There's no use crying over spilled ink

A blog for my book stuff...

[ad-wills]

[vaspider]

@thebibliosphere

[cherubcallremade]

im having a moment

[cherubcallremade]

im turning rbs off of this in 24hrs you have my express permission to repost this image as much as you desire idc.

[avocadosalad]

[meme-train-choochoo]

[trickstertime]

I think about this post every time I wash my sheets

[shadowsong26x]

image description: a tweet from Archie Henderson (@ jazzemu_), timestamped 4:06 AM on 7/6/20

[inside washing machine]

duvet cover: climb in my brothers

every single piece of clothing: we shall build a new life in the big sock

[nottawriter]

Twitter post by Kelly_McKernan:

If we don’t fight back against predatory practices and exploitation against AI right now, than what was it all for? Raise a ruckus. Let’s do this.

[aquitainequeen]

Alarm bells being rung by Maureen Johnson on AI and the Big Publishers

[roach-works]

it’s not just about replacing big authors, it’s about replacing ghost writers completely. which will make publishing and writing for a living even more inaccessible. it’s bad all the way down.

[gingerswagfreckles]

Holy Fucking Shit

[fans4wga]

[image ID: screenshots from CNN live updates on the SAG-AFTRA strike. The first one shows the headline, "SAG-AFTRA negotiator says studios' proposal allowed for actors' digital likenesses to be used forever."

The second shows the text, "SAG-AFTRA's negotiator pushed back about an alleged claim made by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) that its proposal would offer protections surrounding the use of AI likeness of actors.

"During Thursday's news conference, a reporter asked Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief SAG-AFTRA negotiator, about an alleged AMPTP news release that claimed that a "groundbreaking AI proposal" would protect an actor's digital likeness.

"Crabtree-Ireland said that proposal would allow background performers' likenesses to be used repeatedly and indefinitely — all while the performers are paid for only one day of work.

"But this groundbreaking AI proposal that they gave us yesterday — in that groundbreaking AI proposal, they propose that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day's pay and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and to be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation. So, if you think that's a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again," he responded."

end ID.]

[beowulf22121]

If that ever goes through, there's going to be "Yellow shirt guy" and "woman in a red dress" in every scene that requires a background character for 50 years, and then some uppity director will hire new background actors and be praised for his inventive idea instead of being seen as normal.

[swordofsun]

This is also why CGI Animators need to go on strike. Who do they plan to have making all these scanned background images move and pretend to talk? CGI people. It'll all be done on the computer. The AMPTP is looking at potentially saving hundreds of millions of dollars in the long run by not having to pay day rates and associated costs while still giving CGI Animators shit for compensation. Now is the time for the CGI people to stand up and demand their fair share as well.

[coldalbion]

Terry Pratchett estate backs Jack Monroe’s idea for ‘Vimes Boots’ poverty index

Campaigner has used the idea drawn from Discworld novels to register the disproportionate effect price rises have on the lower paid

""The index, Monroe said, is named in honour of Pratchett’s creation Sam Vimes, who in the Discworld novel Men at Arms lays out the “Sam Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness”.

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money,” wrote Pratchett. “Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of okay for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”

The Pratchett estate has authorised the use of the name, tweeting its own Pratchett quote in support of Monroe’s campaign. “Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness,” wrote the late Discworld author in Men at Arms.

Rhianna Pratchett said: “My father used his anger about inequality, classism, xenophobia and bigotry to help power the moral core of his work. One of his most famous lightning-rods for this was Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch - a cynical, but likable, man who attempts to better himself whilst railing against the injustices around him. Some of which he’s had a hand in perpetrating in the past.

“Vimes’s musing on how expensive it is to be poor via the cost of boots was a razor-sharp evaluation of socio-economic unfairness. And one that’s all too pertinent today, where our most vulnerable so often bear the brunt of austerity measures and are cast adrift from protection and empathy. Whilst we don’t have Vimes any more, we do have Jack and Dad would be proud to see his work used in such a way.”

