#wondercon 2013

[renposter]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Meatspace twiddling

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

"Enshittification" isn't just a way of describing the symptoms of platform decay: it's also a theory of the mechanism of decay – the means by which platforms get shittier and shittier until they are a giant pile of shit.

I call that mechanism "twiddling": this is the ability of digital services to alter their business-logic – the prices they charge, the payouts they offer, the particulars of the deal – from instant to instant, for each user, continuously:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Contrary to Big Tech's own boasting about its operations, the tricks that tech firms play to siphon value away from business customers and end-users aren't very sophisticated. They're crude gimmicks, like offering a higher per-hour wage to Uber drivers whom the algorithm judges to be picky about which rides they'll clock in for, and then lowering the wage by small increments as a way of lulling the driver into gradually accepting a permanent lower rate:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

This is a simple trick. The difference is that tech platforms like Uber can play it over and over, and very quickly. There's plenty of wage-stealing scumbag bosses who'd have loved to have shaved pennies off their workers' paychecks, then added a few cents back in if a worker cried foul, then started shaving the pennies again. The thing that stopped those bosses was the bottleneck of payroll clerks, who couldn't make the changes fast enough.

Uber plays crude tricks – like claiming that a driver isn't an employee because the control is mediated through an app – and then piles more crude tricks on top – this algorithmic wage discrimination gambit.

Have you ever watched a shell-game performed very slowly?

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-do-penn-tellers-famous-cups-and-balls-trick-in-12-steps

It's a series of very simple gimmicks, performed very quickly and smoothly. Computers are very quick and very smooth. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye: do crude tricks with superhuman speed and they'll seem sophisticated.

The one bright spot in the Great Enshittening that we're living through is that many firms are not sufficiently digitized to to these crude tricks very quickly. Take grocery stores: they can get up to a lot of the same tricks as Amazon – for example, they can charge suppliers for placement on the most prominent, easiest-to-reach shelves, reorganizing your shopping based on which companies pay the biggest bribes, rather than offering the best products and prices.

But Amazon takes this to a whole different level – beyond simply organizing their product pages based on payola, they do this for search. You ask Amazon, "What's your cheapest batteries?" and it lies to you. If you click the first link in a search-results page, you'll pay 29% more than you would if you got the best product – a product that is, on average, 17 places down on the results page. Amazon makes $38b/year taking bribes to lie to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

Amazon can do more than that. Thanks to its digital nature, it can continuously reprice its offerings – indeed, it can simply make up each price displayed on every product at the instant you look at it – based on its surveillance data about you, estimating your willingness to pay. For sellers, Amazon can continuously re-weight the likelihood that a given product will be shown to a customer based on the seller's willingness to discount their products, even to the point where they go out of business:

https://www.businessinsider.com/sadistic-amazon-treated-book-sellers-the-way-a-cheetah-would-pursue-a-sickly-gazelle-2013-10

Twiddling, in other words, lets digital services honeycomb their servers with sneaky wormholes that let them siphon value away from one kind of platform user and give it to another (as when Apple silently began spying on Iphone owners to create profiles for advertisers), or to themselves.

But hard-goods businesses struggle to do this kind of twiddling. Not for lack of desire – but for lack of capacity. Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon Fresh – an online grocery store – can change prices and layout millions of times per day, at effectively zero cost. Jeff Bezos, owner of Whole Foods – a brick-and-mortar grocer – needs a army of teenagers on rollerskates with pricing guns to achieve a fraction of this agility.

So hard-goods businesses are somewhat enshittification-resistant. It's not that their owners are more interested in the welfare of their customers, workers and suppliers – they merely lack the capacity to continuously rejigger the way their business runs.

Well, about that.

