SpaceChampion

Not reading this thread yet;  got a ticket for a Noon showing and it's packed.

Rewatching the first movie right now on Netflix.

In the rumour category i guess:  John Carpenter thinks a sequel to The Thing might be.

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“I have been sworn to secrecy, okay, because there may be, I don’t know if there will be, there may be a Thing 2,” he said.

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What the heck is “the syndrome”?  Nichols could try to be less prickly.  Billings seems decent.

I wonder how much medicine these people know.  If not much, then it could be as simple as a thiamin deficiency.

The Brazilian dub of No Way Home contains captions of the background voices (where Peter is settling in to his apartment) mentioning "Miles".  The speakers are identified as Jeff and Rio, who are the parents of Miles Morales.   So a live-action Miles maybe be coming soon.

https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/spider-man-no-way-easter-egg-miles-morales

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Ken Paxton went on fellow indicted fraudster Steve Bannon's show and bragged about how he stopped 2.5 million Texas voters from receiving mail in ballots. Thus denying their right to vote. The reason he admitted this theft of votes on a YouTube channel? He wants the Texas Senate to keep him in office so he can do it again. Paxton admitted Trump would have lost Texas if he had allowed the Harris County voters to all vote. He also said Beto O'Rourke would be Governor without his election ballot interference. This was voter fraud on a massive level. Republicans are always talking about voter fraud in the 2020 election. Here it is. Right in front of their very eyes. 63 Texas Republicans voted to impeach Ken Paxton Saturday. Now we need the Senate to do the same and rid Texas of Ken Paxton and his many crimes once and for all.

Judging by the seat selection the local theatre options for Across the Spider-verse is more packed that anything I've ever checked for opening day in the last ten years.  Shocking because The Force Awakens opening night was quite empty.  This is too packed for my comfort, I'll have to see it another time.

Real life Doc Ock!!

Rebecca Ferguson is in final talks to star in the adaptation of one of the standalone books of Joe Abercrombie's FIRST LAW series.

Polite Society kicks ass!  Stealing style from Tarantino's Kill Bill, kinetics and humour from Edgar Wright, a bit of story DNA from Little Women, and putting it into a blender with a garam masala of British school girls and Indian diaspora, it spins from Bend It Like Beckham to Get Out to a heist film without losing itself in the process.

Director Nida Manzoor seems to have only done two episodes of Doctor Who, and a series about Muslim riot grrl / punk rockers called We Are Lady Parts.  This debut film shows an deft talent I'm eager to see more from.

I don't know the star Priya Kansara from anything, but good job!  Good to see Nimra Bucha (the villain in Ms. Marvel) and Ritu Arya (Lila from Umbrella Academy) in this, both wonderful. 

Twitter thread where people are responding

Here's a question someone brought up:

That makes me think a companion declaration from writers is needed too.  I can see a system where writers vouching for other writers might be needed, "I am real, I wrote this" and so way for writer verification to happen.  Social proof, sort to speak.  Of course difficult for new writers but not insurmountable.

Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld, frustrated that other publishers have been slow to respond to the rise of A.I. LLMs used in submissions, issued this statement hoping to get other publishers to discuss and sign on:

 

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I’ve complained that various publishing industry groups have been slow to respond to recent developments in AI, like LLMs. Over the last week, I’ve been tinkering with a series of “belief” statements that other industry folks could sign onto. I’m finally ready to start sharing a draft. Feedback welcome, but if you are here to discourage, move along. Not interested in a fight.

 

Where We Stand on AI in Publishing

We believe that AI technologies will likely create significant breakthroughs in a wide range of fields, but that those gains should be earned through the ethical use and acquisition of data.

We believe that “fair use” exceptions with regards to authors’, artists’, translators’, and narrators’ creative output should not apply to the training of AI technologies, such as LLMs, and that explicit consent to use those works should be required.

We believe that the increased speed of progress achieved by acquiring AI training data without consent is not an adequate or legitimate excuse to continue employing those practices.

We believe that AI technologies also have the potential to create significant harm and that to help mitigate some of that damage, the companies producing these tools should be required to provide easily-available, inexpensive (or subsidized), and reliable detection tools.

We believe that detection and detection-avoidance will be locked in a never-ending struggle similar to that seen in computer virus and anti-virus development, but that it is critically important that detection not continue to be downplayed or treated as a lesser priority than the development of new or improved LLMs.

We believe that publishers do not have the right to use contracted works in the training of AI technologies without contracts that have clauses explicitly granting those rights.

We believe that submitting a work for consideration does not entitle a publisher, agent, or the submission software developers to use it in the training of AI technologies.

We believe that publishers or agents that utilize AI in the evaluation of submitted works should indicate that in their submission guidelines.

