Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Matthew Arcilla, editorial mercenary @experimentego.bsky.social · 10h

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 · 10h

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 · 10h

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 · 10h

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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Masked J Patrick @michaeljpatrick.bsky.social · 17h

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

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So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 15h

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 · 17h

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 · 12h

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 · 14h

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 · 13h

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 · 17h

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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season of the apple cider witch 🍎🎃 @applecider.bsky.social · 13h

"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 · 15h

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 · 1d

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

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

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 · 2d

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 · 2d

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 · 2d

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

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

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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The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv) @theserfstv.bsky.social · 4d

Losing my mind and what look like video game assets but instead were used to justify war crimes and genocide in the real world

NEW: Since October 2023, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has released dozens of 3D animations illustrating alleged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian sites

The style is unmistakable: satellite zoom-ins, black & white wireframes, and red-textured houses - a new visual language of war.Our analysis of 43 official IDF videos found recycled 3D environments, spatial inaccuracies, and assets lifted from unrelated artists and institutions.We traced over 30 unique assets to Washington-based 3D creator Ian Hubert, who makes bespoke models created for his sci-fi project Dynamo Dream, available to his Patreon subscribers.

Models of parking lots, antennas, + pipes were repurposed as Hamas and Iranian military sites

@evanhill
·
11m
Fascinating work here tracing how the IDF recycled 3D assets from a cyberpunk sci-fi art project, the Scottish Maritime Museum and elsewhere to populate its widely-seen models of supposed enemy locations in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. One of the most infamous, the alleged underground Hamas command center at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, used to justify an unprecedented assault on the biggest medical center in Gaza, was actually an animation the IDF had used the previous year, saying at the time it was a tunnel beneath a UN school.

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Kazuma Hashimoto @kazuma.bsky.social · 4d

GC wrote a great thread about the recasting of Hamazaki with Teruyuki Kagawa that I really suggest reading (along with the article from @unseenjapan.com) to get full context of RGG Studios deliberate decision to stand by this choice.

GC Vazquez @gcvazquez.bsky.social · 14d

So for people wondering about the Teruyuki Kagawa stuff (or for people who don't know,) yeah. The new actor portraying Hamazaki in Kiwami 3 admitted to sexually harassing a hostess club employee in 2022.
www.unseen-japan.com/kagawa-teruy...

Everyone Knew About Kagawa Teruyuki - Unseen Japan

The more we learn about the ongoing Kagawa Teruyuki scandal, the worse it gets. Some recent commentary translated for our Patreon subscribers.

www.unseen-japan.com

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Megan Fox @glassbottommeg.bsky.social · 6d

The answer to why no one seems to be making new Deus Ex or whatevs is pretty much entirely that: they are, but then some guy with money goes "but that doesn't look like the game that sold well this year!" and shoots it with a shotgun

All the classic Legendary games were pre-venture capital in games

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Keith W. Dickinson @keithwdickinson.bsky.social · 4d

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

The Verge @theverge.com · May 26

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Paul McCartne, Elton John and others signed an open letter.

buff.ly

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Victor Von Doomscroll @redderbeanpaste.bsky.social · 4d

Comics incels : women that have muscle mass is woke propaganda

Jack Kirby : haha big barda go brr

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

How dare our bodies refuse to cooperate under relentless torture, dehydration and nutritional abuse

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

God no wonder one of these voices was so familiar!! I was a Caira main on Evolve.

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René Otto @aceottorney.bsky.social · 4d

Proud to announce Deviant Legal’s Game Developer’s Guide to Publishing Agreements: a free resource for developers wanting to learn about publishing deals. Publicly accessible, without requiring to provide your data: deviantlegal.com/guide/game-d...

An image about the game developer's guide to publishing agreements feauturing otto the otter

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

I'm reading this in this voice.

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