Grocers have been experimenting with "electronic shelf labels" in order to do "dynamic pricing" – that means that prices change quickly, in response to circumstances:

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1197958433/dynamic-pricing-grocery-supermarkets

This doesn't have to be bad! As @planetmoney points out, it's a little weird that grocers don't discount milk whose sell-by date is drawing near. That milk is worth less to shoppers, because they have to use it more quickly lest it expire. Instead of marking down the price of perishable goods – day-old lettuce, yesterday's bread, etc – grocers put them on the shelves next to fresher, more valuable products, leading to billions of dollars' worth of food-waste and and unimaginable quantities of methane-producing, planet-cooking landfill.

In Norway, ESLs are pretty well established and – at least according to Planet Money's reporting – they are used exclusively to offer discounts in order to reduce waste. They make everyone better off.

But towards the end of the story, they note that Norway's grocery sector – which alters prices up to 2,000 times per day – has been accused of using ESLs to rig prices, hiking them and blaming them on pandemic supply-chain problems and loose monetary policy. Greedflation, in other words.

Greedflation is rampant in the grocery sector, all around the world. Remember when the price of eggs doubled and they blamed in on bird-flu, even as the CEO of the one company that owns every egg brand you've ever heard of boasted about how he could hike prices and suckers would just pay it?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/23/cant-make-an-omelet/#keep-calm-and-crack-on

In Canada, grocers rigged the price of bread, the most Les-Mis-ass form of corporate crime you can imagine (do you want guillotines, Galen Weston? Because this is how you get guillotines):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_price-fixing_in_Canada

EU grocers – another highly concentrated industry – also collude to rig prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

Which is all to say that while these companies don't have to use the twiddling capabilities that come with ESLs to enshittify their stores, we'd be pretty fucking naive to assume that they won't.

And here's the bad news: US grocers like Whole Foods (owned by Amazon, the company that wrote the enshittification playbook) are already experimenting with ESLs. So is Alberstons/Safeway, the massive, inbred conglomerate that has already demonstrated its passion for using twiddling to fuck over their workers:

https://knock-la.com/vons-fires-delivery-drivers-prop-22-e899ee24ffd0/

Economists love "price discrimination" – where prices change based on circumstance, trying to match the perfect price with the perfect customer. On paper, that sounds plausible: if I need a quart of milk for a recipe I'm making tonight and I get a 50% discount on some about-to-expire 2%, then everyone's better off. I get a discount and the grocer gets some money for milk they'd have to throw away at the end of the day.

But these elegant, self-licking ice-cream cones only emerge if the corporation offering the deal is constrained. Perhaps they're constrained by competition – the fear that you'll go elsewhere. Or perhaps they're constrained by regulation – the fear that they'll be punished if they use twiddling-tech to cheat you.

The grocery sector, dominated by a cartel of massive companies that routinely collude to rip us off, is not constrained by competition. And for years, regulators let them get away with ripping us off (though finally that might be changing):

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/21/us/politics/grocery-prices-pandemic-ftc.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ek0.t2Pr.g4n2usbxEcoa

For neoclassical economists, the answer to all this is "caveat emptor" – let the buyer beware. If you want to make sure that ESLs are only used to offer you discounts and not to gouge prices, all you need to do is note the price of everything you buy, every time you buy it, and triple-check it every time you go back to the grocery store. Just be eternally vigilant!

Thing is, the one thing computers are much better at than humans is vigilance. With ESLs and other twiddling mechanisms, you're a fish on a hook, and the seller is tireless in giving you a little more slack, then a little less, until you finally drop your guard.

Economists desperately want these elegant models to work, but "efficient market hypothesis" is a brain-worm that always turns into apologetics for fraud. Dynamic markets sound like a good idea, but they are catnip for cheaters. "Just be eternally vigilant" is miserable advice, and no way to live your life:

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

In his brilliant novel Spook Country, @GreatDismal describes augmented reality as "cyberspace everting" – that is, turning inside-out:

https://memex.craphound.com/2007/07/31/william-gibsons-spook-country/

The extrusion of twiddling technology from digital platforms into the physical world isn't cyberspace everting so much as it is cyberspace prolapsing.

