It is with profound disappointment that we report the industry CEOs have walked away from the bargaining table after refusing to counter our latest offer. (1/11)

We have negotiated with them in good faith, despite the fact that last week they presented an offer that was, shockingly, worth less than they proposed before the strike began.

These companies refuse to protect performers from being replaced by AI, they refuse to increase your wages to keep up with inflation, and they refuse to share a tiny portion of the immense revenue YOUR work generates for them.

We have made big, meaningful counters on our end, including completely transforming our revenue share proposal, which would cost the companies less than 57¢ per subscriber each year. They have rejected our proposals and refused to counter.

Instead they use bully tactics. Just tonight, they intentionally misrepresented to the press the cost of the above proposal – overstating it by 60%.

They have done the same with A.I., claiming to protect performer consent, but continuing to demand “consent” on the first day of employment for use of a performer’s digital replica for an entire cinematic universe (or any franchise project).

The companies are using the same failed strategy they tried to inflict on the WGA – putting out misleading information in an attempt to fool our members into abandoning our solidarity and putting pressure on our negotiators.

But, just like the writers, our members are smarter than that and will not be fooled.

We feel the pain these companies have inflicted on our members, our strike captains, IATSE, Teamsters and Basic Crafts union members, and everyone in this industry. We have sacrificed too much to capitulate to their stonewalling and greed.

We stand united and ready to negotiate today, tomorrow, and every day.

Our resolve is unwavering. Join us on picket lines and at solidarity events around the country and let your voices be heard.

One day longer. One day stronger. As long as it takes.

- Your TV/Theatrical Negotiating Committee

AMPTP is going to fight HARD for AI rights.

They really really want the right to grab actor images and voices and use them without paying the actors.

They want it much more than they wanted the right to use LLMs to generate scripts. They want AI-generated actor options much more than they wanted AI-generated writer options.

They knew AI writing is junk. They were hoping for the right to make an auto-generated script and then hand it to writers to fix, and pay those writers half of what they would for a real script. But they knew LLMs can't write full scenes, much less whole episodes.

...AI-generated "deepfakes" have gotten good. And they don't want to use it to replace the main actor in a movie... they want the right to have a famous retired actor in the background, serving drinks in the bar, and you get to hear his trademarked phrase in what sounds like his voice.

They eventually want to use AI to replace the secondary protagonist, but that's not what they're fighting for now. The tech isn't there yet. What they're fighting for now, is the right to make crowd scenes with 3 actors (that they have to pay) and 75 AI-generated bots (that they don't). Oh, and they want that crowd scene to include half a dozen visible faces of famous actors and actresses.

They want the right to redo a scene after they've made major script changes without having to call back the midlist actor who was playing the cashier.

Did I mention crowd scenes? They REALLY want to do crowd scenes without paying people, because that lets them get rid of a whole section of infrastructure: No payroll department for hundreds of people, no insurance costs, no safety concerns about too many people in the space, no broken equipment because you have 57 people dancing in a barroom set, and so on.

The AMPTP is going to try very very hard to hold out for the right to use AI-generated characters that look like real actors.

Don't believe a damn thing they say about who's not willing to negotiate. Because they don't want to negotiate; they want the right to stop having real actors at all - while still using the appearance and voice and style of the actors that the public wants to see.

Just because the WGA was able to negotiate a fairer deal doesn't mean the work isn't over! Many strikers are living paycheck to paycheck and need all the help they can get!

The actors are striking for better wages as well AND to prevent AI from replacing them! Keep supporting the SAG!! Here are ways we can still support them

Keying/graffiti-ing someones car is old news now if someone cheats we go at their wardrobe with a seam ripper

yknow what? Fuck you *unstitches all your shirts and jeans*

My mother did this to my father once. They got into an argument, my very pregnant and hormonal mother stormed off…except they lived in a tiny apartment so the only place to go was to shut herself into the closet for a good long sulk. And while she was sitting in there, fuming, she looked up and saw her sewing kit on the shelf, and all my father’s uniforms hanging right there.

