your resident poolrooms entity

“The LEGO Movie was my favorite movie of 2014, but it strikes me that the main character was male, because I feel like in our current culture, he HAD to be. The whole point of Emmett is that he’s the most boring average person in the world. It’s impossible to imagine a female character playing that role, because according to our pop culture, if she’s female she’s already SOMEthing, because she’s not male. The baseline is male. The average person is male. You can see this all over but it’s weirdly prevalent in children’s entertainment. Why are almost all of the muppets dudes, except for Miss Piggy, who’s a parody of femininity? Why do all of the Despicable Me minions, genderless blobs, have boy names? I love the story (which I read on Wikipedia) that when the director of The Brave Little Toaster cast a woman to play the toaster, one of the guys on the crew was so mad he stormed out of the room. Because he thought the toaster was a man. A TOASTER. The character is a toaster. I try to think about that when writing new characters— is there anything inherently gendered about what this character is doing? Or is it a toaster?”

I'm stuck on thinking about the person saying, "Why are they shooting at that dog?" during the opening scenes of The Thing. It's a funny story, but I can't help realizing how many modern movie producers think the same way.

Also, the person in the audience asking out loud "why are they shooting at the dog" isn't doing anything particularly egregious. Most of the time, from someone in the audience, that shows they're engaged with the film. It's not a question they expect answered, it's an exclamation of excitement and not a negative experience. But for someone like a producer, whose only concern is delivering a profitable product, that becomes a negative. A good product is something everyone can use and understand immediately. Any hesitation or uncertainty by a consumer is a chance they might stop to think and not make a purchase. Suspense is a barrier to buying into the movie, so it has to go.

me: “yeah I dated a guy in high school who came out as gay. it was before i knew i was a boy so needless to say it didn’t work out”

other things this coworker (who is a cis guy) has done/said:

I was talking to a friend I knew before I transitioned about my new relationship (my first one ever!) and I said "Yeah, I think I only indentified as aro/ace most of my life because I didn't have lesbian as an option" and he looked me dead in the eye and said "Oh? Why not? ...Ohhh"

crazy how every generative AI proponent has been mysteriously quiet about things like AI psychosis, observed cognitive atrophy through repeated generative AI use, use of generative AI chat programs to plan murder(s), and the exacerbation of suicidality via generative AI chat programs. like the best possible read of all this is that generative AI is an experimental technology that needs more guardrails and safeties before it should have been publicly available, and the worst is that it is a sham technology that has an increasing body count that silicon valley does not want to acknowledge because it will scare off investors (which it should).

i read the metamorphosis as a part of a class reading in my high school eng comp 2 class and i think it changed me

To be clear: simply having a Visa card isn't a risk for you. Not yet, anyway. You'll have to intentionally link your account to ChatGPT, then go shopping with the chatbot. If you don't do that, you're safe.