self

it’s really bizarre how obviously forced the propaganda is, looking back:

• the cameo’s very short and not very flattering — Tony’s written as close to blowing Musk off as they could probably manage, and they definitely weren’t giving him more than the bare minimum screen time he paid for
• part of the deal was they got to film in the Tesla factory, so it’s the bad guy’s base and it looks (to my memory, it’s been a minute since I’ve seen Iron Man 2) boring as fuck, like nobody really wanted to film there

given how utterly, sickly-sweet positive his latter cameos are, Musk was probably pissed at his Iron Man 2 cameo and had a few new clauses written into his contract with the studios going forward. as for why the crew’s attitude toward Musk seemed to change between the first and second films, my theory is: according to reputation and second-hand experience, Musk has always been a fucking asshole in person. he probably burned out the crew’s good will quickly, and they just wanted to be rid of him.

holy fuck, the event was held at the Warner Bros lot because Musk and whoever’s balls he’s buttering at WB assumed that would mean he could use the Blade Runner still without licensing it (via The Verge):

Though WBD owns some licensing rights for Blade Runner 2049, because the event would be live-streamed internationally, clearance for the images had to come from Alcon directly. And when Alcon’s legal and licensing departments were made aware of the situation, they sent back a firm refusal to the interested parties “so that there would be no mistakes in the conduct of the event.”

Along with the larger copyright infringement, Alcon also says it was never made privy to any of the agreements between Tesla and WBD that would have been necessary before the We, Robot event. Along with giving Tesla the ability to use Warner Bros.’ lot and equipment, Alcon believes that agreement also included a promotional element that “allowed or possibly even required Tesla expressly to affiliate the Cybercab with one or more motion pictures” from the studio’s catalog.

so I just fucking realized, this asshole wasn’t originally going to bring up the duster but he panicked. here’s the original, so much better-looking photo he ripped off:

and the spinner (a VTOL car) in that, viewed from the back, looks a lot like something he knocked off for the design of his shitty cybercab, including how the doors open and its general shape and color (though the latter’s due to the scene’s color grading if memory serves, but musk ain’t smart), though the cybercab doesn’t have any of the design elements that make the Blade Runner car interesting because of course it doesn’t, it was designed by a creatively bankrupt billionaire from someone else’s work

so that spinner’s missing in Musk’s generative AI ripoff of that image, because the model couldn’t make a spinner-like car that didn’t look fucked up. and that’s why the AI image has “NOT THIS” hastily applied in one corner and he had to change his speech from “I believe we want that car” (followed by revealing supposedly “that car”) to “I believe we want that duster”

unbelievably lazy, but not unexpected

like Matt Mullenweg trying to figure out what Ghandi would do

it’s almost definitely the reason why Musk keeps making utterly cringe cameos in sci-fi shit, starting with Iron Man 2 and continuing on to Star Trek: Discovery and (of fucking course) Rick & Morty, and a bunch of other weird shit like the Saturday Night Live episode that was just propaganda. his former PR team very likely set up whatever price point worked for the studios so Musk could pay for a cameo, and Musk loved it so much he kept doing it after he fired that team.

what’s fucking bizarre is the Iron Man writers seem to swear their version of Tony Stark was based on Musk, and we know now Musk’s nothing like that. so looking back with more seasoned eyes: how much of the first Iron Man was just propaganda too? of course there’s all the libertarian shit — whose idea was all that, actually?

haha nah I insist, fuck off

Media organizations will get $500,000 to hire two-year “AI fellows” who will “pursue projects that focus largely on improving business sustainability and implementing AI technologies within their organizations.” Specific uses include transcription, content “summaries,” and chatbot-fronted “search.”

permanent college kids with 4090s in embarrassing gaming rigs who’ll demand more budget the instant nvidia releases a new top-end card to game on, got it

e: and as someone who used to set up CUDA servers for machine learning back in college, boy fucking howdy is it ever a tell when the supposed research workstation’s copious RGB is all from the same vendor, so they can sync it to the game they’re playing. I mean, what else do you expect them to do, you paid for their case with the wraparound glass already after all

also, the CUDA hardware back then tended to be either rackmount servers, former rackmount servers now on someone’s desk, or embedded shit. not great to look at unless you like science labs and also noise

in other news, holy fuck nix

notably, this weirdo seems to have only started the podcast that looks like the only thing they’re supposedly known for a couple months before the Nix open letter, and I really don’t recognize them from the Nix community otherwise. they also appear to be using their podcast to interview Steering Committee candidates, which seems like a real obvious way to influence the selection process given the kinds of questions they seem to be asking.

…huh, you’re right (for the movie — the shitty AI image is a bad amalgamation of a trench coat and something like the shoulders of a duster). maybe the fucker was thinking of fallout or some shit.

and now I’ve convinced myself to go dig up my duster

The Blade and the Runner: Tokyo Drift is my favorite

…ok I’m fucking saving that for an RPG campaign I haven’t written yet

no thx, nobody here is your dad and I don’t think anybody needs to explain why

I think for many women “being inseminated by” IS a big thing.

is a weird fucking thing to say in the context of the post you’re replying to

I hope so too! I like their approach so far, and a NixOS fork by the same folks seems like something I’d switch to as soon as I reasonably could