@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

southsamurai

@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

The band “scruffy the cat”

I’ve never met anyone else that knows they existed

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

I dunno, if I build a house, I can leave it to my family for generations. Indeed, barring something interfering with that ownership, it will be passed along. Maybe they’ll sell it, or take out a loan against it and default, or a disaster could strike, or whatever.

Why would any other creation be less portable to my heirs?

Mind you, I’m definitely of the belief that artistic creations like books should eventually go public domain. I’m fine with any number of possible restrictions on that duration. But it is strange that one of the only things that automatically gets removed from a family are things like writing. Ideas, if you want to break it down. We treat them different than other things we create.

Again, I’m fine with there’s being limits on holding ideas restricted. That’s necessary to prevent loss of such things, that are harder to preserve than something like a piece of jewelry, or a statue, or a house. That’s why patents and copyrights need to expire, but I can’t agree that the limits as they exist are fucked up/bad/wrong.

Seriously, I’m a published author, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about such things.

Now, I would love to see the laws change so that any copyright held by a publicly traded company, or that has been sold/abandoned by the actual heirs of the author is shorter than when held by the heirs of the author.

And, any popular work is going to have the issue of who gets to decide what is and isn’t done to the works before or after public domain. You can end up with something wonderful being shat on by asshats. So it isn’t like copyrights expiring is without drawbacks. When what’s at stake is only keeping the works published and available, that’s a clear cut thing that benefits everyone.

But adaptations, expansions, “fanfic”? I would definitely prefer someone that at least has some chance of the author’s intent being known than some shitty company looking to milk the work for every possible dime.

Why shouldn’t authors be able to build generational wealth the way a business can? You’re talking about people profiting off a dead man, but that’s what investments and properties and such are. It’s future generations profiting off a dead person’s work. There’s billionaires out there that are sitting on wealth that was amassed not just decades ago, but sometimes centuries. Why do authors not have that possibility?

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Naaah, that’s not true.

I promise you that if the stuff I’ve written and published could be used by anyone, however they wanted, it would not have been published. I would have kept that shit to myself.

If anything, copyright laws encourage creativity because the person knows they can take their time to build things up. You don’t have to worry about fifteen sequels to your book being spammed by hacks trying to profit from your work

Is there an artist so horrible that no matter how hard you try that you cannot separate their art from them?

Similar to the recent question about artists where you can successfully separate them from their art. Are there any artists who did something so horrible, so despicable, that it has instantly invalidated all art that they have had any part in?

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Eh, not really.

Now, there are some examples where I won’t/can’t actively seek out their work, and would never contribute to them by buying anything at all, ever.

Cosby falls into that category, just as an example.

But, I have a complete separation as far as the work itself being valid/good despite the origins. Using Cosby as the example again, if I’m somewhere and one of his performances is on, I’m not going to care enough to change a channel or leave, or even say anything.

That’s pretty much anyone and everyone. I just don’t have that thing where a given item, piece of work, whatever, is “tainted” just because the person that made it is a piece of shit. I don’t form an association like that. It’s that I choose to not seek out some things as a matter of principle.

But, as a general rule, if they’re dead, I don’t care at all. And, if the person in question is only one person involved in a group effort, that group effort is fine by me. Like, if the guitarist of a band is a piece of shit, but everyone else is not, why would their work be a bad thing?

Now, this isn’t to say that I ignore any bad acts when interacting with a given work. Take van Gogh as an example. His excesses and disturbing behaviors are part of his work to an extent. It’s a thing where knowing the person’s flaws informs the interaction with the work. Kinda like “gee, I wonder how much of this work stems from the same root as the bad acts did?”

But, I can enjoy the work of people I personally despise with no issues. I just don’t have whatever it is that other people have that makes a thing tainted based on the creator.

Part of that is knowing how shitty humans in general are, and how hard it is to find any artist that didn’t/doesn’t have massive flaws. In music and painting in particular, you run into a shit ton of artists that were abysmal people. If I did have that whatever it is that causes a connection between the art and the artist’s flaws, I wouldn’t be able to listen to much music at all.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

This guy.

He’s known for a different meme, but he’s used in this one and manages to look like he’s posing at gunpoint after being told “look casual and not afraid. Now, smile.”

How many of you run a Linux phone (Pine64, Librem etc) as your daily driver?

