CategoryArts & Culture
Book Banning Today: Silently … Not Like in the Old Days
Traditional anti-book banning groups are simply not where the action is and maybe don’t want to beLast week we looked at the way censorship in the age of the internet is typically invisible. It’s not the police raiding bookstores; it’s — for example — sudden downranking of posts so that information that might have reached millions of people reaches only dozens. Constantly suppressed, it can’t go viral. We can see the change more clearly if we look at the difference between how books (and other information) used to get banned and how they get banned today. Book banning before the internet When the word “book bans” is used today, it usually means something different from what it meant even a few decades ago. Ulysses, a groundbreaking work by Irish novelist James Joyce (1882–1941) was indeed banned Read More ›
Alien Resurrection Part 4: The Good, the Bad, and the… Bizarre
In a single moment, Purvis becomes one of the most heroic characters in the entire franchise
Thinking Back to the Very Beginnings of Art
It just appears, from great antiquity, and we really don’t know why. All we know is that animals don’t do it
Artists Strike Back!: New Tool “Poisons” Images Pirated by AI
Nightshade, developed by University of Chicago computer science prof Ben Zhao, makes the AI generator keep giving you a cat when you ask for a dog
Cyber Plagiarism: When AI Systems Snatch Your Copyrighted Images
Outright copying of others’ images may put system’s owners in legal jeopardy. Let's look at U.S. legal decisions
Japanese Novelist Who Won Prestigious Literary Award Unabashedly Used ChatGPT
Meanwhile, authors in the United States are waging war against AI for copyright violation
Alien Resurrection, Part 2: Trying to Recover After a Retcon
The writers of the show never seemed to agree on how smart these aliens really are.
Tech Billionaires and Their Science Fiction Dreams
They're mistaking cautionary tales for instruction manuals.
Alien Resurrection, Part 1: This Movie Pays for the Sins of the Last One
It's better than Aliens 3, but has a host of problems nonetheless.
Robert J. Marks on the Copyright Lawsuits Against the Chatbots
Essentially, the salad of material that the chatbot produces for users contains thousands of ingredients lifted without compensation from copyright holders
Alien 3 Review, Part 4
Ripley's curtain callIn the third article, Ripley woke up in an all-male prison after surviving a shuttle crash. A parasitic alien tagged along and implanted an embryo in an inmate’s dog. The embryo breaks out of the animal and begins killing people until everyone figures out what’s going on, then they hatched one of the dumbest plans I’ve ever seen in cinema. After that, Ripley begins feeling sick. She goes to her still fully intact cryobed and scans herself. She finds that the parasitic alien has also planted an embryo inside her. The fact that Ripley had an embryo in her the entire time is ridiculous for a number of reasons. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, her cryobed wasn’t broken, so Read More ›
Deciphering the Hidden Meanings of Cave Art
In many cases, there are more dots and lines than animals, which suggests some sort of early information system
AI Will Disrupt Everything — But Forget the Robot Apocalypse!
It will be a slow, steady, measured disruption, like the one the printing press created
Alien 3 Review, Part 3
Aliens vs. Looney TunesIn the previous reviews, we talked about how Ripley is once again the sole survivor. Her ship crashed because, somehow, the alien queen she killed in the second movie managed to lay an egg in the five minutes before it died. That egg hatched, attacked Ripley and the other’s cryobeds, and some of its acidic salvia melted its way into the ship’s wiring, causing the spacecraft to crash. To make the situation even more ridiculous, the escape shuttle the cryobeds were moved into crashed as well, and everyone expect Ripley was killed. Ripley wakes up in an all-male prison. Superintendent Harold Andrews is concerned for her safety, so he does his best to keep Ripley in the medical wing. Ripley Read More ›
Alien 3 Review, Part 2
An attack on motherhood and logicLast time, we began with the opening scene, and already, the entire franchise is ruined. In this review, we’ll discuss why. I would recommend reading the previous article for clarity, but for now, I’ll simply list the sequence of events. The alien queen, somehow, managed to lay an egg inside the room where the cryobeds were kept in spite of the fact that she’d never been outside the hull of the ship. The egg hatched and the parasitic alien damaged Newt’s cryobed, then for no apparent reason, abandoned its attempt to latch onto Newt, and latched onto Ripley instead. But here’s the thing. Ripley’s bed wasn’t damaged in anyway. So, how did it break into the bed? Both the ship Read More ›
Alien 3 Review, Part 1
How to destroy a franchise in seven minutesNo sense in burying the lead. This one is awful. But it’s important to understand how and why it’s awful. Alien 3 manages to destroy the entire franchise with remarkable speed. I’ll explain how, as the reviews go on. We start off with a credit sequence, and already things feel off. Ripley and the surviving members of the previous film are still in their cryobeds, but something else is aboard the ship as well: an alien egg. This egg is seen hanging upside down, almost at eye level. Already, we have a plethora of problems, so let’s dive in, shall we? The previous movie, Aliens, established that it takes a queen to lay these eggs. Now, we don’t know exactly Read More ›
Aliens Review, Part 1
I found Alien to be tolerable, but not worth the hype. So, who’s to say if the second movie will be any better?Editor’s note: Parts one and two of this series have already been published here and here. The editor apologizes for the oversight and hopes you will enjoy this initial review and read the attending reviews as well. The first Alien film is considered a sci-fi classic, and Aliens, the sequel, is widely regarded as the best movie in the series. But personally, I found Alien to be tolerable, but not worth the hype. So, who’s to say if the second movie will be any better? It starts out with Ripley being found by a scavenger ship, where she is quickly taken back to earth and awakened from her cryosleep. Right away, we have a problem. One of “The Cooperation’s” big Read More ›
Who Has Time To Watch All That AI Can Create?
New technologies put deceased icons in direct competition with current actors and entertainers