gila @ gila @lemmy.zip

Posts

1

Comments

20

Joined

2 mo. ago

I have my psychiatrists direct office extension, yeah. Same for my sister with her paediatrician. The rhyme wasn't from a time when we had mobile devices.

I think Erik's purpose as world-building would be redundant. It was already achieved by Spike's dad pointing out the quarantine patrol. He could have served a world-building purpose if he helped explain why Britain alone is the quarantine zone and not France where 28 Weeks Later clearly depicts the virus spreading, but he doesn't.

I'm not opposed to tonal departures from previous films in a series, but when it plainly contrives justification to jump between genres mid-movie, to me this screams artistic compromise for the aim of broadening audience appeal. Especially combined with the technical choices like the 30-iPhone camera rigs, it feels less like they were trying to reframe the series and more like they were taking the piss, blinded by hubris, motivated by a payday, etc.

she is no longer in control of herself

I'm referring to the large parts of the movie where she clearly is. She alone has the presence of mind and body to endure danger to save baby Isla, to save Spike while he's sleeping. The way the movie depicts her, when they wake up and she has apparently forgotten what she'd done it's almost as though she's hiding the truth to mentally shield Spike. Following her diagnosis she even explains her previously unspoken awareness of her own confusion. She isn't continually regressing; she's intermittently regressing. She is more helpless at the start of the movie than at the point of her death.

I hadn't considered they were a depiction of Jimmy Saville, I think you're right. It would add to the backstory of the kids, given they are depicted as related yet socially distant from eachother. I'd imagine they were in a cult, probably half-siblings with Jimmy with the same crazy Catholic-molester-cult leader father, his bloodline carrying the mutation that makes them subservient to Jimmy, and his character which Jimmy emulates. The shot of the TV you're talking about is likely a red herring, not because of this theory of mine but because there's simply no reason for the group of kids to exist as they are depicted. It's almost certain that whole scene's purpose was to set up the next movie.

He can't have different strength darts?

Certainly he can. Again, I agree with you that suspension of disbelief is fine and normal in movies. The point at which it becomes bad is when a significant part of the narrative arc of a movie heavily depends on that suspension of disbelief. It is fine to assume that Ralph Fiennes' character has devised some way of surviving on the mainland because he is already built up as an expert survivalist, so the specific methods he used don't require extensive explanation. His medical expertise means it's even fine that he's somehow found a way to either synthesize morphine himself, or scavenge it. No critical part of the narrative arc of the movie relies on these facts. However Spike and his mother's acceptance of her death and the method of her death all hinges on that Ralph's morphine darts, the purpose of which is to temporarily sedate Alphas, are actually pre-prepared for mild sedation of a child, euthanisation of a human, and presumably a range of other purposes. Can you see how that would need some sort of surface-level explanation to be believable, or do you really think it's ok that we are just to presume that he's a master of adjusting bootleg morphine blowdart dosages on the fly? Perhaps if that were the only case where such a leap of faith is required by the audience to make sense of the plot, it wouldn't bother me.

I'm elaborating on critiques of the movie you asked for elaboration on, though the real issue seems to be that you're just unwilling not to consistently give the movie the benefit of the doubt. Overall I thought it was fine, though the parts of it that weren't good specifically compare poorly to the earlier entries in the series.

The gas station scene is heavily contrived to provide an older-brother or father figure, offering viewers comfort regarding the main character's situation given Spike's dad wasn't around. The guy is killed shortly afterwards as Ralph Fiennes' character takes over that role instead. This is not only a big tonal departure from the previous movies, but also within the movie itself. What is this, an action, adventure, horror, buddy, sci fi, drama, comedy movie? It is all of them at different parts and mostly only the action is done well (though even then, the bullet time shots - wtf?). Erik's introduction to the audience and main characters are the clearest examples of this and that's why those scenes specifically are relevant to my criticism.

Isla's death does a big disservice to the concept of voluntary assisted dying and significantly cheapens her character arc IMO. For a large part of the movie, her illness just isn't relevant to what she's doing.

Are you saying it isn't heavily implied those are the same kids? What other purpose does the group of kids at the start serve? Why do they all have long blonde hair? Why is their zombie massacre scored by a metal version of the Teletubbies?

