Rachel. 29. She/her, they/them. Multi-fandom. Currently obsessed with Ted Lasso, Hades, The Amazing Devil. (And of course some Leverage and Avatar the Last Airbender) as well as whatever I find interesting. I have a strange collection of obsessions. stevie_RST on AO3
This is a real wonky proof of concept for another Drunkard's Path modular linoprint but I'm v excited to redraft it properly, the repeat looks v cool and it can kinda go as big as you want.
STAY SAFE!! [ID: the Gilbert Baker pride flag with the words “Happy pride to all those who are unable to celebrate openly and safely. You are loved and seen!” in all-caps black text over it. /end ID]
“If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”
alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
💬 2 🔁 18 ❤️ 60 · Transcript:
Colin: So you'll talk a little bit, and then we can have a little interacting, perhaps.
Joey: Correct, yeah
Transcript:
10, 12 years later, Hay Festival invited me to come talk about this book. I've been writing books for about 18 years now, and this is the first one that's been published. And I knew that in the time when I started writing books at the age of 20 and now, the world had exponentially changed. And I had to talk about something .... that's my mic getting stuck to my beard....
I knew that I wanted to talk about something in this book that scared the crap out of me. And it was being filmed. There are one or two people filming me right now. And just before I came out here, they asked "by the way, we've got a camera, do you mind being filmed?". And I said "yeah, fine, yeah, absolutely. " It's ubiquitous. We are just so used to cameras invading every inch of our lives.
Children, before they even understand what it means to be remembered, are being remembered days later. I've seen 3-year-olds know that the 'x' on a phone means go away. They'll swipe if they want to see the next thing. I saw a child do that on the train here. Swiping the window.
In my book, in Its Not A Cult, which is gone now. Oh, it's back! That's why I need the clicker. I wanted to explore what it would be like if I had a character whose addiction to filming was all-encompassing. I've seen people in my life, in my lines of work, who are addicted to filming. I've seen...
... There you go, did you hear it? Did everyone just jolt to see if it was theirs? A phone just went off and we all just went "yeah, it's probably the babysitter". Your brain went somewhere else. To think about who might be texting you, who might be needing you.
And that's what this book is trying to explore. That memory of me 12 years ago exists up here. This memory exists elsewhere now. This memory that is happening right now, this moment, is happening down camera lenses. And I'm fine with people filming.
But to talk about your first point, and also what you spoke about, you described it as oil and wood. I started to wonder outside, do the people who exist in those wooden, in those paintings, and the people collecting data to be immortalised, did they ever think "Oh, I wonder if anyone is going to remember me. "
I wonder if that's important to me.
When I was 20 and I started writing books, that was the biggest driving force. It's... when I started theatre, as an actor, and then I started to get into television and film and I thought "great, well they can't delete that. " And good our bad, whatever it is, I existed and therefore I mattered.
With music, I can point at things that have been created and I can say that I created that. And yet, tomorrow night our band are playing, in a church, and we've not played in years because I'm so terrified of being filmed sometimes. I don't want to be captured.
And neither does the protagonist in this book. They want to capture everything, but never be captured.
For context, earlier Colin had introduced everyone, and explained that each person would give a 10-15 minute talk. Joey had said that he'd only found out about this 15 minutes before coming on stage, so hadn't prepared anything. In the previous talks, Peter had spoken about medieval attitudes to the 7 deadly sins, and Aleks had talked about silicon valley moguls who are seeking immortality (more about these later).
Disclaimer: I had originally only intended to film excerpts. The theme (as with the book) is filming. I kept filming, because what he was saying seemed really important, even if it was about not filming, so sorry for the hypocrisy inherent in these. But also, enjoy!
Colin: So you'll talk a little bit, and then we can have a little interacting, perhaps.
Joey: Correct, yeah. You've got my notes on the laptop here. I want the clicker. Have you got the wee clicker?
Aleks: Did I put it in my pocket?
Joey: I just want to hold it.
Aleks: Ah, it was stolen by someone in the front row.
Joey:
Yes, thank you. And thanks everyone for coming out and hearing about... I feel like I'm following the intellectual equivalent of the Rolling Stones. So do bear with me.
