For the content creators out there who want to use the strike as an career opportunity, I’d reconsider after watching this
Franchesca Ramsey is a member of both the WGA and SAG and took time to address some misinformation going around by certain content creators who promote film and tv projects. The one in this video being StrawHatGoofy. The gist of the video is that unless you are already contractually obligated to fulfill a promotion for a struck company. Unless you have plans to eventually join SAG or the WGA it would be ill advised to take future work during the strike. I thought I’d put this out there in case anyone here or anyone you know is contacted by one of these companies because no amount of fame or money is worth being a scab. Respect the writers and actors and just say no.
found this informative, about how studios are going to attempt to use influencers (particularly small ones) to try to cross pickets by paying a lot for movie promos, and that SAG-AFTRA likely will not let you in if you do this. my suspicion is they're hoping people won't understand the implications so wanted to spread the word!!
My copy of @drchucktingle's book Camp Damascus has arrived! (The publishers were kind enough to send me an advanced copy when I mentioned that I had ordered a copy but time was not kind to me as it was Finish Good Omens and Wrap Things Up Before the Strike world, and I had no personal reading time. So I'm really looking forward to settling down to read it.)
having a husband who is a forensic science student who does nothing but study skeletons all day is ridiculous because we were in the middle of doing...adult....stuff....and he suddenly just grabbed my head and said "oh my god, you know you've got a healed skull fracture here?!" like WHAT do you MEAN I have a HEALED SKULL FRACTURE???
he told me my skull healed really weirdly and I probably have brain damage from it because there's a fuckin crater in the back of my skull that I just thought was a normal thing everyone has. I should probably see a doctor
update on this: he keeps like grabbing random body parts and trying (and failing) to subtly look at me and im like STOP EXAMINING ME because he's so fascinated by my fucked up skeletal structure. the other day we had Christmas drinks with my coworkers and he told me afterwards that someone in the group had a weird shaped skull and something about processes and i was like god can't you just be normal and stop examining people
I told the person I'm dating that one reason I like old movies is because most actors don't have Hollywood-perfect smiles and I like to look at all the different shapes of their crooked teeth and misaligned bites and the way their silver and gold molar fillings flash when they talk.
They just looked at me and said "That's such an anthropologist thing to like," and honestly? No rebuttal possible.
(After this conversation I drunkenly showed them my favorite pages of my paleopathology textbook. Bless them for not immediately running as I caressed an image of a snapped femur that healed at a 90 degree angle.)
I came home from my bioarchaeology masters and started poking my dad’s head because his skull was so extremely masculine in every feature.
One of my supervisors went to her doctor at one point and said ‘hey, remember when those shelves in my office fell and the hospital were only concerned about my neck? Well, I think I actually fractured my skull.’ and her doctor started feeling her head going ‘I seriously doubt...wait...that’s...ok, yes, you did fracture your skull but it’s healed pretty well!’
Also, @slipstreamborne which textbook is that, because I want to see!
My favorite skeletal pathology text. The vast majority of images are from archaeological sites of various ages, because thanks to modern medicine and improved diet it's far less common to see advanced presentations of untreated skeletal disease and trauma. Only comes with black and white images, unfortunately, but the text has all the details needed for a thorough differential diagnosis.
Some of my favorite images!
The aforementioned femur that healed at 90 degrees; femur was weakened by osteomyelitis (infection in the bone):
ALT
This person dislocated their hip and the femur was never put back into its socket (bottom circle). Eventually the bone formed a new socket (arrow)!
ALT
And for @angiethewitch , what your husband was likely feeling, depressed fractures on the skull (the two round impressions with arrows). Presumably you fell and struck your head on something, were in an accident, or were hit with a ball or other hard object when you were younger. If the area is larger/flatter and mostly on the back of your head, however, could just be flattening from lying in the same position a lot when you were a baby.
when conservatives scream "socialism!" as if it's a dirty word, this is what they mean:
it's okay to give media CEOs salaries equal to all the combined benefits that workers are striking to attain, but it's not okay for workers to demand fair and equitable treatment or compensation
Republikkkans would have cried for socialist bailout money from the blue states while simultaneously blamong Transportation Sec Buttigieg for personally crashing on the overpass.
