Happy Wednesday. It’s a quiet week in the House of Reine. We put up the Christmas tree (this is late for us) and I’ve been enjoying my holiday turn toward romance- and comedy-themed movies. I watch a lot of the same movies every year, even if I hate them, which is how you end up with me developing an entire standup routine my family must endure whenever I watch Love Actually again.
I try to have an RSS feed reader that keeps me scrolling through hundreds of articles a day across many sites – that way I get a broad look at things and don’t get bogged down on Reddit. It seems it might be fun to read the feed “together” and round up some snippets of my commentary on the articles as we go.
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Meta calls for legislation to require parental approval for teens’ app downloads.
I don’t love anything that puts walls between youths and the potential support and information of the internet. Parents’ best interests are not always the kids’ best interests. Kids who are queer, abused, or otherwise reluctant to share everything with their parents deserve to be able to find community elsewhere. Sometimes the internet is the only place that can happen.
It seems like Meta doesn’t want to engage with their audience-manipulating practices; they want to put the onus on safety elsewhere, even if that’s going to make youths more vulnerable whether they get on the site or not. It’s fine for Instagram to manipulate people as long as adults give the thumbs up, right?
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Workers Unionize at Drawn & Quarterly, Vaunted Literary Graphic Novel Publisher.
It’s wonderful seeing how unions standing together are inspiring more unions to do the same. The labor movement historians called as a likely follow-up to this pandemic continues to gather momentum.
While “working with the publishing team and D&Q authors is a joy,” one publishing assistant, commenting under condition of anonymity, said in a statement, “we often work long hours and engage with the comics industry outside of our jobs because we are passionate about bringing excellent comics to readers without additional compensation. While there are lots of opportunities to take on more responsibilities and learn more skills in the publishing office, there are rarely paths to promotion for assistants. It’s hard to see or commit to a future if there are not transparent conversations about what all our learning and acquired skills might lead to.”
I hope the workers get what they’re asking for.
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Like Obamacare that way: Benefits from Biden’s infrastructure bill sinking in.
People generally like the impacts of Biden’s infrastructure bill.
Still, some polls show Biden trailing Trump.
Many Americans have always supported fascism. The ability to own, control, and destroy other humans is core to the foundation of the United States of America. Until we honestly reconcile this history and contemporary reality, we’re going to have plenty of enthusiastic grassroots support for getting fascist strongmen in charge.
That’s why the popularity of Biden’s infrastructure bill isn’t necessarily salient to the election. The fascist right has an unchanging base. Meanwhile, other Americans can see our own history and know that the center-right incrementalism of the Democratic party is worse than treading water unless we have serious reform against corruption.
I’m optimistic that the aforementioned labor movement could give rise to new leadership with a genuine eye for reform, but I don’t really have anything to back up that feeling except my dreamy wish it would happen.
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It’s been 10 years since Batkid. He’s now fifteen-years-old and healthy. That’s so nice.
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Who in the world wants this? Edith Piaf AI-Generated Biopic is in the works at Warner Music.
The film will be narrated by an AI-generated facsimile of Piaf’s voice and promises to “uncover aspects of her life that were previously unknown.”
“Animation will provide a modern take on her story, while the inclusion of archival footage, stage and TV performances, personal footage and TV interviews will provide audiences with an authentic look at the significant moments of Piaf’s life,” the music company said in announcing the project.
It’s hard to imagine how artificial narrative would be superior to human narrator. Since the estate is involved, it’s not like anyone else has the right to tell them no, but I suppose audiences will determine whether they prefer a resurrected Piaf or La Vie en Rose.
