posted:They haven't... yet. Mr Biruta, you don't understand. Vince from Swindon says the deal has to go ahead, because we've been talking about it for so long and it'd look weak if we backed down now.
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Dec 6, 2023 19:52
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2019: "We need a leader who will finally deliver on Brexit!" 2023: "We need a leader who will finally deliver on Rwanda!" 2028: "We need a leader who will finally deliver on, oh, gently caress, what insane and unworkable thing did we insist on to placate the lunatic fringe? It says here 'A Thatcher Gundam to patrol the Channel, blowing up small boats with her chest-bazookas?' That doesn't even make sense. Anyway, it's become clear that the British public want a true Conservative Prime Minister with the will and courage to enslave and assemble the innumerable labour-hordes required to build Gundam Thatcher."
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Dec 6, 2023 20:59
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It says the conference is 'to defend the Rwanda policy' so I think we're just in for a bunch of I HAVE BEEN CLEAR, THE BOATS MUST STOP
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Dec 7, 2023 11:40
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Lemurtron posted:Can anyone actually explain to me what the point of the Rwanda plan is and why the government are pushing it as seemingly the one and only Plan to end all plans? Why must it be pushed through despite all cost, decency, international law, protests and blocks by our very own courts? How is it that this alleged Plan is the only way to deal with alleged illegal immigration and processing of asylum seekers? It squares the circle of having an appealing punitive subtext to racists (we're sending them back to Africa, arf, arf), while also making it more difficult for the UK press to directly embarrass the government's management skills over any embarrassing Legionaire's disease outbreaks, supposed 'five-star hotels', etc. I'm sure there are handouts involved, but I think the point is that we've become a country that's willing to economically self-harm in order to satisfy the gut reactions of nationalists and sweep messy problems under the rug.
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Dec 7, 2023 12:42
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'Ceasefire', like 'genocide' before it, has become politically-contested rhetoric that is far too controversial for our leaders to publicly support. We've just killed a refugee (Care4Calais is implying suicide) who we trapped on a disease-ridden prison boat but we will be pushing through irregardless with this Rwanda shite on the same day because there's no longer a sufficient sense of shame for that news to check us. Just rancid.
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Dec 12, 2023 13:29
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Ms Adequate posted:Still blows my mind that we have a bloke called Drax in parliament Even weirder, he's actually the grandson of the Drax who Ian Fleming named the Bond villain after, and their actual aristocratic name is Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.
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Dec 12, 2023 22:03
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fuctifino posted:Things could be worse. At least we aren't Argentinian. They just devalued their peso by over 50% You say this, but we're probably only one focus group away from either Starmer or Sunak declaring that a round of economic shock therapy is exactly the kind of decisive leadership the UK needs to get back on its feet.
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Dec 13, 2023 10:32
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Apraxin posted:just the equalities minister writing to peoples' employers to say that some research they did about racism existing in the 17th century 'undermines social cohesion' Back in April, the Women & Equalities committee urged Badenoch to seriously investigate the role that structural racism in modern-day UK healthcare plays when it comes to the fact that black people are still four times more likely to die in childbirth in this country so definitely reassuring to see that she's instead running up headlines about how black plague victims in the 14th century didn't face discrimination (or maybe just that they didn't exist?) and how minority ethnic communities just need 'reassurance' to shake off their silly conspiracy theories
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Dec 13, 2023 21:03
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Pistol_Pete posted:It's odd that people'll get all squeamish about eating crickets or whatever but show them e.g. a southern Italian seafood dish with absolutely enormous shrimp that are all legs and wriggly antennae and they'll be delighted. I guess it's the classic hygiene-born taboo around any animals which are considered vermin or pests - i.e. if we lived in a Junji Ito's Gyo world and there were shrimp scuttling around the damp corners of our bedrooms at night or lurking in our attics, we'd probably be a lot less inclined to throw them on the barbie.
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Dec 15, 2023 13:36
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The Telegraph and Times now have multiple columnists exactly like Gill on-staff - these posh-totty young-adult Haw-Haws whose only job is to soothingly reassure an audience of older men over and over again that actually, young people are all feckless, over-sensitive and headed in entirely the wrong direction and we shouldn't listen to anything they have to say.
