Tag: Comment

Helix Comics

comment left at Comics Worth Reading’s post, The Helix Titles That Live On; Time Breakers Crowdfunding

Interesting: I think Sheva’s War and The Dome: Ground Zero were the only ones I picked up at the time. I might even still have Sheva’s War in a box somewhere, though I don’t remember anything at all about The Dome.

I read Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse as a TPB, but I’m not sure what imprint it was by that time. Transmet, of course, I discovered after it moved to Vertigo.

Of the rest, only Cyberella rings a bell, but when I read about the Time Breakers collection, I immediately thought 2 things: “Why didn’t I notice this when it was new?” And “I have to buy it now!”

In retrospect, it’s weird to me that I skipped most of the Helix line. But I think I was still mostly reading superhero comics at the time.

Having an open mind doesn’t mean believing both sides equally or disbelieving them both equally.

Comment on this guest post at This is True: What’s Good for the Goose

Having an open mind doesn’t mean believing both sides equally or disbelieving them both equally. It means looking at evidence and actually *thinking* about what is being said, what is being done, and what else is happening.

If one “side” promotes unfounded accusations (i.e. conspiracy theories) and the other “side” calls them on it, those aren’t equivalent.

If one “side” marches when an election doesn’t go their way and the other “side” violently threatens or attacks the legislature to overturn an election that doesn’t go their way, those aren’t equivalent.

If one “side” complains about propaganda in an election they lost, and the other “side” insists without evidence (unless you count the claims that have been repeatedly laughed out of court) that the votes in an election they lost were somehow faked, those aren’t equivalent.

Sure, don’t trust reflexively – but don’t dismiss reflexively either. Automatically rejecting “both sides” isn’t critical thinking, it’s just another way of reassuring yourself that you’re right.

Flickr Commons and Facial Recognition

Comments on @angeldan’s Flickr post reacting to the NYTimes article on Flickr Commons photos being used to train facial recognition software and the initial reaction of how dare they use our photos for this?

FWIW, it was Yahoo that did this, and they no longer own Flickr.

Also, if they only used photos that were licensed for creative commons or commercial use…well, that’s what those licenses are for, right? Pre-emptively giving others permission to use the work under specific terms without them having to ask?

…

A. The thing is, you have to make an effort to choose a Creative Commons license for your photos. And the licenses are short, and go out of their way to explain what they do. It’s not the default, and it’s not 40 pages of legalese that you’re required to click through just to use the service. Now, if Yahoo used photos that *weren’t* licensed to allow reuse, then that’s another story.

More concerning, IMO, is whether the *subjects* of the photos would have agreed to this use. Not an issue with identifying trees, birds, cars, etc. – the original Flickr Commons collection wasn’t specific to people – but definitely an issue with the face recognition projects, and that’s where things like the Illinois biometrics law come in.

B. Yeah, the uses that the tech has been put to are in many cases creepy, unethical, and dangerous. That’s always a problem with tech. We often don’t anticipate the ways people will abuse it, and that’s something that we need to do more of. That’s a *huge* discussion in the tech world right now, and one that needs to be examined more closely, from as many angles as possible.

But is this *Flickr’s* breach of trust?
1. It was Flickr’s former parent company that made the original collection, using images that users had specifically assigned creative commons licenses.
2. It was a team at the University of Washington that narrowed it down to the images of faces, created the MegaFace dataset, and encouraged groups building facial recognition technology to use it for training and testing.
3. It’s still other companies that have been actually using the tech.

Similar to my own thoughts on the portal Equifax set up for people to check.

Equifax compromise and their insecure response

Similar to my own thoughts on the portal Equifax set up for people to check.

Just enter your name and 2/3 of your SSN into this brand new website that you can’t verify actually belongs to Equifax, and we’ll tell you if you’ve been pwned!

It really is Equifax as far as I can tell, but the way it’s set up sets off a ton of red flags and will train people to ignore those flags on actual phishing attacks.

Demonizing Rent’s Benny vs. Lionizing Hamilton’s Alexander

My comment on GeekDad’s Demonizing Rent’s Benny vs. Lionizing Hamilton’s Alexander.

Great analysis! I recently picked up the Rent soundtrack again after letting it sit for a while and found that my perspective has changed over the years.

I was thinking about Benny vs. Aaron Burr the other day: Benny’s the designated villain because he’s on the other side of the conflict from the rest of the main cast. Personal flaws aside, he’s not evil, he just has different priorities. But the show clearly presents him as the bad guy.

Hamilton literally has Aaron Burr *call himself* the villain, but the show does so much to humanize him that it’s hard to read him that way. (At least as far as the cast album goes.) Antagonist, yes. Opponent, absolutely. But he’s presented much more sympathetically than Benny, even though he actually kills the hero.

Angsty Superheroes

Comments on Mary Sue: Daredevil v Batman v Superman: Getting Angst Right in the Superhero Genre

I’d like to think that the general popularity of Daredevil amongst comic book/superhero fans should make it clear that fans who aren’t thrilled about the dark tone of Man of Steel (and the implied dark tone of Batman v. Superman) aren’t all just afraid of having grown-up superhero stories, but that grimness and darkness fit some characters better than others. (YMMV as to which characters they fit.)