I was going through Pine64’s page again after I found the latest KDE announcement. With that said, I seem to see a lot of issues with firmware on the Pine, whilst the Librem is just plain out of budget for me. Was interested in how many people here run a Linux mobile as a daily driver, and how has your experience been?...

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Man, the call problems are a dealbreaker for any phone at all, imo. Maybe not for a toy, but it’s bonkers that they’d release a phone OS that isn’t 100% call stable.

The DCEU ends not with a bang, but a wimper. (lemmy.ml)

10 years after Zod’s snapped neck, Martha, “some kinda Suicide Squad”, CGI moustache, rennouncing your wish, the hiearchy of power changing, and Speed Force PS1 graphics, the DC Extended Universe finally comes to a close. And it ends the same way it started - with a Rotten score....

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Hopes? None. Warner Bros. has no fucking clue how to use DC characters and ideas in theaters. They may get lucky with specific movies being decent, but the best movies are not even as good as the worst of the animated movies and series. They keep throwing money and names at live action, instead of focusing on telling good stories that stay true to the essence of the characters.

I don’t see Gunn doing any better tbh. For one, he’s going to be hamstrung by whatever Warner decides is the goal. For another, he’s going to end up limited by whatever flawed view executives have of the servers characters. And then he still may not have a grasp of what either comics fans or non comic fans need from a movie featuring DC characters.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Amen. Though, tbh, I did shed a few tears during love and thunder, so it wasn’t a total failboat.

I like Gunn’s style, but any time you just hand the reins to a single director, the risk of them cackling like a mad scientist and creating an abomination is high.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Man, I’ll download stuff just because I don’t want to dig through all the DVDs lol.

But, yah, I actually have done that a few times. I even did it twice with goonies. I keep forgetting that I got it as a gift on DVD years ago, get a hankering to watch it, and I’ve got so many files that it’s easy for my dyslexic ass to miss one while scrolling.

Did it with several of those older nostalgia movies here and there because of the same reason. But I still never get around to dyslexia proofing my file naming lol.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Whew, you’d better stay away from “one in a million” by guns n roses then!

Of course, the two songs are very different, but if you have ever only heard the “radio” version of OIAM (which still doesn’t get played on radio) and then hear the original, you’ll shit yourself.

They’re completely opposite in intent and usage. Dire straits are poking fun at an idiot saying the things in the song. Axl Rose was saying what he thought in the worst possible way. Dude is batshit, and a homophobe. Well, was for sure, I guess even someone that much of an asshole could have changed by now.

Kinda sucks because the song itself isn’t bad, just really nasty. Like, as a slice of life from a person that’s full of anger and hate and wants to run away from his self generated fears, the song is successful. It paints a realistic picture of not only the person that wrote it, but of people that think like that. It’s just really hard to listen to because of that accurate slice of hate.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah, that’s in there too. But definitely not a joke. Just Axl being Axl

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Ehhh, Axl has gone on record about when and why he wrote the song, and why he used the words he used. He outright said that he didn’t like gay people unless it was lesbians he could watch because that’s his fetish. He did say that he was only using the slurs to point at part of the groups, but the way he said it was still both racist and homophobic.

Slash has said on the record that he objected to the song, and wished it hadn’t been made, but that (at the time) the band didn’t interfere with each other creatively. He also didn’t play much on the track, btw. Afaik, Axl wrote all the acoustic guitar on it, because he’s stated on the record that he sucked at the guitar and was essentially just strumming two strings. I’ve never seen any breakdown of who played what on the recording though, so I can’t say who is playing on the track.

However, Slash has also said that while he didn’t like the song, he wasn’t pissed at Axl because of it. But you can’t use that as a guideline for the song being acceptable or not because a shit ton of other musicians were quite vocal in their objections at the time (including the band that toured with them during that era, Living Color).

It isn’t anyone ascribing anything to him (axl), it’s what he himself has said in interviews, and on stage.

In later interviews he’s outright said that he as a person was a rage junkie (abridged version lol, he did a lot of interviews), and absolutely had hatred for gay people as a whole. He’s given multiple reasons for that, and none of those are self-contradictory. However, none of them excuse his behavior towards gay people.