In the past we never even knew who the Transportation Sec was but because the current one is an openly gay Dem the Republikkkans are losing their minds.
Sixty-six staffers at Warner Bros. Animation and 22 at Cartoon Network filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday and simultaneously requested voluntary recognition from management at the Warner Bros. Discovery subsidiaries. Collectively, the group includes workers in roles like production manager, digital production assistant, IT technician, production coordinator, production assistant, design production coordinator, assistant production manager and senior assistant production manager.
The effort was announced on a joint Zoom call around noon on Wednesday with production workers at the Warner Bros. Discovery brands and TAG members. The staffers involved work on an array of shows, including Warner Bros. Animation’s Batman: The Caped Crusader, Harley Quinn and Teen Titans Go! and Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake, We Baby Bears and Craig of the Creek.
“Although many might not think it, production is a specialized skill; we might not be artists or writers, but what we bring to the table goes beyond traditional creativity and gets content on the air,” Warner Bros. Animation production manager Hannah Ferenc said in a statement about the organization effort. “Having lived through the existing state of the animation industry for the past seven years, I want to make sure that not only our current workers, but all those who choose to join us in the future, can feel secure in following their passion by earning livable wages and being treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.”
An estimated 650 million people would watch Neil Armstrong take man’s first step on the moon more than six hours later, but during the actual lunar landing, 32,933 were in the stands at Yankee Stadium on that Sunday afternoon. Ken McMullen was batting against Jack Aker with Epstein on third, a man on first and no outs.
As the umpires, according to prior arrangements, waved their arms and stopped play, an urgent voice came over the loudspeakers: “Here is a bulletin from WWDC News, Apollo 11 is 100 feet from the surface of the moon. We now switch live to the manned spacecraft center.” It was public address announcer Bob Sheppard, sharing the historic news with the crowd.
“Ladies and gentleman, your attention please,” Sheppard said. “You will be happy to know that the Apollo 11 has landed safely on the moon.“
The cheers from the crowd drowned out the final two words of his announcement, but the message displayed on the scoreboard in right-center field was loud and clear: “THEYRE ON THE MOON.”
The cheering at Yankee Stadium continued for about 45 seconds, according to the New York Times, as thousands of children waved the Hillerich & Bradsby Co. Louisville Sluggers they received on bat day.
Finally, the noise died down enough so the announcer could be understood, and he asked the crowd for a moment of silent prayer for the safe return of the astronauts. After a few seconds of silence, a recording of “America the Beautiful” played over the Yankee Stadium loudspeaker. The crowd sang and then cheered some more.
After the roughly four-minute stoppage, McMullen hit a grounder to third baseman Bobby Cox, who threw home to nail Epstein for the first out.
that's right! it's research traditional methods of moroccan architecture, which follow strict mathematic structures and formulas to create stunning tilework and arches, often also utilizing a special form of clay endemic to morocco famed for its sculptural qualities which are difficult and even impossible to reproduce in other regions! additionally, the cultural significance of the various motifs and colors used throughout moroccan architecture, both in religious and in secular buildings, are distinct and highly formalized, honed over many h
yes! i was actually referencing muqarnas when speaking about the clay! morocco's carved clay and plaster muqarnas are famous for their intricacy and detailed fretting!
that’s a tough one to answer. sorry in advance for the wall of text.
when i first started seeing ai-generated images, they were very abstract things. we all remember the gandalf and saruman prancing on the beach pictures. they were almost like impressionism, and they had a very ethereal and innocent look about them. a lot of us loved those pictures and saw something that a lot of human minds couldn’t create, something new and worth something. i love looking at art that looks like nothing i’ve seen before, it always makes me feel wonder in a new type of way. ai-generated art was a good thing.
then the ai-generated pictures got much more precise, and suddenly we realized they were being fed hundreds of artists’ pieces without permission, recreating something similar and calling it their own. people became horrified, and i was too! we heard about people losing their job as background artists on animated productions to use ai-generated images instead. we saw testimonies of heartbroken artists who had their lovingly created art stolen and taken advantage of. we saw people being accused of making ai-generated art when theirs was completely genuine. ai-generated art became a bad thing.
