Random thread of whatever

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What it says on the tin.

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Back to basics

weavtheer rodnam tehard?

I know Tarantino knows him mom better than all of us, and he managed to get his foot in the door of Hollywood and made it big, but still… Is he right or wrong to still hold it against her after all this time?

Al, in all the years you have been on the various incarnations of this board, did it ever seem that the rest of us cared much about celebrity personal lives? Isn’t that what your relationship tread is for?

Well, the pic doesn’t belong in the relationship thread first of all,
and it is not really celebrity gossip either.

It is imho, a question to throw out there in the random thread.

And speak for yourself too….

My personal opinion about all this is, with all his success, and the money that comes with that, isn’t Quentin Tarantino able to afford a better haircut?!

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Todd, Dave, Rocket

a.) I said Celebrity relationships
b.) Tarantino is a celebrity and it is discussing the relationship he has with his mother.
c.) would you like to take a poll of our members about who cares about Tarantino’s mother and who doesn’t? If you win, I apologize but I think if you win, it is because most of our members are smartasses.

To each their own. You have the right to post whatever you like and so do I.

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njerry

d) Tarantino is probably just bullshitting and is actually really nice to his mum.

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Rocket

Dave wrote:

d) Tarantino is probably just bullshitting and is actually really nice to his mum.

e) Quentin Tarantino’s mom cuts his hair.

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njerry, DavidM, Dave, Rocket, Sean Robinson

e) comes after d, before f.

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Todd, Rocket

Anonymous wrote:

e) comes after d, before f.

…”def”?

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Todd

I don’t know… would you do that to spite your mother even if she said that to you?

I will follow up on this… someday.

DavidM wrote:

…”def”?

jam?

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Todd

does anyone else use this emoji   when they are shitposting?

Rocket wrote:

does anyone else use this emoji   when they are shitposting?

Are you suggesting that people deliberately shitpost on The Carrier?! I’m shocked!! Shocked, I say.

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Todd, Rocket

My use to my 18-month-old nephew is now the same as it is for most people I know, in that I’m the one person who knows how to work a DVD player.

Today I came into the room while he was visiting, and as soon as he heard me, without even turning around to say hello, he ran right up to his pile of Tractor Ted DVDs and grabbed one to shove in my face while shouting “Deev Dee!”

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Rocket, DavidM, njerry, garjones, Martin Smith, Sean Robinson

https://popculture.com/movies/news/quentin-tarantino-mother-connie-zastoupil-breaks-silence-vow-never-give-money/

I mean, this is a moment he relates, but if he wasn’t joking (and he doesn’t seem to be), I’d say it isn’t the particular comment that’s stuck in his mind that is the problem, but his overall relationship to his mother.

So to answer your question more broadly, Al, as I don’t know anything about Tarantino and his mother except for those few quotes, I think sometimes people make the mistake of feeling that they have to stay close to their parents and that they owe them just because they’re their parents, no matter how they were and are treated by them, and they’re kind of trapped in an eternal cycle of mutual frustration. Sometimes, the healthier thing may be to just distance yourself from them and let that be the end of it.

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Todd, Al-x

Thanks @christian… You are indeed a gentleman and a scholar. 😊

Well, if I had a shit-ton of money, I wouldn’t give a cent to Quentin Tarantinos mom either.

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Christian, garjones, DavidM, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Well, if I had a shit-ton of money, I wouldn’t give a cent to Quentin Tarantinos mom either.

Hey, I’m not giving her any money now!

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Christian, Al-x

Celebrities going on social media telling the world that they don’t bathe (or bathe their children) regularly is TMI…

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Todd

Al-x wrote:

Celebrities going on social media telling the world that they don’t bathe (or bathe their children) regularly is TMI…

Celebrities on social media is TMI

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Sean Robinson, Rocket, DavidM, Todd

Anyone know what type of shotgun this is?

I’m just curious, I totally haven’t cloned any dinosaurs that I need to bring to heel.

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njerry

Anonymous wrote:

Anyone know what type of shotgun this is?

I’m just curious, I totally haven’t cloned any dinosaurs that I need to bring to heel.

It’s a Franchi SPAS-12, according to the Internet Movie Firearms Database.

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Christian, Todd, DavidM

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Internet Movie Firearms Database

Of course that’s a thing.

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Christian, Sean Robinson, Rocket, Todd, DavidM, lorcan_nagle

Someone offers to give you 10 million dollars if you will spend the rest of your life with a penis tattooed on your forehead. Do you take the deal?

(Anders, no need to answer, we know you wouldn’t need a financial incentive.)

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garjones, Todd, lorcan_nagle

I’d take the money and grow a fringe (and if I go bald wear a wig).

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DavidM

I’d go as low as £5 million if it’s tattooed in ink that’s only visible under a UV light.

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DavidM

Ok…

Smart as Reed – I can invent something that will make me as rich as Bruce, most likely even richer.

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Ben, JRCarter, DavidM

It is been mentioned more than once that F4 lives off the $ created by Reed’s patents.

