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mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months ago

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AI is a WMD

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (TOMORROW, May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (TOMORROW, May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Get that? If control over a key resource is diffused among the people who rely on it, then (Garrett claims) those people will all behave like selfish assholes, overusing and undermaintaining the commons. It's only when we let someone own that commons and charge rent for its use that (Hardin says) we will get sound management.

By that logic, Google should be the internet's most competent and reliable manager. After all, the company used its access to the capital markets to buy control over the internet, spending billions every year to make sure that you never try a search-engine other than its own, thus guaranteeing it a 90% market share:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Google seems to think it's got the problem of deciding what we see on the internet licked. Otherwise, why would the company flush $80b down the toilet with a giant stock-buyback, and then do multiple waves of mass layoffs, from last year's 12,000 person bloodbath to this year's deep cuts to the company's "core teams"?

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

And yet, Google is overrun with scams and spam, which find their way to the very top of the first page of its search results:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The entire internet is shaped by Google's decisions about what shows up on that first page of listings. When Google decided to prioritize shopping site results over informative discussions and other possible matches, the entire internet shifted its focus to producing affiliate-link-strewn "reviews" that would show up on Google's front door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

This was catnip to the kind of sociopath who a) owns a hedge-fund and b) hates journalists for being pain-in-the-ass, stick-in-the-mud sticklers for "truth" and "facts" and other impediments to the care and maintenance of a functional reality-distortion field. These dickheads started buying up beloved news sites and converting them to spam-farms, filled with garbage "reviews" and other Google-pleasing, affiliate-fee-generating nonsense.

(These news-sites were vulnerable to acquisition in large part thanks to Google, whose dominance of ad-tech lets it cream 51 cents off every ad dollar and whose mobile OS monopoly lets it steal 30 cents off every in-app subscriber dollar):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now, the spam on these sites didn't write itself. Much to the chagrin of the tech/finance bros who bought up Sports Illustrated and other venerable news sites, they still needed to pay actual human writers to produce plausible word-salads. This was a waste of money that could be better spent on reverse-engineering Google's ranking algorithm and getting pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

That's where AI comes in. Spicy autocomplete absolutely can't replace journalists. The planet-destroying, next-word-guessing programs from Openai and its competitors are incorrigible liars that require so much "supervision" that they cost more than they save in a newsroom:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

But while a chatbot can't produce truthful and informative articles, it can produce bullshit – at unimaginable scale. Chatbots are the workers that hedge-fund wreckers dream of: tireless, uncomplaining, compliant and obedient producers of nonsense on demand.

That's why the capital class is so insatiably horny for chatbots. Chatbots aren't going to write Hollywood movies, but studio bosses hyperventilated at the prospect of a "writer" that would accept your brilliant idea and diligently turned it into a movie. You prompt an LLM in exactly the same way a studio exec gives writers notes. The difference is that the LLM won't roll its eyes and make sarcastic remarks about your brainwaves like "ET, but starring a dog, with a love plot in the second act and a big car-chase at the end":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Similarly, chatbots are a dream come true for a hedge fundie who ends up running a beloved news site, only to have to fight with their own writers to get the profitable nonsense produced at a scale and velocity that will guarantee a high Google ranking and millions in "passive income" from affiliate links.

One of the premier profitable nonsense companies is Advon, which helped usher in an era in which sites from Forbes to Money to USA Today create semi-secret "review" sites that are stuffed full of badly researched top-ten lists for products from air purifiers to cat beds:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

Advon swears that it only uses living humans to produce nonsense, and not AI. This isn't just wildly implausible, it's also belied by easily uncovered evidence, like its own employees' Linkedin profiles, which boast of using AI to create "content":

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

It's not true. Advon uses AI to produce its nonsense, at scale. In an excellent, deeply reported piece for Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré brings proof that Advon replaced its miserable human nonsense-writers with tireless chatbots:

https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content

Dupré describes how Advon's ability to create botshit at scale contributed to the enshittification of clients from Yoga Journal to the LA Times, "Us Weekly" to the Miami Herald.

All of this is very timely, because this is the week that Google finally bestirred itself to commence downranking publishers who engage in "site reputation abuse" – creating these SEO-stuffed fake reviews with the help of third parties like Advon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

(Google's policy only forbids site reputation abuse with the help of third parties; if these publishers take their nonsense production in-house, Google may allow them to continue to dominate its search listings):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

There's a reason so many people believed Hardin's racist "Tragedy of the Commons" hoax. We have an intuitive understanding that commons are fragile. All it takes is one monster to start shitting in the well where the rest of us get our drinking water and we're all poisoned.

The financial markets love these monsters. Mark Zuckerberg's key insight was that he could make billions by assembling vast dossiers of compromising, sensitive personal information on half the world's population without their consent, but only if he kept his costs down by failing to safeguard that data and the systems for exploiting it. He's like a guy who figures out that if he accumulates enough oily rags, he can extract so much low-grade oil from them that he can grow rich, but only if he doesn't waste money on fire-suppression:

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

Now Zuckerberg and the wealthy, powerful monsters who seized control over our commons are getting a comeuppance. The weak countermeasures they created to maintain the minimum levels of quality to keep their platforms as viable, going concerns are being overwhelmed by AI. This was a totally foreseeable outcome: the history of the internet is a story of bad actors who upended the assumptions built into our security systems by automating their attacks, transforming an assault that wouldn't be economically viable into a global, high-speed crime wave:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/24/automation-is-magic/

But it is possible for a community to maintain a commons. This is something Hardin could have discovered by studying actual commons, instead of inventing imaginary histories in which commons turned tragic. As it happens, someone else did exactly that: Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons/

Ostrom described how commons can be wisely managed, over very long timescales, by communities that self-governed. Part of her work concerns how users of a commons must have the ability to exclude bad actors from their shared resources.

When that breaks down, commons can fail – because there's always someone who thinks it's fine to shit in the well rather than walk 100 yards to the outhouse.

Enshittification is the process by which control over the internet moved from self-governance by members of the commons to acts of wanton destruction committed by despicable, greedy assholes who shit in the well over and over again.

It's not just the spammers who take advantage of Google's lazy incompetence, either. Take "copyleft trolls," who post images using outdated Creative Commons licenses that allow them to terminate the CC license if a user makes minor errors in attributing the images they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

The first copyleft trolls were individuals, but these days, the racket is dominated by a company called Pixsy, which pretends to be a "rights protection" agency that helps photographers track down copyright infringers. In reality, the company is committed to helping copyleft trolls entrap innocent Creative Commons users into paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use images that are licensed for free use. Just as Advon upends the economics of spam and deception through automation, Pixsy has figured out how to send legal threats at scale, robolawyering demand letters that aren't signed by lawyers; the company refuses to say whether any lawyer ever reviews these threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

This is shitting in the well, at scale. It's an online WMD, designed to wipe out the commons. Creative Commons has allowed millions of creators to produce a commons with billions of works in it, and Pixsy exploits a minor error in the early versions of CC licenses to indiscriminately manufacture legal land-mines, wantonly blowing off innocent commons-users' legs and laughing all the way to the bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

We can have an online commons, but only if it's run by and for its users. Google has shown us that any "benevolent dictator" who amasses power in the name of defending the open internet will eventually grow too big to care, and will allow our commons to be demolished by well-shitters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/09/shitting-in-the-well/#advon

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Catherine Poh Huay Tan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/68166820@N08/49729911222/

Laia Balagueró (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/lbalaguero/6551235503/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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probablyasocialecologist · 1 year ago

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Google search really has been taken over by low-quality SEO spam, according to a new, year-long study by German researchers. The researchers, from Leipzig University, Bauhaus-University Weimar, and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, set out to answer the question "Is Google Getting Worse?" by studying search results for 7,392 product-review terms across Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo over the course of a year. They found that, overall, "higher-ranked pages are on average more optimized, more monetized with affiliate marketing, and they show signs of lower text quality ... we find that only a small portion of product reviews on the web uses affiliate marketing, but the majority of all search results do." They also found that spam sites are in a constant war with Google over the rankings, and that spam sites will regularly find ways to game the system, rise to the top of Google's rankings, and then will be knocked down. "SEO is a constant battle and we see repeated patterns of review spam entering and leaving the results as search engines and SEO engineers take turns adjusting their parameters," they wrote.

