Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[books]

Ahh ok. I skipped out on Ant Man III(?!). I only remember Kang from the Doc Strange movie which was advertised to me as Sam Raimi being unleashed (meh).

Honestly, until Disney finally shows a violent revolutionary with no qualms about mass murder as a hero like they should be, I don't want anything to do with their yt ass honkery. Miss me with that cracker shit.

I'm starting to think people took the wrong lessons from Black Panther I, which I really liked because it played Too Short in the first three minutes but almost lost me during the laughable final fight scene.

[Gamegirl Nostalgia]

Who the fuck is kang? Who the fuck is jonathan majors? I have read the entire malazan book of the fallen and played every JRPG released since the mid 90s, I'm a giant fucking nerd, now tell me internet, who the fuck are these people? What is kang? What's an eternal? Why did the ant man get 3 movies? Why are there three marvel people? Why are none of them actual captain marvel? What does captain marvel even do isn't there like captain america anyway? It's fucking nuts is what it is

this is kang the conqueror in comics, he is a villain



notice he is not black-coded, he is just a blue man group

in their infinite wisdom, disney decided to cast a black man in this role, thus immediately invoking the we wuz kangs meme, while also casting a black person in a villain role, thus necessarily making commentary (by modern discourse) that black people are cruel, vindictive, colonizers, and need to be defeated by white saviors

and then the actor was arrested for domestic violence and accused of worse

and now disney are saying wait what are we actually doing

They knew what they were doing with the we wuz kangs commentary.



Hotep much, Marvel?



Let's not forget the hooting, hollaring, and barking like dogs.

Not slick, Marvel. Not slick at all. 

[books]

Dude looks like a human sized Sentinel. I'd rather have sentinels. #notaheightist

[Alpacx]

Iger just bought the remaining stake of Hulu from Comcast.

He's going to play the Phil Spencer card, buy shit so your failures become noise in acquisitions.
I hope that idiot listens to his advisers and actually buys EA. Not enough popcorn in the world to watch Disney run EA.

I thought Disney was already contractually obligated to buy Hulu so this isn't some smooth brain deflection attempt.

[Gamegirl Nostalgia]

Once the Mouse owns everything then the real Epcot utopia begins.

[benji]

It feels as if Western society is on the brink at the moment. The things which the political leaders are saying are almost complete opposites to what the people believe in.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-ongoing-israel-palestine-conflict-news-thread-see-staff-posts-for-posting-guidelines.772478/page-175#post-114322649

Brink of what? What does this guy think could possibly occur over "the people" disagreeing with political leaders on Palestine, an issue that none of them give a shit about? "Western society" barely had an upheaval in 1968 and that was over shit people actually cared about.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE MEANS FREE PALESTINE! QUEER RIGHTS! TRANS RIGHTS!

[Gamegirl Nostalgia]

it's ok. Ukraine will fall to Russia, Palestine will be no more, and the PS6 will come out and GamingEra will be busy talking about that while EtcetEra freaks out over some other war that sparks in god knows where.

Looks like kaalm123 got banned again too.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-ongoing-israel-palestine-conflict-news-thread-see-staff-posts-for-posting-guidelines.772478/page-173#post-114263735

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/do-you-read-and-study-philosophy.780845/

I've always wanted to learn more of philosophical concepts to improve mental health. But usually give up at the first few definitions.

Crash Course Philosophy is great. I watch it every year or so (just wrapped up a rewatch this morning actually).

I can't say I read a philosophy book, but I did enjoy listening to the audiobook of Michael Schur's 'How to Be Prefect' which touches on some philosophical topics in a comedic fashion, inspired by his show 'The Good Place.'

I enjoy the concepts but the level of my study is basically PhilosophyTube only. She's cool.

I think the only philosopher I've read widely is Judith Butler.

Also some political philosophy. John Rawls' Justice as Fairness is still one my fav reads

I really enjoy lectures on youtube and podcasts, specifically around moral philosophy/ethics. I don't indulge, it's just an every once and a while treat. I do stick to positive stuff I mostly agree with because consequentialism triggers me big time and there's no need to turn something thoughtful into a rage cage moment.

I've read a lot of both continental and analytic philosophy—the former because I was genuinely interested in it and the latter because I was a philosophy major at an analytic school. I also consider myself pretty well-versed in Marxism and psychoanalytic theory.

These days, though, I stick with Indigenous Studies theories and don't do much with continental philosophy anymore.

[Boredfrom]

1698888747[/url]']
Dude looks like a human sized Sentinel. I'd rather have sentinels. #notaheightist

Because his IRL creators are Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Who created the X-Men and many of their villains (like the Sentinels).

