Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 5h

Sure, Halloween is still a couple weeks away and we're nowhere close to the Day of the Dead but that doesn't mean it's not a good time to play Grim Fandango Remastered. So tonight I'll be playing Grim Fandango Remastered. 14:30 UTC at www.twitch.tv/experimentego :D

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 15h

Knife time?

a cat is sitting in a bathroom sink looking at the mirror .

ALT: a cat is sitting in a bathroom sink looking at the mirror .

media.tenor.com

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 19h

We should pay zero attention to anti-woke gamer chuds. Their days revolve around coming up with new ways to put the word "woke" in the name of a game, and then convince themselves they invented a new slur. That is literally their intellectual ceiling, you might as well talk to a sack of potatoes.

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 20h

No matter how much less powerful, famous or relevant they are, a white cis man like Stone always feels empowered to weigh in on questions they weren't asked. He escalated the situation from "actress provides cowardly both sides-ism response" to "transphobia is just a free speech issue." Fuck him.

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 20h

What bothers me most is director Simon Stone, whose unsolicited response equated Rowling to a bullied child and not a fully grown adult with billions to finance bigoted causes. He's less famous yes, but his remarks will have a non-zero influence on whatever Knightley may choose to say later.

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 20h

Knightley's dogshit reply strikes me more as the panicked response to a question she wasn't prepared for, likely due to the fact that she probably has zero trans friends and zero time and incentive to educate herself on things outside of her immediate professional concerns.

Keira Knightley Reacts to J.K. Rowling Boycott After Joining Harry Potter Project

The actress was asked about signing onto the new full-cast Harry Potter audiobook series.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 1d

Wow a whole paragraph about how they're not "that kind of person," i.e. addictive personality, immune to psychological tricks, wanting enriching things. It's giving "I'm built different," it's giving "I'm not like other gamers," It's giving "pick me girl" but a gamer.

Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 1d

When I look at how talented, creative, handsome Kirby was, what a loving husband he was, what a fierce and courageous soul he was, I realize he explains Stan Lee. Stan knew he had none of the talent, looked like shit and was a spineless coward, so of course he wanted to screw Kirby over.

John Jakala @jjakala.bsky.social · 17d

Every time I see an old photo of Jack Kirby I think, how is it fair that this guy was not only so talented, creative, & prolific but also a stone-cold stud to boot?

SIMON & KIRBY
Photograph, Joe Simon (left and Jack Kirby (right) with writer Martin A. Bursten;
Simon and Kirby studio, New York City.
Ca. 1942.

Closeup of Jack Kirby, who's just so goddamned handsome, the bastard.

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 1d

He spoke when no one asked him to; he happened to be there when Knightley was asked. Typical white man filmmaker behavior to provide an unsolicited opinion.

He's a shit even without the rotten take of describing JKR as a victim of bullying and not a rich bigot with billions to finance her hate.

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 1d

In summary, Absolute Batman is stupid because it claims to reinvent him, but doesn't act on any of the foundations it has changed. After all, why reinvent what people are already in uncritical adoration of?

The infamous scene / meme of Victoria Beckham claiming she is working class while her husband, an incredulous David Beckham, asks her to admit she wasn't working class at all.

The scene has been captioned as follows:

VICTORIA: "In Absolute Batman, this version of Bruce Wayne is working class."
DAVID: "Be honest."
VICTORIA: "I *am* being honest!"
DAVID: "What Batmobile does he drive?"
VICTORIA: "His Batmobile is a thirty foot tall mining truck."
DAVID: "...Thank you."

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 1d

The Batmobile exemplifies this. It's big as a house, fast as hell, armed to the teeth with weapons and gadgets and easily hidden. This Batman gets to own the same stuff, do the same shit in a way. The mechanics of the character aren't informed by invention, just amplification of the original idea.

A car as big a house that looks like a mining or construction truck, but with Bat-themed ornamentation. It looks very stupid.

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 1d

There are lots of "interesting" ideas here. Bruce Wayne grew up without generational wealth, and his friends are from the working class. He works in construction. His mother is still alive. But they don't do anything to modify the core Batman fantasy. He's still a heavily geared soldier-detective.

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 1d

What the heck are people on about with Absolute Batman. This is not a “bold reinvention," it’s the comic bro fantasy of the macho genius on overdrive. Batman is meant to be implausible, yes, but the whole “he can beat a thousand men and is prepared for every possibility” is cranked up to ridiculous.

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Reposted by Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary

Masked J Patrick @michaeljpatrick.bsky.social · 2d

Some people can not see any interaction as anything other than a struggle for dominance.

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Reposted by Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary

So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 2d

This is another form of censorship and book banning to my mind: you force an ersatz simplification on young readers while making the original harder & harder to obtain, then tell them the ersatz is better than the real thing (bc it is programmed propaganda pablum).

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 2d

No, resurrecting the corpse of Anne Frank so 12-year-olds can gossip with her is not how you “make history come alive.” It’s how you destroy history so that someone can come in, rewrite it, and then author a future to their liking.

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 1d

It's really telling that when these assholes talk about science fiction, comic books, video games and movies in a misguided attempt to display their intellectual and cultural bonafides, it's some very popular thing already mainstream. It's 2025, knowing Dune or Watchmen isn't impressive.

Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 2d

If you read Watchmen at 14, yeah, it's going to blow your mind and you are going to tell people that it's the most profound piece of media that's ever been produced. At Thiel's age it should be clear that while interesting, it is not a codex for understanding humanity

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 1d

There's a special kind of sub-literacy accessed only by the Silicon Valley elite. The kind that would get them laughed out of most critic circles, but earns them currency and clout among the worst and dumbest of edgy bois

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 2d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Reposted by Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary

season of the apple cider witch 🍎🎃 @applecider.bsky.social · 1d

"luckily AI is still shitty at writing"

No one who uses AI cares about quality, otherwise they would not engage with slop. Also the career of Writing as a whole is largely devalued as it is, hence why wholesale theft of it is considered fine, even if English grammar confounds it.

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 2d

Motherfuckers be like "oh indie games are too hard to get into" and then do a fucking triathlon to figure out how to get around SecureBoot requirements to play a game like fucking Battlefield 6.

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 3d

It's fine, don't worry about it.

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 3d

That's true, I glossed over that precise detail in the interest of a more expedient paragraph. My bad.

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 3d

The Philippine Star asked me to write a thing about EA.

EA was just acquired by private equity; Congratulations or sorry that happened - Philstar Tech

By now, you’ve probably heard that Electronic Arts, or EA, is being acquired by private equity.

philstartech.com

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Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 4d

Been spending my after hours on chill streaming and tonight I'll be continuing The Quarry, the giant-sized Dark Picture by Supermassive Games. Live right now at
twitch.tv/experimentego/

a close up of a man 's face with a shadow on his face

Alt: A slow motion close up of a young man with an unsettling grin on his face.

media.tenor.com

Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 4d

Any higher and you would start seeing ray-traced reflections in his eyes

Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 4d

David Simon, creator of The Wire was interviewed by Ari Shapiro for NPR back in 2023. This was how he responded to suggestions of using AI to smooth over minor speed bumps in scriptwriting.

www.npr.org/transcripts/...

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without AI, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems, or saying...

SIMON: You mentioned that.

SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.

SIMON: I don't think AI can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.

SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from Scene 5 to Scene 6 and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an AI and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition.

SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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