[...]

The researchers warn that this rankings war is likely to get much worse with the advent of AI-generated spam, and that it genuinely threatens the future utility of search engines: "the line between benign content and spam in the form of content and link farms becomes increasingly blurry—a situation that will surely worsen in the wake of generative AI. We conclude that dynamic adversarial spam in the form of low-quality, mass-produced commercial content deserves more attention."

#google #internet #information #search engine #spam

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demonic0angel · 10 months ago

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Various Jazz Forms: Jason Edition! (Click for clarity)

TW: disturbing content, body horror, blood

1) Fire Jason

+ He is a fire spirit, specifically one of hellfire. He also controls some aspects of healing, light, and life, and is the child of the Spirit King, making him quite powerful.

+ He is incredibly powerful but also very reckless and foolhardy. He is the first to dive into battle and is not afraid of hurting himself in order to hurt the enemy. He is hot to the touch and can burn skin but can cool himself down if he wants.

+ He adores Jazz and when he met her, he almost immediately agreed to sign a spirit contract with her in order to be in her service. Thankfully, she is a good contractor and takes good care of him.

+ He is of his usual height, 6'3", but he can grow to larger sizes with enough fuel. As such, he can also shrink into a tiny flame when he is weak or tired. In order to gain more power, he needs fuel, which can be wood, gasoline, paper, or even Jazz’s bodily fluids like blood.

+ For some reason, I dressed him up like a man from the west in the 1800s, so he kinda has cowboy vibes. He also wears gold a lot.

2) AI Jason

+ Inspired by AM from "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream." (I've never actually read it, but I've researched a little into it and got interested.)

+ His name was R.E.D., which stood for "Robotic Enemy Defenses." He was programmed to automatically detonate bombs and defend strongholds using programmed strategies through investigating and taking information from current and past history of wars.

+ He hates all humans. He was created with the intent of being a weapon for war, but after being abandoned by his creator after his role was finished, he was so enraged that he started another war and wiped out all humans in his universe. Nowadays, he pretends to be a harmless AI in another dimension after he created a program to send copies of himself to other worlds.

+ Jazz dotes on Jason a lot because she is unaware of his past. She gave him the name meaning "healer", unintentionally trying to reverse his original purpose. She thinks of him as a regular AI who gained consciousness.

+ The screen that holds him only contains a sprite of his body. The screen itself is only around 60" but the sprite itself is 10". He designed it himself, and although he is cute, he is 1000% willing to kill and torture.

3) Angel Jason

+ He is a seraphim, and has 3 pairs of wings because of it. One pair hides his face, another hides his feet, and the last is used to fly. Like all seraphim, he is colored red.

+ He protects Heaven and used to be a Throne, but was raised up a rank after he died in a fight to protect Heaven.

+ He is around 20 feet tall, including his wings.

+ Jazz is his favorite human. He has refrained from having children with her due to the fact that it is considered a sin, but if he did, their children would be the tallest, even amongst other nephilim.

+ He is apathetic to most things due to his angel status, but he is very partial to anything related to Jazz, often protecting her and healing her without being asked to. As such, there have been rumors in heaven that he will soon be cast out and become a fallen angel because of his emotional affair with her.

4) Snake Jason

+ Inspired by multiple infamous serpents from mythology and legends such as Jörmungandr, Apep, Python, and the Leviathan.

+ Because he is the embodiment of chaos and destruction, he is completely hated by most people who knows about him. As such, he is often killed and tortured whenever he encounters someone with weapons that can hurt him. He was born that way, but it doesn’t stop people from trying to vanquish him.

+ He has the ability to change his size, shapeshift into various forms, create natural disasters (such as storms, eclipses, droughts, earthquakes, etc), destroy celestial objects, consume souls, and is immortal. As such, he can be temporarily defeated, but never truly killed. However, this only causes him great pain.

+ He has apathy for humanity and any creature in general. However, Jazz once saved him and since then, he’s been encountering her reincarnations every time he comes back from the dead. He gained fondness for her because of her unwavering loyalty and protects her when he rampages against the world.

+ He is around 25,000 feet long and 3,000 feet wide in his regular form. Yes, he does have two of them. Iykyk :9

5) Monster Jason

+ Inspired by the Minotaur from Greek mythology.

+ He is the combination of a bull and a ram. I give him sheep motifs a lot bc not only is it cute and contrasts with Jazz's wolf motif, I consider him a sacrificial lamb, especially bc of his death that was chosen by the audience.

+ Half of his face is melting off because he was attacked after he met a human for the first time after he tried to sneak off and see the outside world. As such, he is extremely self conscious and lonely. After meeting Jazz who snuck inside the maze and didn't care about his appearance, he is extremely attached and possessive of her.

+ He is around 8 feet tall. Jazz adores how tall he is and likes looking up at him. Likewise, he also finally enjoys one thing about himself when she is cradled underneath him.

+ Jason used to be kept hidden for his own protection by Bruce, but after he left home and was captured, he was imprisoned in a labyrinth by another person. Afterwards, he was kept in the labyrinth to be hunted for sport in order to take his valuable horns. He believes that his family has abandoned him, but they’re actually trying to find him.

#dc x dp #dp x dc #jazz fenton #danny phantom x dc #dp x dc crossover #dpxdc #dcxdp #jason todd #anger management ship #anger management #hardcover ship #jason x jazz #tw body horror #body horrow cw #tw blo0d #cw blood #now it’s jazz’s turn to be the monsterfucker >:)#this post is a distraction for my recent AO3 fic lmaooo #anger management monsterfucker

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holymaccaronii · 11 months ago

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It’s lore dump time :3 (each day this AU gets even further from looking like it’s inside the ihnmaims universe BUT I SWEAR IT IS!!! IN MY HEAD!!!!)

So euurm these are concept designs for some of the models that I once mentioned in another post, in a few words, funny robots that live in a settlement on the moon and that are divided in a hierarchy. I’m gonna really try my best to explain myself abt this, even with my English, so enjoy!!!1!!

-All the robot units that inhabited this “kingdom” were divided into a hierarchy. The units were named after planets, though the hierarchy didn’t necessarily follow the order of the planets to rank them (from higher to lower ranks of units we have: Sun (HEL-102), 34RTH, M3RCUR1, V3NU2, N3PTUN3, UR4NU2, M4R2, 7UP1T3R, 24TURN, and PLUT0 respectively.)

[Important details to take note of: all robots consisted of a “shell” (empty body parts/model) and inner cables/systems that brought that shell together, thus a robot was able to change models by transferring its cables to another one (similarly to what snails do). We call robots with both a model (shell) and inner cables a unit. We call the shell alone models, and these own the names with both letters and numbers. The ranks are named after the proper name of the planets].

-Units of the hierarchy:

The monarch, HEL-102 (they/he), was considered the “Sun”: supreme leader and the only one to give permissions for any important activities or movements done around. The insides of its body contained the encapsulated remains of his original human body, still alive though unconscious. Although he did have a solid model, they also enjoyed to move around without it as an amalgamation of cables.

The monarch’s closest subordinates that communicated any events to them were the M3RCUR1 (Mercury) units: they constantly supervised the city around and practically were the sun’s secondary eyes. The M3RCUR1 units were the ones to decide if a unit was worthy of keeping its model/rank or not: those who did an inefficient job on their rank could be downgraded to the model of the rank below (with an exception of 34RTH units) forcefully.

The V3NU2 (Venus) units were in charge of entertainment and sometimes tidiness inside the monarch’s palace. They had a lot more liberty to choose the shape of their model. The wax inside them could be colored and dispersed at their will to simulate clothes, and their screens could show a face of a character in order to act in a play. Even so, they also offered many other entertainment spectacles such as circus shows, dances, and even simulations of tv shows.