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/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

[jennaflare]

Its the anniversary of hannibal airing which reminded me that I had a hannibal lanyard I got from wondercon! So here's a little 2023/2013 selfie comparison

[mysticdragon3art]

WonderCon 2013 figure photos at the Anaheim Convention Center's Grand Plaza's east side water feature.  

[filmmakingismylife16]

Dylan O’Brien; WonderCon Anaheim (2013)

[obrienschicken]

[dswcp]

I love this unused storyboard from The Phantom Menace, so I painted it! I was excited to paint the looming, skull-like Maul with a dainty brush and the sand clouds with a palette knife. I tried to balance Iain McCaig’s creepy composition with the sunny color palette of the movie. He looks a bit like he’s emerging from an explosion of perfectly toasted marshmallows.

In the storyboard, McCaig sketched Maul in his original design -- a spiked collar and no horns (he actually had feathers on his head!). I decided to keep the original costume but alter the face to look more like his final design.

Media: Blick Canvas Pad, Golden Fiber Paste, acrylic paints, painter’s tape

Storyboard drawn by Iain McCaig during the 90s as preproduction for The Phantom Menace. From “Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy,” edited by J. W. Rinzler and published in 2013.

🎨🎁DSWCP ART TRADE!🎁🎨

This is an open invitation to all other Star Wars fans and artists! If you redraw any Star Wars comic panel or official art (browse DSWCP’s archive here for a ton of options) and submit it or tag me, then I will share your art here. In return, I’ll draw any Star Wars character you request!

You can also feel free to make fanart based on a panel/official art, or change it around in a creative way (costume swap, different dialogue, coloring it in, etc.). All skill levels and media are welcome.

If anyone actually does this, I’ll be over the freaking moon and probably print your art out and tape it to my fridge. Go ahead, make my day!

There is actually an old action figure which combined Maul’s original and final designs long before I did. I bought mine at WonderCon a few years ago:

This 2001 action figure is called “Darth Maul: Sith Apprentice” and it’s from the “Power of the Jedi” line. It comes with a little book which gives a narrative explanation for the costume change:

“Early in Darth Maul's training as a Sith, he wears special padding as he learns the rigors of hand-to-hand combat and furthers his mastery of the dark side of the Force.”

I think the mustard yellow is very fetching on him.

[archivingspn]

Destiel?

Scripts

• 2014 - 9x22 Production Draft (cut Cas’ fake heaven scene) • 2016 - 11x17 - Production Draft (Dean isn’t thinking about Cas) • 2018 -  8x02 - yellow, 9x05, 9x23 - pink, 13x08, 13x21 (eyefucking) • 2018 - 14x01 - Studio Network Draft (Sam is described as surrogate dad not an uncle) • 2020-15x18 Production Draft and One Blue Page (not reciprocated)

Episodes

• 2011-06x20 - (family) (brother) • 2013-08x17 - (family) • 2016-11x17 - (It’s a Sam parallel) • 2016-11x18 - (family) • 2016-11x23 - (friend, brother) • 2017-12x09 - (friend) • 2017-12x11 - (friend) • 2017-12x12 - (family, I love you, I love all of you, family, family) • 2019-14x12 - (friend) • 2020-15x09 - (friend) • 2020-15x18 - (I love you)