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JRCarter, Todd

Todd wrote:

Smart as Reed – I can invent something that will make me as rich as Bruce, most likely even richer.

Now that’s smart.

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JRCarter, Todd

The Daily Show is funny and there is a wickedness in doing so.

Observe:

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Christian

All things Australian was a weird fad for the United States in the 80’s even though the comparison and relationship between both nations is apparent. If the Colonies hadn’t revolted then convicts would not have been sent to Australia after all.

However, the one fad interest that did not continue was interest in Australian rules football. Essentially, to us it looked like a rugby game played on a field about the size of Manhattan Island by a bunch of drunk Irish hooligans. Very entertaining.

this many decades later, I’d Australian football still as popular as it was back then or is it on the decline like Hockey in the US?

I fell down a little rabbit hole this afternoon, thanks to Youtube recommending a video about the law around parking fines. Resulting in reading this quite funny court case transcript.

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Rocket

Martin Smith wrote:

I fell down a little rabbit hole this afternoon, thanks to Youtube recommending a video about the law around parking fines. Resulting in reading this quite funny court case transcript.

Makes me think of this:

Interesting:

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Ben, Todd, njerry

Todd wrote:

Smart as Reed – I can invent something that will make me as rich as Bruce, most likely even richer.

On the flip side, there’s no guarantee that being as smart as Reed will also make you as productive as Reed.

Conversely, all of Bruce’s wealth could be tied up investments and projects to build “all those wonderful toys”

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Todd

Rocket wrote:

Conversely, all of Bruce’s wealth could be tied up investments and projects to build “all those wonderful toys”

“Paper rich, cash poor”

I seem to remember that was a problem Marc Spector was referenced as having in an issue of Moon Knight back in the 1990s.

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I got back 224 euros on my yearly energy bill. I’m happy as I could really use that money.

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njerry, Todd, DavidM

Just a reminder, anything I post from 5:00 PM Friday US pacific time until 9:00 AM Monday US PDT should be considered a “drunk post.”

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Rocket, njerry, Sean Robinson, Todd

Just saw Millar post that he’s dropping Twitter to just send a newsletter.

It seems this newsletter revival is all the rage, even though it was the main communication thing 20 years ago. Will we go in circles and they’ll shift from newsletter into message boards next?

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Ben, DavidM, Todd

garjones wrote:

Just saw Millar post that he’s dropping Twitter to just send a newsletter.

It seems this newsletter revival is all the rage, even though it was the main communication thing 20 years ago. Will we go in circles and they’ll shift from newsletter into message boards next?

I noticed that a few of the comic book people who got the deal with Substack said they were dropping Twitter or at least using it at a minimum level.

In the newsletters I do get, I admit to mostly just skimming through them unless something stands out to me.

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Ben

[Rocket]

garjones wrote:

Just saw Millar post that he’s dropping Twitter to just send a newsletter.

He always has been on the front edge of of ways to connect with fans. I’m not sure who’s behind this push to Newsletters but I can’t deny they are persuasive. Good thing we are the Carrier now if Gar’s prediction comes through and Millar restarts MW. I wonder what O’Hara thinks of all this and whether he is still in touch with Mark.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Rocket.

Rocket wrote:

I’m not sure who’s behind this push to Newsletters

There’s a lot of money being pumped into Substack lately, for some reason, which is being used to sign up writers for exclusivity deals.

[DavidM]

garjones wrote:

It seems this newsletter revival is all the rage, even though it was the main communication thing 20 years ago. Will we go in circles and they’ll shift from newsletter into message boards next?

I want a photocopied zine through my letterbox or nothing. Where do I send my two second-class stamps?

 

But seriously, emailed newsletters make so much more sense. I’m seeing a lot of bands switching (back) to newsletters, too.

It used to be that I sign up to a newsletter and get news pushed to me without any further effort. Now I have to check twitter, facebook, maybe instagram, and if I’m a day late I’ll still possibly miss something due to their stupid interfaces and noise-to-signal ratio. Social media is a stupid way to do one-to-many communication.

 

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by DavidM.

DavidM wrote:

It used to be that I sign up to a newsletter and get news pushed to me without any further effort. Now I have to check twitter, facebook, maybe instagram, and if I’m a day late I’ll still possibly miss something due to their stupid interfaces and noise-to-signal ratio. Social media is a stupid way to do one-to-many communication.

It depends what you’re trying to do and who you’re trying to reach really.

If you’re sending out email messages to a group of people who have actively signed up to receive that information then it’s likely to be well-received and acted upon – a fan will be quite likely to buy a comic, or go and see a show, or pick up a book if it’s promoted in a direct email from a favourite creator.

But those emails are only ever going to have a limited, self-selecting audience. If you want to broadcast further than just your core fanbase then social media lets you do that – reach new people, build up a profile, get known and so on.

Of course, you’re part of a massive world of noise on social media, and you’ll find that on average people are much less receptive to your message than your self-selecting fanbase, but at least you can reach them.

So I think both avenues have their place, and are probably appropriate to creators at different stages in their careers.