i’ve worked in the animation industry. right now, i work at an animation school, specifically for 2D animation. i care a lot about the future of my friends in the industry (and mine, if i go back to it), and about all the students i help throughout the years. i want them to find jobs, and that was already hard for a lot of them before the ai-generated images poked their heads into our world.
i’m not very good at explaining nuanced point of view (this is also my second language) but i’ll do my best. i think that ai-generated art is a lot of things at once. it’s dangerous to artists’ livelihoods, but it can be a useful tool. it’s a fascinating technological breakthrough, but it’s being used unethically by some people. i think the tools themselves are kind of a neutral thing, it really depends on what we do with it.
every time i see ai-generated art i eye it suspiciously, and i wonder “was this made ethically?” and “is this hurting someone?”. but a lot of it also makes me think “wow, cool concept, that inspires me to create”. that last thought has to count for something, right? i’m an artist myself, and i spend a lot more time looking at art than making art - it’s what fuels me. i like to imagine a future where we can incorporate ai-generation tools into production pipelines in a useful way while keeping human employees involved. i see it as a powerful brainstorming tool. it can be a starting point, something that a human artist can take and bring to the next level. it can be something to put on the moodboard. something to lower the workload, which is a good thing, imo. i’ve worked in video games, i’ve made short films, and let me tell you, ai-generated art could’ve been useful to cut down a bit of pre-production time to focus on some other steps i wanted to put more time into. there just needs to be a structure to how it’s used.
like i said before, i work in a school. the language teachers are all very worried about ChatGPT and company enabling cheating; people are constantly talking about it at my workplace. i won’t get into text ais (one thing at a time today) but the situation is similar in many ways. we had a conference a few months ago about it, given by a special committee that’s been monitoring ai technology for years now and looking for solutions on how to deal with it. they strongly suggest to work alongside AIs, not outlaw it - we need to adapt to it, and control how it’s used. teach people how to use it responsibly, create resources and guidelines, stay up to date with this constantly evolving technology and advocate for regulation. and that lines up pretty well with my view of it at the moment.
here’s my current point of view: ai-generated art by itself is not unethical, but it can easily be. i think images generated by ai, if shared publicly, NEED a disclaimer to point out that they were ai-generated. they should ONLY be fed images that are either public domain, or have obtained permission from their original author. there should also be a list of images that fed the ai that’s available somewhere. cite your sources! we were able to establish that for literature, so we can do it for ai, i think.
oh and for the record, i think it’s completely stupid to replace any creative position with an ai. that’s just greedy bullshit. ai-generated content is great and all, but it’ll never have soul! it can’t replace a person with lived experiences, opinions and feelings. that’s the entire fucking point of art!!
the situation is constantly evolving. i’m at the point where i’m cautious of it, but trying to let it into my life under certain conditions. i’m cautiously sharing ai pictures on my blog; sometimes i change my mind and delete them. i tell my coworkers to consider ways to incorporate them into schoolwork, but to think it over carefully. i’m not interested in generating images myself at the moment because i want to see what happens next, and i’d rather be further removed from it until i can be more solid in my opinion, but i’m sure i’ll try it out eventually.
anyway, to anybody interested in the topic, i recommend two things: be open-minded, but be careful. and listen to a lot of different opinions! this is the kind of thing that’s very complicated and nuanced (i still have a lot more to say about it, i didn’t even get into the whole philosophy of art, but im already freaking out at how much i wrote on the Discourse Site) so i suggest looking at it from many different angles to form your own opinion. that’s what i’m doing! my opinion isn’t finished forming yet, we’ll see what happens next.
so while i was writing the book, i became violently suicidal.
this was mostly due to the fact that i had a very bad reaction to some meds and my brain stopped producing any serotonin. also i was in the last semester of grad school where it's actually illegal to feel anything but dread. so it wasn't going well.
somewhere in the fog of it i became aware i needed help. nobody was taking clients or my insurance. i didn't want to do inpatient care - it wasn't right for my needs. there's not really an "in between" stage between "inpatient" and "no care," but i was trying to do the right thing. i was trying to activate the chain of command that was my emergency plan. i knew i needed help now.