Cons

• 2009: Asylum 3 Saturday- Misha • 2009: Vancon- Misha • 2010: Vancon - Jensen • 2012: Nashcon - Jensen • 2012: Jibcon 3-Jensen solo • 2012: Jibcon 3- Misha & Jensen • 2012: Comic Con- Jensen, Edlund • 2012: SDCC Press Room - Jensen • 2012: Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo - Misha • 2013: ECCC - Misha • 2013: Vegascon- J2 • 2013: NJcon- Misha • 2013: SDCC Press Room - Kripke • 2013: SDCC Press Room - Carver • 2013: TorCon- Jensen meet and greet • 2013: Chicon - Misha • 2013: Burcon - Amy Gumenick • 2013: Burcon Autos- Robbie • 2014: Vegascon- J2 • 2014: Asylum 12 - Misha • 2014: Jibcon Saturday - Jensen solo • 2014: Jibcon Sunday - Jared solo • 2014: Jibcon Sunday - Jensen solo • 2014: Jibcon Sunday - Jensen & Misha • 2014: Torcon - J2 gold • 2015: Seacon- Jared • 2016: DCcon- Misha • 2015: Jibcon 6 Saturday - Jensen • 2015: Jibcon Saturday - Misha & Singer • 2016: Seacon Saturday - Sheppard • 2016: Vancon SuperWiki’s Wayward Cocktails - Wanek • 2017: Jaxcon - Jensen • 2018: SPNUK - J2M • 2018: Chicon - Alex • 2019: Jibcon Sunday - J2M • 2019: Dallascon- J2 • 2020: Twitter- #DCOnline - Richard, Misha • 2021: WonderCon - Cas’ voice actor

Interviews/Articles

• 2007: TV Guide - Kripke (three year plan) • 2007: TV Addict - Kripke (rough two seasons outlines) • 2009: Channel Ten Interview with J2M - J2M (didn’t know if his character would stay) • 2009: Chicago Tribune - Kripke • 2010: Supernatural: The Official Season 4 Companion - Kripke • 2011: Zap2it - Edlund • 2011: TV Squad - Edlund • 2011: Zap2it - Edlund • 2012: Fangasm - Jensen • 2012: IGN - Carver • 2012: SYFY Wire- Misha • 2013: Supernatural Turkey - July - Jim Micheals • 2013: The Backlot- July- Misha • 2013: TV Guide Canada - Misha • 2013: HuffPost - Misha • 2013: Daily Dot - Kennedy, Chau, Bee  • 2013: Fail-fandomanon - needs source • 2013: Larry King Now - Misha • 2013: TV Fanatic- Misha • 2014: Fangasm - Misha • 2014: New York Times - J2M (no mention) • 2014: Variety - various (no mention) • 2015: ET Online- Misha • 2016: EW - Misha (outsider yet connected to both brothers) Highfill- (close to a third brother as one gets) • 2017: EW - Dabb (family) • 2017: EW - (Closest friend, Best buds, Family) • 2017: EW - (”now it’s Mom and it’s Cas“) • 2017: Hypable - Perez • 2019: MarySue - Dabb (no romance endgame) • 2020: Variety - Dabb • 2020: EW - (probably family and/or do anything for him) • 2020: TV Guide News - J2 • 2020: Daily Dot - internet reaction to 15x18 • 2020: Buzzfeed - internet reaction to 15x18 • 2020: Polygon - internet reaction to 15x18 • 2020: TV Web - internet reaction to 15x18 • 2020: PinkNews - internet reaction to 15x18 and DLCOnline • 2020: EW - Nov 26- rouge translators • 2021: London Screenwriters’ - Kripke