When you’re just getting started, hardly anyone is going to sign up to your emails, so social media is a good way of establishing yourself. But I think there’s a point where you become so big that the attention and maintenance and visibility of social media becomes a net negative (despite the promotional opportunity), and you have enough of a following that you can pull people into a more insulated channel and you don’t have to wade through twitter every day.

All of which is fine. It’s just using these tools in appropriate ways.

But I do get a bit mystified when you see creators like James Tynion IV starting to decry Twitter as ultimately all being about people trying to sell you something, as though it’s a huge revelation. I feel like… yeah, that’s what you’ve been using it for, for years, to connect with fans and establish yourself in the industry. It feels a bit hypocritical to me. All of these channels have their uses.

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Ben, DavidM, Todd

Depending on the frequency and depth, a newsletter can become a huge time suck. If the person is producing a newsletter with a lot of writing and graphics, that could take the better part of a day or maybe longer. With social media, you could be done in under two minutes, if that long. I think both can work if used smartly and in conjunction.

It seems that with the comics people going to Substack and having premium levels, they will be spending a lot more time producing newsletters and other bonus content. I wonder how that will impact their ability to produce actual comics?

There are some sites that are linked here a few times… you know, the “clickbait” stuff.

I heard that Buzzfeed is not good and neither is Screenrant.

We posted a LONG time ago that the old Wizard magazine was no good and better, faster, content, is online.

So, I want to bookmark some decent sites on comics and overall entertainment news.

Any suggestions for all of us?

Every so often I end up on comicbook.com, seems OK, haven’t heard anything bad about them yet.

As to Millar doing a newsletter, it feels a bit too low profile for him but maybe I’m too used to his prior style of motormouth marketing hyperbole.

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Al-x, Todd

Ben wrote:

As to Millar doing a newsletter, it feels a bit too low profile for him but maybe I’m too used to his prior style of motormouth marketing hyperbole.

Just thinking about it, I would have jumped at the chance to sign up to Millar newsletter about 10 years ago. Now, I think I’ll pass.

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Rocket

Martin Smith wrote:

There’s a lot of money being pumped into Substack lately, for some reason, which is being used to sign up writers for exclusivity deals.

Yes. Substack is being massively funded by venture capital. They have money to burn.

Whether that indicates a successful model is quite disconnected. In truth the nature of VC is most of it fails. The reason the money keeps coming is if an idea does stick it returns billions. So you can stick millions here and there into various ideas and not stress too much if they fail.

It’s all basically a risk/return calculation, you have levels of putting money into a bank, then blue chip shares, then VC projects. Only one will have the potential to make you super rich overnight.

Personally I don’t get it, I wasn’t into newsletters when they started and barely read any but I also don’t have any interest in Tik-Tok and Instagram and they are huge. We shall see but I don’t see the ‘killer app’ idea really with newsletters.

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lorcan_nagle, Todd, Dave

They’re very good if you’re a deplatformed personality with fringe views that you want to keep disseminating in a direct yet less public manner. Like Graham Linehan for instance, who has one of these Substack deals. Which says a fair bit about where the platform’s heading, I think.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

garjones wrote:

Personally I don’t get it, I wasn’t into newsletters when they started and barely read any but I also don’t have any interest in Tik-Tok and Instagram and they are huge.

 

(I agree though, the children are wrong. Bring back the 90s internet)

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DavidM

My internet connection is a bit unstable lately. It goes off for a little while, like two minutes max then it pops back on, once every few days, sometimes twice a day. I don’t think it’s the wifi, in the network connections window it shows the wifi is still connecting to the router, but the internet light on the router is off. So I think it might be the router, or the ISp is screwing something up.

I think it might be on the internet’s side rather than yours, as I’ve noticed some similar issues today and recently. My ISP has had various large-scale service outages over the last couple of weeks too.

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I’d actually think that if it’s just little 2 minute outages it is most likely at Arjan’s side. Normally outages at the ISP side are longer and bigger impact than that.

There’s a possibility it’s an issue at the DNS server at the ISP, that can cause short outages like he’s describing where it fails to resolve web addresses but the light being off on the router suggests not.

In typical The IT Crowd fashion – have you tried shutting the router down and starting it up again?

* As an ex tech support guy this is always laughed at but the truth is that a lot of computer equipment runs self tests and diagnostics on startup, which is why ‘switching it off and back on again’ is such a successful piece of advice, during my time in that job I’d say about 50% of the calls were resolved by rebooting. With my own router and wifi kit at home I restart it every couple of weeks to keep it running smoothly.

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I think it could be the router or maybe something with the cables. I tried to pull the cable out of the router but that thing was completely stuck, I couldn’t get it out. It’s this type of cable with a little clip.

 

 

Anyway it doesn’t happen very often so I’ll see if it goes away or gets worse.

 

edit: I did turn it off and on again, but the problem still occurred afterward

Martin Smith wrote:

Which says a fair bit about where the platform’s heading,

no, it is where the platform is coming from

Anonymous wrote:

https://gen.medium.com/substack-is-not-a-neutral-platform-8fc5bdf8e5f2

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lorcan_nagle

I have always known about these external hard drives that store info well into the terabytes. I never really cared to give it that much thought as I was happy with the 500GB SSD drive. Then this college student I know got this great deal and gave one to me.
It sat there in the box for a few weeks in my room. Then yesterday when I was cleaning the room, I saw the box and decided to try it.
I formatted and got it to work.

