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Cake day: July 11th, 2023

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  • He’s also done a lot of wide-spread horrible things to get that money though, that’s the thing, the good stuff billionaires do rarely makes up for the stuff they’ve done to get that money in the first place. The most fantastical thing about Batman is that he and his parents are usually depicted at face value as good rich people who get their money legitimately without hurting anyone and then only do good things with that money. And despite that Gotham is still an eternally crime-ridden cess pit. Most billionaires donate huge amounts to non-profits or start their own. Hell I bet trump himself has done plenty of philanthropy, but that automatically doesn’t make up for the way they earned their blood money in the first place. Is Bill Gates going out of his way to lobby for taxing the rich, or universal healthcare, or other systemic changes that would help a lot of people but likely reduce the rate he accumulates wealth? Because he has more than enough money to make large waves in those political arenas and still be rich for the rest of his life. If he never made another cent and gave away 90% of his money to homeless people he would still have enough left to be rich for the rest of his life.


  • I mean yeah there are tons of other kinds. I can think of lots and lots of superheroes who are fundamentally anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist etc. Spider-man for example is hardly right-wing, his motto is literally antithetical to the individualism of right wing ideology: with great power comes great responsibility. He’s seen as a working class man’s superhero who isn’t an old rich guy, the friendly neighbourhood teenage hero. And when you get into iterations like Miles Morales it gets even less right-wing. I’m sure the presentation of Spider-man differs depending on the writer, but at the core he’s not what I’d consider a right-wing fantasy by any stretch.

    Heck, even if you look at the Punisher, I haven’t read the comics so take this with a grain of salt but a lot of people who have read them have noted that the Punisher hates cops and the series does not actually align with right-wing ideals the way right-wingers seem to think he does. From what I’ve heard the Punisher comics, especially modern iterations, usually depict him as someone doing bad things as a result of the system failing him and driving him to try and take things into his own hands in all the wrong ways. Not a glorification of vigilantism but rather a deconstruction of it. But even if you set aside the problems with vigilantism, enjoying it as a fictional concept isn’t exclusive to right-wingers. A lot of people who fall under other political ideals can enjoy it for different reasons. Robin hood isn’t a superhero but he is a classic vigilante archetype who is not right-wing in nature. He literally steals from the rich to give to the poor. And enjoying the concept in fiction is fine, fiction can be escapist sometimes, what’s important is understanding why it isn’t a good thing in real life.

    Even rich superheroes aren’t automatically a right-wing power fantasy, it can be the fantasy of people with other political ideals for rich people to care about the little guy and take accountability. Tony Stark for example is someone who did become a billionaire by being a bad person and inheriting it from a father who was also a bad person. He becomes a superhero after being hit in the face with the consequences of that and seeing the truth of where his money is coming from, and after that point with most versions of his character he does use his money to try and enact real social change large scale and help people on top of funding himself and other super heroes, who are necessary in a universe with aliens and gods and magic and shit. His story is centered around him realizing that his money was ill-gotten and him trying to take accountability for that by trying to undo the damage he’s done and use his money to help people instead. That is at heart a fantasy that isn’t right-wing even if it is unrealistic. In comparison Batman as a character reads as more right-wing (if unintentionally) mainly because there’s generally not much criticism levied at him as a billionaire. Even his father is usually depicted as a good person, a loving parent who didn’t deserve to die, because the loss of his parents is his motivating factor, compared to Iron Man, whose motivating factor is making up for the things he and his father did to become rich in the first place. Batman is depicted as a good rich guy, son of another good rich guy, and you know he’s good because he doesn’t kill people. His money is bloodless and innocent. Though of course I’m sure there are iterations of him and stories which do address this, but the most well known version of him does present in a way that is appealing to right-wingers in a lot of ways.