i used betterhelp.
i know, i know. i'm a straight-A student and so smart and so clever, how could i ever use something so blatantly bad. to be honest with you, i didn't feel particularly keen on it from the getgo - things that seem too good to be true usually are. also, if something online is free, the price is usually your privacy.
the thing is that there was kind of a global pandemic happening at the time and i worked 5 jobs alongside of being a fulltime student and also like writing a book on the side. it is a miracle that i even thought about getting help. i would love to tell you i had the mental wherewithal to like, process whether this was the right choice for me. mostly i was desperate. i was so suicidal that i was trying to find a reason to stay inside of fortune cookies. i was the kind of suicidal that looks like splatterpaint. i hadn't been that bad in an entire decade.
they took my data. i gave them it freely. somewhere out there, they have a dossier on me. on everything i survived. my story in little datapoints, scattergraphed beautifully.
the first woman told me that really i should be grateful, because (and this is a direct quote): "at least you're not anne frank." i said that i felt that statement was antisemitic, as anne frank's life and experience shouldn't be compared to like, a nonbinary lesbian in western massachusetts. the therapist said that i should try to use lucid dreaming to try to picture myself in an actually scary situation, like running from nazis.
i applied for another therapist. i was willing to accept the possibility that there was a bad apple in the bunch. the next therapist and i even laughed about how inappropriate that statement was. and then, in our next session: the new therapist said if i was struggling with body image issues, i should just work harder on my appearance. she spent 3 sessions in a row talking about how she was grieving, and made me memorize facts about her grandmother so "she can live on through my clients."
i am a three's-a-charm kind of person. okay, so what if the last person made me uncomfortable. i figured it was just a misunderstanding of priorities - she had felt she was sharing with me, i had felt like i had to take care of her. i applied for another therapist.
the last woman asked me to help her pray. she bowed her head. i stared at her, frozen, while she said: lord, i beg you: cure her.take the pain of being gay away from her.
i spent somewhere between 2.5 and 3 months on betterhelp. in that whole time, i was not getting the professional help i so desperately needed, even though i was fucking trying.
in the end, i survived this because i finally could get off the meds that were literally killing me. a request for a real therapist finally went through. i survived because my friends saved my life. because nick let me sob myself dry in his arms. because maddie took the razors out of my room when i asked them to. because grace slept over in my bed for like 3 weeks in a row since nobody trusted me not to hurt myself when i was alone. i survived because i got fucking lucky. because even when i was desperately suicidal, i was too old and too self-aware to take "you need to be prettier" as good advice.
the thing is that there's a 19 year old me who isn't like that. who would have heard "just think about how grateful you should be" and said - oh, i see. i would have assumed that is what it means to be in therapy: the same thing my abusers used to tell me. that i am just pretending and lazy. that i am ugly and unworthy.
betterhelp positioned itself to take advantage of an incredibly vulnerable community. it preys on desperation. it knows it is serving people who are not doing well mentally. it saw that there is a huge need for real, immediate, compassionate mental health care: and then it fucking takes your money and privacy.
i still get their ads on instagram. last night i watched as a woman in a pool pretends to talk to a different woman. they discuss her anxiety.
there's a 19 year old version of me, and she didn't survive this. she was too tired, and drowning. i almost fucking died. this thing almost fucking killed me.
in the ad, the woman playing the therapist takes a note on a clipboard and then nods once, sagely.
i have to admit it's a pretty scene. the steam and light coming off the pool water lands on the actresses. like this, it almost looks baptismal, holy.
I also used BH for about 3 months in pre/early pandemic times out of desperation. My experience was a nutritionless nothingburger. I spent two sessions explaining to probably a first year grad student why I was breaking down, received zero feedback, advice, or anything resembling an action plan, then had two sessions with another random 24 year old, then another. I seem to have received the best possible treatment BH is capable of offering.
All I got out of it was $500 out of my wallet and a further-cemented unforgiving attitude towards the folks whose harassment drove me towards BH in the first place.
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