Now I am saying “Where have you been all my life?” 😂

It is amazing! It holds so much as a depository drive, you can put it everything, games, movies, pics with not having to worry about a limit!

Exciting, eh? 😂

Happening…

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garjones, njerry, Todd

Substack reminds me of Bill Burr’s idea of a Disgrace Channel, a tv network where all the presenters go who made a racist oopsie until they are forgiven and can go back.

 

How can anyone follow Graham Linehan’s blog. What is it, post after post saying “trans people are still  freaks?”

 

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Ben, Todd, lorcan_nagle

Exactly. While I disagree with Linehan’s views what got me most is how obsessed he got about it. I followed him early on when I joined Twitter as he’s a funny guy who posted interesting stuff. Then when the trans stuff came up that’s all he posted about endlessly.

Even if you could buy into some of the arguments (which I didn’t) it’s not exactly the most pressing issue in the world. It’s a tiny percentage of people largely minding their own business. If you really are a champion of women’s rights then there are countless cases of domestic violence and rape happening every day with a falling conviction rate – yet he spends all his energy on what is largely a theoretical threat.

 

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Ben, Todd, lorcan_nagle

It is a very minor issue if you look at the numbers, I think I’ve met a trans person just once in my life. Of course it could be I have met more trans people without noticing they were trans, but if it is unnoticeable why would it be an issue for me. I just wish them the best and hope they have happy lives without discrimination or persecution.

 

I think it is used by some professional shit stirrers as a “wedge issue” to get people upset. Men are chopping off their dicks and painting their hair blue, the world must be coming to an end. I think there are better things to be concerned about.

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lorcan_nagle

I used to follow Linehan on Twitter as well mainly because there was a period when it was almost impossible not to – pretty much anything he tweeted would get retweeted by everyone else I followed and it was funny, so it just made sense to. Thankfully, I bailed before all the transphobic stuff blew up. The red flag for me was when he got incandescently angry with a newspaper TV critic who gave a negative (and not even hugely so) review to Jessica Hynes’ sitcom Up The Women, which Linehan didn’t even work on. Proper “you’re scum of the earth” type stuff just because this guy had found a (pretty mediocre at best) sitcom made by women and about women’s suffrage disappointing.

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lorcan_nagle

garjones wrote:

Exactly. While I disagree with Linehan’s views what got me most is how obsessed he got about it. I followed him early on when I joined Twitter as he’s a funny guy who posted interesting stuff. Then when the trans stuff came up that’s all he posted about endlessly.

Even if you could buy into some of the arguments (which I didn’t) it’s not exactly the most pressing issue in the world. It’s a tiny percentage of people largely minding their own business. If you really are a champion of women’s rights then there are countless cases of domestic violence and rape happening every day with a falling conviction rate – yet he spends all his energy on what is largely a theoretical threat.

 

At this point, I’m pretty sure transphobia give you brain worms, literally. As soon as someone starts down that road it invariably takes over – they become so obsessed that they lose all their friends and family who aren’t on-board (As an example, Linehan was called out publicly by a brother-in-law and his marriage has broken down), and eventually it’s all they have left. It’s really sad.

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Todd

[Martin Smith]

Interesting* old TV documentary about the video game industry and elements of making them. From 1993 and I think an episode of Equinox.

What was it with early 90s documentaries filming interview subjects in darkened rooms and projecting things (in case the output of the game or the computer they’re demonstrating) at them? It was such a weird fad.

 

*your mileage may vary.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Martin Smith.

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lorcan_nagle

lorcan_nagle wrote:

As soon as someone starts down that road it invariably takes over

I don’t want to be a quack but there does seem a mental health issue here. He was called out on that episode of the IT Crowd and crawled deeper and deeper into defence of it he can basically think of nothing else. He ended up where everything he discussed day and night was that to the detriment of his career, his family and more. Hidden always behind a facade of being all about women’s rights while addressing nothing they face daily.

Compare that to Walliams, Lucas and Baddiel who have been called out on using ‘blackface’ in a similar time period.  They’ve said they didn’t mean that to be the target of the humour, which I believe,  but it was wrong and would never do it again.

Which in all honesty all of us are probably guilty of at some point. I confess in the early 90s I called a gay pub a ‘poofs bar’ to my friend’s boss who was gay (and I didn’t know was). I was never homophobic but flippant, which I shouldn’t have been and I probably upset him and I would never ever do that now.

Linehan could never concede an inch that his trans story was at all wrong and he’s just dug deeper and deeper down a hole that is hugely unhealthy.

 

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Ben, Todd, lorcan_nagle

Yeah, and you can see the same thing with JK Rowling and her refusal to walk back from a mildly dodgy statement.

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garjones, Todd

This appears to be a legit web site…

https://barkweb.net/

But scroll down until you get to “Frequently Asked Queries” and start reading.