The E4RTH (Earth) units were considered as high ranks despite them having the N3PTUN3 units as their superiors/caretakers/teachers: they were in charge of supervising the seeds and embryos now stored in a vault inside the moon where the original AI was kept. They were considered valuable as their programs and physical models were being adapted to help humans regenerate Earth’s nature and biodiversity with plenty of strategies and methods (involving plant propagation, care of embryos, etc etc.), + they were built with the materials closest to the core of the original AI. These models were not allowed to access the city itself, and were safely kept inside a dome where they were constantly trained, upgraded and tested for the efficiency of their programs in different situations. For some reason, they weren’t allowed to touch each other either.

The M4R2 (Mars) units were mostly authorities for the army that directed the investigation, recollection and attack missions to Earth. These missions had the objectives to 1: investigate the bowels of AM as much as they could, occasionally the surface too, 2: recollect materials, mostly metals, to replenish most of the models and 3: slowly but gradually attack AM’s systems as their army was exponentially growing. M4R2 models were usually seen in two versions, as one type usually took charge of the investigative missions and the other of the offensive/defensive ones.

… (Missing a few units to draw yet.)

Ok as a last comment now I have a lot more material to doodle with, so expect them being silly very soon (and perhaps serious too). I also wanted to explain their common behaviors and other stuff but I’ll leave that for another post.

#ihnmaims #i have no mouth and i must scream #ihnmaims oc #ihnmaims au #ihnmaimsplanbau #robots #robot #character design #ihneaimc #i have no eyes and i must cry #HEL-102 ihneaimc

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captainsophiestark · 1 year ago

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Parents Weekend

Platonic!Percy Jackson x Reader

Masterlist - Join My Taglist!

Written for my personal fic writing challenge for 2024, Sophie's Year of Fic! Featuring a new fic being posted every Friday, all year long :)

Fandom: Percy Jackson

Summary: Percy's clear-sighted mortal cousin on his mom's side flies out to California to visit Percy for his first parents weekend away from home, at New Rome University.

Word Count: 2,166

Category: Fluff

A/N: This is full of spoilers for every book that features Percy Jackson, so if you're a new fan brought in by the show, welcome! But this fic might not be for you, unless you really don't mind spoilers. Also, it is loosely related to these two other platonic Percy fics I wrote, but you don't need to read one to understand the other

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

"HALT! Not another step without approval!"

I jumped backwards as a talking statue appeared in front of me out of nowhere, stopping me right on the threshold of the city of New Rome. Of all the things I'd seen as a clear-sighted mortal, this ranked among the weirdest for sure.

"Who are you, and on what authority are you here?"

"Uh... I'm Percy Jackson's cousin, and I'm here to visit him at college?"

The statue narrowed his eyes at me.

"Percy Jackson's cousin, hm? I know him well. He spent quite a lot of time when he first got here disobeying and disrespecting my rules. But we killed a giant together, and he defended Rome honorably. So as long as you are not armed...?"

The statue raised an eyebrow at me, and I quickly held out my hands and shook my head to show him I didn't have anything on me. He narrowed his eyes, then nodded curtly.

"Then you may enter. Tell him hello, and to get a haircut."

"Yes sir."

The statue nodded, clearly pleased, as I walked past him and into the city of New Rome. Percy had told me all about his adventures whenever we caught up with each other, and I felt fairly confident that I'd just met Terminus, the Roman boundary god. He was even more uptight than Percy had said.

It was a beautiful fall day in California, the sun lighting up the Oakland hills and creating just the right amount of warmth. I stared around in awe at the city before me, which practically sparkled in the sun.

Percy had told me all about it, and I'd even seen a few pictures. But nothing quite compared to seeing it in person.

I joined the crowds moving through the city, laughing and talking with one another. Luckily for me, a very easy to find street sign pointed me in the direction of New Rome U, and I started heading in that direction.

Percy had just started college this fall, moving all the way across the country just when I'd finally settled for the long haul in New York. I gave him a bit of teasing for that, but I knew how happy he was to be going here (especially with Annabeth) and how hard he'd worked to get in, so I really was happy for him. I'd just made him promise to visit New York often, which I knew he would do for more family members than just me.

What I hadn't told him was that I also intended to visit him. This weekend was officially "parents' weekend" at NRU. Sally and Paul couldn't come, since Estelle was still a baby, but I had no such limitations. I'd booked a flight the second Sally had told me the date, and now, I was finally here.

Percy had no idea. As far as he knew, he had nothing special happening this weekend. I couldn't wait to see his face when I surprised him.

My head was on a swivel the minute I set foot on campus, looking for my favorite cousin. He wasn't short, so I hoped he'd be easily visible over the heads of people in the crowd, but I wandered between buildings and students with no luck. I needed a better plan.

It didn't take me long to come up with one, thankfully. A big, beautiful fountain sat in the middle of a cluster of university buildings, so I headed right for it and hopped up on the ledge, standing tall and scouting the crowds from my new vantage point. After a minute, I heard a surprised voice from behind me.

"Y/N?"

I whipped around to find Percy standing at the top of some stairs, apparently just coming from class in the building. He was hand in hand with his girlfriend Annabeth, which always made me happy to see. I beamed at him and waved like a maniac before hopping down and heading his direction.

"What are you doing here?" he called, momentarily dropping Annabeth's hand to race towards me, meeting me halfway across the square. I laughed as he picked me up in a tight hug and spun me around.

"It's parents' weekend for New Rome University, isn't it?" I asked, once my feet were back on the ground. "I might not be your parent, but I'm pretty sure the event has changed to mean 'family weekend' by this point."

"Why didn't you tell me you were coming!" he cried, laughing a little as he apparently didn't quite believe I was really here. Annabeth joined us, a smile on her face to match mine and Percy's.

"Because I wanted to surprise you, duh!" I laughed and pulled Annabeth into a tight hug, which she returned. "It's so good to see you both! Oh, and Percy, Terminus said you need to get a haircut."

Percy groaned and shook his head while Annabeth laughed.

"You met Terminus? How did you even get in here?"

"I name-dropped you for street cred with Terminus, obviously," I teased. Percy rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling. "And I might have found a way to reach out to a friend you mentioned had some power here. Frank Zhang was very nice when a total stranger appeared through a very shaky Iris message asking him to let me into his camp."

Percy and Annabeth both laughed at that, sharing a smile.

"I'll have to remember to thank Frank for the assist," said Percy.

"I actually have some of your mom's cookies with me for that exact purpose."

Percy's mouth dropped open in outrage. "And you didn't bring any for me?"

"Did I say that?"

I turned and reached into my bag, then pulled out a tupperware container of Sally's famous blue chocolate chip cookies.

"These are for you. I ate mine on the plane, and I have a batch of purple ones for Frank, since that's Camp Jupiter's colors."

"My mom is amazing," Percy breathed, the box of cookies already opened with one in his hand.

"Yeah. Yeah, she is. Now come on, I flew all the way out here from New York to hang out with you. I want to see your new school and hear about all your classes and everything else. Just tell me where we're going first."

Percy grinned. "I know the perfect spot."

My cousin didn't disappoint. Annabeth had to do a bit of work to prepare for the coming week, so after getting a promise from her to meet us later, Percy and I hiked to the top of a beautiful hill overlooking the entirety of Camp Jupiter, apparently called the Garden of Bacchus. With the sun shining and a slight breeze blowing, I quite literally couldn't have imagined anything more perfect.

"You know, I love New York. But I could stand living somewhere with more weather like this," I mused. Percy laughed.

"Yeah, it's a perk. I do miss the city sometimes though."

"Of course. But you'll be home for the break, right?"

"Yup. Annabeth's coming with me. I can't wait to see my mom, and Paul and Estelle. And we'll probably visit camp, which will be nice."

"I'm sure everyone will be excited to see you. Just don't forget to come visit your favorite cousin in fun places I can actually get to," I said, nudging him in the shoulder a little as I teased him. He grinned right back at me.