I was told to say something today, and I thought a little bit about saying no. And just saying "no, I'll just have a nice little chat with you guys and see how it goes". But actually it kind of sprung on me something that I wanted to talk about, and that I talk about in It's Not A Cult, that's very, very linked to both of your fields. I'd like to talk a little bit today about moment, and memory.
The last time I was here in Hay, I wasn't at this Festival, I was at the other one. I was a wastrel. A snotty person who tried to, who thought he could do, everything. And ere festival invited my band, The Amazing Devil, to play. Now, we had our first album out, which was made in an old button factory for about £4000, and we were very excited. And we turned up and they said, "we know you're playing this evening, but would you like to play a couple of gigs?" And we thought "Oh my goodness, this is a moment. "
And we got out and played in front of 9 people. Which, and this is about 12 years ago now, I think something like that, and I'm so glad that I did. Because nobody filmed it. It was a beautiful failure. Our guitarist accidentally set for to his amp. There was a 5-year-old having the best time in the corner, twirling. No one could really try and capture that down a camera lens.
Even 10, 12 years ago now, social media was burgeoning. The people you've been talking about in your third point had claimed power, but didn't really know how to use it, or really how to monetise it. And we still had these cameras in our pockets, but they were new. You know, everyone, snip snap? What do you call that? Everyone was doing snip snap, but it was old and no one understood it. Tip top didn't exist yet. I don't personally use them, I don't know if you can tell.
But I found it a very joyous time because I didn't have anything to point at and say "that happened". I couldn't point at that gig and say "wow". All I have is the memory.
I love that Leverage really goes out of it’s way to show us that just because you break the ‘rules’, it doesn’t mean you’re breaking the rules. Rules and laws and society are all made up, at the end of the day, and all you really have is your own moral compass and sense of justice; is this just to you? Is it right? Should it be OK for companies to put people in insurmountable debt for the rest of their lives just because our medical care is so expensive in this modern day and age? No law or rule should change what you know in your heart is right and wrong, and I think that’s the key thing that makes someone a good person in my eyes.
#there was a time when parker wouldn’t have noticed, #not because she lacked the capacity to care, #but because she had narrowed herself, #to stay alive she cut off as many unnecessary things as possible, #watching her get them all back, #is one of the glories of this show (via @seananmcguire)
This scene hit me like a brick. My parents were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt when I was 16 bc I’d had cancer the year before (my treatment ended up being free but the initial ER bills and such were not).
But somewhere along the line they just… Disappeared. My mom says they’re not being paid and they’re not in collections. It’s almost as if someone out there did…exactly what Parker did.
Ever since I saw this the first time, I’ve imagined it was Parker doing it. That she and Hardison had a free weekend and decided to take it out on a collections agency. That I was one of the lucky ones who got a little Leverage.
Okay but like yeah, that is actually a thing that happens, albeit not exactly like this. I don’t remember the exact process but basically there’s a booming industry to sell peoples debt - the business you owe money to sells it to someone else for a fraction of the money owed, wipes their hands of the whole affair, and now whoever bought your debt is riding your ass to get you to give the money to the. But it’s also entirely possible for people to just… buy up massive amounts of debt for pennies on the dollar, and then just. Forgive it. Because capitalism is a living nightmare, but the system is broken enough that it’s possible to exploit it for good sometimes.
Like, the main reason I know about this is because John Oliver did a piece on debt buying a few years ago, and ended it by revealing that he’d bought 15 million dollars worth of medical debt just so he could forgive all of it. Both to expose how broken the system was because some random fucker like him could buy millions of dollars in peoples debt with zero regulations, and also just to take the record for biggest TV giveaway in history.
yes! if you want to help with the medical debt crisis in the US and have some extra money please donate to RIP Medical Debt if you can. They’re completely legit and really do what they say - you really CAN relieve an incredible amount of debt for the needy with even a small donation. I’m a monthly donor and receive a quarterly report of the debt they’ve abolished, and it truly is amazing. Based on those reports the average amount of debt abolished per person is actually I would say about $600 - which means, if you’re doing the math, that with a $6 donation to RIP Medical Debt, you can potentially pull one person out of a poverty spiral - maybe even one family. For six dollars. that’s a pretty good deal, I think.
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