Do you get the impression they made it live before it was finished?

 

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Dave, lorcan_nagle

DavidM wrote:

This appears to be a legit web site…

https://barkweb.net/

But scroll down until you get to “Frequently Asked Queries” and start reading.

Do you get the impression they made it live before it was finished?

 

It’s like Lovecraft’s Old Ones went hipster.

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Rocket

This should be a fun debate although I would give Michael Dorn honorable mention:

https://blavity.com/twitter-debates-whether-morgan-freeman-or-james-earl-jones-has-a-more-iconic-voice?category1=news&fbclid=IwAR2BSldDu6PGPXvUmGI7yjWcNTtWHemJhsUWdh6xw0TzvFy9vA4X8Jxgrn4

I mentioned last year a tapas restaurant here in town was fire damaged after a lightning strike…they fixed the place and reopened a week ago. They have maybe the best place in town to sit for a beer, and as it was glorious weather today I went there for a cold drink…

 

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Rocket, DavidM, njerry, Todd

[Al-x]

Ok…

Years ago, when the remote became more common, a term arised out of people’s habits called “channel surfing”… nothing is really on but you go from channel to channel on the remote and before you know it an hour or two passed. Now that habit has multiplied to the web and on social media sites. Youtube can get you hooked going from video to video. Tiktok (my latest addiction) has me going from video snippet to video snippet on social issues, pop culture, unknown history, social and racist undertones in pop culture, and so on.

How can a person learn to pull away from either channel surfing or mouse clicking before an hour or two passes?

———-

Professor Xavier if you will. He recruited his first mutant team when they were all in their teens and actually had a crush on Jean Grey. It is all a little creepy looking back at it all. Now more fans are saying that Magneto was not so wrong after all. I might change to Franklin Richards… and I did.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.

I play chess online with friends. Lately though, a lot of online players use this very strong chess program/engine called stockfish and have cheated with it. Kind of like using Google to answer a call in trivia contest (Do they still have that anymore?)

Anyway, most of my opponents use the honor code and still beat me.

Exciting eh?
Happening…

We used to have threads like Say something nice about another member, weekend plans, word association, and I used to post Thought Provoking Threads

Now, as Roy Batty said “All those moments will be lost in time… Like tears in the rain.”

Al-x wrote:

Professor Xavier if you will. He recruited his first mutant team when they were all in their teens and actually had a crush on Jean Grey. It is all a little creepy looking back at it all.

I’m going to posit a counterpoint there and at last defend Xavier.

So Jean Grey is super good looking, when the X-Men briefly split up in the original run she immediately gets work as a model. She’s also an extremely nice person with an attractive personality. While he’s middle aged there’s no sensor in your brain that ceases finding young women attractive, if a good looking young girl of 17 or 18 passes me in the street I’m going to be attracted to her.

What is wrong in that instance is to act upon it, especially if you are in a position of power. That’s exactly his thought process in that one panel it was mentioned (and then Stan Lee forgot the entire plot point). He says he cannot revel his feelings while he is headmaster of the school. So Xavier got the horn, did what he should and keep it to himself.

(It does get creepier later when a retcon has her joining the school first and much younger but that’s why retcons are a bad idea).

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Ben, Todd, DavidM

Watching some Youtube videos with David Blaine doing tricks with celebrities like Margot Robbie, Jennifer Lawrence, Jamie Foxx. He spooked them all. I already showed here the video of Harrison Ford getting so spooked he told him to leave.

Some of those tricks kind of make you wonder…

You know…

We could talk about some of the things that happened last night at the MTV VMA award show. But most of you are so far removed from the latest in pop culture… and in a sense that is a good thing.

Al-x wrote:

But most of you are so far removed from the latest in pop culture

I’ll be honest, I don’t even know what a VMA award is. (And no, that’s not a request for you to explain it to me   )

DavidM wrote:

’ll be honest, I don’t even know what a VMA award is.

Need I say more?

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DavidM

Al – as a middle aged man, did you, like Xavier, find any of the teens acts on the VMAs attractive?

I suspect based on your Tik-Tok conversations you probably did. If I watched it I most likely would too.

This is interesting because I think there’s a bit of a lie we are telling each other. In the X-Plain the X-Men podcast they recoil at that Xavier comment and question the age gap between Kitty and Piotr but then revel in the idea that Storm and Kitty had an unrequited romance despite the age gap being bigger than between her and Colossus. Ororo being in more of a parental role. In theory that would really be worse.

I’m on a Whatsapp group with a bunch of people that used to frequent this site (or MW before it). Most are straight males but there are two gay males and a female. They post a lot of ‘thirsty’ comments and photos of men. I’ll be honest and I enjoyed the WW films more because I found Gadot to be quite mesmerisingly beautiful. I never wrote that but it’s true. I held that back.

This is not a Jordan Peterson style ‘men’s rights’ argument. We have to acknowledge privilege. There’s a period maybe of adjustment but while that happens I don’t think we are holding exactly the same moral standards if we were to be honest about it.