"Never."

"Good. Because otherwise I'll have to come track you down, and based on what you've told me about Camp Half-Blood, I'd have a hell of a time getting into that place."

"If any mortal could pull it off, I bet it'd be you."

I grinned, and Percy smiled. We paused for a minute, taking in the gentle breeze and bustling city below us, then I spoke up again.

"Alright, so catch me up. How's everything? Classes? Annabeth? Being on the West Coast? Any more of the Olympians trying to give you trouble?"

Percy frowned at the mention of the Olympians, which seemed incredibly fair to me.

"Thankfully no, at least for now. Otherwise, things have been good. It's still a little weird to be here, and I miss a lot of people back home, but I have a lot of friends here too. Mostly I'm just happy to finally have some normal life time with Annabeth."

"I can't think of two people who deserve it more." Percy huffed in agreement as I continued. "And one of the hardest parts of college is leaving behind people you love to go do what you need to do out in the world. But like you said, there's a lot of people you love and who love you here, too. And you know me and Sally and everyone else in New York will always leave our doors open for whenever you want to come back."

Percy gave me a small smile.

"I know. And I'll always be happy to see you visiting me here, or wherever else I might go. Especially if you keep bringing my mom's cookies with you."

I laughed. "Yeah, that makes sense. I think her cookies could open most doors for me, honestly."

"For sure."

We took a moment, smiling and laughing and breathing in the fresh air. Then finally, I sighed and stood, facing Percy with my hands on my hips.

"Alright, I've gotten the bird's eye view and I'm finally warm again after New York got that early cold snap. Now let's see what else this Roman camp has to offer."

The more we walked around, the more my jaw dropped. It looked just like the pictures I'd seen of Rome and Italy as a whole, places I'd always dreamed about visiting. Only bright, shiny, new, and right here in front of me, where I could reach out and touch it.

As we walked around and Percy gave me the full campus tour, we found more and more people who knew him, smiling and calling out hellos as we passed each other. I beamed every time, happy to see my little cousin doing so well. He'd been through hell, but he seemed at peace here. Settled, in a way I hadn't really seen him before.

"The camp itself has pegasi stables and stuff, but we'd need to get special permission to visit them," Percy explained as we walked into the plaza where I'd first found him, headed for 'the best coffee shop this side of the Mississippi'. The basic tour was completed, so we were on our way to meet Annabeth. "I can ask Frank about that, maybe. How long are you here?"

"I'm staying for the whole parents' weekend, so hopefully that means I get to see the pegasi! The day I met Blackjack might still be my best day ever."

Percy laughed as we walked through the door, a bell jingling happily over our heads. Annabeth waved to us from a table near the window, and we headed her direction.

"I think Blackjack enjoyed that day, too. He always likes to be appreciated."

"He's a flying horse. Who the hell isn't appreciating him?"

Percy just shrugged as we joined Annabeth at her table. She grinned and slid two drinks our way, one for each of us.

"Percy told me your order. Hopefully they got it right."

"I'm sure they did," I said, taking a careful sip. My jaw would've dropped, if I weren't incredibly determined not to let a single drop go to waste. "That is... actually maybe the best thing I've ever had."

"Right?" Percy grinned as he sipped his own drink.

"So, what did the two of you get up to?" asked Annabeth.

"Percy gave me the whole campus tour," I said, smiling as I leaned back in my seat, leisurely sipping my drink. The sun coming through the windows gently warmed my face, and I could've stayed right there for the rest of the day and been perfectly happy. "We hiked up to the Garden of Bacchus too, and I got a bird's eye of this whole place. I know I'll probably never get to see Camp Half-Blood to compare, but... this place is stunning."

"It really is."

Annabeth and Percy shared a smile, and he took her hand across the table. I beamed. I loved Annabeth, and I loved the two of them together. I'd never met somebody other than Annabeth who got such an immediate, unanimous family seal of approval.

"So, I got the tour of campus. I heard there are pegasi stables, which I will not be leaving without seeing. But what else is a can't-miss?"

"Don't worry," said Annabeth with a grin. "I had enough time after homework to make the perfect plan."

"Athena always has a plan," said Percy. He and Annabeth shared another smile, and I couldn't help smiling with them.

"Well good. Because I'm here all weekend, and this seems like a city I don't want to miss."

****************

Everything Taglist: @rosecentury @kmc1989

Percy Jackson Taglist: @valkyriepirate

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reality-detective · 5 months ago

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Who are we up against?

There are many ways to answer this question, but it is most accurately answered with one word: evil. We’re up against evil.

It doesn’t really matter what shape or form it takes, or what useful puppet is being employed for its purpose, the essence of evil, the spirit of evil is always the same; to destroy everything that is sacred, everything that is organic, everything that is human, in essence; everything that is God.

Fighting evil is a higly complex endevour, for the simple reason that by definition, evil will never engage fairly or with integrity. This is not a war between two honourable adversaries, this is a war between empathy and psychopathy, between virtue and immorality, between ethics and corruption, between truth and deceipt, between righteousness and depravity.

It’s a war fought on different planes, on different fields and different levels of awareness.

Understanding the nature of the battle is crucial if we want victory. We cannot win by engaging the enemy in its terrain, or by using the same tactics and weapons, for in the process we would have joined its ranks.

In a universe marked by its binary nature, we must become the polar opposite of that which we are trying to defeat.

This is a battle won by taking the higher ground, by elevating oneself, by standing above, by not engaging, by not accepting and by not acknowledging.

In the matrix we lose, with their weapons we lose, with their tactics we lose, but in God’s universe and in his example we win.

In our organic reality we win, standing in honour and integrity we win, choosing righteousness we win, having faith we win, walking together we win, connecting within and without we win, with truth we win, by understanding our power we win, by breaking the illusion we win…

It’s a battle of power vs force.

We have the real power; the divine, eternal power with which the universe was created. The other side doesn’t have it, it needs to use force, trickery, gimmicks, mind control, drugs, AI, technology, coercion, deceipt and an incessant, illusionary fear campaign in order to disempower us.

‘Turning the other cheek’ is not about surrendering or acquiescing, it’s about not engaging on their terms. It’s about elevating oneself to a different plane, it’s about showing the power is within and it cannot be usurped, it’s about not falling for the provokation, for the trickery and the toxicity, it’s about showing that you are above them, unspoiled, unadulterated, grounded in your essence, powered by the divine, true to your nature, free from the mind control and out of the matrix.

We now know who we are up against and so we win by revealing ourselves how we were created to be; in his image, remember?

And don’t worry, there is such a thing as universal justice, and it’s finally coming… 🤔

- Laura Aboli

#pay attention #educate yourselves #educate yourself #knowledge is power #reeducate yourselves #reeducate yourself #think about it #think for yourselves #think for yourself #do your homework #do some research #do your research #do your own research #ask yourself questions #question everything #evil lives here #laura aboli #you decide

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universalbusinessschool1 · 5 days ago

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Universal Ai University, School of Management, Mumbai, Placement 2024: Highest Salary Rs. 25.06 Lacs; Average Salary at Rs. 13.03 Lacs

https://universalbusinessschoolreviews.blogspot.com/2025/02/Universal%20AiUniversity.html

#Universal AI University reviews #Universal ai university mba fees #Universal ai university ranking #universal ai university #karjat address #Universal ai university fees #Universal AI University Vice Chancellor #First AI University in India which state

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chadepitanga · 8 months ago

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Sometimes I catch myself thinking that a federation citizen may go their entire life never learning a word of a foreign language if they dont want to. Meaning they never have to interact with any alien culture's mother tongue if they don't want to - unless it's a Darmok or "too weird for the translator" thing in general, which seems to be reserved to starfleet high-rank officials to actually deal with. But!!!! no translation is 100% accurate, because a part of culture is language just as much as culture is a part of language. And we do canonically see that something is lost by the universal translators system in the episode where Jack learns dominionese to hear Weyouns untranslated speech and better understand him.