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Dec 21, 2023 14:00
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keep punching joe posted:AA Gill the creator of Winnie the Pooh Giles Coren: well-connected media family and public school upbringing, made a career out of sneery restaurant reviews with literary pretensions, devotes column inches to blatant anti-black racism, likes to joke about shagging kids, won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, made an internet alt so he could be offensive without anyone knowing Rod Liddle: devotes column inches to blatant anti-black racism, likes to joke about shagging kids, made an internet alt so he could be offensive without anyone knowing, left his wife for a younger journalist, assaulted that same journalist while she was pregnant AA Gill: well-connected media family and public school upbringing, made a career out of sneery restaurant reviews with literary pretensions, won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, left his wife for a younger journalist, shot a chimp just to watch it die There's a powerful Venn diagram of Fleet Street tossers here but I don't want to make it
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Dec 21, 2023 16:39
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Her Dryer posted:I'm late to this I'm sorry but I swear I've seen this exact headline about 100 times in the past two years, if I wasn't very lazy I would look to make some sort of compilation of "Brexit finally about to be good we swear" headlines Despite superficial differences in context and intent, DON'T LET THE SCROOGES GET YOU DOWN is essentially just a holiday-themed CRUSH THE SABOTEURS
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Dec 24, 2023 20:07
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Microplastics posted:Yeah it looks like a pretty nice Christmas day Enjoy! If you spot a jolly old fellow with a big white beard sunning himself with a nice cocktail, please seriously consider the possibility that you've tragically ended up on the M. Night Shymalan Beach That Makes You Old.
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Dec 25, 2023 11:41
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Relatedly, Daniel Sloss has a pretty good show in the vein of 'halfway through let's unexpectedly drop the jokes and talk passionately and angrily about male culpability when it comes to sexual assault' but I think he probably has more traditional standup and solid punchlines dotted in there for anyone who finds Nanette a bit lacking in that regard.
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Dec 27, 2023 14:14
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Mega Comrade posted:I could be friends with someone who's a naieve Tory voter. My Dad voted for them a few times but if you actually asked him what their policies were, he wouldn't know. His reasoning would have just been "I'm sick of Blair" or something and he hasn't voted for them recently because "I don't trust Boris". We get a lot of this centrist broadsheet valorisation about 'reaching across the divide' and how the younger generation needs to start building social relationships with people who disagree with us politically in order to challenge our preconceptions and heal our broken society, and none of it really takes into account just how loving tedious young Tories have been rendered by anti-PC culture and comedy. I understand that to a Guardian columnist, reaching across the political divide involves some gentle Rory Stewart type who you sit down with over a bottle of Chablis to debate the free market, as opposed to 'noisy tosser who won't stop going on about pronouns, immigrants, blue hair, how shallow women are today on Hinge, or showing off his hilarious Team America impressions at you'
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Dec 31, 2023 17:37
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Nothingtoseehere posted:There's more evidence in the report, but I think there's enough to say that this spike in international students dependants is something dodgy - it's a new wave of internation students studying cheap masters courses of dubious quality, using the course more as a backdoor to immigrate to this country (maybe being misled about how easy they'd be able to find a legal route to stay afterwards). This is being facilitated by a university sector that is desperate for international students to fund their institutions due to austerity in the university sector and willing to look the other way to ensure their institution keeps existing. It's not the most important factor here, but it does continue to be incredible how the UK can exist in two political timelines at once: the endless drum-thumping of 'Labour must yet serve its centrist penance, shun all leftery, and prove in time that it can regain the public's trust - for have we forgotten that Starmer himself once broke bread with Jumbly Crumbly??' and the Dory-like elation of 'ANNOUNCEMENT: we are delivering for the UK by enforcing rules changes which should result in a yearly 130k reduction in dependent visas, a number we have estimated based on the fact that in 2022 our rules changes immediately resulted in an 130k increase in dependent visas'
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Jan 2, 2024 12:25
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As an outsider, my understanding is that all good Star Trek shows are about a gruff but goodhearted dad and his gang of sexy bozos, and every bad Star Trek show fails essentially because they didn't make the captain dad enough
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Jan 2, 2024 16:19
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sneering bourgeois, all of you 'gang' and 'gangers' are perfectly legitimate terms used by those of us who actually work for a living, fighting for archeotech in the Underhive of Necromunda in sincerity, quote:I have to kick someone out of my gang tomorrow. He's annoying has refused to work and rubs everyone up the wrong way especially if he doesn't get his own way. The other gangers have asked why I haven't gotten rid of him already. But I hate just cutting people off like that, if we don't work we don't get paid so even thought my life will be easier still feels poo poo getting rid of someone. This sucks and I'm sorry. Try and remember that this is on him and not on you; ultimately your responsibility is to the entire team, not to him, and it sounds like you've tried to make it work and everyone's at their limit. Feeling the weight of it is a reminder that you're conscientious, not a sign that you're doing anything wrong.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:36
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Rappaport posted:Apologies in advance for engaging in another derail, UKMT Don't apologise, that was a really interesting answer, it was a pleasure to read.