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DavidM, Todd, Dave

Actually, I saw a few red carpet clips, a few song and dance numbers by twenty somethings. No teens. Still too young for me though.
It is always to make a media splash and to appear in something memorable, Megan Fox, Kourtney Kardashian, even Madonna.

As for TikTok, if you only think it is just about people with silly or sexy dance moves, you are dead wrong. I said before a lot is going on there and being said. You only have to follow the hashtags or enter a hashtag topic and you will see..

So, you also listen to the Jay and Miles podcast. Interesting.

WhatsApp group… Gal Gadot is your crush now… Ok.

Tbh, I tried to get the forums away from the usual versus threads and strongest super hero stuff and wanted to be thought provoking. I succeeded to an extent.

I tried to bring up in the now defunct relationship thread terms like gaslighting, ghosting, but no one was really up to date on those things. I even mentioned what a bisexual woman goes through and someone straight on the forum never heard about it and tried to come across as an expert on bisexuality!

I also tried to bring up:

Cultural appropriation vs appreciation
The racial ambiguity trend by whites to be “white passing”
Blackfishing
Queer baiting
Fetishizing people of color
Colorism
The legacy of colonialism
The Male Gaze
The Patriarchy
The legacy of capitalism

But very few here are into that. It is as someone said I am talking to the wrong audience. This audience once took me for a prude, now take me for a sexist for a few pics. Now no one says anything about the gangbang posting in the picture thread so all that holier than thou “pile on” only applied to me. Hmm.
I could say the earth is round and someone we know would post a remark over me saying it. But I digress…

I still feel bad about the implosion. Didn’t mean for that and I hope everything is Ok.

I admit I made the mistake of trying to force dialogue here. In the end the Carrier and it’s predecessor MW is a comic book/fantasy forum. I tried to make it more and expand its limits. Oh well…

Still it was cool coming up with threads and guys like O’Hara, Russell H, Will, TMasters, Kiel, Mike, Miqque , Johnny California, Wonk, Henry Blanco, etc. would all post their views and the dialogue was nice. Then some of the few female members like Sabrina, Alice, Stephanie Familiar, would join as well. The old days…

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Al-x wrote:

I also tried to bring up: Cultural appropriation vs appreciation The racial ambiguity trend by whites to be “white passing” Blackfishing Queer baiting Fetishizing people of color Colorism The legacy of colonialism The Male Gaze The Patriarchy The legacy of capitalism But very few here are into that.

Actually I think people have tried to engage on a lot of the issues you have brought up recently. The trouble is that the conversation seems to end almost as soon as it begins, because there’s an apparent reluctance on your part to discuss it further and grapple with the specific issues that other people bring up in response.

I get the sense that you want to say your piece and then let that be the end of it, rather than engaging with any differing opinions. That’s fine, but you can’t expect a dialogue to happen when only one side wants to participate in the conversation.

With a relatively small group of people on this forum now, I don’t think it’s enough to simply bring up a subject and then expect everyone else to talk about it while you look on as a passive spectator.

If you want to discuss these things, then we should discuss them. But simply bringing up a topic for debate doesn’t constitute truly engaging in a discussion.

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Rocket, Todd, lorcan_nagle, Martin Smith

You know what?

You’re right

In the MW days when the forum was bigger, all I had to do was start a Thought Provoking Thread by asking a topic and the members (most of whom I mentioned above) would pretty much take over and the thread would snowball. I would just look on as a passive spectator, pretty much being proud of what I started. That was my modus operandi and still is.

As you said, it is now a relatively small group and you are absolutely right, it is not enough to look on. I have to make that adjustment and engage a lot more.

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Dave

Yup I think we just need more of a  dialogue. You said I closed down the cultural appropriation chat but actually my only issue is it was very circular. I gave my opinion on why I think wearing a cheongsam isn’t and you just posted the same story again.

I didn’t want to give my same opinion twice on the same subject. If anyone wants to agree or disagree with my stance then that’s a conversation or a debate that moves things on.

 

Al-x wrote:

As you said, it is now a relatively small group and you are absolutely right, it is not enough to look on. I have to make that adjustment and engage a lot more.

Thanks Al. And I hope that didn’t read as too critical. The truth is that when you bring these topics up I am genuinely interested in your thoughts, and (coming as I do from a background where debate and disagreement is usually seen as pretty healthy and desirable) I think a discussion is the best way to test these ideas.

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garjones

Dave wrote:

The truth is that when you bring these topics up I am genuinely interested in your thoughts, and (coming as I do from a background where debate and disagreement is usually seen as pretty healthy and desirable) I think a discussion is the best way to test these ideas.

You’re wrong, Dave. Absolutely wrong. As wrong as wrong can be.

Discuss.

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Todd, Dave

Agree to disagree.

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njerry, Todd

[Al-x]

ok… This may be all over the place but here goes:

In the music thread, we discussed Led Z stealing blues riffs as well as Elvis stealing dance moves. I asked “If you came up with what would be the next big thing in pop culture, someone else sees it and does a knockoff of it before you, and they get all the attention, fanfare, credit, MILLIONS.. How would you feel?” No one answered. This happened before and it happening now on TikTok.

