Kevin Beynon

If you care about a show or movie, grab the discs. Especially if you want someone to see it.

Streaming was a long and elaborate con to teach the public that art should be a service and not a tangible good. It was also to control piracy at the expense of the artists they claimed to protect

Physical Media Is Cool Again. Streaming Services Have Themselves to Blame Collectors tell Rolling Stone an exhaustion with streamers is making owning physical media the next big thing — again.

Streaming promised a new world, but consumers aren’t entirely happy with the trade off.

“There’s this false notion that everything is online...And it’s just simply not true."

"It's so important to be able to own your media."

www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult... #FilmSky #PhysicalMedia

Just read that again: AI tech bosses are choosing not to have children because they don't think the world will be around much longer.
WHY are we inviting this monstrous tech into all levels of education? Why are we blithely going along with Big Tech as it tells us we cannot do without AI?
WHY?

Police acting on this government’s behalf arrested more people for protesting Palestinian genocide in ONE DAY (yesterday, 500 +/-) than all the anti-migrant marchers combined ever.
The hypocrisy is beyond stratospheric

The moon sounds like it's got dirtier since I last looked at it.

(So sorry, I'm tired after a walk at Silecroft.)

I can recite Mulder's entire bit from the X-files film, when asked by the barmaid what he does for a living.

Gravestone inscribed: Alistair Stephen Fabian Mitchell. 13-6-1957, 10-2-2019. Barrister of the Middle Temple. My brain, socialist. My heart, anarchist. My eyes, pacifist. My blood, revolutionary. Around the edge, the legend: The only man in British legal history to be convicted of biting a policeman with someone else’s teeth.

A tombstone in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, photographed by Andy Darby.

Note the border inscription.

A pack.of two bread buns with the tag Giant White Baps.

A challenging wank but at least I didn't need to have my ID verified.

Stop calling Labour the 'left' - even with 'centre' before it.

Plastics. Even with the so-called recycling that we do, only 1% of overall plastics (or is that 1% of the recycled ones?!) are actually reused.

There are bigger cons, I know, but this is pretty massive.

Make no mistake, there is a race by tech companies to normalize use of gen AI as fast as possible across creative fields, before sensibility within law can coalesce.

So fight back: reject using it in your workplace; inform friends sharing funny AI image memes; and mock its use to ardent backers.

It's notable that ex Unbound CEO Dan Kieran, ex Unbound MD Kate Boulton and ex Unbound CEO Wil (one "l") Harris have stayed silent about why Unbound (despite heaps of crowdfunded cash) failed & shat all over its authors. Dan, Kate & Wil: many authors & readers would love to hear your side of things.

it is no exaggeration to say that Hersey’s Hiroshima is one of the most affecting, devastating pieces of reporting in the last century. I don’t see how you can read it and not come away with the soul-deep belief that every nuke should be fully dismantled and the blueprints obliterated.

@MattWalshBlog let the following bullshit fall out of his mouth hole: “Remember when they spent years telling us to panic over the hole in the ozone layer and then suddenly just stopped talking about it and nobody ever mentioned the ozone layer” and then @DKThomp cast the appropriate side eye with this: “What happened is scientists discovered chlorofluorocarbons were bad for the ozone, countries believed them, the Montreal Protocol was signed, and CFC use fell by 99.7%, leading to the stabilization of the ozone layer, perhaps the greatest example of global cooperation in history.”

relevant

So you’ve taken something infamous for lying and incompetence and high levels of corruption and replaced it with AI?

Brilliant idea.

I suppose at least AI will answer constituents, unlike most MP’s

Can this AI prototype explain why so many of the stupidest people in Britain end up in parliament?

Jewish Britons decry ban on Palestine Action as ‘illegitimate, unethical’ Hundreds rally near Downing Street as delegation delivers letter to UK government calling for sanctions on Israel.

Hundreds rally near Downing Street as delegation delivers letter to UK government calling for sanctions on Israel.

YouTube video by Declassified UK We found the Israeli soldiers SECRETLY being trained by Britain

📹NEW VIDEO -- We found the Israeli soldiers secretly being trained by Britain

After months of research, Declassified managed to locate and identify the Israeli military officers training in London amid the Gaza genocide👇
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQiY...

BLAIR CONSIDERED A 'SPECIAL PARTNERSHIP' BETWEEN ISRAEL AND NATO Downing Street files show Tony Blair was prepared to allow Israel to take over part of the West Bank and to give Israel a “privileged” alliance with Nato and the European Union.

NEW -- Blair considered a "special partnership" between Israel and Nato

by @markcurtis30

Files show Tony Blair was prepared to allow Israel to take over part of the West Bank and to give Israel a “privileged” alliance with Nato and the EU.

www.declassifieduk.org/blair-consid...

Unbound / Boundless: RI without much in the way of P: www.eamonnmartingriffin.co.uk/blog/2637232... #fuckers

I Deleted My Second Brain Why I Erased 10,000 Notes, 7 Years of Ideas, and Every Thought I Tried to Save

Here's a great article by @joanwestenberg.com on deleting every note in their Obsidian app, and 'the anxiety of the unread'.

"There is a guilt that accompanies unread books, articles and blog posts... the fear of losing track, of forgetting, of not being caught up. But caught up to what?"

I recall a book from the late nineties called the Cost of Letters which stated the average writer earned around £12k and that's 30 years or so ago. Throw inflation into this and publishing is in a worse place despite apparently making more.

‘Richard Osman made £10m, but I  got £250 last year’: How much money novelists really make The big hitters of the literary world draw headlines for their book deals. But the reality of writing fiction for a living is an altogether less lucrative existence

It really is an industry that doesn’t serve its most valuable people (authors) at all. What future does that have? inews.co.uk/culture/book...

Irish Reunification, Free and Independent Scotland, Free and Independent Wales, Free and Independent Cornwall, free the fucking Manx, LIBERATE THE KINGDOM OF NORTHUMBERLAND

God I am so here for the dissolution of the UK back into its constituent kingdoms.

And do it for the indies and selfpub.

They do not have the marketing reach of the popular tradpub folk.

🔥🔥🔥

Canadians' health data at risk of being handed over to U.S. authorities, experts warn | CBC News Canadians' electronic health records need more protections to prevent foreign entities from accessing patient data, according to commentary in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Canada law prof: electronic medical records ( #EHR) oft controlled by US biz. Stored on servers physically in #Canada, but owned by US biz, thus subject to US law. US gov can compel disclosure for criminal investigations. Prof calls for Canadian sovereignty for health data
www.cbc.ca/news/health/...

A lot of good things in here: free (no payments) NSFW content can go back up; there's a pathway laid down for some paid NSFW content to come back, and positive statements from Stripe that indicate pressure campaigns are working. All really positive. So happy to see.

An image of a huge jackboot crushing a comic artist and a bunch of comic pages. The boot is marked by the logos for MasterCard, Visa, Paypal, and Stripe. Below the image there is text which reads: Don't let Payment Processors tell YOU what you can buy! It is not a payment processor's role to decide what kind of content you can or cannot spend money on, so long as it is a legal transaction. Fight back against the unjust policies hurting artists and creators online! https://yellat.money/ https://stop-paypros.neocities.org/

Let's Keep Calling!