When movie magic stops being magic and starts being transparently a plot device, or omission in service of serialisation, it's bad. This has nothing to do with whether I'm willing to suspend disbelief - example: Ralph Fiennes surviving on the mainland for decades because he paints himself with iodine - fine. Isla wandering into the distance to be killed by a morphine blowdart which seconds earlier had only served to make Spike a little woozy - dumb.

Sure, I don't think it's necessarily reasonable for the average viewer to know much about benzene. Which makes it all the more odd that the movie contrives a situation entirely dependent on a character knowing a lot about benzene for no reason.

Erik's friend tried to shoot the Alpha and his gun jammed. Erik's gun was perfectly fine. Basically the stars aligned to make sure none of the Alphas in the movie ever had to deal with the automatic weapons introduced by the movie.

No, that's an entirely unbelievable way for Isla to behave. She has a husband and life outside the romp she's been tricked by her son to go on, much of which she seemed to enjoy. That's why they felt they had to contrive a line where the doctor mysteriously knows she has very little time left.

Mark my words, when the sequel to this movie comes out next year it'll turn out that those are the same kids and they're infected but, because of special mutations, or because of something mysterious done by Jimmy, they're "good" infected. I'm sorry, it's just that dumb.

Gas station buildings are completely separate from the gas tanks, and it's established that buildings in the area have been searched many times. Yet mysteriously the gas station has been left undisturbed for benzene gas to build up in. Although it typically evaporates quickly and is also denser than air, and given that changing your vertical position by a few feet in a room where a gas explosion occurs makes the difference between instant immolation and going completely unscathed, getting down is the direction you'd want to move in. Luckily Erik is mysteriously an expert in this.

Erik could have shot and killed the Alpha in the tunnel, but running away for no reason other than to set himself up as a support for the main characters is clearly the better option.

Terminal cancer diagnosis based on a field test done by a random hermit you just met means you're content to just give up on life immediately and have him kill you. Everyone agrees this is normal.

Although Jimmy is the only one that escaped in the opening scene, the group of kids with him naturally overpowered the group of zombies that just murdered their parents. Or the zombies just took pity and left them alone.

Yeah, just slight suspension of disbelief.

Thanks for your input. I agree with you that it is a labour and capitalism issue. This seems to be where your perspective differs from the OP.

I guess my fundamental disagreement is that we should deny ourselves technological advancement because we live under capitalism. Yes, that is the system we will live under for the foreseeable future. I don't like it and don't like how capital takes advantage of technology. The way capital takes advantage of AI isn't unique. Generally, significant advancement will bring change and the biggest impact of that change will be felt by the proletariat. That sucks and we shouldn't have to put up with it.

Circling back to the topic of the post, OP uses this negative impact as justification to disagree with the apparent use of AI in the community banner art. This is non-sequitur. No one is making a living off of designing Lemmy community banners. The people that run the community simply decided not to arbitrarily deny themselves what they felt to be the best tool for the task. What I'm defending isn't necessarily the current AI landscape as such, just the technology part I'm interested in.

I don't think my earlier reply came through. I'll try rewriting it.

AI can add, remove, change or refine input, either text or image-based, either wholly or partially, which may or may not itself be AI-generated. That feature set certainly allows room for genuine, inspired artistic expression. The way you describe AI art is as though it is all created by asking ChatGPT to draw you something. This isn't the case, and neglects to consider the litany of AI model types that are fundamentally different to LLM's. Models which are operated by humans directly interacting with them in a range of ways.

Let's say you're a concept artist for a movie. After replacing you with AI, how does the company instruct the model in the concept to be represented? If they're just asking ChatGPT to come up with something itself, then sure - your description applies. And the output will be shitty concept art, and the movie will shittier than it otherwise would be. People might consume it, but it would be a slippery slope towards failure either because a) people don't like it, or don't like it enough for it to reach the critical mass required to spread, or b) someone else does the same uninspired and easy job more cheaply or effectively. If you're an AI-slop consumer, why watch AI slop movies when you can just watch AI slop Tiktoks?