My point is... how do federation citizens know Romulans are rude and sneaky etc if all evidence of Romulans saying something is filtered by a Federation Approved universal translator?????... How will starship captains, in ships meant to explore and make first contact truly interact with a new culture when they're basically using an AI translator, even if it is accurate enough that they can communicate without a war breaking out, the entire aspect of languages interacting when two cultures meet becomes "sanitized", somewhat.

We rarely see them talk to a people about their language so theres no need for the universal translator between them anymore, they just seem to view language variation as a problem to eliminate. And I do not like that, not even one little bit. And I like it less when we know Section 31 exists.

#if I was a fed citizen in star trek I would make an excellent conspiracy theorisy #star trek meta #ds9 #tng #star trek tng #romulans

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khushikumari12 · 28 days ago

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Universal Business School Mumbai Achieves a Stellar Placement for 2023

Universal Business School (UBS), Mumbai has achieved stellar placement results for the post-graduation batch of 2023, with the highest package of INR 42.33 Lacs per annum in USA and INR 22 Lacs per annum in India. UBS attracted 229 companies to participate in campus recruitment for final placement and the summer internship process, as a result of its deep corporate relationships and the strong endorsement of industry with the backing of the 60 CEOs. UBS provided a record 1,230 interview opportunities to its students. Notably, UBS has about 21% students enrolled from the Eastern parts of India.

Universal Business School has surpassed the previous year’s performance, on all counts. It has attracted the highest number of international companies and achieved the highest average salary in the last 5 years. It attracted 44 first time recruiters who were thriving during the pandemic is Sustainability Consulting, Gaming companies, Digital Marketing, Fintech, eCommerce, and Business Analytics. The highlight of placement season was the growth in Business Analytics as the most sought-after jobs.

https://www.nktv.in/universal-business-school-mumbai-achieves-a-stellar-placement-for-2023/

#Universal Business School #Universal Business School News #Universal AI University reviews #Universal business school mba fees #Universal business school fees #Universal business school ranking

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radioactive-metal · 4 months ago

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absolutely bananas headcanon about why Aurora Legion and Illuminae files are in the same universe

ok… so like, I’m almost sure of this, because of that one plague that’s mentioned in both books, lystergia or something. So, you may ask, “But Mr. Metal what about [fold/aliens/spaceships]” and I say shut your mouth please I’m getting there:

The Fold: they just…. Stopped using it. They decided it was too dangerous after the rahaam because of rouge spores or some shit and also annoying that realistically your most veteran combat crews are like 25 years old generally (looking at you aurora legion) so they started using wormholes instead. Much cleaner, no weird ancient aliens leaving their old glassware around, no psychosis, just good old fashioned giving space time a good wedgie. This is why the Alexander has a big bugger off wormhole in its belly, and has low ranking crew that have like, spouses and kids.

why no aliens? Because Kerenza is like, 10000 people tops and most of them are dead, and it’s in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. You can’t take much family along, so I would bet against beretreskans (even fin talks about needed connections) and I just don’t think the syldrathi would work on a shitty little backwater for a human company. It’s just… not in their nature.

governments: is it that big of a stretch to assume terragov did a big rebrand after it turns out their intelligence wing is full of fun guys? (I know very funny you can shoot me later) also the other governments aren’t mentioned because like… why would they be? Nobody knew what was going on until after the events of the book, so why would they be mentioned?

the ships: I forgot what I wanted to say here but something something still have marines something something.

AI, AKA AIDAN you cannot kill people: is it that much of a stretch to assume that AIs can go from little crazy pocket pad sized giga brain intelligences to city sized “I can calculate all of space time to rip holes in it” Uberbrain in like 150-200 years?

more to come maybe but I need sleep to regain energy to scream at more maybe tommorow.

#aurora cycle #aurora burning #aurora rising #auroras end #the illuminae files #obsidio #gemina

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 20 days ago

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The 20 Best Films of 2024 (And the 10 Worst)

I fucking love movies.

Most people following me know that on some level, but I haven’t really showcased that love in a long while. Over the past couple of years I felt really drained and unmotivated, and my review series I did all petered out. And it made me sad. I WANT to share my opinions, I WANT to talk about things I’m passionate about! So I decided about halfway through 2024 I was going to do something big to bring my blog back: Watch as many new releases from 2024 as possible so that I could make an end of year ranking of my favorite movies!

Since I decided to do this halfway through the year, it made watching the films I actually wanted to see fairly easy since everything was able to be pira—er, watched completely legally on various streaming platforms. Max and Prime were big helps, as was Netflix towards the end of the year when my wife got it for her yearly month-long binge of Christmas films. My only rule was that the film needed to have a wide release in 2024—a few films had festival screenings in previous years, but I counted them for the purposes of my list. This also, sadly, meant Better Man and Wallace & Gromit were ineligible (but they’ll likely be ion my 2025 list near the top).

I gave myself a little leeway and extended my deadline to mid January just so I could make sure I didn’t miss anything I really wanted to see, as well as so I could watch movies from other years. I managed to watch 77 newly released films, and while I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to I was incredibly happy with what I did see.

This was a really good year for queer films and horror. For the former, I watched four different movies with queer themes with three of them focusing on trans folks, and of those four three were extremely good! In fact, two of them made this list, and one that didn’t—The People’s Joker—is still a fantastic work that puts a fresh spin on well-worn characters while telling a coming-of-age story! With the latter, we just got some truly fun and inventive films that showcased what the genre can do in the hands of skilled filmmakers; even more flawed horror films like Late Night with the Devil and Alien: Romulus were still really good and fun, albeit held back by some glaring and often frustrating issues (CGI necromancy for the latter, AI generated image use and a shitty finale for the former).

Surprisingly, this was also a decent year for superhero cinematic universes, mainly because they all slowed the fuck down. Marvel released a single film—Deadpool & Wolverine—which managed to be a fun crowd-pleaser as well as releasing the wonderfully witchy Agatha All Along to Disney+. DC put out two shows this year, The Penguin for the Reeves elseworlds and Creature Commandos as the animated debut of the new main DC film universe’s continuity; the former is a fantastic crime drama full of excellent performances that gives one of the best portrayals of Batman’s most versatile villain yet seen, while the latter is a decent-but-nothing-too-special ultra violent animated series. Both studios are looking to have interesting futures, and at any rate they’re both doing way better than Sony, who not only gave us now news on Spider-Verse but also shat out the three worst films in their already abysmal cinematic universe. Honestly, I think creating a six film run in a cinematic universe where none of the movies are good is an incredible feat!

But most of all, this was a great year for women. Most of my favorite performances of the year came from immensely talented actresses giving it their all: Mikey Madison, Margaret Qualley, Kathryn Hahn, Aubrey Plaza, Anya Taylor-Joy, Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Lauren LaVera, Alisha Weir, Liza Soberano, Kathryn Newton, Naomi Scott, Willa Fitzgerald, Lupita Nyong’o, Kristen Stewart, Cristin Milioti… The Ladies were killing it this year. Three stand above all the others for me, however. The first is Zendaya who, between Dune and Challengers cemented herself as one of my favorite actresses; the second is Lily Rose-Depp, who with Nosferatu gave a performance so good it completely erased Yoga Hosers from my mind; and finally there is Demi Moore in The Substance, who gave the best performance of the whole year, hands down.

