I actually think there was some real writing potential in depicting an edgelord poser who idolizes the trappings of a fascist past that he doesn't even fully understand, especially in the Trump era.
But then, you could drive a Star Destroyer through the gap between potential and execution in the Star Wars sequels.
The designers wanted it to be comfortable
I think it's funny when people criticize the D for looking like a luxury hotel in space. You've got crew deployed on this ship potentially for years at a time. Of course you're going to put some wood paneling, beige and pastel colors, and potted plants in there. Would you want to spend every waking hour looking at gunmetal grey deck plating? Spruce the place up a bit! Saves money time and effort on dealing with all the mental breakdowns.
AI is not sufficient for tasks involving creativity like art and music. It doesn't capture that human aspect yet (It could in the future).
There's a dismissive take on AI creating art that "AI can never create a truly great work of art or tell a truly compelling story." I worry less about that, since those are really subjective stances to take on a given work; one person's La Dolce Vita is another's Dude, Where's My Car? and vice versa.
What I want us to worry about is: What are we going to do to protect human dignity, even if there's no profit motive in it? Sure, maybe an AI screenwriter could someday write a movie that people would want to see, but why should that mean that human screenwriters should have to starve even more than they currently do? If we can automate a large percentage of all human labor, does that mean that we're just going to render most humans unemployable and not change anything else, because that's what the invisible hand demands? Or are we going to have a serious conversation about how human dignity has value, in and of itself, and totally separate from our ability to increase GDP?
Pedagogy of the Oppressed and all that.
Sometimes my brain doesn't take care of its flesh vehicle for a while; typical situation is I don't get a shower or shave for a little too long. And then my brain becomes convinced that it doesn't like itself very much. Then another part of my brain realizes what's going on, but has learned that my brain isn't very reliable, and is also fairly open to suggestion. So my brain takes a shower and shaves and puts on clean clothes, and then my brain is tricked into liking itself again.
It's literally like playing peekaboo with your own self-esteem in the mirror.
Whether or not the guy historically known as "William Shakespeare" actually wrote all those plays. For one thing, the plays were probably produced with a lot of input and modifications on the fly from the company itself, so already anything that Will himself wrote is going to have been significantly altered along the way.
For another, the historical Shakespeare is almost as much of a folk character at this point as Paul Bunyan, so anything we can "know" about him is what we can reassemble from the historical record after 400 years have passed, so it's all fairly muddied anyway.
Could just some guy from Stratford have written those plays? Yeah, I think so. Could it have actually have been some nobleman writing under a pen name? Also possible, but doesn't meaningfully change the content of the plays or my feelings about them. In hindsight, if it was a pen name, the dude probably should have just bit the bullet and published under his own name, because now some glover's son is the Immortal Bard, and Edward de Vere is the guy that only the cork board and red yarn set care about.
Good find, thank you! This was from a time when I was looking through a lot of old LIFE magazines and got a lot of really cool looks into old time history through that lens.
It's got to sleep sometime. Dig a hole while it's sleeping. Doesn't have to be a hole that the whole dinosaur can fall into, just deep enough to step on a punji stick:
ONE OF US. ONE OF US.
Under him and with his leadership we can make isolationism as dead an issue as slavery [ 😬 ]
At that time, in that place and context, "isolationism" meant "we don't want to get involved in the war in Europe." That was literally what Luce was talking about. It wasn't about proxy wars in Viet Nam, it was about whether we should let Hitler do his thing in Europe and Japan do their thing in the Pacific and we'd be fine and safe in America, so why bother getting involved?
To put it in modern terms, should we be helping Ukraine defend themselves against Russia?
It's from a letter from the editor from LIFE Magazine from October 1940. That's me on the old website, posting it originally. Unfortunately, that's from an older phone so I haven't got the original page scan, but the full text of the article is quoted in the comments over there.
Yeah, that's him. Are you arguing that American isolationism, while Hitler was occupying Paris and bombing London, was the right stance?
It looks like one of those tilt shift images where it makes everything look like it's a quarter inch tall.
Swords don't need to be reloaded
If not for fighting with, why medieval weapon-shaped and sized?
Edit:
Let me guess: ignore Congress, let billionaires do whatever the fuck they want, rule by executive order, and hope that the other two branches of government don't grow a spine and do something about it. So, basically the same thing they've been doing all along?
There is someone or some proposal on your ballot worth voting for, or at the very least worth voting against, even if you don't like either of the candidates at the top. Vote for the better option for County Registrar of Deeds. Vote in favor of the amendment that protects collective bargaining rights, or that increases local school funding.
Every vote matters, and even moreso on the individual basis for the down-ballot races in which fewer people are voting.