[Alpacx]

Looks like kaalm123 got banned again too.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-ongoing-israel-palestine-conflict-news-thread-see-staff-posts-for-posting-guidelines.772478/page-173#post-114263735

Another completely reasonable post and I assume Nepenthe did the banning.

More generally about antisemitism and the left:

When your entire worldview is about privilege & power hierarchies and antisemitism is a conspiracy theory about Jews having the most privilege and power guess where you end up .

[Boredfrom]

1698889699[/url]']
it's ok. Ukraine will fall to Russia, Palestine will be no more, and the PS6 will come out and GamingEra will be busy talking about that while EtcetEra freaks out over some other war that sparks in god knows where.

Looks like kaalm123 got banned again too.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-ongoing-israel-palestine-conflict-news-thread-see-staff-posts-for-posting-guidelines.772478/page-173#post-114263735

I see the woke squad just woke up. 


So is clear there some mods that genuinely want to ban anybody is not 100% in with the borderline Hamas apologist rhetoric. (Some prominent member posting that Hamas could have been a super cereal no terrorist organization if it was not because Israel  ).

[benji]

Should be juicy if mods don’t lock it. AI art generators won their first copyright lawsuit. 


https://www.resetera.com/threads/venturebeat-midjourney-stability-ai-and-deviantart-win-a-victory-in-copyright-case-by-artists-—-but-the-fight-continues.780527/

Fine, I'll look at the morons:

It would still at least protect artists who aren't in the training set from having someone type in "draw this in the style of [X]".

Bingo.

AI content isn't going away, but we can still protect artists and stop them being fed to the machine.

Any AI generated content that makes money, should give huge percentages of that money to the artists whose work was used to train it, unless they explicitly said they were okay with their art being used or agreed to an upfront lump sum for what went into the training set. I mean, that *should* be the legal context for it. If you can't show that you have full permission to use the works in your training set to generate new content from, you shouldn't be legally allowed to make money from it.

Hopefully that's where we can get to with legislation.

This is just fuckin depressing, man. Being able to pursue your creativity and even making a living from it is really being actively killed off in favor of having an endless stream of soulless, meaningless slop to Consume. Even as these AI models improve, they'll never have a point of view or a sense of aesthetics or anything to say. It's just disposable garbage to go haha whee at and then throw it away for the next thing.

and like fucking come onnnn why WHY do we as a species have to be working towards eliminating creative work, work that's supposed to be fun and enriching to produce??? I'm tilted boots 😞

Depressing news to wake up to. But I chose this path, and I don't want to walk away, despite the fact my pursuit of art has led me to being broke living at home. AI makes things worse.

I just keep hoping for a better tomorrow.

That's just neoliberal capitalism, where ways to affirm your humanity, identity, and relationships with other human beings are continuously stripped away if they cannot be commodified into a product. We are at the end point in history and trying to fight for a better world is actually biologically counterintuitive. Your purpose is to only serve capital and grow the machine, and nothing else.

However, and maybe I'm just ignorant, but I genuinely don't understand how an AI using training data to create new stylistically similar works is fundamentally different from a human artist referencing or learning from existing works to do the same?

Human artists do not train specifically to mimic other people as a career, and they certainly did not train by having millions of pieces of art, private photos, medical data, and what have you directly shoved into their brain so that they could learn pixel-perfect arrangements of colors. They train to learn how to do their own art and express their own voice. By design, algorithmic generators cannot actually do anything else but mimic what someone tells them to mimic. They don't have a voice. They don't have any message to say. They don't make art on their own. These things are not fucking autonomous actors. They are tools for the lazy to subvert having to pay another human to make art for them. That's it.

At the risk of getting dogpiled: To be clear, I am all for artists getting compensation for their work. I think AI art, as democratizing as it may be in some respects, is ultimately going to affect the art community for the worse, and I hardly believe in the good nature of AI companies to ensure that artists are even properly credited in the first place for products that are unmistakably only as profitable as they are off the backs of artists' prior works and effort. However, and maybe I'm just ignorant, but I genuinely don't understand how an AI using training data to create new stylistically similar works is fundamentally different from a human artist referencing or learning from existing works to do the same? Is the Picasso estate entitled to a cut of my auction earnings from my cubist pieces if I studied Guernica in art school?

One fundamental difference is that you studied at art school and spent years, either paying for college or wracking up debts, honing your skills. That is but one thing that gives your work inherent value.

You aren't a piece of software someone fed a bunch of images into in order to create a neural network that can spit out cubist versions of descriptions its fed.