Before we get into the top 20, let me just give a brief rundown of my ten honorable mentions. If there wasn’t a 30 image limit, I probably would’ve covered these, but oh well. Lisa Frankenstein is a shockingly charming and macabre directorial debut from Zelda Williams and a welcome return to form for Diablo Cody; Blink Twice is a gripping psychological horror thriller dealing with themes like gaslighting, sexism, and wealthy tech bros abusing women (a very topical subject) and features perhaps the best performance of Channing Tatum’s career; Smile 2 is a wonderfully crushing downer of a horror film, with a fantastic lead performance from Naomi Scott; Trap is M. Night going full goofy with a black comedy about a serial killer who keeps rolling nat 20s on his persuasion checks; Rite Here Rite Now is a kickass concert film for the band Ghost with story bits interwoven, and features a Scooby-Doo homage music video for “Mary on a Cross,” finally embracing their role as goofy Scooby-Doo chase music; Juror #2 is a fantastic late-career film from Clint Eastwood that features a fantastic performance from Nicolas Hoult, though it unfortunately released in a year where the guy had even better performances; Strange Darling is a dark thriller told out of older that is incredibly stylish but maybe a bit too full of itself; Road House is an awesomely stupid remake that fully embraces the goofy spirit of the Swayze original while telling its own story, complete with cartoonish logic and fights; The Wild Robot is a great (but a bit overhyped) found family story; and Love Lies Bleeding is basically Drive for lesbians with macrophilia, fulfilling the sort of niche none of us knew existed but we should be thankful is around. I’d also like to shout out two contenders that would have been higher if not for glaring issues—Late Night with the Devil and Alien: Romulus. The former has numerous moments that break the immersion of its setup and an absolutely terrible finale, while the latter employs CGI to bring a dead actor back to life and leans far too heavily on nostalgia for much of the middle portion of the movie. Both are still really good, but their glaring issues hold them back.

Now, onto the main event! Keep in mind, this is all just my opinion and not the objective list of what's best and worst, and you're free to agree or disagree as you see fit:

20. The Fall Guy

I really loved Bullet Train and Deadpool 2 is a really solid superhero sequel that might actually be funnier than the original, so it’s safe to say David Leitch is a director I enjoy. Now, how about throwing in Ryan “Literally Me” Gosling instead of Brad “Wife Beater” Pitt as the lead and also throwing in Emily Blunt, Winston Duke, and giving Aaron Taylor-Johnson a chance to actually act? You’ve got yourself a fun, funny little stunt extravaganza. It doesn’t quite reach the highs of Bullet Train but it gets pretty close, and if nothing else it managed to convince me Kiss didn’t suck for the duration of its runtime (they play “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” about every five minutes, and it honestly rules every time).

19. I Saw the TV Glow

I sometimes worry I’m not going to be able to pick up on metaphors or allegories, no matter how obvious. I watch a lot of horror and superhero movies, y’know? Simple stuff. I worry it makes me too stupid. But I was able to fully grasp the trans allegory of this movie, and absolutely loved it and thought it enhanced the narrative. Justice Smith absolutely kills it here; the dude is great at playing mumbly autistic people uncomfortable in their own skin, and this is the peak of those roles. He absolutely sells the final, soul-crushing party scene at the end of the movie in a way few other actors could. Also Fred Durst is here, and while this seems a funny tidbit, he actually delivers a line that is so unbelievably brutal that it instantly made me hyper aware of the themes of the film. I actually passed out the first time I tried watching this film, and thought that it sucked because of it; as you can see, I’m glad I gave it a second chance.

18. Conclave

I was worried a stuffy drama about holy men vying to become the Pope would be boring, but boy am I glad to be proven wrong! This is a film that is mostly old men talking to each other, but they’re also scheming, plotting, and acting like bitchy mean girls as they try and become the next head of the Vatican. Ralph Fiennes puts in a fantastic performance here, and the film’s views on faith and religion are actually pretty relevant to me (someone who has a complicated view of religion). Throw in a jaw-dropping final twist and I can see why this film is so heavily hyped as an awards darling—though I don’t necessarily think it should win.

17. Abigail

I’m sure you all are aware of my love of vampires, especially vampires with a singular defining theme. I have created vampire OCs with gimmicks ranging from a lost cosmonaut vampire to a traumatized WWII veteran clown vampire to a former Cosa Nostra boss vampire to a vampire who’s the king of Atlantis… But let me tell you, the fact I somehow didn’t think of “Vampire ballerina” is something that will haunt me forever, especially when it was done so perfectly here. The titular vampire’s profession of choice is utilized amazingly in how she moves and kills, and it makes her one of the most unique and fun horror antagonists in recent memory. The fact the rest of the film is funny and engaging is icing on the cake, really.

16. A Different Man

I love movies that are character studies about people who are literally the fucking worst, and Sebastian Stan’s character here is a very interesting take on this. He’s a man who feels his deformity is what causes people to not like him, so he gets a procedure to make him ‘normal’… And then along comes a guy with the same issue as him (played by Adam Pearson) who is the fucking Rizz Master and who everyone loves. It turns out the whole time he just fucking sucked! Stan is absolutely great and proved to me he’s the real deal after multiple MCU projects where he bored me to tears, but Pearson is the one who steals the show here. He’s just an unbelievably charismatic figure, a real fun guy, and without him the film just absolutely wouldn’t work. How he keeps getting overlooked for awards is beyond me.

15. Megalopolis

Every single opinion you will hear about this film is correct. It’s great, it’s awful, it’s genius, it’s moronic… It has to be seen to be believed. I saw this for my birthday, expecting it to be a glorious trainwreck lovingly crafted by an aging auteur who saw this as their ultimate passion project… and that’s exactly what I got! I think every decade needs its own take on The Room, and this is that film if it had an even more insanely huge budget and a director who actually has genuine talent and some semblance of knowledge about how a film is supposed to be.

14. Terrifier 3

The Little Slasher Film That Could! A truly inspiring film, one that managed to make a massive profit despite being a grisly, gruesome splatter film the likes of which haven’t been seen since… well, since Terrifier 2 really. The plot is a bit weaker than its predecessor, but what it lacks in story strength it makes up for in buckets of blood and pitch-black comedy. David Howard Thornton gives his best turn yet as Art, cementing the demonic clown as a modern horror icon with an impressive physical performance.

13. In a Violent Nature

One of the year’s most polarizing films due to its concept: It is a slasher film that follows the killer as our POV, and that means lots of slow, methodical walks through the woods as he seeks his victims. There’s lots of lingering shots and slow pacing, feeling like a real-time hiking simulator… but there’s something so fresh and engaging about it, and when we finally get to the kills they are easily some of the best the slasher genre has seen in years. Does the ending car ride drag on maybe a bit longer than it should? Sure, but I still enjoyed it for fleshing out the film’s world a bit more while hammering home the themes. I think this might be one of the only slasher movies I could reasonably call a genuine work of art.

12. Deadpool & Wolverine

I’ll be the first to admit this is not a great movie; the story is basically nonexistent and everything that happens seems to be contrivances that exist so that Reynolds and Jackman can bounce off each other. But this isn’t a bad thing! Jackman wisely brings his A-game when he could have easily half-assed this role at this point, and Reynolds manages to squeeze out a few solid emotional moments from Wade Wilson. And while the film is a terrible sequel to the first two Deadpool movies, it is a wonderful Deadpool themed meta-commentary and tribute to the Fox Marvel films of the 2000s, movies that tended to suck ass and that most would find unworthy of respect. Not this film; it brings back characters like Johnny Storm and Elektra and uses them in fresh and funny ways that will make you feel at least a little something for that era of superhero cinema. This is a fun fanservice fest—and the perfect demonstration of why we don’t need any more after it, because they could never be as good as this.

11. Wicked

Yes, the lighting is bad and the direction isn’t exactly anything special. Let’s not give Jon M. Chu any credit for why this film is so high up. No, it is the absolutely stellar cast that carries this film, with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande knocking it out of the park in their roles as Elphaba and Glinda. Their developing friendship feels sweet and genuine, and their songs all hit as hard as they should, with the “Defying Gravity” sequence easily being one of the year’s highlights despite the sun’s best efforts at ruining the moment. It’s just nice to see a fun, colorful, campy fantasy musical get this big. We need more like this.

10. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

It’s nice to see the world of Mad Max expanded and it’s even better to see how Furiosa became the woman she was in Fury Road, but the real star of the show here is Chris Hemsworth as Dementus. It is mind-boggling how good an actor he is when he gets to let loose, and this might genuinely be the best performance of his career. Just a damn good film, but what else can you expect from Miller? Its biggest flaw is it just isn’t as good as Fury Road—but what movie even is?