  • Tries and fails. It never goes anywhere, and she’s mocked as a well-meaning fool for trying in the first place because “welp most elves just enjoy being slaves what can you do shrug emoji”. Jkr sets up something with Hermione and the elves and then doesn’t follow through with it in any meaningful way (and I don’t count commentary from her outside the books as following through) so it’s left to just sit there uncritically as “slavery is a thing in this universe and is seen as completely normal by most characters, and only one person ever tries to do anything about it and she’s depicted as a cringey radical in the process”. Jkr doesn’t even show the beginnings of societal change like more elves coming to Dobby’s side of things once they see it’s an option and that Dobby’s is happy that way, or other house elves being motivated to think differently about their situation and starting to unlearn their generations of indoctrination. We don’t even see a glimpse of Winky starting to recover instead the last we see of her is as a depressed alcoholic whose life was ruined by her being freed from slavery. Jkr depicts it as “yeah slavery is bad but you can’t change the way the world works so might as well not even try.” the house elves’ servitude is treated as something so fundamentally tied to their species that it seems to be biological and thus humans taking advantage of that is to some degree the natural way of things which, I shouldn’t have to explain what the problem with that sort of depiction is. Maybe that wasn’t what she intended, maybe she just added slavery because it’s a common world building trope, but if that’s the case she did so without considering the implications or how it would come across in the end product or the messages it would send.














  • Ai isn’t interpreting anything. This isn’t the sci-fi style of ai that people think of, that’s general ai. This is narrow AI, which is really just an advanced algorithm. It can’t create new things with intent and design, it can only regurgitate a mix of pre-existing stuff based on narrow guidelines programmed into it to try and keep it coherent, with no actual thought or interpretation involved in the result. The issue isn’t that it’s derivative, the issue is that it can only ever be inherently derivative without any intentional interpretation or creativity, and nothing else.

    Even collage art has to qualify as fair use to avoid copyright infringement if it’s being done for profit, and fair use requires it to provide commentary, criticism, or parody of the original work used (which requires intent). Even if it’s transformative enough to make the original unrecognizable, if the majority of the work is not your own art, then you need to get permission to use it otherwise you aren’t automatically safe from getting in trouble over copyright. Even using images for photoshop involves creative commons and commercial use licenses. Fanart and fanfic is also considered a grey area and the only reason more of a stink isn’t kicked up over it regarding copyright is because it’s generally beneficial to the original creators, and credit is naturally provided by the nature of fan works so long as someone doesn’t try to claim the characters or IP as their own. So most creators turn a blind eye to the copyright aspect of the genre, but if any ever did want to kick up a stink, they could, and have in the past like with Anne Rice. And as a result most fanfiction sites do not allow writers to profit off of fanfics, or advertise fanfic commissions. And those are cases with actual humans being the ones to produce the works based on something that inspired them or that they are interpreting. So even human made derivative works have rules and laws applied to them as well. Ai isn’t a creative force with thoughts and ideas and intent, it’s just a pattern recognition and replication tool, and it doesn’t benefit creators when it’s used to replace them entirely, like Hollywood is attempting to do (among other corporate entities). Viewing AI at least as critically as actual human beings is the very least we can do, as well as establishing protection for human creators so that they can’t be taken advantage of because of AI.

    I’m not inherently against AI as a concept and as a tool for creators to use, but I am against AI works with no human input being used to replace creators entirely, and I am against using works to train it without the permission of the original creators. Even in the artist/writer/etc communities it’s considered to be a common courtesy to credit other people/works that you based a work on or took inspiration from, even if what you made would be safe under copyright law regardless. Sure, humans get some leeway in this because we are imperfect meat creatures with imperfect memories and may not be aware of all our influences, but a coded algorithm doesn’t have that excuse. If the current AIs in circulation can’t function without being fed stolen works without credit or permission, then they’re simply not ready for commercial use yet as far as I’m concerned. If it’s never going to be possible, which I just simply don’t believe, then it should never be used commercially period. And it should be used by creators to assist in their work, not used to replace them entirely. If it takes longer to develop, fine. If it takes more effort and manpower, fine. That’s the price I’m willing to pay for it to be ethical. If it can’t be done ethically, then imo it shouldn’t be done at all.


  • Laticauda@lemmy.catoMemes@lemmy.mlMilk creme
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    1 year ago

    Humans drink human milk, and the milk of other animals. Animals drink the milk of their own species on a regular basis. I will never understand why people get hung up on this in Zootopia as if drinking the milk of other creatures OR the same species is something humans and animals don’t ever do in real life. It’s like y’all just want it to be weird.