Thistlewick

Nobody who is mad at this situation thinks that taking inspiration, riffing on, or referencing other people’s work is the problem when a human being does it. When a person writes, there is intention behind it.

The issue is when a business, owned by those people you think ‘demonised’ inspiration, take the works of authors and mulch them into something they lovingly named “The Pile”, in order to create derivative slop off the backs of creatives.

When you, as a “professional”, ask AI to write you a novel, who is being inspired? Who is making the connections between themes? Who is carefully crafting the text to pay loving reference to another authors work? Not you. Not the algorithm that is guessing what word to shit out next based on math.

These businesses have tricked you into thinking that what they are doing is noble.

No I don’t, but we’re not talking about a single copy of one book, and it is grovellingly insidious to imply that we are.

We are talking about a company taking the work of an author, of thousands of authors, and using it as the backbone of a machine that’s goal is to make those authors obsolete.

When the people who own the slop-machine are making millions of dollars off the back of stolen works, they can very much afford to pay those authors. If you can’t afford to run your business without STEALING, then your business is a pile of flaming shit that deserves to fail.

You’re right, each of the 5 million books’ authors should agree to less payment for their work, to make the poor criminals feel better.

If I steal $100 from a thousand people and spend it all on hookers and blow, do I get out of paying that back because I don’t have the funds? Should the victims agree to get $20 back instead because that’s more within my budget?

Wow, you might be right. It’s always the hands…

It’s like trying to reclaim the red cap though, it’s almost too far gone at this point. There was a period where people were wearing ironic red caps with anti-trump slogans on them as a way to take some of the power out of the symbol.

It only ended up causing stress to people who didn’t want to wait to find out if the hat-wearer was going to call them a slur.

If I saw a loud crowd marching down the street brandishing American flags, I would also not want to hang around to find out if they are fascists or not.

I also feel like flying the flag of the oppressive fascists government that is trying to deport and kill your friends and family sends the wrong message.

Sure, there is the idea of reclaiming the symbol of the flag, but on short notice, a march that is against the deportation of Mexican immigrants probably doesn’t call for the US flag.

You’re right Bernie! But how are you, I, or anyone else going to stop him? I mean, somebody’s gotta do it…

“Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” “Israeli and US support”

My nose started bleeding, trying to unify these concepts in my mind. Its like the “Bird and Small Mammal Support Foundation”, run by house cats.

I’m sorry, let’s all be quiet about the murders happening at peaceful protests; the man who is attempting to install himself as god-king of the western world; the knee that this god-king is bending to Russia; and all the human rights violations occurring daily across the country so that you can keep living in your whack country in peace.

A person doesn’t need to have an answer to a systemic clusterfuck in order to call it out, and calling it out reminds us that none of this is normal. If we stop calling the US whack, then people start accepting the whack-ness as the new normal.

I read the comic as metaphorical for the state of the world in general, not a literal attack on low-income, undereducated individuals.

We fought the nazis less than 100 years ago. We lost loved ones in the fight against tyranny. We brought that victory, and that trauma, home with us. But in the decades since, the number of people who lived and fought in those times is dwindling. All that we are left with today are the symbols of that time. Yes, there are plenty of us that know the history, that have heard the stories. But there are also plenty of us that have only seen the sleek, manicured projection of the ‘bad guys from Indiana Jones’ through the Hollywood lens. And some of that trauma has been passed down too.

I feel like this comic is more about forgetting our own history.

The editors are right. Why would I want a paragraph of garbage at the top of the page that is clearly labeled “unverified”, that I then have to scroll past to find the information that people already tell me is non-credible because it’s not explicitly from a published journal.

I fucking hate when Google does it, but I don’t donate to Google. If Wikipedia starts making it harder to access the information they host, I’m not going to support that either.

Get this conspiracy shit outta here. Looks like the guys about to tell me that there’s a Walmart under the pyramids.

Christine married into the family, inherited her wealth when her spouse passed, and is not involved in the running of Walmart. She has previously donated to anti-trump groups.

Could she be doing more with her billions? Definitely. Is she the head of a corporate conspiracy to oppress the American people by funding a single ad in one newspaper? Highly unlikely.