Bolts and Screws @bolts-and-screws - Tumblr Blog

Intro Post

Hello, my name is Val, and I like stories. I think I know shit about media analysis because that’s what I went to college for (sorta), and I decided I need an outlet so I can rant about whatever I am currently into. This blog is sort of a diary of things I read, watch, and listen to and my totally personal opinions about them. I know it’s basically the idea of tumblr and that’s what everyone does on here anyway, but I want to be systematic about it. Idk. Come in and watch me rant about stuff, I guess.

#personal

ysolt

fuck an "intended audience" how about we normalize engaging with new and unfamiliar art pieces on their own terms

ysolt

little-theatre-fairy

ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the difference between pushing a product and creating a work of art

themainspoon

I can't be bothered to find the thread rn. But there were a bunch of people talking about it, and I agree, so I'm sharing the idea here:

We need a death of the audience; lots of media gets worse because authors are too worried about a hypothetical audience. As someone engaging with media, you need to understand that you simply might not understand all of it, and that's ok. But also I think more authors need to realize that it's ok if not everyone in the audience will fully understand everything they're doing.

morlock-holmes

How, and I’m not just grousing but looking for real advice, how on earth do people shop online these days?

If you ask Amazon for 90 inch blackout curtains it just vomits up a random pile of Chinese made curtains in, you know, not that size at all.

Honestly literally how do you find a specific product online these days?

definitelynotplanetfall

You pretty much have to already know the model number or exact product name for a specific product. It’s pretty much impossible to side-by-side compare different versions of the same object. If one had a conspiratorial bent you might assume this is the system working.

How do you learn the product name for the curtains that actually block light and aren’t made of poison when every review section is astroturfed and every recommendation is either glowing sponsored praise or some eccentric hobbyist with a corner use case decrying the lack of something you’ve never heard of and don’t know if it’s the jargon for something you should be paying attention to or some AI-generated repetitive gibberish mashing together phrases from the ad copy and the other recommendation lists and the other AI-generated repetitive gibberish?

Just Do More Research (: Caveat Emptor!! (: (:

fr there is no way I am aware of other than spending infinite time creating a brute force map of every blind alley and there is no way to publicize that map to save everyone else the trouble short of becoming The Curtain Review Guy as your full time job

(but, given the preponderance of low-credibility Headphone Review Guys and the fact that search engines invariably return useless slop regardless, this is probably also a waste of time even if you pull it off.)

the-grey-tribe’s lament that the only real solution is to go to a physical store is probably the final word here, I’m afraid.

morlock-holmes

It’s impressive how quickly it happened. Google and Amazon went from “Astonishingly useful” to… not that in a very short time and I wonder what happened.

roach-works

since you asked for advice, i offer this: it’s not a cure-all, but it does help a bit if you use firefox with as many adblockers as you can get it to run, and then duckduckgo on top of that.

here’s what pinterest looks like for me when i search blackout curtains. see those holes? they’re where ads were served to me and then blocked out. that’s how much of your pinterest feed is sponsored products. this particular search is probably not going to help me find a link to a good blackout curtain for sale, but it’s going to take me to craft sites and review sites, so maybe i’ll see if i can make myself some, or read some reviews so i know more of what to look for when i DO go to amazon.

this was the sixth result on duckduck go, after ikea and lowes. it’s not even on the first page of google results, which would prefer me to go to target, wayfair, and overstock.com. amazon dominates the rankings on both searches, but it’s not as aggressively presented to you on duckduckgo,

there’s also a duckduckgo result for a comparison article from a homegoods site. i honestly like thespruce.com, and use them frequently for their craft tutorials and recipes. if they’re fluff, they’re still fluff worth reading when you feel like fixing up your home.

https://blackoutcurtains.com/product/shop-blackout-curtains/

https://www.thespruce.com/best-blackout-curtains-4152964

in conclusion the state of the internet fucking sucks, but there are people who design browsers and search engines to help you navigate your way through the hypercapitalist manipulation.

sarroora

So Netflix is releasing this animated movie but here’s the thing - all backgrounds are done in AI. No actual BG artists were hired or credited for this work.

And here’s the kicker - I gave them too much credit. I realized that not even the AI users are credited apparently. Check this out:

“+Human”. No names, no nothing.

I know it’s tempting, but please don’t hate-watch this thing. Numbers equal profit even if the people watching are just doing it to mock. Don’t give Netflix and other studios even more incentive to fire more animators and replace them with machines trained on their work and skill.

Hilarously, the excuse used is ‘there aren’t enough artists’. That’s not true - there are more than enough artists, but the real issue is that no one wants to pay a living wage. Here’s a short video about the reality of animation in Japan.

The biggest winners in this equation at the end of the day are the AI infrastructure owners - owners of Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, etc. Do not feed this machine, it creates more monopolization of entire industries, raises a powerful few and dehumanizes the rest.