[llywela13]

This campaign came about because the current poverty index tends to look at mid-range luxury items, the price of which is often less affected by inflation, rather than the bottom-of-the-range necessities that the poorest in society actually rely on, and which have been massively hit by inflation.

[damazcuz]

*explaining kitchen appliances to my pet medieval knights* The microwave, or Micheal the Wavious, and metal fork, or Sir Silver Prong, are sworn enemies and can never cross paths lest their meeting spell destruction for all.

[steampoweredwerehog]

[studentofetherium]

CGI animators should unionize next. normally, their jobs would be too precarious to strike, since studios would replace them without a second thought, but if it's part of this larger general film strike, they might finally have meaningful power to better their working conditions

[studentofetherium]

if CGI animators unionized, it would kill the MCU. straight up. the the entire business model is built on exploiting CGI animators

[roseverdict]

TEAR THE BITCH (exploitation of cgi animators) APART

[phantomarine]

as a person who may or may not have been an animator who worked on an infamous sausage-themed movie during which animators were horribly exploited and also tried to seek unionization

indeed, tear the bitch apart

it's rotten all the way down

[cardassiangoodreads]

Some of you might remember a couple of years ago when Scarlett Johansson sued Disney because she was making significantly less money for Black Widow than was guaranteed in her contract because so many more people watched it on streaming than in theaters, how there was a massive misinformation campaign from Disney that a ton of people on this website (and Twitter and other social media) bought into: that she was a greedy bitch who didn't respect people who needed to stay at home during the pandemic (I believe the word "ableist" was thrown around with aplomb) as opposed to someone who just wanted to be paid what she was owed, what Disney had initially guaranteed her when they signed the contract, and whose issue obviously wasn't with streaming itself but with how little streaming was allowed to get away with paying her and other actors.

Anyway we're going to see a lot of that from studios now, especially now that actors have joined the strike and it's easier to sell them as rich and greedy than writers, because of this cultural stereotype we have of all Hollywood actors as celebrities. Don't fall for it. SAG-AFTRA represents people like Tom Cruise and ScarJo but it also represents the kind of people who played a Borg in two episodes of Star Trek: Voyager in 1997 or who had one line in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as an enthusiastic audience member. Most actors are not crazy wealthy, and in fact, if you're a big TV fan (especially older TV and genre TV) that likely includes some actor names that you know, who played supporting roles in your fav shows, or who were even a star in something decades ago but haven't done anything major since. The AFTRA side also represents people like radio broadcasters. But even beside that, all workers deserve to be fairly compensated for the work they do, and the threat of replacing them with AI, or real actors being required to sign contracts to allow their likenesses to be used by AI forever without paying them, is an existential threat to acting as a profession in general. The actors are in the right. The writers are in the right. The studios are in the wrong. The studios have exploited new technology to get away with horrifying labor practices for years and their feet need to be put to the fire. Circulate the articles about how poorly the Orange is the New Black cast was compensated for making one of the defining shows of the early streaming boom, and of the studios saying they want to force writers to starve and lose their homes. Don't get distracted by propaganda aping progressive-sounding language about wealthy celebrities. Focus on the real enemy, the real greedy, rich assholes who care more about money than people and art: the studios.

[theabstruseone]

Fun Fact: The last time both WGA and SAG (now SAG-AFTRA) were on strike together, it was in 1960. They were striking over residuals for television productions and airing of films on television.

See, the studios and networks didn't think they should pay for television. "It's too new of a technology! It's unproven! We don't know if it'll ever be profitable! Listen, why don't we just put this off for now and come back to it later..."

Damned if that doesn't sound really fucking familiar...

[backstepping]

what black mirror episode are we in now

[felixcloud6288]

[sailermoon]

babe are u okay ur crying about closeness lines over time by olivia de recat again

[ad-wills]

[animentality]

[mckitterick]

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