It's a bit like asking the difference between a chef and a vending machine. Both provide you food when you put money into them, but there is the understanding that one is doing so with thought towards modern cuisine trends and consideration for the patron and pride in their work, and the other is a vending machine.

maybe I'm just ignorant, but I genuinely don't understand how an AI using training data to create new stylistically similar works is fundamentally different from a human artist referencing or learning from existing works to do the same? Is the Picasso estate entitled to a cut of my auction earnings from my cubist pieces if I studied Guernica in art school?

Ok so, first of all during art education they do not routinely say "Paint this painting exactly like Picasso." Secondly, an AI cannot learn, it can only swallow and poorly regurgitate. A human, is the exact opposite, good artists can't only do what their influence is, they can evolve. They aren't stealing something and claiming "this is something I made." And people who do get BTFO not just because laws against plagiarism exist, but because being the human equivalent of the "U made this, I made this" meme is incredibly cringe. And outright insulting. As I said in another thread, ordering a pizza doesn't make you a chef. Even if you use the dominos drop down menu to customize the pizza, or better yet, In a hypothetical future where that's an entirely automated process based on what you ordered with no humans involved, calling yourself a chef after using the automation machine to make a pizza would be insulting to every actual chef.

Imagine how we'd laugh at someone putting money into a vending machine then turning around and having the audacity to call themselves a chef.

And yet we're here having actual philosophical debates with people who never cared about art or the people who make it regarding whether or not someone who commissions a robot for free to spit out a picture is as much an artist as a human who trained in the skill to make art.

It's baffling and insulting.

At the bare minimum it should not be possible to enter into a prompt "in the style of X artist". That should just be straight up illegal.

I would argue that some almost certainly do and operate with legal freedom to so do. Again, Asylum films exist as a pretty blatant counterexample. As much as I loathe Kidz Bop that's also protected artistic work. There's a whole cottage industry of Elvis and various other celebrity impersonators out there. Let's not forget the swathes of cover bands that play at weddings and venues the world over.

None of these examples can be qualitatively confused with the real thing. And you know this.

The practical issue is scale and speed. No artist would be giving away art for free if another human artist could 1) look at their work for a few seconds and then be able to completely recreate it or incorporate it into their art style and 2) take away every possible job from that original artist by being able to create new works in a fraction of the time and cost of the original artist.

It's a completely different ball game. The professional art world would be completely different if this were the case.

No matter your understanding of what an AI is actually "learning" or not "learning", the big practical difference is scale and speed.

How does the mere existence of these industries not disprove that statement though? Better example, how many people constantly confuse which late 90's boy band songs came from N-Sync or Backstreet Boys? Or how many thought (prior to the Fox merger) that Anastasia was a Disney princess? Or listen to the headaches Weird Al Yankovic has with the number of parodies that have been misattributed to him since the days of Limewire. Regardless this is a pretty subjective standard.

Layman ignorance between works within similar genres and mediums, as well as parodies and satire, is not the same thing as someone deliberately generating a work that is meant to be indistinguishable from the the body of work of an artist, especially when we've heard from many of those using AI that the point of doing this literally is to put affected artists out of work just out of spite for their talent. Again, you know this.

I like to compare it with some kind of furniture making process. There are hand crafted furnitures that's worth a lot and there are machine-made mass produced furnitures that work as well. Using an AI prompt makes us simply a buyer of what AI spits out, like buying a furniture after browsing at the shop. We are not the craftspeople nor the machinery operators who make the actual furnitures. In the case of AI, I am definitely concerned that the scale of AI outputs is significantly more than a furniture factory though. Meaning, by having less AI engineers needed to support these AI services, it's like having less people working in the furniture factory yet capable of producing far more furnitures.

This doesn't feel quite analogous to at least the moral issue, because people are not simply using AI outputs to consume art for personal reasons. They're also using AI outputs to claim that they, themselves, are artists, and that if they don't at least deserve hireable positions above actual artists, then at the very least they are trying to prove a point about the expendability of making art yourself in a world that cannot quantify therapeutic, cultural, and communal acts like the process of making art with a price. It's capitalist realism at its most potent and vile.

It would be like buying machine-made furniture, claiming you yourself are a furniture craftsperson, and laypeople- somehow- actually taking you seriously as a craftsperson, and badgering actual craftspersons with stupid fucking questions like, "but what's the difference between you making furniture and the guy buying the machine made furniture?"