As far as other things he’s said about his racial beliefs, I don’t know if it’s fair to say he’s full on racist, as in hating black people or any given ethnic group. What is fair to say is that his excuses for use the n slur in the song amount to stereotyping and was certainly intended to attack at least the black people he was stereotyping.

Now, I’m pulling this from having been a fan of the band since they broke into national awareness, and all the stuff I read and heard along the way. But, the interviews are usually available online. I know the Rolling Stone magazine stuff is. There’s still concert ,footage of him from the era ranting about being accused of bigotry, though that was pretty much just him saying “fuck you” to anyone that didn’t like him.

Very specifically, Axl has said that he wrote it from his own perspective, talking about his experiences and his anger. The “one in a million” sections of the song are him repeating something said to him in real life because he was a raging asshole (again, he’s said that on record).

So, the worst motives being ascribed to him aren’t ONLY because he isn’t well liked. Hell, I’ve still got the vinyl of Lies, and have the rest of the pre-breakup albums on at least CD, if not multiple formats. I don’t hate Axl, much less the band.

Knopfler has also been open about how his song was written, and it’s intent. It was, just as you said, holding up the kind of speech and behavior in the song to ridicule. That’s been his public stance on the song from the beginning, and it has never changed afaik. The lyrics support that stance. He’s told the story of writing down many of the lines from the song after hearing them in person by another person. The lyrics are saying that the musicians on stage and screen are the yo-yos playing Hawaiian music, so the f slur in the song would be directed at Knopfler himself even if he was writing from his own perspective.


I know, that’s a lot of words for a decades old song lol. But anyone that was a fan of the band back then had to negotiate the matter. My best friend still hates Axl because of the song. The debate about exactly how bad the lyrics are was a nearly daily thing for a few weeks after the EP came out. I never hated Axl, I don’t waste my hate on strangers very often (and never on strangers that can’t really do anything with whatever bullshit they spew). But I get why people do.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Absolutely! It wasn’t at all unusual, even for other slurs. But gay slurs were outright common. Ffs, even in 91, my high school had a gym class playing “smear the queer” and that was the gym teacher calling it that. It wasn’t a secret, it was right out in the open. And that really was about the mildest kind of bullshit gay people had to deal with.

My best friend in high school was/is gay (still my best friend, still gay lol). He was mean as a snake, so nobody was dumb enough to directly attack him, but it was a real fear that it could happen, or that it could end up a planned attack by enough people when he was alone that his willingness to fuck people up wasn’t a deterrent.

By about 93, I had been going to the closer gay bars with him, and ended up bouncing at a few when I moved to the city for a while. It could get ugly fast at those places. Here in the south, the acceptance of gay folks still isn’t where it should be, but back then, we would have assholes showing up specifically to beat gay people. I’ve got a few scars from trying to keep our patrons safe and alive. All of us at the big drag club ended up with scars.

The sheer ease with which some of those sociopaths would drive into the city specifically to try and hurt someone they didn’t even know was disgusting. The police response was utter bullshit. A couple of times, people damn near died while we tried to keep things under control because the cops didn’t care. At least the ambulance people were fast, those folks were incredible, and always got there before the cops, despite being located farther away.

It’s one of the reasons I can’t bring myself to hate Axl. I’m amazed I didn’t end up thinking that way too, if I’m being honest. My family were mostly cool with gaydom (that’s an actual thing my aunt said once), but they still looked at it with pity and condescension. “Those poor people”. I have to laugh at it a little or it would make me sad.

southsamurai, (edited )
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Man, I’m just happy to see a skyclad reference in the wild, away from a metal dedicated community :)

Edit: also, this needs a playlist so that anyone not familiar with all the albums listed can enjoy the discovery :)

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Is legit.

But, you kinda have to do one playthrough like that. You can have the playlist perfect in theory, but until you listen to it all the way through, you can’t know that you got things the way you really want them. Quick skipping through is the best way to do that with the ability to keep track of what your impressions of the playlist are, rather than just vibing to single songs and missing the overall flow.

It’s absurd absurd how much thought I’ve put into playlist creation and management lol.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Jesus, I remember the first time I got hit with that line (the old guys part, nobody has ever tried the fax on on me…yet). Just hearing it made me feel creepy considering the source, and I was only fucking 32. The girl was 17 FCOL. I literally noped out. Took off saying nope over and over again.