Social Media

• 2012: Twitter - Sep (Misha) • 2013: Twitter - Jan (Robbie) • 2013: Twitter - Feb (Adam) • 2013: Twitter - Mar (Misha) • 2013: Twitter - Mar (Wanek) • 2013: Twitter - Mar (Glass) • 2013: Twitter - Sep (Robbie) • 2013: Twitter - Oct (Kennedy) • 2013: Twitter - Oct (Glass) • 2013: Twitter - Oct (Osric) • 2013: Twitter - Oct (Bee) • 2013: Twitter - Oct (Misha) • 2013: Twitter - Nov (Robbie) • 2014: Twitter - Mar (Wanek) • 2014: Twitter - Mar (Misha) • 2014: Twitter - Apr (Jared) • 2014: Twitter - May (Robbie) • 2014: Twitter- May (Glass) • 2014: Twitter - Nov (Jensen, Robbie) • 2015: Twitter - Jun (Smith) • 2016: Twitter - Jan (Misha) • 2016: Twitter - Apr (Parks) • 2016: Twitter - May (Armstrong) • 2016: Twitter - Jun (Fitzmartin) • 2016: Twitter - Jul (Lee Rumohr) • 2018: Twitter - Apr (Official SPN Twitter) • 2018: Twitter - Aug (Williams) • 2019: Tumblr/Twitter - Feb (Jess, MonarchMish, Davy) • 2019: Twitter - Oct - (Williams) • 2020: Twitter - Sep (Meghan, Emma, Jason, NF, Davy, Jeremy) • 2020: Twitter - Sep (DSilza) • 2020: Twitter - Nov 5 (Berens) • 2020: Twitter - Nov (narwhalltime) • 2020: Twitter -  Nov (Buchanan) • 2020: Twitter -  Nov 20 (Jay Julier) • 2020: Twitter - Nov 25-26 (Williams) • 2020: Twitter - Nov 25-26 (Misha) • 2020: Twitter - Nov 25-26 (narwhalltime) • 2020: Twitter - Dec 11-12 (Williams) • 2020: Twitter - Dec 12 (Williams)

Misc.

• 2011: Supernatural Season 6 DVD Extra- Edlund (another brother) • 2013: Season 8 DVD Extra “Angel Warrior: The Story of Castiel” - Carver (talks of DeanCas as a humorous friendship dynamic) • 2014: A Very Special Supernatural Special - Kripke, Carver, Singer, J2M2 • 2014: The Essential Supernatural [Revised and Updated Edition]: On the Road with Sam and Dean Winchester - (the book kind of infers that Cas’ bond with Dean is a flaw? And that’s pretty much the only line specifically dedicated to it in there.) • 2016: Warner Brothers Market Research • 2018: Hot Topic - Dean Cas Shirt

[captcash]

WonderCon Masquerade Contest: Capt Cash

Costume Name: Endgame Ironman

Costume Description: Re-creation of the moment Tony Stark does the Snap in Avengers: Endgame

Bio: Capt Cash got his start at the Tokyo Game show in 2005. At the time he had never attended a con of any kind and was living as an expat in Kobe, Japan. When his friend insisted that they go to the big show in Tokyo, Cash agreed on the condition that they did it ‘all the way.’ That meant costumes. Dressing as Lupin the Third, the rush of that first con had Cash hooked.

He moved back to the US in 2009 and picked up Cosplay again in 2013 when he attended San Diego Comic-Con for the first time. His work has been featured in the San Diego Union-Tribune, SYFY, i09, and Nerdist to name a few.

With a wife and two boys under the age of five, cosplay hasn’t so much slowed down as it has changed. Now it’s making costumes for four.

Photo credits:

Top image - K.C. Alfred 'Snap' - K.C. Alfred Edit by Sandor Gyarmati 'Death of Tony Stark' - Jeff Zoet Visuals

[catdesignsunlimited]

2021 WonderCon Masquerade@Home - Victorian Poison Ivy

WonderCon Masquerade Contest: Catherine M. Fisher of Cat Designs Unlimited

Costume Name: Victorian Poison Ivy

Costume Description: My favorite character to cosplay all dressed up as a woman of class from the late 1800s!

