*film festival, good gawd 🙃
English professor; co-editor of Spaces & Places of Canadian Popular Culture; feminist dad; he/him; @professorneil on TikTok; @professor_neil on Instagram https://linktr.ee/neilshyminsky
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*film festival, good gawd 🙃
Actually, the doctor success was the REAL monster success of the Venice fun festival all along.
Actually, Frankenstein is a doctor success at the Venice film festival
I can drop a few screenshots because finding the links in a sea of thousands of videos and reply comments across at least 4 platforms is a bit beyond me right now. TL is pretty explicit now, though, that the real concern is with the source of the money.
And full-disclosure: I’m also an influencer and I’m not Chorus-sponsored but I have friends who are. /ps
I think there’s also an important conversation to have about how money can influence an influencer, even if it comes with no strings attached. But the media ethics framing is not the correct one because the venn diagram of journalists, PR, and influencers is definitely not a perfect circle. /end
Now the larger point about money in politics and billionaires bankrolling influencers and covering their tracks so no one knows who they are - even the influencers? Yeah, that’s bad. But TL has walked back or softened all of the strongest, specific accusations about control, censorship & secrecy /2
JFC, you’d think that anyone this concerned would actually be following along: -Chorus didn’t dictate anything, which Lorenz admits in the deluge of clarifications -they also didn’t place any limits *other than* to avoid suggesting Chorus endorsed a politician, which TL also acknowledges /1
The wonderful people at the Heart Tattoo Society are running a fundraiser to keep their Monday BBQs at the Downtown Eastside going and both spreading the word and any contribution help: www.facebook.com/donate/74448... #fundraiser #DTES #DowntownEastside #FoodInsecurity #BBQ
If being trans is a ‘common denominator’ among mass shooters, just wait until they find about how many of them are white cis men.
Isn’t one of the funders of this ‘powerful dark money group’ the same guy who’s paying your writer-in-residency gig?
And I thought the FIRST one looked good. WOW.
I'm not right wing but some of this "woke" stuff is a little over the top [6 months later] Slavery was fine. Your city is under martial law
The more I hear from Sam Altman, the less inclined I am to believe that he is a serious person. (Or a smart one, for that matter.)
Jack Kirby story from 1959 ("I Fought the Colossus," Strange Tales # 72) predicts AI would be developed by 2020 and that one major fear would be that it would start giving the wrong answers to questions and "wreck civilization." Gotta love the 1950s giant mainframes.
What we are witnessing with air Canada is a complete breakdown in Canada's industrial relations regime. It's part of a trend that should be scaring the hell out of average people.
The union representing Air Canada’s flight attendants is defying the back-to-work order from the government and remaining on strike, at least temporarily, so… this will get interesting 👀
Even if you want to suggest that it’s not a conflict because her term ended 20 years ago… it looks TERRIBLE, right? I assume the Industrial Relations Board has more than one member - why not choose literally any other arbitrator?
Wait, have I got this right? The government of Canada didn’t just legislate striking flight attendants back to work after only a day but… they appointed Air Canada’s former senior counsel to arbitrate the dispute between Air Canada and the flight attendants?
a specific skill I've developed over the past ~20 years is crafting responses to emails sent to me, but intended for that other Naomi Wolf
Update: I think the squirrels are sending us a message. 😬
The neighborhood squirrels are up to something: 1) steal toys from my daughter’s water table 2) ? 3) profit!
“I don’t read comic books, I get laid” I read tons of comic books and get laid, so i just live a full life of joy and whimsy and I deny myself nothing
"stick to menswear"
It’s amazing how different siblings are, even as babies! My first would headbutt me in the teeth constantly. My second prefers eye gouging.
if only men had another demographic to talk to 😔
That’s not to say that I want TikTok or Instagram to send me a useless t-shirt. (It’d be nice if either platform paid me for anything, at any point, and also didn’t throttle the ads that I make.) But it *is* a reminder that I’m not even worth a t-shirt to them.
I’ve been on TikTok for 4 years and nearly half-a-million people follow me. And on Instagram and Facebook for 2 years with another half-million-plus combined followers. I have fewer than 6,000 subscribers on YouTube. But weirdly? This is the only thing that any of those platforms have ever sent me.
I am pretty sure that my 1 year old thinks that the sign for ‘more’ specifically means ‘more kisses’, and I’m ok with this.
Why is it always the ones you most suspect??
The Hockey Canada sex assault trial just ended with all the players acquitted. And it’s another reminder that an imperfect victim will almost never find justice. I’m not sure how you can claim to ‘find actual consent’ here, even if you think the accusations weren’t proven. What an awful outcome.