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Jan 4, 2024 13:37
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a new twist in the Somerset Gimp saga, well well well
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Jan 4, 2024 13:39
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UKMT-ers who've undergone the miracle of British birth in the past couple of years - what was your experience like, anything to watch out for, and any advice or tips on getting through the process intact and safe? My partner's newly pregnant (hooray!) but we keep hearing horror stories from our friends about how much worse things have got in maternity wards since the start of the pandemic, and as she's a woman of colour I'm spending a lot of time worrying about the exponentially increased chance of her dying due to something that the NHS politely describes as 'unconscious empathy bias' amongst healthcare professionals. I was just reading our nearest hospital's google reviews, and there's a one-star story from a woman who was waiting in a supported-standing position with nobody checking in on her. Her partner kept pushing the buzzer as her baby unexpectedly started to crown but nobody came to help - so he had to catch the baby and prevent it from hitting the floor. Finally the midwife showed up, promptly lied on the notes that she'd been in the room the entire time, and then forgot to do any of the post-natal checks. So I'm feeling good right now, very positive.
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Jan 4, 2024 15:28
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Beefeater1980 posted:First few months after Baby # 1 also represent the first statistically significant divorce spike. It’s always nightmarishly hard I sent parcels of homemade scotch eggs to my friends when they had their kids, and by god if they don't reciprocate now, i will call them up on speakerphone every time my kid is screaming
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Jan 6, 2024 20:16
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smellmycheese posted:Ron was definitely wanking while typing this The man whose entire year can be redeemed by seeing a photograph of a stranger without her hand on her stomach should get together with the woman whose Christmas is ruined by non-shiny Quality Street wrappers, I feel like they'd have something there
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Jan 7, 2024 15:26
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smellmycheese posted:The “Crap Footballer having a meltdown because ladies are allowed to talk about kicking a ball” seems to have passed the thread by, but it’s now into its second week and he’s moved on to the classic Boomer “I fought in WW1 so this kind of filth shouldn’t happen” trope Sorry, so what was this about? The existence of female footie commentators brings shame to the memory of some bloke who got chlorine gassed 110 years ago?
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Jan 8, 2024 10:46
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Sanford posted:Hope no-one minds a bit of a ranty self-post. Please feel free to ignore but I’m definitely open to any thoughts anyone has. I'd make a very conscious effort to detach the two issues and address the workload rather than the individual, if you can: - of course you didn't mean anything by the comment or want to make your colleague feel unwelcome, it was just a joke and you're sorry for any upset caused, happy to say that to him directly, etc. - you have to honestly acknowledge that it's been hard for you this past year as there hasn't been as much support available as you expected. You completely understand that this isn't your colleague's fault, but you're definitely struggling with the work and the constant change-ups, so the easements promised by taking on a new team member haven't been met. Your boss and HR team will have to make a call (and hopefully will have provisions or accommodations in place) about how the situation is handled - but that shouldn't be on you to worry about, and you don't want them to treat this as a clash between colleagues that needs mediating, when in fact it's about the pressures on your time.
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Jan 8, 2024 11:20
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:If it was my anecdote that has caused upset, I'm sorry if I caused offence. In no way was I saying the diagnosis wasn't real. I am just questioning why that particular person who had got to her late 40s without being rude to all and sundry suddenly felt that she had to be. Sorry again. I wasn't offended, but if it helps shine any light, I did empathise with your acquaintance a bit when I read your post. Finding out that I was autistic as an adult (for me, at least) felt like a lot of different pieces falling together all at once; it was the first clear explanation I'd had beyond 'there's something wrong with me' as to why I'd always found it so exhausting and frightening trying keeping up basic social behaviours that seemed to come so easily to others - feigning interest or an emotional response that I didn't really feel, constantly arranging my face into the right reactions to other people's conversation to appear 'normal', constantly checking and reviewing my words before I spoke. Which is what I understand is meant by masking - not just social performance, but the long-term weight and effort that comes with suppressing yourself out in public, putting on that act, the constant underlying terror that you'll slip up somewhere and consequently get a failing grade on being a human being. I can get how liberating it might feel, especially while you're still figuring yourself out - even if you know that it's rude and unfair and it's going to come back to bite you - to be able to tell your acquaintances that you're actually not interested in the small talk about holidays or weekend excursions that you've already had to navigate a thousand times while not really understanding why everyone else seemed to be enjoying it so much. Because the declaration you're really making to yourself is that it's OK to feel this way.