Addison Rae, Charli and Dixie Damelio (Google them or go on Wiki if you want) are huge on TikTok with 150M followers each and therefore, they are branded as “influencers” making a millions a year in endorsements, talk show appearances, movie deals, streaming shows, the works… Addison has a movie out now on Netflix and the Damelio’s are on Hulu.

Thing is, it has been found out that they became popular being cute young white girls who started out doing hip hop dance moves. They took credit for the choreography, but it turned out that they stole and mimicked the dances from the videos of much lesser known black choreographers. (If this all sounds like the movie the old Gabriel Union Kristen Dunst movie “Bring it on” you are correct). Now as I said at the time, the black choreographers went on strike by not developing any more viral dances and (you guessed it) the dance videos, followers, etc. all went way down on the accounts. Nothing to steal from any more apparently. Now, the real choreographers are taking legal action in getting their ideas copyrighted from now on, getting the royalties, real credit etc.
—————-

I mentioned “white washing” in movies also. Movies like “Dirty Dancing” gave attention and credit to white teens when the real credit should have gone to the minority teens who did develop the lambada and the grinding dance. “Saturday Night Fever” gave attention to Italians for disco when it really started in the gay community.
——————

Rapper Nicki Minaj said in an interview that she sees a lot of white women get credit for wearing a hairstyle or clothing that really came from minorities and other marginalized groups, but the media acts as if it is so “innovative”, “exotic”, because it is on a white woman and act as if it was never done before. (See Bo Derek’s cornrow braids in the movie “10”). There is now a “culture vulture” term for the likes of the Kardashians, Gwen Stefani… (Please Google them or use the search engine on YouTube).

Interestingly, when black girls were shaking their asses and twerking to dance music, it was seen as “ghetto” “ and they were viewed as “ animals”. Then when Miley does it on national TV it was “sexy”,“daring”, “edgy”, etc. The conservatives denounced it, but Miley rode it for years to change her image from Hannah Montana. Now she is doing covers of rock music.
——————-

As for racial ambiguity: There is a trend in society of some white women who, rather than look like the cookie cutter/dime a dozen standard blonde or brunette, decide to go under the knife to get more curves (ie, rounder backside, lip fillers, etc) thus taking from the features and aesthetics of minority women to appeal to the patriarchy/white male gaze and be more exotic looking. They want to expand on the white beauty standard. The Kardashians are prime examples of this trend. If you are a black/brown/Asian woman who was ridiculed and teased at for your body type and features and you see someone swoop in and use your “type” as a gimmick to accentuate and advance themselves then…
———————————

In Shang Chi, the “actress” named Awkwafina is making a name for herself (She was also in “Crazy Rich Asians” IIRC), but she really got noticed by using a “blaccent” where she was an Asian woman in street clothes talking in the urban black vernacular. It was her gimmick for a while. Now she said in an interview that she wouldn’t do an Asian accent as THAT would be insulting to Asian culture and a minstrelsy. Hmmm
—————————-

There are a LOT of white acts who jumped on the black/hip hop bandwagon to either jumpstart their careers or to shed an image, whether it is Miley Cyrus twerking, Justin Timberlake wearing grills, using rap interludes in their songs, appearing in a dark tan and adopting a darker complexion with braids… This can all be Googled.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/nepnqq/gwen-stefani-cultural-appropriation-legacy
———

There. I believe I have said enough for now. Sorry to take away from the Random thread. If you want to discuss all this in another thread be my guest.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.

Al-x wrote:

In the music thread, we discussed Led Z stealing blues riffs as well as Elvis stealing dance moves. I asked “If you came up with what would be the next big thing in pop culture, someone else sees it and does a knockoff of it before you, and they get all the attention, fanfare, credit, MILLIONS.. How would you feel?” No one answered. This happened before and it happening now on TikTok.

I guess on that my answer would be that even if someone else does a similar idea, they’re not going to do it exactly like you would and so you can’t really claim that they’re stealing your success (unless you’re literally lifting something wholesale and presenting it in exactly the same way, like stealing a novel or a recording of a song or something).

Even TikTok itself feels like a bit of a lift of Vine or those other short-video-sharing platforms from a while back. But they appeared at a slightly different time and context, and in a slightly different form, and got much more success. Does that mean that the developers of TikTok should sign their success over to the people behind Vine?

[Al-x]

Ok…

First of all, it is one thing to come up with a similar idea (Please google tiktok vs. vine for the real history), but OURIGHT THEFT is something else and what I was discussing. There is a side by side online video of the real creators dancing and Addison Rae on the Jimmy Fallon show.

Don’t kid yourself. Addison and the Damelio’s knew exactly what they were doing. Keep in mind that you are in effect defending someone that you don’t know over what they did, the story of which you don’t know in any real depth. I would encourage you to get into it (Google, Youtube, actual Tiktok) if you want to engage in this.

I know this is not the thread for a three to four page discussion of all that I posted. (That would be a derailment)

@garjones … fellow… If you want to splinter this off, be my guest. 😁

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.