So she picked one shirt and one pair of trousers, carefully, methodically ripped every third stitch out of every seam, and then hung them back up together so that he would be likely to pick them at the same time. This took her a couple hours, so by the time she was done, the anger had worn down. She came out, she and my father had a talk that ended in apologies, after which they were tired and went to bed. My mother swears up and down that she meant to warn my father about the sabotaged clothes in the morning, but he wore a different uniform set and they were both still feeling a little raw, so she didn’t want to bring up the fight again. She decided to tell him that night instead.

And then she forgot.

Anyway, about four days later, my father apparently came home roughly an hour after he left for work, his clothes slowly, gently shredding off his body, the most bewildered expression on his face. “Paula,” he said, his voice mildly shell-shocked. “Paula, my clothes are broken.”

My mother promptly burst out laughing so hard that she went into labor. And that’s the story of my birth, heralded by petty vengeance and utter confusion.

GUYS IT’S THE POST

THIS POST THIS POST OMG

What's that poem about the cockroach and the moth where the cockroach is like "I wish I've ever wanted anything the way that moth wanted to burn itself up in that lantern" because we had to read that in high school and it still fucks me up to this day

Ok I found it it's called "the lesson of the moth by archy" and it's by Don Marquis

archy and mehitabel are a treasure, newspaper columnist Don Marquis wrote a lot of these free-verse poems in character as a cockroach named archy (always lowercase because he's a cockroach and can't reach the shift key!!) who was using his typewriter & while it started out as a way of poking gentle fun at the avant-garde poetry of his time (the 1910s - startling how little "avant-garde poetry" has moved forward, isn't it) it evolved over time into some genuinely beautiful and moving poetry

ALSO many of them have illustrations by Krazy Kat author George Herriman which are frankly iconic and adorable!!

Marquis introduced Archy into his daily newspaper column at New York's Evening Sun.  Archy—whose name was always written in lower case in the book titles, but was upper case when Marquis would write about him in narrative form—was a cockroach who had been a free verse poet in a previous life, and took to writing stories and poems on an old typewriter at the newspaper office when everyone in the building had left.  Archy would climb up onto the typewriter and hurl himself at the keys, laboriously typing out stories of the daily challenges and travails of a cockroach.  Archy's best friend was Mehitabel, an alley cat. The two of them shared a series of day-to-day adventures that made satiric commentary on daily life in the city during the 1910s and 1920s.

Because he was a cockroach, Archy was unable to operate the shift key on the typewriter (he jumped on each key to type; since using shift requires two keys to be pressed simultaneously, he physically could not use capitals), and so all of his verse was written without capitalization or punctuation. (Writing in his own persona, though, Marquis always used correct capitalization and punctuation. As E. B. White wrote in his introduction to The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel, it would be incorrect to conclude that, "because Don Marquis's cockroach was incapable of operating the shift key of a typewriter, nobody else could operate it.")

There was at least one point in which Archy happened to jump onto the shift lock key—a chapter titled "CAPITALS AT LAST".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_and_Mehitabel

the lesson of the moth by archy (a poem by Don Marquis) 

i was talking to a moth the other evening he was trying to break into an electric light bulb and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows pull this stunt i asked him because it is the conventional thing for moths or why if that had been an uncovered candle instead of an electric light bulb you would now be a small unsightly cinder have you no sense

plenty of it he answered but at times we get tired of using it we get bored with the routine and crave beauty and excitement fire is beautiful and we know that if we get too close it will kill us but what does that matter it is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while so we wad all our life up into one little roll and then we shoot the roll that is what life is for it is better to be a part of beauty for one instant and then to cease to exist than to exist forever and never be a part of beauty our attitude toward life is to come easy go easy we are like human beings used to be before they became too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him out of his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter i do not agree with him myself i would rather have half the happiness and twice the longevity

but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himself

archy

…An old friend. 😏

As someone who has mispronounced so many words because I never actually heard them. I appreciate this post

i think ubisoft devs should not only post their work from canned projects i think they should legally be allowed to come together and eat the entire guillemot family <3

What in the good love of fuck.....

It’s a Tree. There was a tree there. Folks cut down a tree, they usually don’t pull the roots, it’s like a Whalefall for fungus and burrowing invertebrates. They feast for decades.

It’s tree roots. I know that’s not cool and adventurous but I promise you it’s tree roots.

No, that's where they dumped the body of my good friend, Mr. Five by Five. We called him that because he was five feet tall and five feet wide. Perfectly spherical.

