Pat @Pat@qoto.org

@/piggo@piggo.space

>"I'd much rather watch a real movie than some ai hallucination with 6 fingers on a hand, tyvm"

The Outer Limits, Episode 5, October 14, 1963

(Hint: you need to actually watch it to understand)

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"ChatGPT, please produce and show me a romcom about a laid-off writer and an actress set in early 21st-century Hollywood. Begin playing the movie when I get back in the room with the popcorn."

#AI #neoluddism #hollywood #film #romcom

***** spoilers *****

A little bit more on the economic and political situation around the time that this film was made... There was a deep recession in the early 1990s, and then the Rodney King beating and riots occurred during the recession in 1991. So Hollywood, which had pretty much excluded black people from their films up until that time, changed things up very quickly because they were afraid of a revolution. So they started putting more black people into their movies, and this film, 12 Monkeys, was one that had a lot more black people in it than many mainstream Hollywood movies.

I don't know if the title of the film relates to that or not. It's possible. If I knew for sure that it did, I would not recommend the film at all for that reason alone. But I’m not sure, thus the ambiguous sarcasm in the original post.

Also of note is that Frank Gorshin played a supporting role in 12 Monkeys. Gorshin was a guest star on Star Trek in 1969 in an episode titled, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, which was one of the more memorable episodes of the original series. The narrative of that episode, which featured aliens who were black on the left half of their bodies and white on the right half, and vis-a-versa, was a naked metaphor for the absurdity of racial prejudice, which was a top issue during the revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the US. This indicates to me that race was on the minds of the producers of 12 Monkeys, and they wanted to send a hint to that effect to their audience. Also in the film was a quick image of a TV screen showing news coverage of the riots – another hint about the undercurrents surrounding the making of the film.

This type of major change in the way that Hollywood treats black people in film has happened at least three times in history that I know of. It happened near the end of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s; it happened after the Rodney King beating and the subsequent riots; and it happened most recently again in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. But in between those inflection points, Hollywood has been really racist. The racism got even worse during Obama’s presidency.

This film is also partly about animal rights activists, which were very active during the time the film was made. I think some of the people involved in the film are supportive of animal rights. Even though the activists were portrayed as crazy people (along with just about everyone else in the film), ultimately in the story they were mostly benign, and were not the ones who released the deadly virus which caused the pandemic.

Both the fight against racism and the animal rights movement share a common philosophical core tenet, which is opposition to the oppression of individuals for who they are – speciesism and racism are cut from the same cloth. Alice Walker has written some about this and there is a book on the subject titled, “The Dreaded Comparison” (1988; Marjorie Spiegel, Alice Walker), and some more recent titles, too.

#covid19 #covid #vax #respirator

More people died last week in the US from COVID-19 than were killed in the 9/11 attack. Every week, another 9/11 attack.

Please wear your respirator when you are around other people.

Do a seal check on your respirator when you wear it.

It is more dangerous to be in public without a respirator than it is to drive without a seatbelt.

A properly worn respirator, like a N95 mask, prevents infection and spread of disease from all variants of the flu and COVID-19.

(right image: attribution Ryssby, CC-BY-2.5)

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For those of you who are unfamiliar with George Orwell's Animal Farm here's a quote from Wikipedia about the novella...

"It tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, the rebellion is betrayed, and under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon, the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before."

https://qoto.org/@Pat/110297899836118447

#mastodon #authoritarianism #fuckup #blunder #fedi

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Here's an archived link to Eugene Rochko's power grab. Just in case...

https://web.archive.org/web/20230501170049/https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/05/a-new-onboarding-experience-on-mastodon/

#mastodon #authoritarianism #fuckup #blunder #fedi

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#OutOfContext

https://www.patriotholdings.com/agi-calculator

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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

12 Monkeys (1995)

Magical realism and unrelenting dysphoria characterize this '90s time-travel sci-fi about a guy who tries to go back in time to help correct a massive pandemic that happened in the future. The attention to detail in this film is extraordinary. The writing, the acting, cinematography, the score, special effects, art design; everything in this film is so tight; very well done. Terry Gilliam deserves praise for his direction, for which he had great creative latitude during production. In fact it's so effective at creating a feeling of unease I think it requires a content warning for people who are under stress or who otherwise may be vulnerable to unsettling content. But there’s plenty of comedy for those who enjoy demented humor.

Brad Pitt had the most demanding role, I think, with lots of rapid dialogue playing an over-the-top delusional crazy guy. Bruce Willis, the main protagonist, also played a guy who is losing touch with reality. Madeleine Stowe, who plays a psychiatrist opposite Willis' character, is absolutely flawless. All the actors in this film did a very good job even in the minor rolls. I saw only one flawed bit performance in the whole film.

There were two societal phenomena happening when this film was produced in the 1990s – animal rights activism was at its height, and the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots had just occurred. Pitt’s character plays the leader of an eponymous underground animal rights group (Army of the Twelve Monkeys), which is apparently planning a horrendous act.

The film features a lot of black actors, which was unusual for films in the early 90s. I think filmmakers at the time were intentionally trying to correct for past racial bias in the film industry in the wake of the Rodney King beating. However, none of the black players in this film had major roles, only minor parts. None of the black players played any of the many scientists and doctors in the story, they played mostly cops, orderlies and such. I counted twelve credited black roles in the film, which I’m sure was a coincidence and the producers had no intent to denigrate. (ambiguous sarcasm)

The film presents overshadowing stereotypes of people who have mental illness, a trend that continues to this day in filmmaking. The single female protagonist is also stereotyped as a mostly weak and submissive character even though she plays a psychiatrist which should be an authority figure in this context. (In all fairness, her character evolves considerably.)