We believe that publishers or agents should clearly state their position on AI or AI-assisted works in their submission guidelines.

We believe that publishers should make reasonable efforts to prevent third-party use of contracted works as training data for AI technologies.

We believe that authors should acknowledge that there are limits to what a publisher can do to prevent the use of their work as training data by a third party that does not respect their right to say “no.”

We believe that the companies and individuals sourcing data for the training of AI technologies should be transparent about their methods of data acquisition, clearly identify the user-agents of all data scraping tools, and honor robots.txt and other standard bot-blocking technologies.

We believe that copyright holders should be able to request the removal of their works from databases that have been created from digital or analog sources without their consent.

We believe that the community should not be disrespectful of people who choose to use AI tools for their own entertainment or productive purposes.

We believe that individuals using AI tools should be transparent about its involvement in their process when those works are shared, distributed, or made otherwise available to a third party.

We believe that publishing contracts should include statements regarding all parties’ use, intended use, or decision not to use AI in the development of the work.

We believe that authors should have the right to decline the use of AI-generated or -assisted cover art or audiobooks on previously contracted works.

We believe that individuals using AI tools should be respectful of publishers, booksellers, editors, and readers that do not wish to engage with AI-generated or -assisted works.

We believe that publishers and booksellers should clearly label works generated by or with the assistance of AI tools as a form of transparency to their customers.

We believe that copyright should not be extended to generated works.

We believe that governments should craft meaningful legislation that both protects the rights of individuals, promotes the promise of this technology, and specifies consequences for those who seek to abuse it.

We believe that governments should be seeking advice on this legislation from a considerably wider range of people than just those who profit from this technology.

ADDITIONS:

We believe that publishers and agents need to recognize that the present state of detection tools for generated art and text is capable of false positives and false negatives and should not be relied upon as the sole source of determination.

 

Some notes in response to comments:

AI-generated and -assisted are not specifically defined due to the fact that the technology is evolving and any definition would likely create loopholes. Broad terms are meant to encourage transparency and allow individual parties to determine whether or not such uses cross their individual lines. For example, one’s attitude towards AI-assisted research may be different for non-fiction vs. fiction.

In suggesting that AI developers should be required to provide reliable detection tools and that by emphasizing that detection should be a priority, we are stating that the people best equipped to understand and tackle the problem of detection–which can be tackled in several different ways–are the ones developing the AI tools that generate the output. (Some have even suggested that all output should be saved for detection purposes, but we’re not qualified to tell them how to solve the problem.) It’s a problem of the same scale (or even more complex) as generation. Instead, industry professionals have been quoted saying things like “get used to it” and have placed insufficient effort into addressing the problems they are creating. The pricing concern is to make sure that anyone can access it. It’s going to impact more than just the publishing world.

3 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

I still don't know if this is great or garbage.  Totally confused over the very end.  Makes ZERO sense if Coach did this.

It'll never make sense it you want to understand these characters as people with a coherent psyches.  The writers either are portraying them all as psychopaths, which is uninteresting, or don't understand how to portray a consistency in their motivations, which is maddening.   "Why did you do that?"  "I don't know."    That'll be the answer from any character in this show at every step of the plot.

These writers are deciding what plot they want, and figuring out behaviours to build that plot, but don't expect those behaviours to follow from well thought out and consistent motivations.  Same problem with Rings of Power, I think.  Some people lack a theory of mind.

1 hour ago, Secretary of Eumenes said:

The actor, Sacha Dhawan, is a treasure. I can't wait to see him in many things to come. All the actors in this are great (which I tend to put to direction/production and good writing making possible), but boy is this fella just aces.

Please tell me you saw him in Doctor Who.

There's some sort of Witcher spin-off being filmed in South Africa currently, and Dolph Lundgren is part of the cast...

https://www.comingsoon.net/tv/news/1291188-the-witcher-dolph-lundgren-joins-netflix-spin-off

That video I assume was for the SNW trailer?  It's gone from that link...  but here it is:

Virgin sacrificed for parts.

On 2/13/2023 at 10:29 PM, Lord of Oop North said:

Tough one.

I believe the first concert that I saw on my own (no parents) was in early 1999. That year I saw the Rolling Stones on the No Security tour in Toronto. The fall prior I had seen Aerosmith with my uncle at an arena in Hamilton.

I was at that!  Aerosmith at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton.   The Nine Lives tour.   Saw them in Toronto twice, August 1993 (my first concert ever) for the Get A Grip tour, and 2001 on their Just Push Play tour.  Had to check wikipedia to reconstruct that.

Is there a dating app for this?

21 hours ago, DMC said:

I prefer to think of all of you as different aspects of my personality, like an internet version of the film Identity.

I am DMC's complete lack of surprise.