I'm gonna give y'all a cheat code for this btw

Start with : I feel you (friend), i went through xyz and it really messed me up, I know this has to be rough for you.

The important part is to start and end with how this is about the person you're comforting. It can sometimes come off as a little callous to jump into a story about yourself when someone else is having a moment and looking for comfort, but it's about gauging the situation.

Another rule of thumb is that if someone has gotten to the crying/yelling stage, they don't need reasoning, they need a glass of water and supportive words. You can bring in the reasoning after their breathing is back to normal.

[footage of the inside of an ordinary Eastern-European home, taken with a handheld phone camera, the man filming is walking from the living room to the back door of the house]

man, narrating in russian: Every fucking year, this time of the year, the pond at my backyard gets infested. What do ponds get infested with? Frogs? Poisonous weeds? Geese? No. Not my pond.

[The man opens the back door, stepping out into a garden. Three or four nude, human-like figures dash from the borders of a pond back into the water.]

man: Rusalki! I don't know where they come from or how they get here, and I can't afford to hire an exterminator every year. I can't let my cat outside anymore. Last year a rusalka managed to drown a whole deer in my pond, the stench was unbearable.

[He walks as he speaks, approaching the pond. There are several eerily beautiful female beings peering at him from under the surface, their long hair floating in the murky water. Their eyes are gleaming in an unhuman way. The man holding the camera stops to film them.]

man, calm and deadpan: What the fuck are all of you staring at. Get jobs or something.

[One of the rusalki, smaller than the others and clearly not a fully matured adult, slowly reaches out of the water with her white, thin hand, grasping his ankle. He appears unconcerned.]

man: You can't drown me, you little idiot. You're too small. Shoo!

[A loud thud startles the rusalki, making them scatter. A second thud makes it clear these are the approaching footsteps of something massive. The man turns around and points the camera at what appears to be a house, walking past above the treeline with chicken-like legs]

man, now yelling: IF YOUR HOUSE SHITS ON MY YARD AGAIN I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD-

This post is a joy and a delight.

this is the energy

Okay I HAD to do this was just perfect

It’s weird to think this comic predates the rise of Internet spam, though otherwise it reads like it could’ve been drawn yesterday.

I've been thinking about the phrase "verbing weirds language" for nearly 30 years

hobbes in the last panel deconstructing twitter decades before it’s invention

guys, Calvin's dad in the last panel is not just making up nonsense words to mock Calvin. he's using actual, historical slang his generation (boomers) invented in the 60s-70s specifically to have an argot separate from his own parents, who in turn were saying shit like "23 skidoo" to their unimpressed Victorian parents, and so on. it's not weird to think that this comic came out before twitter, because this has been going on since the dawn of humanity. that's the joke

for more information please refer to Jeeves and Wooster (1990-1993AD, BBC)

we have GOT to kill tiktok/twitter self-censorship i just witnessed a grown adult say the word “smex” out loud to our professor

my poor professor was SO confused that she asked them to repeat themselves and they went “you know, like, blank . . .” and kept just vaguely gesturing until she somehow connected the dots. i fucking hate art school

god i wish i was making the shit i witness at this place up. my life would be so much easier if i didn’t have to deal with my classmates seriously arguing about fandom discourse in the group project chat

the price you think you're paying by going to art school: tuition, supply costs, etc

the price you're actually paying by going to art school: having to put up with the most brain-rotting terminally online discourse imaginable in real life

I had someone argue with me that it was problematic for me to have watched Frozen with my niece because I was encouraging her to become an emotionally abuse codependent sibling. I'm a senior and I've had someone else doing their senior thesis ask, genuinely, if she was problematic for doing her thesis on domestic abuse, because sometimes domestic abuse effects rich white women and they're privileged, so therefore her doing it on that is racism apologism. I've had to sit there and watch people say "unalive", "SA", "PDF file", and my favorite, "marital relations" (it only happened once but it's really funny) to professors who look at them in total despair.

Hamlet didn't unalive himself, he killed himself. Our Crime Prevention class is discussing sexual assault and pedophiles. The implication of this paper we're reading in Intro To Africana Studies is not about white settlers marrying and having gentle loving monogamous funtimes with slaves, it's about rape.