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Jan 10, 2024 00:45
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Incredibly disturbed by one woman's perspective in this week's Guardian domestic debate column: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/12/you-be-the-judge-should-my-wifes-family-stop-using-my-toothbrushquote:When you live with three siblings and your mum and dad, you just do whatever. We shared toothbrushes – we have done it our entire lives. I still do when I go home. I genuinely don’t think there’s anything unusual about it. I thought everyone did it. It didn’t occur to me that it was disgusting. Imagine getting married and then your in-laws show up like a bunch of drooling Gollums clamouring to have a go at your superior-quality Oral-B
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Jan 12, 2024 13:10
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Guavanaut posted:Same with "no-fly zone" and "sanctions list" and all the other formal names for poo poo that kills people that don't get extended to others. likewise, the US killing hundreds of Yemeni civilians across two decades of airstrikes - well, those are just the tough choices you have to make to eliminate those barbarous Al-Qaeda terrorists. These barbarous Yemenis, on the other hand, are crossing a line by endangering innocent civilians, etc,
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Jan 13, 2024 16:21
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domhal posted:Don't worry about all that, just enjoy the party. It's a Labour victory today, and Keir is PM! That means only one thing...BRING IT IN, GUYS!!!! *Billy Bragg, the Spice Girls, Tony Blair, Richard Curtis and all the Britpop acts come in with everything for a HUGE party*
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Jan 16, 2024 11:38
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Gonzo McFee posted:Love Liz Jones, absolutely batshit woman. Every once in a while I still think back to that infamous article where she goes to a murder victim's neighbourhood in Bristol, tries and fails to cheat the toll on Clifton Suspension Bridge, and then concludes her article by sorrowfully shaking her head at a world where murder is OK and yet bridge tolls exist. Just bugfuck nuts.
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Jan 18, 2024 18:27
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Can't believe that we discussed this article yesterday while burying the lede of Jones offhandedly urging her very recently-dead sister to give Kate Middleton a ghost hug. 
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Jan 19, 2024 17:15
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crispix posted:a student of mine works in B&M and he said one day an auld fella came in and shoplifted a hot tub, just dragged it out and stuffed it in a horsebox and drove off j'accuse-i is the obvious punchline here but I can't think of any way to fit it into an actual sentence
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Jan 19, 2024 19:22
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https://twitter.com/Redpeter99/status/1750038154118074742 Wrap it up, Sunak. You can't compete against the impressive mandate of Some Guy We're Imagining Right Now
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Jan 24, 2024 10:16
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:Agatha Christie...also hints at characters being gay but not in a pejorative way There's a bit I appreciated in one of her later books where Ariadne Oliver (Christie's own stand-in) has to deal with male publishers trying to force a female love interest on her Poirot-a-like protagonist and refusing to accept her insistence that he doesn't like women, because it would hurt book sales if the hero was "a whoopsy", which I took as about as clear a confirmation of the character's intended sexuality as she could give.* *it also shines a different light on the godawful stories where Poirot falls for an Irene Adler knock-off while having James Bond adventures. Branagh is a coward for making his Poirot straight.
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Jan 26, 2024 15:57
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Guavanaut posted:Even the Lego one is someone's fetish. Can't believe they forgot to trademark Gollum's gently caress FishTM
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Jan 26, 2024 16:57
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I think the problem which 'well, you can't stop technological progress, don't be obstinate' doesn't consider well enough is the fact that AI art and writing is coming off the back of a cultural tradition under capitalism which not only values art solely as historical product and established brand, but which has zero time for the contemporary artistic process. Society should support and protect contemporary human artists because we can agree that where people are given time and space to bring their craft, thought, emotion, life experience, and sensibility to bear on stories or works that explore or reflect or dissect some aspect of what it means to be alive right now in this moment, it can have a meaningful influence on society-wide thought, progress, and change*. The personal can become universal; it can create human connection. "Art is more democratic now that I can have a computer generate 20 convincing Van Gogh facsimilies with a prompt" is patently a bad argument, but I think it's dangerous to view it solely as a debate about whether a foolproof imitation is as good as the real thing, or whether typing 'big jugs drider style of Mike Mignola' into ChatGPT constitutes an act of creativity in its own right. The problem isn't that an AI-generated Shakespeare play is innately valueless compared to King Lear, the problem is the fetishisation of the final product without considering the importance of process and context. AI art is end-of-history thinking. We've decided that we already have a big enough database of cultural product that all we need to do is efficiently manufacture more of the stuff we like best or mash-ups of what we like best, and that immediately turns art into stagnant novelty seasoned to taste, rather than something organically and inefficiently evolving - a literal culture - that can continue to serve a meaningful purpose in the years to come. *while also resulting in a lot of dreadful shite. this is fine and normal grobbo fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Jan 28, 2024 |
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Jan 28, 2024 10:12
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 13:04 |
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domhal posted:Where is this coming from? Seen various war things recently e.g. an LBC call-in challenging the woke-electuals on not signing up for war. A general went on the air to argue that army recruitment is too low and offered up a "at this rate, if we went to war with Russia, we'd need to reintroduce conscription" soundbite, and in response the entirety of UK journalism decided to unironically re-enact the "IT'S WAR!!!!" bit from The Day Today.
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Jan 28, 2024 19:29
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