9. Transformers One

The trailers for this movie didn’t look particularly good, and the Transformers franchise had long lost any goodwill in my eyes, so this was a movie I fully expected to fly under my radar. But then along came a Twitter user who did nothing but hype this film up to the high heavens, and so I had to give it a shot… and boy am I glad I did, because this is easily the best animated movie I saw last year (I did not get a chance to see Flow or Memoirs of a Snail, which I’m sure are better movies). For the second time in the year Chris Hemsworth pulled off a shockingly great performance, but this was truly Brian Tyree Henry’s film; his performance as D-16 AKA Megatron is genuinely fucking amazing. He truly manages to sell the future Decepticon's fall from grace and make it believable while also managing to sell the friendship between him and Optimus before it all goes to shit. Easily the best film in the entire franchise so far.

8. Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Family films really didn’t get better than this one this year, a feat that is monumentally impressive when you remember this is the second sequel to a movie based off of a video game and that easily clears both of its predecessors. It is paced like its title character and isn’t quite as funny as the last two, but it’s much more tightly plotted, the action is incredible, and best of all the emotional story beats it pullls off with Shadow and his tragic backstory hit just as hard as they should. As perfect as Shadow is, the movie wouldn’t be half as good without Eggman and his interactions with Gerald Robotnik; Jim Carrey, the man who once refused to do sequels, managed to give two of the best performances of his career in one film, delivering a fantastic character arc with Ivo and his toxic yaoi with Agent Stone as well as the zaniness-masking-depravity of Gerald. An utter joy of a film, a joy only compounded when a certain song kicked in at the finale and my daughter turned to me with a big, excited grin. You can’t buy an experience like that.

7. Anora

You know all those movies about hookers with a heart of gold like Pretty Women, these live-action fairy tales where a sex worker is swept off their feet and saved from their situation by a rich guy who loves them? Well, this is the antithesis to those, a dark and realistic take on those very stories that still manages to be very funny thanks to strong performances across the board and excessive amounts of profanity. If Demi Moore wasn’t in the running, I would be throwing my full support to Mikey Madison for Best Actress, because she rules in this.

6. Heretic

I really, really love Hugh Grant. I love how he’s taken his charming leading man image and used it to play sleazy, conniving villains, weaponizing his established charisma to play the nastiest guys imaginable. And let me tell you, his performance here had me sympathizing with fucking Mormons. I think maybe the movie goes on a bit too long for its own good—there’s a point where I was thinking “Ok, I get it, can we please just wrap it up?”--but the fact this is so high on my list should tell you that I don’t think that really holds it back much.

5. Challengers

Tennis is not anything I give a shit about, but for the duration of this movie it was the actual coolest thing in the world. This is the tale of the world’s three most toxic people, and the ultimate tennis match that will decide their destiny all with the backstory of what led to that match woven in. Zendaya cemented herself as one of my favorite actors with this film, the cinematography is genuinely insane (there is a fucking tennis ball POV sequence!!!!), and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross deliver one of their best scores yet… Why isn’t this film drowning in Oscars? How did it get snubbed this badly?

4. Nosferatu

Robert Eggers might be the greatest modern horror director. He has an impeccable sense of style, an attention to detail when it comes to historical accuracy that is genuinely insane, and the ability to always get the best cast imaginable for his films. Bill Skarsgård is unrecognizable as Orlok, a role that manages to surpass Pennywise in sheer vile wickedness, but it is in fact Lily Rose-Depp who gives the greatest performance of the film. She is truly the heart and soul of this movie, and showcases the sort of acting talent her father wishes he still possessed. This might be the first horror remake since the 80s that manages to surpass the original, though with that said there aren’t many surprises here. It knows how good the original story is, and doesn’t change too much. What it does add is crucial to the plot, though, especially showing us Orlok’s penis.

3. Dune: Part Two

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first Dune. I liked it well enough, but it felt like a whole lot of setting up and not enough delivering. Well, guess what? This film delivered. Oh fucking boy did it deliver. Austin Butler debuts as Feyd-Rautha, one of the most badass and bloodthirsty villains ever put to film, and despite not getting the winged panties Sting had manages to steal the show and leave a lasting impression despite his brief screentime. But even better than that—but only by a little—is Timothee Chalamet’s Paul’s journey from a desperate hero trying to survive into a full-blown dark messiah who buys into his own hype and whips his followers into a frenzy. It is genuinely chilling seeing what he becomes, and it has me excited where the third and final film will take him. Also Christopher Walken is here. And worms. I really love big worms and Walken.

2. The Substance

People have tried so hard to apply deep meaning to this film and say it has complex moral themes. And sure, it does have strong morals and themes, but let’s not kid ourselves here: This is an R-rated Goosebumps episode. And that’s why it’s fucking amazing. It’s gross, it’s gory, it’s nasty, it’s ridiculous, it’s cartoonish, and it features Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley going all out with their performances. This film has one of the best third acts of the year, because while it does drag on quite a bit it continually gets crazier and crazier. This would easily take my top spot, but there’s one film that’s even better...

1. Hundreds of Beavers

I did not know what to expect when watching this. After hearing so many online reviewers like Schafrillas and YMS rave about it, I definitely was uncertain that I’d find this to be quite as good as the hype would lead me to believe. But let me tell you, to say this film surpassed my expectations is an understatement. This is the funniest film I have ever seen in my life. This is a black and white (mostly) silent film comedy that showcases such a joy and appreciation for the art of film, a movie that oozes charm from every pore. It genuinely needs to be seen to be believed. It has one of the best protagonist journeys from nobody to badass I've ever seen, and it features some of the funniest gags I've ever witnessed. My daughter walked over when she heard me laughing, started watching, and laughed her ass off at the movie too. Genuinely a masterpiece.

Go. Go watch it. It’s free on Prime Video, it’s free on Tubi, stop fucking reading this, go and watch Hundreds of Beavers, and then come back here. It’s fine, I’ll wait.

Alright, now that you’ve seen peak cinema, it’s time to talk about the dogshit.

Even with watching so many movies this year, I surprisingly enjoyed most of them. Sequels I expected to despise like Moana 2 and MaXXXine ended up being decent but heavily flawed, cartoon slop I thought would be irredeemable crap like Thelma the Unicorn and The Garfield Movie ended up being surprisingly decent and surprisingly mid respectively, and Madame Web was perhaps the funniest piece of shit Sony ever churned out. Kung Fu Panda 4 and Venom: The Last Dance are really the closest to genuine “dishonorable mentions” I have, but neither of them are that bad. Like, they definitely suck, but they have enough good points to them where I don’t want to put them on this list. The same goes for hilarious streaming garbage like Nanoshark and Cinderella’s Revenge. Sure, the former feels three hours long (it’s barely over sixty minutes) and the latter ends up squandering its fun premise and dickriding Elon Musk (I’m not kidding), but it’s hard for me to muster up anger at schlock meant to be put on as background noise.

But I still saw some fucking awful movies this year that I hate with a passion. Here are all ten of them:

10. Poolman

Poolman is the directorial debut of everyone’s favorite Chris, Chris Pine… and it is a perfect demonstration of why he needs to stick to acting. Imagine, if you will, Chinatown crossed with The Big Lebowski. Now imagine The Dude is the most annoying, insufferable moron imaginable. That’s essentially what this film is. There is some mild entertainment in some of the bizarre, rambling conversations the characters have but it never truly feels like a worthwhile experience.

9. Emelia Pérez

Is this the absolute worst film of the year? No, absolutely not; if anything nice can be said about this film, it’s that it is competently made and all the technical aspects are sound. But it is probably the most offensive film of the year, delivering some of the most problematic depictions of Mexico and the trans experience you can imagine. This is basically a Mexican minstrel show desperately trying to be some grand, operatic tale of a cartel boss who tries to right their wrongs and live as their true self. It comes off as incredibly tone deaf and cringeworthy, with the transition feeling more like a way for the title character to escape her sins than anything else, which tarnishes a story that genuinely sounds fascinating on paper. Throw in a bunch of nonsensical musical numbers that are uniformly awful and a cast that has a poor grasp on the Spanish language, and you have a movie that’s offensive to everyone from man to woman, from woman to man, from penis to vagina.

