Peter Clines

A fun reminder that a loss of 60,000 jobs in and around academia is ~50% more than all coal mining jobs in the entire country.

Soooooo freakin' good on so many levels.

If you are a company that still advertises to your audience on Twitter, if you are a public figure who still uses it to reach your audience, if you are someone who uses it to keep in touch with your audience for your brand or your work...maybe think about who that audience is. Maybe get off Twitter.

Remember when Biden got a bit confused during a debate and the media just en masse said he shouldn't be president and needed to drop out of the race?

Hahhahhaaa good times, good times.

The fact that ai art and writing programs are built on stolen work really seems to be fading from the discussion even amongst artists and writers, which is a bit shit.

Okay, fine, I did.

I absolutely love all of these but they also remind me that Hasbro still hasn't done a pink bathrobe Peter Parker with May...

Thank you!

@peterclines.bsky.social I finished The Broken Room and have to say I didn't know how the story would unfold right up to the last chapter. Awesome book!

The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

I know, I know, the typo annoys me, too.

<sigh> too busy bleeding to catch the typos...

Marvel screwed up by insisting (I do believe very innocently) that they owned the Dire Wraiths, Hasbro had proof they didn't, and that's why the lawyers for Marvel/ Disney-- one of the most litigious, IP-protective corporations in existence-- backed down so quickly. That's all there is to it.

Again, sorry to keep repeating this but... there really aren't. At the end of the day, Hasbro owns the Wraiths and always has (except for the window of time when Parker Brothers owned them before that company was bought out by Hasbro). That's it. End of story. End of legal challenge.

A very tiny LEGO-sized violin sits on a keyboard. It's notably smaller than the ENTER key

And now it's time for everyone's favorite home improvement gane-- Wait, Where's That Blood Coming From?

When Hasbro licensed Rom and the Wraiths to IDW, Marvel freaked out, tried to claim ownership, and it was shown they very clearly did not.

Yes, part of backing down was probably not wanting to annoy Hasbro, but can you really picture Marvel/Disney backing down from something they legally owned?

The books matter because Hasbro licensing Rom and the Wraith for books (comics) is what started all this and it's what Marvel's staking their claim on.

Marvel licensed a toy property 40+ years ago, made comics of it, then tried to claim the property was theirs because they honestly didn't know.

I don't know... I just went through this and there's nothing that contradicts what I said before. Marvel thought they owned the Dire Wraiths, were all set to go to court, and got slapped down hard by reality.

(you did see the above link, yes?)

I'll check it out. Thanks.

So many want to bypass the actual process in order to get the acclaim of being an artist. The acclaim of being a filmmaker. Get the accolades & praise but don’t want to have to actually think and create from scratch. That’s why you’re so keen on AI. You want praise for the art but not to do the art.

I mean, it was parsed. By lawyers. I even explained it above. What's left to parse?

No, legally it's pretty cut and dry.

Much closer to animated Jetfire who was *completely different* from an intellectual property standpoint.

An action figure of a gas-mask wearing woman in a cowboy hat and pink leather jacket. Her whole aesthetic is sort of post-apocalyptic cowgirl. She's got a long leather bullwhip in one hand.

Side note--the piece I needed to fix this JoyToy fig showed up today. She's been missing an elbow since I got her in... January?

A white and red toy robot looms over a Rogue action figure.

Just a hair over 12" tall in robot mode. Seriously gigantic.

A.6" Rogue action figure stands on a wood table next to a large white and red toy jet plane. The jet is the size of a car compared to her.

Holy crap this Jetfire is enormous! Over 14" long with a wingspan about the same. He looked big in the box but I didn't realize just how huge he was.

Sauron the pterodactyl man with an effects piece attached to his beak, creating the appearance of waves of glowing energy coming out from his swirling eyes.

"You need... more... Marvel Legends figures... more..."

iPhone.