I understand the allure of wanting to be a "carry guns and wear leather jackets" Black Panther but there's a case to be made that the most dangerous ones were the "feed kids breakfast and teach them about settler colonialism" Black Panthers
Me: posts a video about childfree women being happier, healthier, and wealthier than married women with kids, where I also suggest that a lot of men encourage women to have kids for men’s own selfish reasons Some guy:
"i asked grok" "i asked chatgpt" yeah well i asked carl sagan and he said the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge 🧪
It *does* align with the general finding that women underestimate how important physical attractiveness is in a man.
The Dress (2015)
Having spent 20 years teaching in the community college system this is correct — I read so many things about how awful entitled college students are and my whole deal is trying to get my students to be MORE ENTITLED. I want them to stop accepting the junk they are given!
…fellas, do you need someone to explain how ‘hear me out’ works?
On the left is a post today from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. On the right is literal Nazi propaganda from the 1930s.
![@DHSgov on X: Remember your Homeland’s Heritage. New Life in a New Land - Morgan Weistling [Painting of a family]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:eppsmw5nfmdzhfeymtzd3xbe/bafkreifufhjor4i5ijjyh2cuswhmtmoybnr7rzjg3pdi6ow3udhtbuxhnu@jpeg "Click to view full size")
AI is not only awful it's also stupid and this is truly insane times we're living in
some days I feel like my baby doesn't care about my writing schedule at all
25 years ago today! I watched it 3 times in the first 5 days of its release, going every time any of my friends were going. (I generally never even watch a movie twice!) And it’s still my very favorite movie.
And to be clear, it was distracting for me because she’s so very right. And I don’t think we’re meant to be convinced by her argument. I think we’re supposed to find it admirable that he thinks and feels this way. But of course he does, he doesn’t understand fear or what it means to be threatened.
The one moment that really took me out of the movie was when Lois was gently chiding Clark for thinking people were good and everyone was beautiful because… yes, an all-powerful cis white dude can absolutely afford to be optimistic and naive about the world. Because he’s obscenely privileged.
I heard someone say that the new Superman movie is a Superman cartoon in live-action and that is 1) totally apt, and 2) a compliment.
I mean… kind of? He actually is conservative but his social media accounts are exaggerated and comedic.
Nick Adams is a conservative troll who plays a caricature of an Alpha Man for laughs. To be clear: he’s awful in real life but he’s also a comedian doing a bit on social media. That’s how he makes a living. And now he’s probably going to be an ambassador? What the actual fuck.
Of all the unqualified people Trump has nominate or appointed, this is maybe the stupidest?
Yesterday, I read a study that included a section about me. It described me as "middle-aged" and I was slightly offended. This afternoon, my lower-back spasmed when I placed some weights on the rack. I spent the next half-hour on the floor. Message received, "middle-aged" isn't entirely inaccurate
Parenting a toddler would be a lot easier if they weren't trying to do something that's likely to result in their death literally every 2 minutes.
More than half of the ads that I see on Scrabble are for a game that looks like… poverty porn? I don’t understand what the appeal is. Like, sometimes I can appreciate that it’s not for me but it’s for someone who a, b, or c. With this, though, I’m totally at a loss.
This whole thread is nightmare fuel.
These are all good questions!
I half-expect tweets to come with an AI-generated summary, at this point.
Playing the Scrabble app and asking myself the usual questions one does while playing Scrabble: -why is the acting so bad in this Solitaire ad? -how many times do I see this ad every day? -does she get paid per view? -what did I do to deserve two Vs? -how do I get hired to make a bad app ad?
I love this genre of engagement farming because it takes the impossible hypothetical SO SERIOUSLY. ‘If someone offered you 10 kajillion Blorks today or 5 blabillion Flarks every week for the rest of your life, take the Flarks!’ I’ll be sure to remember that, should someone ever make me that offer.
Just recorded and submitted my first audition, for a small part in an indie movie - with massive amounts of help from my wife, the professional actor! (If it’s any good, she deserves all the credit.)
My wife was anonymously quoted for this article about Americans who dated Canadians and ended up moving to Canada. 😂
“Haha I’m still young” I think as I consider which sleeve I should put on first, depending on which shoulder is acting up more in the moment.
I had this comic! (Maybe I still do? It would be in a box at the bottom of a closet, somewhere…)
Strange that this question is only being asked of the ladies... I only have one pro sports team that I love deeply. But in the end? We’re all just cheering for laundry.
So, there’s a gang of 3 cats on my street and the orange one is clearly the leader. They travel everywhere as a pack and I like to imagine that they meow with Hollywood wise guy accents.
When did Bryce Harper start looking like he suddenly turned 45??
An even better question: which direction is its head and which is… not?