I genuinely do not see how I'm supposed to take the people around me seriously. How am I supposed to believe you have incredible insights into something you can't bring yourself to say? How am I supposed to look over your rough draft and not cross out the euphemisms and write grown-up words?

And I DO NOT go to art school! I go to Montana State! I'm in redneck country - remember when redneck meant tough enough to at least say words?! Not anymore!

Do you know how stupid I feel that I couldn't figure out that "PDF File" was supposed to be censorship slang for "paedophile"

“Unfortunate! Anyway,”

few terms have come to piss me off more than "traumadumping" does like having a sincere conversation with someone about personal issues in your life is not "traumadumping" shut the fuck up

obviously your twitter mutual arbitrarily dming you out of the blue to describe a detailed account of the abuse they experienced as a child is one thing but i often see the word "traumadumping" applied to things as mundane as a friend or relative telling you their girlfriend broke up with them or that they got in a bad fight with their dad and like that is not traumadumping that is simply seeking emotional consolation from a friend, which isn't exactly uncommon nor is it an unreasonable thing to desire. these people are not necessarily asking you to become their therapist or what the fuck ever, usually they are merely looking for reassurance and recognition as simple as "sorry to hear that i hope things start looking up for you soon." i understand that situations like this can still be hard and make you feel confused and helpless and unsure of exactly what you can do/say, but i just feel like it's downright cruel to act as though wanting comfort from a friend when you're going through a rough period is somehow a moral failing and the big boy thing to do in such a situation would just be to suck it up and repress lest you make your emotions someone else's problem

I am the very model of a shrewd Ferengi businessman I’ve been on Deep Space Nine since it was run by the Cardassians My bar provides each alien that passes through its double doors With gambling and alcohol, and holographic paramours

But that is not to say that I’m impervious to harder times I’ve often been accused of larceny and graft and other crimes My righteous indignation is becoming quite demonstrable Especially with my old friend, the law-enforcing Constable.

I’m singing this while sitting in a holding cell familiar So Odo comes and lets me out before he goes peculiar That good-cop, bad-cop subroutine he just took to employing Could use some work (or one more cop) - it’s really quite annoying.

Incredible. Who would have thought my favorite crossover piece would be Star Trek and Gilbert & Sullivan with perfect rhyme and meter.

I love this forever.

How do i reblog harder???

If I had a nickel for every time I was giddy and excited for a rendition of Gilbert and Sullivan's "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" about an alien in a science fiction series I'm quite fond of, I'd have two nickels - which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.

I am going to remember this image forever, it will save me so much time

Another

A Note to Minors:

I see a lot on tumblr lately regarding the defense of underage participants in a certain community, as well as the underage participants expressing anger that they are not welcome on NSFW blogs. As a NSFW blogger, as well as someone who has come to know various sex laws due to their career, I thought I would clarify some things:

1. It doesn’t matter what the age of consent in your state is. Age of consent refers to the age that you are able to consent to sexual activity only.

2. Even if you are able to consent at age 16 or 17, by law you are still a minor. Pornography cannot be sold or viewed by minors.

3. If you are under 18 and you post explicit photos of yourself, you can be charged with creating and circulating child pornography, as the images contain a minor.

4. It is normal to have interests in sex and kink, regardless of age. There are safe spaces on the internet to seek these out and ask questions regarding your interests. Spaces where you can communicate with other teens, that are well moderated and do not allow adults to freely graze and prey. Scarleteen.com is probably the greatest example.

5. As a minor, showing purposeful disregard for another blogger or a website’s request that no minors be present on the site (and for some explicit material, 21 is the age for legal viewership) puts the owner of that blog and/or website at risk. No one wants to see awesome sex bloggers get shut down or sex friendly spaces on the internet get hit for having underage members. Think about more than just yourselves.

If you’re under 18, unfollow me. Don’t argue, don’t flame me, just unfollow. I’ll be the first person to high five you when you turn 18 and we can reminisce about how much it sucked to wait. Until then, peace out.

