Waiting for this gentleman to get a public apology: https://news.sky.com/story/man-arrested-after-heckling-prince-andrew-during-royal-procession-12695924

Investment money has basically dried up. Even indies need that, unless you mean the "one person in their garage working off Patreon" type of studio. For awhile Chinese companies were holding down the fort and trying to expand in North America, but they've largely withdrawn that strategy and focused on domestic production. That's why so many indie studios working on their first game shut down in the last two years.

For this to reverse itself interest rates will need to come down, but for that to happen without catastrophic inflation we would need several years of un-fucked monetary policy. So basically it's fucked for a long time and possibly will never exist again in the way it did. This is on top of all the other issues the vfx/game industries have with crunch, chaotic management, etc.

The dialog pushing AI media seems to start from this assumption that I consume media just to have colors and words and sounds enter my face holes. In fact, I consume art and media because I like hearing, seeing, and reading about how other humans experience the same world I do. It's a form of communication. I like the product but also the process of people trying to capture the bonkers, ineffable experience we all seem to be sharing in ways I would never think of, but can instantly verify.

What's funny is, due to the nature of media, it's kind of impossible to not communicate something, even if the artwork itself is empty. When I see AI media I see the communication of a mind that doesn't know or give a shit about any of this. So in their attempt make filler they are in fact making art about how inarticulate they are. It's unintentional, corporate dadaism.

If jacking off constantly at age 14 doomed a person we would never have left the Miocene epoch.

You paid for something and never got it. Initiate chargeback with your bank. Amazon may close your account for this, but fuck them.

Can you imagine? It's probably like the inside of Vincent D'Onofrio's mind in The Cell.

Trees are unbelievably cool. My favorite fact is that the actual living surface of a tree's roots, called the rhizosphere, consists of extremely small, ephemeral hairlike structures that supply the whole, gigantic tree. The large roots we think of are mainly structural. Where the actual "rubber meets the road" of the life form is incredibly small. Within that rhizosphere the interplay of plant, fungi, bacteria, and soil is so intricate that it's difficult to even say where the soil ends and the tree begins.

So many amazing things happen in this space. For example, the tree exudes sugars out of the roots because it creates an electrical gradient that pushes nutrients into the root cells. This way the trees, which are masters of energy efficiency, can use passive transport to uptake nutrients. Fungi have adapted to this energy and symbiotically extend the rhizosphere beyond what the tree is capable of alone. In fact an entire world of organisms has evolved inside the rhizosphere. Similar worlds exist in the bark, the cambium, the buds, the leaves, the flower, and the fruit.

It's like this enormous organism is a fractal masterpiece, and the closer you look the more clever it is. And we all depend on it, because plants are the only organisms capable of turning sunlight into usable energy. Apart from some things living off deep-sea vents, that's it. Even the energy you're using to read this right now passed through a chloroplast. It's just so cool.

At this point let's just go back to manually using command line GPG/PGP.

Cops can ignore. Prosecutors can decline. Judges can "sentence" to unconditional release.

The people can nullify.

Same thing happened with honey. Suddenly Vietnam's honey exports magically increased to more than their domestic production. Of course nobody cared because it's all theater.

Wait, it's all just Arthurian legend? 🌍👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀

Happens to some SE Asians in North America too, because the edible straw mushroom from SE Asia resembles one here called "death cap". Amanita phalloides. What's fucked up is right before it kills you your symptoms actually improve, so people get discharged from the hospital and think they are going to be ok. I forage mushrooms but I stay away from white gilled mushrooms completely.