This was a 2 year old video about the terrible graphic design of Canada’s passport, which was *just* hit with a violation by TikTok for… no stated reason. And there’s no opportunity to appeal, either. (I would say their CGV system is broken but that implies that it worked at some point.)
why is the president the only person testing the limits of his power? everyone should see what they can get away with. what if zookeepers gave helicopters to gorillas? nobody has tried this
It’s difficult to explain just how deeply disturbing I find this children’s puzzle from the dollar store. And the longer I look? The worse it gets.
Learn how to be an artist… from someone who couldn’t even be bothered to check the pamphlet for THE MOST OBVIOUS AI-generated errors
Your regular reminder that LLMs can only be trusted if you can fact-check them, which means already possessing the information that you’re looking for.
Some really strong “you can’t dump me - because I’m dumping you first!” energy here.
A student walked into class this afternoon and yelled ‘hit me with it’, unprompted. I never have to wonder if my students watch my videos. They always let me know. 😂
So glad I reached the 2.4K likes mark that is definitely a real and meaningful milestone worthy of noting in an update from TikTok (…now how about your process that appeal I filed a week ago?)
Failing to choose Charlie instead of Jagmeet is going to haunt the party for a long time. He was absolutely the right personality and populist for the moment.
I see that Trust Me Bro University also awards degrees in Making Things Up to women. How very progressive!
Me: Since I'm transferring files to my new computer, I should also reorganize them. Also me, 10 minutes later: This is hard, I'll just do it the next time I get a new computer.
So, TikTok removed a hashtag from one of my videos because it violated community standards. And the offending hashtag? #SexEd
I almost feel sorry for Matt Walsh when I read this. He really doesn’t believe that he’s good for anything other than a paycheck, that he provides nothing else of value to his family. And what’s even sadder is that he’s probably right. Because he’s also a hateful monster and buffoon.
There’s a special place in hell for people who design in-app ads that have a little X in the corner that you can never successfully click on the first try.
Nooooooo
The friend mentioned it! My therapist was a man in his 60s, so he had no idea I plagiarized it, probably 😂
A very short cryptomnesia storytime: Years ago, I told a friend about a therapy session where I thought I had a really poetic insight into the end of a relationship. Her response? ‘That’s my favorite line from All Too Well.’ That’s right. I was taking credit for a Taylor Swift lyric.
So I started to type out a response... then checked the sender's address, which was from Gmail. And included a typo. ...better luck next time?
The scammers almost got me! I got an email from "Meta Support" threatening account deletion that referenced a copyright infringement complaint. And normally? I would've ignored it. But (by coincidence?) it arrived hours after a video actually WAS pulled down for the same reason. It felt real!
I have been beckoned. Tell my family I love them.
Look, I am not a violent man… but I think that every man who answered ‘no’ should be entered into a random draw. And the winner gets to learn whether he’s right. (Spoiler: he’s not.)
Whoever coined and/or popularized it clearly didn’t value thoughtfulness or subtlety.
Anyway, I'm not certain I'll ever find traction on YouTube if the algorithm sees me as an account to recommend as a hate-follow. (I will also continue to avoid those comment fields.) /end
My theory? They don't show my videos to people who like them. The demographic data certainly shows that they don't push my Shorts to the same audience that I have elsewhere. Worse, I think they actually show them to a lot of people who *hate* my videos - because those are the people who comment. /3
But this isn't because I'm posting bad videos. They wouldn't do as well as they do on every other platform if they were bad! /2
I was in a YouTube Creators Community meeting yesterday and one of the metrics that we were told is particularly important is the % of people who swipe away in the first 5 seconds. You want that to be below 5%, apparently. My rate on YouTube Shorts? 33%. Yikes. /1
Studies of men absolutely show the same correlation between the number of sexual partners and the likelihood you’re in a LTR, have ever married, or divorced, you absolute buffoon.
I still adore TLJ and just wish they’d handed the next movie to someone who was actually going to do work with what TLJ was trying to do 🤷♂️
You are correct. It was ruthless.
I’m sure that this is correct - a lot of casual fans will be more inclined to see it. But it’s at the expense of a lot of good will from the Marvel Zombies who waited a few days.
This is the first time I wanted to make a funny video response to something and just… couldn’t. It’s already too pathetic. Mocking this would feel like kicking the winner of the world’s ugliest dog.
At the risk of spoiling the ending of Thunderbolts*… i figured they’d wait a couple weeks before renaming it. But revealing the twist at the end after opening weekend? Seems like an excellent way to piss off a lot of people.
The Venn diagram of men who are convinced that they bear the weight of the world and men who can’t do their own laundry or clean their bathroom is a perfect circle.
Conservatives: Leftists and progressives are the word police! Also conservatives: We’re closely monitoring your work and if you use these words your career is over:
Anyway, it remains true that most of the NDP vote in ridings where their support collapsed went to the Liberals. But it’s also clear that in a lot ridings, an alarming amount went to the Conservatives instead - a majority, even. And that’s a problem that needs to be acknowledged and addressed. /end