I'm not denying that the usage of AI generated art can be malicious in intent. I agree wholeheartedly, that there are people and companies out there that can and will do this when given the chance. I think that's awful, and I want to find a way to prevent that as much as anybody here. My point, in a thread about a legal case involving AI art, is how do you legislate against that effectively? How do you define AI art style theft, or however you want to phrase it, in a way that doesn't damage the existing industry as much as the thing itself?

You at least start by legislating against the ability for any and all AI-generated content- art, music, voice clips, writing, etc.- to be copyrighted or trademarked because, like with the precedent of animals creating art, machines ultimately cannot autonomously express a claim of ownership. If it can't be copyrighted or trademarked, you cannot stop another person from simply swiping it and using it for their own ends.

Quite right. That's why I said using AI prompts only makes us a buyer, not creator, in my analogy. We are not the craftspeople who produce the actual goods by simply using prompts. I could take this further by saying we aren't even spending money to buy said furniture. We window shop the available furnitures (like browsing prompt results) and choose the one we want all for free or with a subscription fee to the AI company which doesn't currently go into the pockets of the actual furniture makers. Then the furniture makers say they aren't making money making furnitures. You, in turn, say this is just democratization of furnitures making and we all deserve good furnitures. This AI prompts make us all furniture makers!

I agree we all deserve good furnitures even if we lack the skills to make furnitures. Pay people for their skills.

I'm on the same page with you. Although I will clarify that the democratization that AI proponents talk about isn't in the mere existence of and access to good art. You can simply go on Twitter and search for an artist's work, download their shit to your phone, print it up at Walgreens and put it on your wall, and what have you without much in the way of legal recourse from the artist. Good art is already largely free or astoundingly cheap to be enjoyed by the masses. If you want your eyeballs to look at pretty pictures, you are not really gatekept from that.

The democratization refers to the actual ownership of the effort, of who gets to call themselves an artist. The worst of the worst AI proponents do not simply believe that people who lack skill deserve to look at nice images. They believe that people with no skill deserve to be able to nonetheless call themselves skilled, and that calling someone who cannot draw unskilled in the act of drawing is a legitimate bigotry. It is because they are capitalists and see the title of "artist" as something that is in and of itself commodifiable for personal gain, and in a world that is built on a capitalistic framework, to be denied from a title that can earn you clout can legitimately seem like an actual bigoted attack to people with that mindset.

For them, it's as simple as I told this robot to make an image, and since the robot cannot advocate for itself, it must default that I am the artist, and therefore I deserve the same respect and access to social and monetary capital as people who worked for years learning how to do it themselves. And if you do not give me what I am entitled to, if you do not give me my right, then I will take your livelihood and put you in your place.

It is the vile jealousy of untalented vultures who have absolutely nothing in the way of anything personal or worthwhile to say (because if they did, well, they'd be making art by now), because they think the process of making art itself is the problem, that it's a hurdle to solve or an obstacle to bypass to get to the end Product, and the Product the only thing that matters. They think learning, exploring, and improving yourself, that using the process of creating art as a means of self-expression and humanism, are inherently useless. They literally do not like being artists. They instead like what they believe is a shortcut to financial gain and respect that comes with being an artist. And ultimately, the world would legitimately be better off without these people.

I love how Nepenthe, our anti-capitalist, wants a powerful state enforcing property monopolies to ensure art has meaning or some shit. Nepenthe, our ACAB police abolitionist, wants mass police enforcement against people claiming they're artists because they typed some shit into an AI prompt.

Here's how informed on this topic she is:

You at least start by legislating against the ability for any and all AI-generated content- art, music, voice clips, writing, etc.- to be copyrighted or trademarked because, like with the precedent of animals creating art, machines ultimately cannot autonomously express a claim of ownership. If it can't be copyrighted or trademarked, you cannot stop another person from simply swiping it and using it for their own ends.

This is already the case and has been. Copyright law already accounts for the printing press.

[Potato]

here watch this easily digestible video for more information

Holy shit, a 6 hour video? I could just fucking watch the movies!

YouTubers should probably all be lined up against the wall. It would improve society.

[Boredfrom]

I think Nepenthe is an untalented vulture.

[benji]

How do you propose getting rid of Hamas then? They want Israel destroyed and Jews dead.

I don't, Palestinians have the right to resist.

Palestinians get justice and Hamas becomes unnecessary and will eventually fade away.

Has Hamas ever said they'd give up arms for a 1 or 2 state solution?

Is Hamas supposed to be representative of the Palestinian people?

Hamas will have to be central to any kind of peace deal in region, anyone suggesting otherwise doesn't have peace as their priority.

Is Hamas supposed to be representative of the Palestinian people?

Yes, they run Gaza.

Israel runs Gaza, it's a prison.