But then the complementary tones of Flash and Arrow don’t seem to get that across either, and they actually make meta-references about it in the shows.

I’m *hoping* that once DC’s cinematic universe branches out, they’ll break things up tonally as well (like they’re doing with the DC & Vertigo TV shows), but it’s hard to be confident when they’re presenting the launchpad movie as doubling down on the angst.

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Challenger

Comment on I Remember Where I was When the Challenger Blew Up

I was in elementary school, outside, so it must have been during recess, when a classmate said something like, “Did you hear what happened? The space shuttle blew up!” I don’t remember how he found out, or when I first watched the video, but I remember that moment.

Strangely, I can’t remember how I *found out* about Columbia, even though I blogged about my reaction to the news. #

No Coincidences

Comment on PAD’s Coincidence in Fiction

I love the take on Les Miserables. I’ve been re-reading the book, and the coincidences are just astonishing.

Things like Cosette starting to give up on Marius and catching a glimpse of a soldier, who just happens to be Marius’ cousin. The Thenardiers’ younger sons are taken in by a former servant of Marius’ grandfather, then get lost and picked up by Gavroche.

My favorite is probably the point at which one of Thenardier’s associates decides to mug some random guy who turns out to be Jean Valjean, on the street outside Marius’ friend’s house, while Gavroche is watching from the bushes.

There actually is a part in the novel where Eponine is manipulating various groups of people. The question is, should that be worked into Valjean’s sister’s spy network? Or is she an opposing force? Hmm…

Note: same ground mostly covered in Padded and No Such Thing as Coincidence

Delicious Retreat

Comment on A Delicious Retreat: Early Sharing Pioneer Announces Feature Downgrade

I get the impression that they tried to be Pinterest and then realized that they couldn’t keep up, and figured it would be better to focus on their strenghts than be a third-rate Pinterest clone.

The fact that they added Facebook integration at the same time as announcing the cancellation of stacks suggests that they’re aiming to be a repository for link sharing on other social services. Searching your Twitter stream or Facebook timeline (or Google+ page, or Tumblr, etc) for a particular link you posted three months ago is a pain. Searching for it on Delicious is…well, at least possible, though it’s better if you take the time to tag your links once in a while.

That of course goes away if FB or Twitter realize that people might want to look at their old stuff and improve their own search…except for people who use more than one social service. Or *have* used more than one social service over time. Aggregating those shares in one place could be useful, and might even turn out to be a niche worth filling.

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Mitochondrial Eve

Comment in response to The 10 Most Successful Failures in Geekdom

Apologies in advance for the nitpicking, but this is one of those things that Just Bugs Me(tm), and it seems to come up every time the BSG finale is mentioned.

The “Mitochondrial Eve” concept doesn’t mean everyone else died out. It’s finding a common ancestor based on the fact that we only inherit mitochondria from our mothers.

Start with two families. One has all girls, or a mix of girls and boys. The other has all boys. The mother who has girls? Her grandchildren will inherit her mitochondria. The mother who has all boys? Her mitochondrial line will disappear, even if she has more grandchildren than the first.

One character being Mitochondrial Eve doesn’t mean every other family died out. It just means that over time, each other line had at least one generation of all boys.

Tunguska Event

comment on the post “Flash Facts: Tunguska Event“:

I remember my first encounter with the Tunguska event was in The New Teen Titans, with the origin of Red Star. The weird thing is, I went back later and reread the issues with him and the story never actually states that the incident involved was the Tunguska event!

I must have thought of the origin story when I first read about the real event, and connected them in my mind to the extent that I was convinced the story had specifically referred to it!

Pegg as Scotty

comment on the post “Trekkies Petition To Remove Pegg as Scotty”:

Scotty, misanthrope with a core of rage? I don’t think so.

Now, on first viewing, I’ll admit, Scotty in the film seemed a bit off from what I remembered. Oddly enough, though I rewatched an episode of the original series a few days later (I forget which one), and I was struck by how similar James Doohan’s performance was to Simon Pegg’s (or, rather, the other way around).

They don’t look particularly alike, but the acting matched, down to facial expressions. Especially if you take into account that in TOS, you see Scotty after he’s been the respected chief engineer for however-many years, and in the new movie, you see him as a young officer who’s spent the last 6 months in an isolated station with only one person for company, with whom he doesn’t get along.

The Horton Grand

comment on the post “San Diego Comic Con Reflections, Part One“:

My wife and I were also at the Horton Grand. I absolutely agree on that hotel — it’s fantastic.

Except for the fact that we were in a second-floor room that looked out onto Fourth, and the windows didn’t block much sound, so we could hear drunken revelers, motorcycles, and stretch Hummers idling below our window into the late hours of the night.

I wasn’t aware it was supposed to be haunted. I think I would have preferred the ghosts to the street view.