I’ve had giant leather bears hit on me and felt complimented. But that kid just skeeved me out. Luckily, it’s never happened with anyone that young again, but it still isn’t exactly the best line to use lol

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

I think they were more asking about what the costs are, not what generates the costs or any kind of complaint about paying for such things.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Now, I’m not talking about exactly the same thing here. And I don’t actually run any sites at this point in my life.

That being said, I considered setting up a site to host my stuff. Mostly writing, some art, just a kind of vanity project that would let me distribute files to friends and family with an easy link instead of having to send them files when requested.

So, I could have used any hosting service since it’s all legal files. I own all the copy rights, and that means the price starts out pretty low. I never looked into what the less stringent services would cost.

But, it worked out that it would cost me about 300 a year between domain name, file hosting, and ssl certificate, etc at the cheapest rates I could find.

Which is why I didn’t do it, lol. It’s way cheaper to just deal with the hassles of sending files via telegram or whatever. That only costs time.

I’ve a friend that runs a site for their business though. He’s shelling out about a grand a year, and doesn’t host any files for download. That’s with some fancy templates, and some kind of security thing that I’ve never asked about the specifics of. He was a bit surprised how much it cost.

So I suspect that if someone wanted to actually host a large amount of files like movies, games, and music would need, they’d be looking at that range as a minimum cost. The storage space is fairly expensive once you’re into terabytes, or so I was told.

But I don’t think the repack folks do it that way. They use torrents, which means things are cheaper. So the costs of that are probably closer to the bottom end of the scale where I would have been

Again, this is not the same thing, and I’m guesstimating off of research I did years ago, so don’t take it as some kind of expert talking.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

I’m not asking asking this as a put-down, but is English not your first language? Allow me to try and say it all differently.

What you’re saying is that the people perform the necessary tasks without expecting did be paid for their labor, but some ask contributions for it.

What OP was asking is what those people (the ones running a site to maken the fruit of their labor available to others) have to pay in order to make it available.

We’re well aware that the labor is possibly free.

But it still costs someone money to host a site with a domain name and the ability for other people to download anything. That’s what OP was asking about, those costs to the person providing the files that get pirated by others.

That’s it.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

And here’s the realistic explanation for why and why now:

"…Orin Kerr, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote on X on Wednesday that “from a public policy standpoint, that seems like a bummer.”

“Geofencing has solved a bunch of really major cases that were otherwise totally cold,” he wrote.

“And there are lots of ways of doing the legal process (including Google’s warrant policy, although that’s just one way) that are a lot more privacy protective than ordinary warrants. But I can see why this might be in Google’s business interest. If there isn’t a lot of economic value to Google in keeping the data, and having it means you need to get embroiled in privacy debates over what you do with it, better for Google to drop it.”

It’s a good thing! It never should have been allowed in the first place. But, Google didn’t give a fuck until it caused them enough hassle. Doing this is just a way to avoid something more expensive later, it isn’t a strong principled stand. And I’d bet small amounts that they’ll still have a way to use the data anyway. It won’t be some magic wand that means Google can’t make money off of it.

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

I dunno, I guess it’ll be worth one watch.

I don’t hate the original version. But it has so many flaws, I’ve never watched it a second time. Just not a true-to-the-spirit comic adaptation. I never care about direct copying of plots from comics, and I’m very open to modified back stories as well; after all, the tradition of alternate realities in comics is canon.

But they need to stay true to the spirit of the character/s. If they can’t do that, then there’s no point in it. If you make a Spider-Man movie/show and he’s this grim, uber-serious person, it isn’t going to work (most of the time)

And that’s where the first suicide squad failed. Pretty much, Harley was the only one that was close enough to their “spirit” for it to work. Everyone else felt like they just copied the look partially, then wrote without bothering to read anything about the character.

Comics have that freedom in a way book adaptations don’t. Books and comics made into movies trade on the idea of established fan bases being the initial “butts in seats”. With books, established fans expect not only the characters, but the plots to adhere to the printed original (otherwise, it isn’t the same thing at all, and they might as well just call it a parody and be done). But comic fans love a good alternate reality. But if the company can’t be bothered to understand the characters that make such things interesting in the first place, it’s a fail.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • localhost
  • All magazines
  • Loading…
    Loading the web debug toolbar…
    Attempt #