ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝

A geologist and archaeologist by training, a nerd by inclination - books, films, fossils, comics, rocks, games, folklore, and, generally, the rum and uncanny… Let’s have it!

Elsewhere:

  • Yrtree.me - it’s still early days for me in the Fediverse, so bear with me
  • 3.61K Posts
  • 5.82K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences acknowledged the existence of generative AI yesterday in new rule changes for its annual Oscars awards ceremony. Rather than dictate its use or require disclosures, the Academy simply says using AI doesn’t, on its own, hurt a movie’s chances — but that how it’s used could.

    That seems fair.

    The Brutalist used AI to improve Hungarian accents, which seems a reasonable use for it. They also used it to generate photographs of fictional buildings, which has done someone out of a job. However, someone else has to come up with the prompts and sift through the results, it just feels a bit… Cheap? Low effort?


  • To what extent? Like what about an AI generated humour/satire image in a comment section? I have a funny one of Vladimir Putin sitting on a naughty step

    That’s a no for that. It’s ultimately based on someone else’s stolen work.

    We would, I suspect, allow AI imagery in discussion about AI and what it us capable of but the days of posting it to laugh at the shitty results seems long gone. In recent examples, I couldn’t tell by eye but I ran it through an AI checker which was pretty definitive.

    Anyway, I changed casualuk icon as it was an old 2023 AI generated image previously. I think we should work towards revamping other communities

    Yeah, there’s the odd community avatar we need to swap and we definitely need to give some of the communities a bit of a revamp as they were bodged together over a year ago, often in haste.








  • Following the ruling, J.K. Rowling, the world’s richest author and perhaps its most prominent transphobe, tweeted a photo of herself enjoying a cigar and a bourbon on her $15 million superyacht, toasting what she called “TERF VE Day,” in reference to the acronym “trans-exclusionary radical feminism” and the surrender of German military operations that heralded “Victory in Europe” 80 years ago. “I love it when a plan comes together,” Rowling added.

    She’s become a Bond villain.

    Astonishingly, the ruling specifies that what it calls “women living in the male gender”—i.e., trans men, and cis women whose appearance is deemed masculine—“could also be excluded” alongside cis men, from women’s spaces. “Not being allowed into the mens by rule does not mean you have the right to go into the ladies,” clarified the leading anti-trans campaigner Maya Forstater; “That may seem unfair, but these are life choices people make. If you make extreme efforts to look like a man don’t be surprised if you are denied entrance to ladies.” Forstater’s comments underscore the ultimate goal of TERFs and other transphobes: to expunge trans people from public life.

    The mask slips there. Even amongst TERFs that has to be a minority opinion (right? Right?) as everyone has the right to go to the toilet, but it does demonstrate that some don’t see this ruling as an end point but just a foot in the door. One of my arguments against the ruling (or the misinterpretation of it) was that trans men will be forced into women’s toilets, changing rooms, etc and this would underline the absurdity of all of this and lead to push back against it, but it seems like some TERFs are already planning for that eventuality.

    And, again, who do they expect to police this? I spoke to the landlord of my local and he is pretty clear that everyone should use the toilet that best corresponds to the gender you look like, not necessarily from some high moral ground but because it causes the least fuss and bother.






  • My previous house was a Victorian semi that had cavity walls. I phoned up about a green grant to get it done (as people two doors down had) and they wouldn’t believe me until they checked Google Earth. Had it surveyed and it would have needed a lot of preparation work to get into a condition that it could have been insulated. Ended moving and I am unsure what the new owners have done on that front - not flash enough to make their Instagram account about renovating the house which I have been advised not to read as they are horrible people with bad taste. Although I get the gist as it often gets commented on at parties, especially as a friend’s brother-in-law did the bathrooms.





  • (Your link is a bit malformed)

    Ah yes, the Lemmy UI goes a bit sideways when you try and post a new link into existing markup.

    I wonder if the police were right, and he had been (perhaps sexually) assaulted, but it was the 70s and men couldn’t quite talk about that, or something.

    Ufology is interesting, but because it may be more about us than aliens.

    That could definitely be a reason (my grandfather was gay in a time when it just wasn’t possible to be open about it and it seriously impacted his life) although the damage to his trousers is unusual. I suspect the temporal lobe epilepsy explanation is right and he may have stumbled into a barbed wire fence or thorn bush.