I haven’t been costuming as much this year as I should be and while I was half expecting there to be a WonderCon Masquerade@home like last year’s Comic Con Masquerade@home, I was still taken by surprise to get the email on March 12 announcing we could submit WC Masquerade entries.  Like last year for SDCC 2020@home, it took me a while to figure out what to make in such a short time that would still be Masquerade worthy.  St. Patrick’s Day was coming up and I don’t know if all that green had anything to do with it, but the idea of a Victorian Poison Ivy popped into my head and I knew she was meant to be my entry this year! I’ve done many incarnations of Poison Ivy (my favorite villainess of all time), and Victorian Poison Ivy is definitely up there as one of my new favorites. I’m better known for my sexy leggy costumes, but after my first foray into period costuming thanks to Gaslight Gathering 2011, I developed a taste for the beautiful formal gowns of the Victorian era and knew one day I’d make a fancy formal version of everyone’s favorite redhead vamp, and this year’s WonderCon Masquerade@home was just the inspiration I needed to make it happen!  I’m very pleased with how this turned out even if it’s a little different than I originally envisioned it to be.  I had originally planned on glittering a TON of ivy leaves and trimming the gown with a variety of glittered leaves, but once it was made, I decided that in Victorian Poison Ivy’s case less is more, and chose to use a few leaves here and there as accents.  Glitter is one of my favorite mediums, and no Poison Ivy costume is complete without a pair of glittered emerald slippers, so I got my glitter fix that way.  There was a lot of fabric involved (9 yards for the gown and 6 yards of netting just for the bustle), a lot more hand sewing than I’d anticipated and in the end, it was 100% worth the extra effort bring Victorian Poison Ivy to life!  I made this gown in about 24 hours over the course of two and a half days, and while she may not show as much skin as my other versions of Poison Ivy, I still feel incredibly sexy sashaying around as Victorian Poison Ivy – if you see her coming your way, you better watch out!!!

Bio: I’ve entered the SDCC Masquerade since my first year attending Comic Con (2005), and I entered WonderCon’s Masquerade from 2008 to 2013.  I was planning on entering back in 2019, but some outside circumstances prevented me from attending that year, so I was hoping to get back into the swing of things this year, but sadly WonderCon was postponed yet again, so this was a great way to jump back into the WC Masquerade scene!  I know this year’s entry isn’t as big or as fancy as some of my past entries, but I think she’s a great addition to an awesome array of entries this year, and as always, it’s an honor to be part of the Masquerade!

Be sure to follow @WonderConAtHome! 

[airmanisr]

Jessica Nigri as The Mad Moxxi by Michael Stevens Via Flickr: Wondercon 2013 Anaheim convention center

[crunchbuttsteak]

Wondercon 2017 Day 1

Tag yourselves

[exeggcute]

my only other "getting engaged in cosplay" story was when I went to wondercon in like 2012 or 2013 (rip to the days when it was in anaheim, after one fateful AX I have sworn off LA cons for good) and book one of korra had just come out, and at the con a mako cosplayer proposed to his korra cosplayer girlfriend, who obviously said yes. I can only hope they're still together, off somewhere popping bottles...

[mysticdragon3art]

Chibi-Arts C.C. at Anaheim WonderCon 2013.

[loveforbobandeliza]

The Cast of The 100 at Conventions  via Eric Goldman

TheEricGoldman: Today marks the end for #The100, a show that has a lot of importance for me. I’m crazy busy today, but let me start a thread I may need to slowly update through the day... and kick it off with my blurry pic of Paige Turco, Eliza Taylor, and Isaiah Washington at CW’s 2013 Upfront. [x]

TheEricGoldman: Moderated my second #The100 panel at WonderCon 2014. This was a few weeks after the show had debuted, so you were beginning to get a crowd of folks already into the series. I had decided to cover the show regularly - I was on a mission to get even cynical IGN commenters into it! [x]

TheEricGoldman: #The100 panel at #SDCC 2015 [x]

TheEricGoldman: A couple o’ pics from WonderCon 2016… #The100 [x]

TheEricGoldman: …and then me wearing the same damn shirt moderating the #SDCC 2016 panel! Sigh. Well, whatever, I do like that shirt. Plus, getting ready for an SDCC interview with Eliza, Lindsey, and Ian ... [x]

[obrienschicken]