This goes for the TOS of Discord as well. It’s purposely vague for a reason.

it is really wild that people are incapable of seeing children as being able to make autonomous informed decisions

for a while my family thought my sibling might be a trans girl, because they didn’t want their voice to become masculine with puberty.  my mother reached out and spoke with a someone associated with a gender pediatric clinic, who basically guided my mother about having a discussion with my sibling. my folks sat down with my sibling and asked a series of questions that were given by the gender clinic. it turns out my sibling simply didn’t want to leave the Soprano Alto choir, because they felt uncomfortable being amongst the boy’s choir. my sibling does not feel like a boy, but doesn’t actually have body or gender dysphoria. my parents found a co-ed choir for them, and they are now an extremely accomplished tenor. my sibling now considers themself as simply “androgynous.” my folks are incredibly supportive on my sibling’s choices to dress in feminine fashion as well as their opera studies.

this idea that pediatric gender clinics are here to maliciously convince children to become trans, and force them into trans affirming surgery or hormones, is ridiculous. it is also ridiculous to claim that they are trying to force labels on gender non conforming children. they are there to provide resources for gnc children and trans children, as well as parents who might be confused by what it means to be LGBT+

kids deserve respect and human rights. talk to them. listen to them. work with them.

Saw a post that said “Not every person you dislike is a narcissist and not every unpleasant experience is trauma” and a lot of you needed to hear that.

Not all conflict is abuse.

i love you wasps i love you flies i love you beetles i love you moths i love you non-bee pollinators i love you "uncharismatic" organisms who nonetheless carry our ecosystem on your backs

It's genuinely telling that any animal that's even slightly inconvenient to people inspires this kind of extreme irrational rage and even more telling that people are somehow proud of this reaction instead of rightly ashamed. I've been stung by wasps before. The most recent time I remember is when one flew down my shirt one summer and, I presume, panicked at the prospect of getting crushed to death by an animal a thousand times its size. Do you know what happened? It hurt a bit for an hour or two, then went away. I've been hurt worse stubbing my toe.

Wasps are willing to defend themselves, and not even particularly effectively. But they're willing to hurt humans, and our measured response to an animal being willing to hurt us is condemning their entire species to death on sight and fucking revelling in every kill. Pure anthropocentrism brain in action. A lot of people claim to like nature, but only like the fucking terrarium version of it which has every thorn plucked off, every tooth pulled and claw filed down and everything that stings or sucks drowned in DDT.

God, I was just gonna write a sentence or two to get my thoughts out but I'm fucking incensed now. We love wasps here! We love wasps!!!

To top it all off, we made wasps the way they are in the first place. By "we" I mean land vertebrates as a whole, since it was somewhere around the Jurassic that the first social bees and wasps emerged as we know them today, but land vertebrates are a pretty small insular group we belong to and our own five-fingered hands aren't clean here either. Anything capable of obtaining bee or wasp larvae will eat them, including the majority of birds, raccoons, weasels, arboreal marsupials, bears, squirrels, and ALL primates including all our hominid ancestors and our very own species have eaten wasp grubs for their entire evolutionary history. Many human cultures fell out of the practice of eating insects in general, but wasp larvae are such a perfect food that there are even still places where humans grow and harvest them on purpose! These are wasp boxes in Kushihara, Japan, where a lot of people keep them in their backyards and collect all the grubs at the end of the season:

This is because wasp larvae are just about the fattest, juiciest, softest nuggets of pure fat and protein in the entire animal kingdom. here's a photo where you can see their dopey little faces up close, and guess what?? That's all they have! Their faces are their only "armored" part, and only barely! They are plump, legless, unprotected blobs of food who own nothing to their name but one slightly crispy face! They're the little guys with only a face!!! In all the world! Every danger to an organism puts the pressure of natural selection on it. All the organisms sharing an ecosystem are selectively breeding one another's characteristics just by existing together. So now here's a kind of animal who has the MOST EDIBLE BABIES IN THE WORLD, and you and your ancestors all the way back to tiny proto-rodents knew that. The wasps who survived this constant assault were the wasps who were the best at defending those super delicious babies, and now that's why you (the general you, not any one particular person here) think they're "mean" and "aggressive." Your entire family spent hundreds of millions of years slorping down their babies like free popcorn, forcing their gene pool to give them ever more painful stingers and more territorial behavior and then some of us walked in and said "wow, why are those things being assholes"

Look at this sad guy!