Israel surrounds and terrorizes Gaza, but Hamas runs the inside of the prison.

And you can't remove Hamas without removing the prison. Radicalization foments from oppression.

Nope

But I doubt they'd stop attacking Israel and Jews even if there is a 1 or 2 state deal

Maybe I'm wrong

This was the sentiment to dissuade giving South Africans freedom in apartheid and freeing slaves during the civil war. Both groups who had repeated attempts for freedom that included violence against civilians. In reality it was the disenfranchised groups that continued to face retaliation and violence such as Jim Crow and KKK in respect to American slaves.

[benji]

I think Nepenthe is an untalented vulture.

You do wonder who she's describing here:

therefore I deserve the same respect and access to social and monetary capital as people who worked for years learning how to do it themselves. And if you do not give me what I am entitled to, if you do not give me my right, then I will take your livelihood and put you in your place.

[Averon]

Meanwhile, in Elon Musk's replies:

But also, he's taking MCU actors to task:

Did Zeo delete all these tweets

[benji]

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[benji]

Did Zeo delete all these tweets

He deletes whatever gets posted in this thread!

[Gamegirl Nostalgia]

We're not making fun of you, Zeo. We're your biggest fans. 

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Okay maybe we do a little trolling. 

[benji]

Don't worry if you think him checking The Bire to delete his tweets stops him though:

[Boredfrom]

Palestinians get justice and Hamas becomes unnecessary and will eventually fade away.

But Hamas doesnt care about Palestinians, why the fuck you think they are willing to hide weapons caches in hospitals?

[benji]

Why is the onus on Hamas to be the ones to lay down their arms or do any sort of first move here? Like intuitively speaking this makes zero sense. If Hamas ceased to exist, you think Israel would be chill with Palestine??

The idea you can destroy Hamas with violence is stupid and enables genocide.

Why do you think people join Hamas? Especially those that have their families and loved ones be murdered by the IDF?

It's simple. Hamas is the symptom of years of oppression. People are sick of being boxed in, murdered and oppressed. Hamas promises freedom and retribution of decades of oppression and genocide.

If there was no oppression and people had time to heal then Hamas would lose it's selling point and will fade to exist. Palestinians just wanna live in peace and their lands given back to them. Israel refuses this and continues its ethnic cleansing.

I blame the oppressor who clearly has the power for Hamas existing. As Israel themselves admitted.

[books]

My mind is still blown there's been three Ant Man movies. Lol.

Whoever wrote JeffMarvel a few pages ago is an absolute truth sayer and I'll subscribe to their newsletter lol

[Averon]

How do you propose getting rid of Hamas then? They want Israel destroyed and Jews dead.

I don't, Palestinians have the right to resist.

Why is the onus on Hamas to be the ones to lay down their arms or do any sort of first move here? Like intuitively speaking this makes zero sense. If Hamas ceased to exist, you think Israel would be chill with Palestine??

Yes, why would everyone want a murderous terror organization that slaughtered innocent people be told to lay down their arms first

[benji]

The Left has had a pretty insatiable need to identify "the people" with entities that don't even feign democracy with elections over the last century or so.

[Gamegirl Nostalgia]

The idea you can destroy Nazis with violence is stupid and enables genocide.

Why do you think people join the Nazis? Especially those that have their families and loved ones be murdered by the Allies during WW1?

It's simple. The National Socialist Movement was the symptom of years of oppression by the Allies. People were sick of being boxed in, murdered and oppressed. The Nazis promise freedom and retribution of years of oppression and sanctioned starvation.

If there was no oppression and people had time to heal then the Nazis would lose it's selling point and will fade to exist. Germans just wanna live in peace and their lands given back to them. The allies refuses this and continued its economic slavery. 

I blame the oppressor who clearly has the power for the Nazis existing. As Resetera themselves admitted.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

NSA this is satire.

[Boredfrom]

Why is the onus on Hamas to be the ones to lay down their arms or do any sort of first move here? Like intuitively speaking this makes zero sense. If Hamas ceased to exist, you think Israel would be chill with Palestine??

Pretty sure they made things worse for Palestines in the long run, specially in the Gaza strip.

And not, nobody seriously believe Hamas is going to lay down because they are considered terrorists.

[benji]

Hamas got 44% seventeen years ago and polls at ~34% while refusing to hold elections so obviously we should take them as the perfect unbending will of the people.

edit: Completely unrelated information: Trump got 46% in 2016 and 47% in 2020.

[Gamegirl Nostalgia]

Why would Iran want their puppets to stop destabilizing relationships between Israel and other Muslim countries?