Good art resonates with people not because humans are easily entertained by pretty flashing lights or whatever an AI can churn out, but because of their relationship to a piece of art which is derived from their human experience. Companies have tried to broaden appeal and lower costs by appealing to the lowest common denominator for centuries, but beyond a certain point it is a failing business model. In my opinion, if some companies want to try, let them find out why there are 1000s of AI-generated movie trailers but no movies.

I think that AI can be used for the concept art in a way that maintains artistic integrity and capacity for artistic expression by having someone skilled in representing visual concepts operate the AI tool. That someone would be for all intents and purposes an artist. In essence the artist position would not be redundant; the way their job is done would have changed.

actual artists are getting fired from their jobs, because the company replaces them with an AI, that was trained on their original art.

Are you sure that's happening? Under the previous mode of capitalism, what kind of companies were hiring artists?

As I understand it, that isn't the actual gripe from the general perspective of the artist. Instead it's about copyright, a concept I fundamentally disagree with. I don't think it's necessary, and that the artist's capacity for prosperity being tied to copyright is a symptom of a bigger problem than being usurped by software.

I think there is good art and bad art. I think there is good AI art (tbh I can't think of any examples, I just think in principle AI art has the capacity to be good) and bad AI art. I think the relative ease of access skews people's exposure towards slop. I use the term slop as a descriptor for AI art that is sloppy or wholly derivative; not to prejudge it.

I think perspectives like yours haven't compelled me to think they are meaningfully different from that of the Luddites, or those opposed to implementing computers in the workplace, etc. I genuinely sympathise with those groups, but ultimately wouldn't have us go back.

Kodi lol

Season 1 probably has the most coherent narrative of the 3 lmao. The other seasons are still good but a lot of the episodes are fully self-contained headfucks

Rewatched Legion. Originally I watched up to the end of S2 when it came out, but it started going a bit too off the rails and by the time S3 came out, I was completely lost.

I'm glad I rewatched it though because S3 takes a new and interesting direction with better pacing, and without sacrificing creativity. Great series.

Oops, I meant us dot not na dot

Weird, try same with na dot instead of eu dot

eu dot qobuz dot squid dot wtf

You mean the thing Sony/MS set the precedent for under the name Smart Delivery 5 years ago? In a physical media form factor that's cheaper to produce...

Some of the categories for this infographic are arbitrary within the context of the music streaming market. Spotify is literally a more "incumbent" "monopoly" than the "big tech incumbents" if you only consider the segment of those companies' operations related to music streaming. Spotify is probably the worst choice of all, both using the ethos provided by the infographic and by other metrics too. Tech companies with 150B capitalisation are big tech regardless of how much bigger others are.

For me that begs the question though, what is gained by the layout being the way it is? If it were a compromise between adequate packaging strength based on whatever stress tests they did and the appeal of the unboxing experience for example, then fair enough. Maybe it's just me that doesn't find the featureless black rectangle of a powered-off LCD display that appealing.

In my general experience when I don't have enough information to reason a decision like that - it was just to minimise cost.

How is the way Nintendo boxed them "weird"?

The display side of the unit faces out, covered only by a single cardboard layer. Stapling stuff to the box is definitely weird, but the box layout is too. Just not very resistant to shipping damage in general. I'm not sure why they wouldn't have the unit facing upside down at least. Then the first thing you'd see upon opening would be the laser-etched Switch 2 logo.

I guess it depends on what your individual priorities are for this sort of platform. I already created and later abandoned @gila@lemmy.world after they blocked piracy comms, and in hindsight feel that was the right decision - hence creating this account after learning I'll soon be unable to access @gila@lemm.ee. At the end of the day, the ability to migrate to another instance with a different approach on issues like federation, moderation & administration is part of what drew me to this platform. If lemm.ee compromised on their approach simply to remain active - I'd likely have migrated away from it anyway.

I think you're missing the point. The call for new admin volunteers was stickied by the instance for an extended period. Even using an app rather than the web interface, it was stuck at the top of my feed until I hid the post.

The group of people who ignored that call to action yet would have volunteered with a follow-up post of a "big ticking clock" as it were, aren't necessarily the type of people you want to admin an instance. Especially one as big as lemm.ee. Certainly, if any admin will do then increasing recruitment efforts makes sense.