However, in spite of it’s gaffs on political correctness (which were common in the 1990s), I think it’s such a well made film that it’s well worth watching.

Accessible video description:

a man (Willis) in a hazmat suit in a winter environment stoops down near some equipment, a bear startles him and he panics. Cut to a closeup of the central arch in Fre Carnevale’s “The Ideal City” as a woman’s voice reads Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the camera slowly zooms out to show the full painting and an old white woman reading to a small group of people seated on folding chairs in Walters Art Museum, a subtitle says, “Baltimore April 1990”. A beeper goes off as a white brunette woman in a little black dress looks at her beeper message, stands up and fumbles as she awkwardly walks out. As she walks by a man wearing silver shoes, her shoes inexplicably turn from black to silver. Then Willis and Pitt are in a mental institution and a black man with a gray beard wearing formal attire talks about not being from outer space with goofy looks on his face. Cut to old black and white cartoons with crazy characters. Then a guard at a desk reads a newspaper with a man on stilts in the background changing lightbulbs in a hallway as Willis stumbles to an elevator, the guard tell him it’s not working, but the guard’s appearance subtly changes from one face to another, his newspaper’s headline says, “Bat Child Found in Cave” with a scary photo. then Willis and Stowe are in a car, Willis has sad expressions while Stowe has incredulous expressions. Fade to Pitt with long hair wearing dark clothes and a black stocking cap as he explains his theory of predictive neuro-analytics, he grabs his crotch in a funny gesture, tosses a globe to the floor and walks around the room making exaggerated gestures. then a small logo for the film appears and the camera slowly zooms in, it is red silhouettes of monkeys arranged in a circle with the title “Twelve Monkeys” over it.

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#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #TimeTravel #MentalIllness #animals #MagicalRealism #1990s #AnimalRights #shoes #iSeeDeadPeople #barn #Ignaz #PredictiveAnalytics #virus #pandemic #Baltimore
(fair use, unauthorized trailer)

#abortion #analysis

Some US senators claim that they need 60 votes to overturn the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision which reversed Roe. They don’t. They can do it with a simple majority.

- None of the justices who voted to overturn Roe got 60 votes in their confirmation hearings when they were appointed to the court.

- If you add up all of the confirmation votes by senators for justices who favored keeping Roe, it totals more votes than those from senators who voted for justices who opposed Roe.

Right now, there are 55 senators who claim to be pro-choice. They could overturn the SCOTUS decision today if they wanted to.

NEWS FLASH: They don’t want to overturn the SCOTUS decision and make abortion legal.

They are lying to you.

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Senators voting for SCOTUS nominee at confirmation:

Votes for justices who support Roe
87
78
68
63
total = 296

Votes for justices who oppose Roe
52
58
54
50
52
total = 266

#USPol #corruption #revolution

@freemo

My toots don't seem to appear in threads on mstdn.social at all. Are they completely blocking qoto?

I follow several accounts there but even when I respond to someone I follow, my toots don't in appear in the thread and I don't even think they are seeing them.

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Oh, and by the way, while all that was happening we landed the first astronauts on the moon.

#moon #nasa

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The Beatles song "Revolution" was released amid the revolution that occurred in the US during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The revolution resulted in:

- the removal from office of Richard Nixon, the 37th president;

- the ratification of the 27th Amendment in 1971 lowering the voting age to 18;

- Establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency

- ending the Vietnam War;

- large scale integration of schools in the South;

- and many other substantial changes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGLGzRXY5Bw

#revolution #the1960s #beatles #music #USPol #nonviolence #vote

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"...the hashtag symbol # originated as a stylized abbreviation of the Roman term libra pondo, written as ℔."

"libra ponda" is latin for "weighing a pound" (# is also used to abbreviate the unit of weight, pound)

#hashtag #trivia #history #writing

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Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has received more than $3 million in book advances from Knopf Doubleday Group. The first advance, more than $1M, came as she was seated on the court.

I wonder why the media are not talking about that.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-07/sotomayor-s-book-advances-from-knopf-surpass-3-million

#USPol #corruption #scotus #bribes #revolution

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Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon are fired on the same day. If anyone needs any more evidence that the mainstream media are entirely contrived by the plutocrats...

#BoycottMSM #oldmedia #revolution

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For the younger folks out there who are following the debt ceiling "crisis", this happens nearly every time the budget needs to be passed.
This is just Kabuki Theater so they can distract attention from what they're actually spending the money on -- like all the corrupt giveaways to their cronies. Or the fact that US just killed one million of their own citizens during the pandemic.

Happens almost every time, just ignore the theatrics and focus on the real issues.
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Kabuki Theater = "...refers to an event that is designed to create the appearance of conflict or of an uncertain outcome, when in fact the actors have worked together to determine the outcome beforehand." (wikipedia)

#debtCeiling #nationaldebt #USPol #budget #fiscal #policy

*****TruthBeTold Spoiler******

This statement is true. John Glenn took shark repellent with him in the Friendship 7 capsule when he went into space. However, the shark repellent was not to use against sharks in space, it was part of a survival kit to use in case the capsule landed off course in the ocean somewhere and he had to survive in a life-raft with sharks around him in the ocean.

#TruthBeTold

In 1962 when the United States sent its first astronaut, John Glenn, into orbit they weren't sure what to expect so he took some shark repellent just in case.

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#TruthBeTold = A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

#space #nasa #JohnGlenn #astronaut #aliens #shark #SpaceShark #Friendship7
(image: publicdomainpictures.net, modified with some stars in the background)

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This Twitch streamer is so nice that she interrupted her stream to feed her doggie...

(Fair use, full stream at: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1800908100)

#dogs #BeKindToAnimals #animals #kindness

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Investment tip...

Car Shredders.

(full video at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh8j_N0OUSE )

#climate #change #puttputt