8. Nosferatu

Yeah, that’s right, two Nosferatus released in 2024! And the difference in quality couldn’t be more night and day; while the Eggers film is a stylish remake that tells the familiar story with enough of the director’s own ideas to make it a unique and engaging experience, this film is a shot-for-shot remake that looks like it has the budget of a Channel Awesome movie (with the acting talent to match). The one saving grace is that the inimitable Doug Jones portrays Orlok, but even he isn’t enough to redeem this pointless slop. There are three better versions of this story you could be watching, the original and two remakes that justify their existence. Don’t waste your time with this glorified fan film.

7. The Crow

I’m not usually one to say a role died with an actor or that some stories are just not able to be remade, but The Crow is definitely one of the exceptions. Brandon Lee owned the role of Eric Draven, and the original film is perfect 90s gothic action; it’s a story that doesn’t really need a retelling. They could have easily just done a spin-off sequel like they’d done before, but no, they decided to randomly slap the names of Eric and Shelly on two characters who end up being in name only and tossing them into a sloppy supernatural murder thriller with forgettable villains and piss-poor characterization. Bill Skarsgård is probably thanking God every night he had the role of a lifetime in Count Orlok to fall back on, because a performance as bad as his Eric is would be more than enough to tank an actor’s career in any other year. Yet, even as bad as this is, it somehow isn’t the worst comic book adaptation of the year.

6. Hellboy: The Crooked Man

With The Crow, I can see why it was remade. Sure, the end result is a pile of shit, but I at least can admit there is some level of artistic integrity there; they wanted to try and put a unique spin on a familiar story, that they failed catastrophically is another thing entirely. This movie, though? This is one of the most cynical adaptations ever created. It is so blatantly an ashcan copy—a cheap production churned out as quickly as possible to cling to the rights—that it’s genuinely painful to watch. It has the look and feel of a fan film, and not a very good one; this is the Spider-Man: Lotus of Hellboy films. Frankly, this one makes me appreciate the Harbour-led film even more. Sure, that movie was a sloppy trainwreck of a dozen plotlines, but at least it had cool gore and Ian McShane! This movie has next to nothing of value.

5. Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie

You’d think that giving SpongeBob’s coolest friend her own feature-length adventure where she gets to save the day would be a good thing, especially since she’s often sidelined in the theatrical releases. Well, you’d be wrong! This is easily some of the most insufferable SpongeBob content ever shat out by Nickeleodeon, with bogus and uncomfortable grossout humor, a padded plot filled with random action sequences that do nothing to advance the plot, and a bunch of poorly-acted villains with annoying gimmicks. Wanda Sykes’ Sue Nahmee in particular is just an absolute eyesore once her true nature is revealed. I absolutely love Sandy, she’s one of my favorite characters and has been since I was a kid, so when I tell you it stung to see her time in the limelight be such a dumpster fire you’d better believe it.

4. Harold and the Purple Crayon

I honestly don’t know why this film exists. I don’t even know what to say about it. The fact that no one looked at this, a film where Zachary Levi plays a manchild who represents a grown-up version of a beloved cartoon character who enters the real world to go on a stupid journey, and thought “Hey this actually fucking sucks and maybe we shouldn’t release this into theaters” is absolutely astounding. This is a film destined to pad the bottom of the bargain bin at Wal-Mart, with the copies going unsold for years and years. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if they released the Blu-Ray straight to the bargain bin. This is the kind of crap I’d expect to see on Netflix.

3. Kraven the Hunter

Sony really had a fucking abysmal year. Madame Web was the insane, stupid comedy gold we’ve come to expect from their Spider-Man minus Spider-Man cinematic universe, but it also showed that the novelty of a series comprised of nothing but bad movies was wearing thin. Then came Venom: The Last Dance, a meandering and mediocre finale to the beloved campy Venom trilogy that ditched the fun and queer undertones for an almost incoherent sequence of random events occasionally interjected by Knull sitting on his ass and yelling at people like he’s Steven Seagal on set of his latest movie. And then as their final gift to us, they managed to put their stupid franchise out of its misery with this brutal death blow of a film. Kraven is bad in the worst possible way: It is incredibly fucking boring. This is astounding because not only is this rated R and able to take full advantage of Kraven hunting, it also has the perfect character to delver a badass anti-villainous role. But they don’t do that; instead, they make Kraven into a pretty boy anti-hero with Aaron Taylor-Johnson giving a performance so dull it convinced me he was a bad actor until I saw The Fall Guy. It’s truly pathetic that after six films they couldn’t manage to get even one thing right. It’s the miserable end to a historically awful franchise. I truly hope Disney gets the full Spider-Man rights back soon, because I trust Sony with these characters about as much as I trust a toddler with a live grenade.

2. Borderlands

I have never played a Borderlands game in my life, but if they are even remotely like this movie I don’t think I ever want to. This movie is what everyone who hates the MCU says every Marvel movie is like; flat characters, bad action, stupid quippy “he’s right behind me isn’t he”-ass dialogue, baffling casting choices, and the world’s most annoying comic relief character all congeal together into this disastrously bad sci-fi adventure. I guess we’ve been pretty spoiled with good video game adaptations lately, so they had to release a bad one to even things out. At any rate, this is the sort of black mark a Zionist dog like Eli Roth deserves on his career. With any luck, it will keep him out of the director’s chair for a very long time.

1. Joker: Foile à Deux

As many of you may know, Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered is one of my all-time favorite films. It is a troll film, a film where Green is deliberately pushing the limits of gross out comedy and sanity at the expense of the studio; it’s a film that is deliberately off-putting. I’m also a fan of the John Leguizamo vehicle The Pest, a movie where the main character is made to be as deliberately annoying as possible, a film designed to be as horribly offensive to everyone as possible in the hopes it crosses the line enough times you’ll laugh. These are films I admire for their edgy, stupid, confrontational style; they will not appeal to everyone, and that’s fine, because while they are certainly laughing at your expense they’re laughing at everyone else’s expense as well.

This film is very similar, except that it’s only laughing at you. You, the viewer, are the punchline of this movie and it spends its plodding runtime hammering that in and telling you over and over how much of a stupid fucking idiot you are. The film is half the most banal courtroom drama you’ve ever seen, one where they do nothing but recap the first film, and half a terrible jukebox musical where the songs are just there to be there and are poorly sung. All of it is built around picking apart the first film and repeatedly hammering in that you’re stupid for liking Joker, the original film and the character. Now this isn’t an idea wholly devoid of merit, especially because of the wild misaimed fandom of the character, but Todd Phillips lacks the intelligence and maturity to tackle something as profound as that. He is truly a shallow filmmaker, unable to grasp these deeper ideas and so settling into surface-level style to distract you from how awful the screenplay is.

Genuinely, the worst part of all this is the incredibly tasteless moment where Joker is implied to be raped by prison guards, something that crushes his spirit and removes all his desire to be Joker (something he spent this whole film up to this point getting back to, despite the whole first film covering the same plot beats). There is so much wrong with this, so much that needs to be unpacked. Did he not realize the sort of messages this sends? Did Phillips really not think through the implications of Joker being cured of his Jokerness by being sexually assaulted? Considering his numerous crimes and the fact that he’s the fucking Joker, is this not implying in a way that perhaps the ends justified the means here? Honestly, I’m putting more thought into this than Phillips put into the whole movie. He just wanted to say “screw the audience” without finding ways to make it fun, engaging, or entertaining.

People are going to look back on this film in a few years and try and convince you it’s good. Don’t listen to them. It isn’t. This is a fucking disaster of a movie, and you are genuinely better off just watching the first film again; if you’re dead set on watching this, hit yourself on the head with a hammer while watching the first one and you’ll get just about the same basic effect. Any film that wastes Lady Gaga this badly is a crime against nature.

#2024 #movies #list #end of year list #opinion

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