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Yes.

I added The Gentleman to my sickday(s) watchlist. I tried to figure out if and how it was related to the movie by the same title by the same direction. It’s not. ‘Kay. I suppose he just really likes this title? It was rather fun for the first 5-6 episodes. Then I kinda got tired of it because it was buildup on buildup on buildup and I found myself asking, To what? For me the magnitude of the climax was disproportionate to the amount and complexity of all that buildup. The way I see it, we didn’t quite arrive anywhere surprising, impactful, meanigful, fun, punchy. It was much ado for very little. I like the dynamic, the cinematography, the editing, the style of storytelling, the visual experience, I even liked the acting quite a bit. I certainly enjoyed the whole thing more than The Gentleman movie. If they ever made a season 2 I would probably tune in out of curiosity.

Time for the Crimean bridge to really come down?

As an elite athletes I'd say she is eminently qualified to characterise the negative impact on her physical abilities post transition. Evening it happened well after she retired.

Yartsevo Oil Terminal burning merrily away after an overnight drone strike, along with the oil depot in Talashkino. The US has already sent 190-mile ATACMs to Ukraine, and they have already been used.

There's no advantage so nobody is saying they shouldn't compete against men. There's a decided disadvantage so not sure how competitive they could ever be. The US womans football team got absolutely annihilated by a bunch of schoolboys (under 15s) and that was American schoolboys.

Question about the issue w/ sports and fairness and all that that some have raised: does the problem lie w/ trans folks in general, or is the issue only irt trans women and not trans men?

hmmm. I guess that is true about the Iron Born. But they are not indicative of the 7K's as a whole. Slaves, religion and culture are all significantly different from the 7K's. The east may make good armor, yet they don't use plate armor at all. Seems unique to Westeros. I think of Old man Barristan fighting that pit fighter in the pyramid while taking the king hostage. I don't remember exactly, but he thought this guy is younger, stronger and faster... but he cant touch me in armor. So in my mind it is a significant advantage. There is only 1 wall of ice 700 ft tall or whatever absurd height it is. I'm sure those 5 forts are neat though

lmao excellent

Amid arrests and dark warnings about Jewish students’ safety, an editorial at the campus newspaper offered a far different view of the crisis. https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/04/columbia-university-protests-presidents-jewish-students-encampment.html Columbia has a radio station, WKCR, "The Home of Technical Difficulty" which is broadcasting continuously what is happening on the campus concerning the protests and demonstrations. It is online, but regard its self-given subtitle. There are no funds for anything for the radio station. It's entirely volunteer, including the equipment.

Understood. It is a pet peeve of mine. Sorry.

I’m not sure if she’s really relevant to the discussion when she competed as a man and didn’t transition until well after she’d retired.

I get that not everyone is into modern and postmodern art, but generative/aleatoric music has been [designed? curated?] by human composers since the 1950s. One of the most moving pieces of the post 9/11 era was William Basinski's Disintegraton Loops, which consisted of composed synth loops put to tape that were played and recorded in a state of decay--so, a composed work modified by incidental "improvisation." Not saying you have to like stuff like this, but it's been part of the human musical repertoire for a while, and plenty of people are moved by it. I am a researcher and I have no problem using layman's definitions of words in casual speech. Just as I don't correct every person who fails to recognize peppers and eggplants as "fruits."

Got tired of look for a map of westoros or the paintes table so decided to make my own How do I post a pic on here??

Art as a pursuit, rather than an object or product, is a good answer, and, from a philosophical point of view, I don't entirely disagree. The 'Death of the Author' theory might defend the opposite, though (and it predates generative IA by a lot). And yet, at the same time, the result of the creative process is also a commodity. A bad pun in a news headline, a comercial jingle for a cereal advert, a review of a boxing match, a promotional image of a Lazyscrog on mars, a legal report, the design of an Ikea chair... These daily, banal examples of creativity which we mostly do to earn a livelihood rather than as a means of artistic expression are far more threatened by AI than anything else.

If they're selling that, yes.

Hypothetically… a theory is something else. I hate that particular use of “in theory” because it undermines what “theory” actually is…

Is it possible for AI to generate art that moves people? Obviously, yes. And if they do so, it's not necessarily any more copying than what humans do. Artistic creation always involves the combinations of different references, and what is an innovative work versus a derivative one is largely, if not wholly, subjective. Is it possible for current AI to generate art that moves people? Sure. Again, in theory. Is it likely to happen very often? I'm guessing no. Certainly not for me. It'd be interesting to tease apart what I think is missing given my rather generous definition of creativity above, but I'd have to chew on it some more.

I do appreciate the incredible shittery of both criticising trans people for wanting to do sports because they have an advantage based on going through puberty as the other sex, and then ALSO criticizing using puberty blockers which would make this a nonissue.

Break a leg, man. Hope your dreams come true.

There was one bit this viewer's pov appreciated. That was at the end, in, as we have already been informed, Blackthorne's first to fail endeavor to rebuild a ship for seafaring. Buntaro's appearance to throw himself into this failed endeavor along with Blackthorne. Both of them came back from the dead. Both of them failed to keep Mariko from what she wanted, she escaped both of their versions of what they thought was what she should do, leaving them to fail together in this too. Both Ha! However, I really missed Blackthorne's decision, and then mental preparation to commit Seppuku, and the aftermath of being stopped right at the moment, for several days afterword, and then in one way or another for what would be the rest of his life. This, more than anything else in the novel -- and particularly missing in this television adaptation -- allowed Blackthorne to enter "Japaneseness.' That was the powerful bit of Clavell's fiction, that never left my recollection of the readings.

Who said I'm okay with it? As I get older I'm simply getting better at not getting upset by matters that are completely beyond my control. I don't see the point of fifteen pages of Scot trying to squeeze ChatGPT back into its toothpaste tube.

Because I want sports to be fair. Steroids make it unfair. And I believe trans athletes competing against cis women is also (though not in the same stratosphere of) unfair.

Ok, well I hope you'll continue participating because you're one of the few creatives I know who appear largely ok with AI generator theft. Insofar as the latter part of the quoted, it's an AI issue because until they achieve sentience, they'll never be better than us. So yeah, greed is part of it.

I mean in practice they are, given that almost all competitors in almost all sports take them If you think that getting rid of steroids means we would not have professional sports, the i really dont understand what the problem is with trans people competing with cis people.