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Saw Jaws at IMAX yesterday. There were several genuine squeals of fright from the 12 year old next to me and a few night terrors as a result, so it still has it! Despite whispering "that looks fake" and the constant "is that person going to get eaten?"

A masterclass in film making. I.e. how to take a ridiculous premise, an incomplete script and myriad technical issues and turn it into the highest grossing film of its time. Which, ironically, was also the case with the film that superseded it in box office gross two years later (perhaps in that case not so much down to the skill of the director as an exceptional cast and crew).

Straight after the movie I went to see a few bands at local pub: Bossk + Outlander.

I had vaguely heard of Bossk before. Somewhat post-metallish. Decent, if not life changing. Will pick up the latest bandcamp release.  Outlander was a bit too soft and non-descript although I had liked what I listened to beforehand.

NP: Heavy Meta - Mana Regmata

 

 

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Local cops really are pigs.

One of my wife's clients was scheduled to witness in a domestic violence case (she is the victim).

Two days before the court appearance, two men break into her house and beat her up so badly she ends up in hospital with internal injuries (though she is conscious).  As she is in hospital with serious injuries, she has missed her court appearance today.

The cops have not taken any statement from her and to make matters worse are now making rumblings that she will be arrested for failing to turn up to court!

This isn't the first time cops have been harassing domestic violence victims.  Not the first time they've not wanted to take statements.  My wife's been in police stations with the victims and watched the cops try to avoid taking statements.  She has to argue with them to take statements from her clients.

Cops are also violating court orders - they tried to arrest another victim due to an administrative error at the court even though they knew it was an administrative error (my wife pulled strings to have the court fix up the error and the head cop full on argued with my wife the cops were within their rights).

 

Again enforces my belief that cops are just thugs with badges.  Also goes to show that female rights are still not entrenched in the Australian justice system.

 

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37 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

All cops are bastards...until the day I need them, is the full hashtag

I've called the cops on several occasions and they either never showed up or they did nothing.

In first instances there was a big loud domestic dispute at a neighbours where one person was threatening to shoot another.  The cops didn't turn up.  Luckily the neighbours managed to sort it themselves

In second instance, I could see two guys trashing the petrol station next door.  I called the cops and they never turned up.

Also called them for a burglary at one of our facilities.  Cop literally said it was a waste of time doing anything but took prints whilst fagging away and cigarette ash falling all over the area he was dusting!  He said he was there for insurance processes.

Oh and I know at least 3 drunk drivers they let go instead of charging - my brother, my best mate and myself..  

My wife used to work in another part of the justice system in the magistrates court.  The cops were lazy - they sometimes didn't collect statements from witnesses for several months and they certainly didn't bother filling in paper work.  Apparently their KPI was number of charges laid, not convictions.

 

 

Cops are a waste of space and an illusion of security.  My dad said the cops are there to keep honest people honest and that's it.

 

 

 

32 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

And if I need them best be a white male otherwise forget about it. America isn’t the only Country where racism and misogyny are as normal as corruption in “law enforcement”.

Exactly.

My wife has said the cops are especially nasty and unhelpful with victims of domestic violence if they're Asian women married to Australian men.  They apparently view them as mail order brides and gold diggers.  

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When my kids were growing up and they carried on with such negative crap where they labelled entire groups of people as shit (or anything else) based on the efforts of a few I'd send them out to shovel cow shit around the gardens for half an hour and then ask them for 5 things in the world that weren't shit before they could stop.

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3 hours ago, KillaKukumba said:

So with all these mountains available it should be easy to get a percentage of cops who fit into those categories. Lets see the percentages.

 

Back in the 1990s they got a guy from Scotland to reform the NSW police force which was extremely corrupt.  He was asked in an interview if he would sack all the corrupt cops.  He answered if he did that he would be left without a police force.

 

My own experience is local cops don't care and are lazy. The stories coming from my wife who works in the system and has done for many years leads me to conclude mot only are they lazy and don't care but they are also somewhat mysoginstic and somewhat racist.

 

As for corruption who knows.  Their shit attitude to paperwork and due process could be hiding some corruption.

 

After working 16 years in an increasingly inefficient and corrupt health bureaucracy I have realised that chaos and inefficiency actually work in a lot of people's favour even if it doesn't meet the goals of the organisation.

 

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65000 cops in the country in 2021

478 notices of corruption and increase of 62% from the previous year.

Even taking into account that some cases wont be recorded, or recorded yet, that's far from a majority figure.

No one would deny that there aren't and haven't been problem coppers, fuck me try driving a truck through QLD in the 80's, but the comment was that the majority of cops were either corrupt or bigots. I imagine proving bigotry numbers in cops would be as hard to find as in every other human but it's still extremely hard to make a case for 'majority' being corrupt.