I’m not defending anyone and I’m not aware of the specifics of this case other than what you’ve posted.

But I’m assuming that a dance video’s popularity is partly due to the moves but also partly due to the dancers, the costumes, the way it’s filmed and so on. Otherwise, why didn’t the original video blow up and become popular in the first place? And how did the more popular dancers become popular in the first place before they ripped off these dance moves?

I’m not saying any particular party is behaving honorably in this case as I don’t know enough about it, but I would assume it’s a bit more complicated than one party owing all their success to what they stole from the other.

Also, I got the impression that a lot of Tiktok was about imitation and trends and people copying what’s popular, and that others copying what you do is a badge of success as much as anything else. Is that not the case?

That’s kind of interesting, I don’t know if dance routines can be copyrighted. If you look at old video clips I guess everybody stole everybody else’s moves. But why not, if somebody is making money from your creativity, I guess there are grounds for sueing them.

[Al-x]

As to “why didn’t the original dancers blow up?”

It is the notorious and controversial Tiktok algorithm that emphasizes some accounts more than others. Algorithms in social media sites are in themselves news (Google “Facebook algorithm”)

As for the dance snippets, I don’t know definitely if they have a case but in music it would be sampling (Rolling Stones sued the Verve over “Bittersweet Symphony”), in literature it would be plagiarism…If all goes well and they win the case, they will get full credit, their names, royalties, a percentage or a cut…

To put it in perspective, Addison has a net worth of 5M I believe (maybe more off of her movie debut “He’s All That” on Netflix, and and she signed a movie deal), the Damelios are 8M, while the original choreographers are still in their apartment or parent’s house making 40K I believe.

JLo started out as a dancer on “In Living Color” and Rosie Perez was the choreographer, so there is money and career opportunities being known as a choreographer and dancer.

To be honest, the choreographers should have looked into all this before they went online with their dance moves. They probably could sue now for a cut of the millions made from their work.

Why not sue the Damelios and Addison Rae for millions? Go for the kill!!!

We’ll see.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tiktok+dance+appropriation

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.

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DavidM

Al-x wrote:

In the music thread, we discussed Led Z stealing blues riffs

This has actually been discussed a lot and to me it goes into a different area really. I think Led Z are guilty of plagiarism. They copied work they passed off as their own.

This is where it gets interesting though, in his Play album in the 90s Moby used a lot of public domain blues samples but credited them. If people liked the original work there was no pretence where it came from. DJ Shadow does much the same.

Clothing is the area I have most trouble with here. The comedienne saying only Chinese people can wear a cheongsam was saying it wearing western dress. I can’t parse these two concepts. I also know very much nobody in east Asia gives the remotest shit. On Chinese New Year I get press ganged into wearing Asian styled clothing. When working in India I was nagged every day to don Indian dress and then Madonna is skinned alive in western media for once wearing a Sari when the Indian press was delighted she did. I have 100 photos in my personal album of white women wearing saris at the urging of their Indian friends who took them for the fitting.

Did Michael Jordan sign with Nike only wanting black kids to wear the shoes? Unlikely. Are you using Windows or Android to type these messages appropriating white culture?

The previous name and branding of ‘The Washington Football Team” I think is pure cultural appropriation which is not a term I disagree with, just the breadth of its use. You Al have even shown this up when you mentioned white artists ripping off Eminem who last time I looked had fairer hair and pigmentation than I do.

I appreciate the issue but also worry at the extremes it crosses into a segregationist argument. Never can cultures meet, never can anything mix. Grandmaster Flash and other early hip-hop artists very heavily used the German techno pioneers Kraftwerk to make their sounds. Is the endgame here we deny any cross-cultural influences? That’s not a good place for me.

I think that crossover is often the very best of us.

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DavidM, Dave

[Al-x]

A meeting or intersectionality of the cultures can be done under the umbrella properly defined as Cultural appreciation.

The discussion so far has been examples of blatant theft, a cultural appropriation.

As for clothing, I would say that the gatekeeping of what is proper to wear should be done by the main people of the culture. That Asian woman had a right to complain about that white teen wearing that quipao to her prom. It was disrespectful, the white teen used the dress as a gimmick along with the pics of her and her friends at the prom stretching their eyes poking fun at Asians.

As for no one in East Asia giving a shit, it is understandable in Asia, but in America where the foremost race is White and Asian and Indian people are marginalized… That is the difference.

It can get technical, but please go by the offended and critically listen to them. Interestingly, in the States, Whites have always done gatekeeping setting boundaries on blacks and minorities with segregation, where to live, access to jobs, schooling, etc. Now they don’t like it when the marginalized groups set boundaries on them when it comes to this. Now they complain “It is for everybody, America is a free country…” Can’t stand the shoe being on the other foot even for a second.

What I was discussing as an issue involved Millions of dollars that really did not go to where it should have.

Please watch the very first video of the following:

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Al-x.

I think cultural exchange is good, if people are sharing what is beneficial from their own cultures. It enriches everyone. The “cultural appropriation” thing seems to be an obsession in the US.

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Al-x