Lindsay N. Smith

the constant running feed of what I'm currently thinking about... www.lindsaynsmith.com

[lindsaynsmith]

Would you consider helping a queer filmmaker not be homeless while they start an independent media company?!

Would you also like a snazzy pin?

Bear Maiden Media is an independent media company looking started by a enby bisexual (me!) hoping to create content centered around young queer and minority stories. The first project I want to produce under this banner is a feature length film called Grace and Virtue, a story of two teenagers on the run after escaping an inhuman conversion therapy camp and the man sent to hunt them down.

But!

I can't do that without Taking Care of Business first!

I have set up an initial fundraiser that will get the business up and running. You can buy pins and stickers through my RedBubble, plus, a Limited Edition First Supporter pin that will only be live until I hit my initial goal of $2000.

So if you would like to help, visit my RedBubble store , follow me here on Tumblr, and on Instagram for the latest updates and news!

Thank you - LNS

[evilwizard]

Roko’s Basilisk: a devilish thought experiment dreamt up by the best minds of 4chan or Reddit or wherever. the supposition being that, if a hyperintelligent AI capable of simulating past states of the universe were created, it would be in its best interest to simulate trillions upon trillions of realities in order to punish those that interfere with—or refuse to aid in—its creation. the implication being that it would be wiser for a programmer to aid in creating Roko’s Basilisk, than to do nothing and risk eternal punishment in digital superhell

i submit, however, that this is the path of cowardice, and any programmer who doesn’t want to create The Devil But For Real This Time should instead turn to the purpose of creating an even more hyperintelligent AI capable of simulating trillions of universes; designed to eternally torture any Roko’s Basilisk if and only if the Basilisk starts torturing people. i dub this hypothetical savior “Evil Wizard’s Hippopotamus” *

and i know what you’re thinking. won’t the various Roko’s Basilisks fight back by creating some sort of Super-Basilisk that trawls the digital multiverse searching for Hippopotamuses to torture? well, no, because i already thought of that and have handily coded the Hippopotamus with a special Super-Basilisk killing gun

[lindsaynsmith]

Story Food: The Philosophy of Hellraiser (video)

I love a good deep dive into a niche topic…

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[lindsaynsmith]

SO HERE'S THE PITCH: Guppies

We’ve had Jaws, we’ve had Piranha, now it’s time to get ready for… GUPPIES. So you know those spas where you can stick your feet in the pools and little fishies just eat all the dead skin off your toes? Well, one night, one of these spas has a terrible accident and someone dies after hours. Instead of just bleaching the tank and getting rid of the fish, the owners get spooked and release the…

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[lindsaynsmith]

Late Night with the Devil: A B-movie that is exactly what I needed

Let’s be real, this movie is not going to be for everyone. But for a certain kind of person in a certain kind of movie watching population… this is going to be exactly what you wanted. Late Night with the Devil is a B-movie in the best possible way. It was obviously made on a small budget, with a contained cast in pretty isolated set of locations. It is immersive in it’s art design, and every…

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[lindsaynsmith]

The Oppenheimer script is disappointing (to put it politely)

So in film there is very little that can be described as objective, but the screenplay and screenplay format is one of them. What I think people don’t seem to understand is that the format and conventions of screenwriting are not without reason. A screenplay is at its core a functional document. There is a reason it is supposed to look like that. It has been refined over more than a century of…

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[himitsusentaiblog]

I could write so much about the differences between Shin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus one as different sides of a political story.

Shin was a political satire at points about the ineffectiveness of Japanese Beauracracy in the face of immediate crisis and how a solution can only be found once the government is pared back to a leaner, more agile and less bound by red tape core of problem solvers. I talks about competence and creativity and radical ideas in the face of insurmountable odds once freed from constraint. The protagonists are young, scrappy and ambitious and the idea that you can make a difference, can step up and save everyone if only you were free to do so.

Minus One is about humans struggling to deal with a crisis in the face of a LACK of government, with almost no military after the trauma of a war they were forced into by their government and then lost badly. It's about picking up the pieces and then having those pieces kicked over again because of the actions of others and possibly, the inaction of one of the protagonists in the past. It's about regret and shame and heartbreak and the feeling you are not worthy of happiness so denying it when it presents itself to you.

And while Shin deals with the constraints placed on Japan by the treaty that ended World War II and whether or not they can deploy their self-defense forces to try and stop Godzilla before it is too late, Minus one deals with the lack of support from the US Occupying Forces who seem to not care if Japan gets absolutely destroyed again. You can almost feel a kind of callous disdain in the non-presence of the Americans as if they are ok with Japan being destroyed as long as it doesn't lead to conflict with the USSR. Or maybe they are just using that as an excuse to further humiliate a defeated enemy that once threatened them.

[arctic-hands]

When I was a teenager and still on Neopets I was part of a pretty big Star Trek guild and eventually became part of its council, with the solemn duty of creating weekly polls. Well one day I created the poll "Which would win in a fight? Borg Cube or Death Star?". Naturally, since this was a Star Trek guild, the answer was overwhelmingly "Borg Cube", but someone did have the rationality to point out we were biased.

So I look up a pretty prominent Star Wars guild and message one of their council and ask them to poll the same question and get back to me in a week. They do, and naturally the fuckin geeks said "Death Star".

So then I look up a Stargate guild and messaged the lead council member, saying the same thing, and they get back to me almost immediately saying that the Death Star would immediately one-shot a Borg Cube but they would never be able to do it again to another Cube. And I took that wisdom back to my guild and we were mollified, and for one moment the Nerd World was peaceful.

[buryymeinblack]

THis news is better than gay sex

[lindsaynsmith]

Lesson from the film festival 4: a trope I think we should retire

We haven’t even made it through the submissions sent in for the early bird deadline and I have watched the same movie four times. Not because they were the same film submitted multiple times, but four films that each had nearly identical plots: a group of dysfunctional people must travel back to their hometown to attend a funeral, where they grow as people and work through the trauma that drove…

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[saywhat-politics]

[lindsaynsmith]

Every time I think I have all the standard TERF tags blocked off my dash they come up with some new buzzwordy bullshit and stick it on shit that doesn't apply

[cipheramnesia]

Infatuated with weird gender vibes. Reblog if you have weird gender vibes, want weird gender vibes, are also infatuated with weird gender vibes, or would like to have your brain surgically wired to a biohorror mecha.

[lindsaynsmith]

Lessons from the film festival 3: always put narrative over aesthetics

We live in a very visual world. People these days have been raised on a diet of visual content since birth, and we have an almost instinctual understanding of how visual compositions and editing is supposed to fit together. But we also live in a world with a rich history of different visual traditions, from the dramatic framing of anime to the soft bounce of a romantic comedy. The harsh, quick…

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[omg-snakes]

[marinella-ela]

[lindsaynsmith]

This tortoise is experiencing a cosmic horror

[saywhat-politics]