This is now a memes blog

I have decided to abandon @coolmaycroft simply because I got bored of it. I guess the recommended posts in the different tabs started to look repetitive and I wanted to expand beyond what I was already following.

I had about 900 followers on my previous blog but, after the bot swarm 2 years go, I was left with 13K follows; most of which are bots. So it's hard to gauge how much people really pay attention to what I post.

I also never felt my previous blog gave the emphasis to my art that I wanted. So I'll still be posting art and illustration scans in this new blog.

4. One probable outcome of an open-weight-model-dominant world is full AI communism, which is precisely what China proposes: rather than a market product, AI is a "public good" which will ultimately be provided by the state as a kind of "digital public infrastructure." This future strikes me as a dystopian hellscape, but I've never met an open-weight models advocate who doesn't ultimately concede this is where things end. You'd be surprised how many 'accelerationists' lobbied me, while I was in government, to support an eleven or twelve-figure federally funded data center so that startups could train models at a subsidy and then give them away for free. There was no other way for AI to progress, they said. Perhaps this is the logical end state of things. Nonetheless, I find myself surprised to see supposed accelerationists excited about such an outcome. I think many of them just don't know what they're doing. Many accelerationists do not view the creation and serving of frontier models as a legitimate business.

5. I would guess that the Trump Administration will at some point realize that their best strategy here would be to create large amounts of regulatory risk around the use of open-weight Chinese models. You don't need to "ban open source" (one of the dumber motifs of AI policy discussion). You just need to direct every agency to issue soft law that creates FUD. "A Federal Reserve Advisory Bulletin found that there may be backdoors in Chinese AI models." It needn't be that well justified. You just create enough regulatory risk that every regulated enterprise backs off. You probably don't want to create so much regulatory risk that you scare off the hyperscalers from serving Chinese models; this will just drive startups to sketchier providers. There's a happy middle ground here. I'd assume they will do some version of this.

And the thing is with Marvel and DC is that their very own long continuity shields them from exploring this type of realism. As @artbyblastweave says, consequences eventually lose relevance since the status quo returns.

Sophia, the ghost from 1875 who haunts a lamp I got at Brimfield: I wasn't wondering. why would I be?

me: ...but climate change is making it worse even since I was a child. and I had to explain climate change to you last week

Sophia: yes but haze and smoke in the city is normal, isn't it? coal fires for cooking (even in summer), gaslights burning, and so forth

me:

Sophia: the nature is different, but I'm quite accustomed to the concept. and this will last how long?

me: until tomorrow probably

Sophia: after which the air quality will be...?

me: excellent, I imagine. it's really good here 98% of the year, and good the rest of the time barring a few days like this one

Sophia:

Like, I would say that the film is both in direct conversation with classic superhero media and stands alone well. The movie DOES serve as a perfectly fine introduction to its genre, because it's a well-written movie that introduces all of its worldbuilding elements pretty clearly, but it also... it both moves pretty fast, operating under the assumption that you are roughly familiar with superhero media already, and doesn't seem to feel the need to justify itself.

People have flashy powers and improbable secret identities and silly costumes and superspy technology, and it's just... there. That's how this world works. It doesn't matter how Mr. Incredible or Elastigirl developed powers or started fighting crime or built relationships within the community, because that's not what the movie is about; that's the starting line. While the movie pokes fun at many of its own spec fic elements, it also hits the ground running, trusting the audience to catch up to "this is an established superhero" as it establishes the film's relevant problems.

I don't know, I feel like I've watched more than a few live-action superhero movies that I'd describe as "scared of their own basic concepts" and treat the audience as incapable of easily digesting the idea of some guy having superpowers or fighting big scary guys, as though that's not one of the oldest concepts on the clay tablets or in oral storytelling traditions. And so these films VERY slowly handhold the audience through an origin story. I'm bored of that; especially since it's been 22 YEARS since "The Incredibles" kicked off in medias res, followed by non-stop superhero movies every damn year.

>look inside

Corridor Crew, the VFX studio, has been chronicling how they've been using AI (as in model training and neural networks) to make effects processes easier to control: a system to change lighting, and another for better green screen for example

Venom #255 - "Death Spiral III" (2026)

URBAN JUNGLE Pages 65-66

MTG, as a trading card game had unique infection vectors that caused the commodification of cards. It has both the collectors aspect that is infecting comics, manga and pokemon cards; rare items sold on a sea of less value items. Which in our time becomes ground for gambling and financial investment.

At the same time, It had a vast appeal and the same commercialization that allowed for new franchises entering the game and basically becoming a fornite of sorts to entice new players. Though I think this was more forced than organic by the upper management of the company.