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62% increase in reports of police corruption over the 2020/21 period of which more then 300 required direct intervention by the anti corruption authority. Those are just the reported cases. How’s that for a start. Next shall we book at me disparity between people of colour dying in custody compared with white people? How about reports of violence perpetrated by police against people of colour? This information isn’t exactly hard to find.

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8 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

62% increase in reports of police corruption over the 2020/21 period of which more then 300 required direct intervention by the anti corruption authority. Those are just the reported cases. How’s that for a start. Next shall we book at me disparity between people of colour dying in custody compared with white people? How about reports of violence perpetrated by police against people of colour? This information isn’t exactly hard to find.

You should write for Murdoch.

62% looks huge, but the total case numbers still doesn't get close to 'majority' that was claimed. To get close to a majority and we'd need something like 33,000 cases of corruption and that wouldn't take into account cases were a single cop is charged with multiple counts.

 

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You’ll note I said corrupt or bigots. People of colour are statistically more likely to be stopped by and subjected to violence by police, and to die in custody. Then you have the officers driven out by corruption because they can’t stand the corruption. If enough cops are a problem that entire communities of people inherently distrust them surely that says a  lot?

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If the coos are anything like the medical profession they protect their own to minimise 

Also Australian systems are awesomely designed to obfuscate and limit transparency,accountability and responsibility.

Again I work with this all the time.  You wouldn't believe how much corruption and nepotism and negligence occurs yet it is all done through due process but with sloppy paperwork.

 

We make it so hard for patients or their families to complain.  And what complaints get through are literally wahsed away with generic form letters and no action 

 

You could kill patients and get away with it.  The Lonnie hospital has done this on numerous occassions (as shown on 4 Corners)  they covered for a known pedophile for 20 years.

 

----

 

Also I never said the locals cops were all corrupt.  Rather they are lazy and don't care and a bit mysoginstic and racist.  Not all but judging by both my own and my wife's interactions (hers are everyday) they are somewhat misogynistic and racist.

 

Stats are misleading.  Context is critical and often what isn't covered by them is just as important as what is.

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All beaurocratic systems are designed to obfuscate and limit transparency, accountability and responsibility. It's human nature. You can't have groups or agencies or institutions responsible for policing and regulating and disciplining themselves, it just doesn't work they're always going to let themselves off the hook.

As far as police corruption and bigotry is concerned I direct you to the novel/film Serpico from the 1970's. True story of an honest man who joined the force with the best intentions, just a regular guy who wanted to do a good job at being a cop. The corruption and bigotry was so ingrained within the institution of the NYPD that they made it virtually impossible for him to just mind his own business and do the right thing. They needed to indoctrinate all the new cops into being a part their corrupt system in order for them all to be able to stay safe and protected. He resisted and that's a problem they just can't allow, anyone who won't go along is a threat to their system. So of course they came after him hard and it got violent, they weren't taking no for an answer. He became an outcast in a job where you need that bond of brotherhood and you need your fellow officers to come and back you up in tense and dangerous situations. Most people just don't have the stones or the backbone to resist that kind of intense pressure and stick to their ideals. No one wants to be ostracized. People naturally want to belong and go along and become part of that brotherhood. So you can easily end up with a system where everyone is corrupt or at least is willing to look the other way and excuse their brothers' corruption which makes them corrupt as well. 

Official statistics on corruption within any particular police force are essentially worthless because you're asking all the corrupt criminals to inform on themselves. Any official statistics are only going to reveal the tip of the iceberg. Obviously ALL cops aren't corrupt (probably) but corruption is like a disease that metastasizes and spreads. Once it gains a foothold it can become rampant and pervasive very easily.

Bigotry works in much the same way. People can be indoctrinated into thinking this way at a young age and by the time they're teenagers they'll just see it as normal. This is what all that talk the last decade or so about "institutional racism" is about. Individuals don't even have to go out of their way to be overtly racist and they might not even think of themselves as bigots because they might have just been indoctrinated into thinking it's totally normal to think and be that way toward certain groups of people since birth without even realizing it's wrong.

Deadovic made a comment the other day about how it seemed that 80's metal dudes were quite homophobic. I would suggest that simply reflects how society's general outlook on things was very different back then. It was very commonplace and still fairly acceptable to use racial and homosexual slurs back then 40 years ago, and certainly not just within the metal community. That's just how it was in 1984. And it's still pretty commonplace, people just realize it's not socially acceptable to say this kind of shit in public anymore so they'll censor themselves according to who they're with and who might be within earshot. 

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On 9/2/2022 at 10:16 PM, FatherAlabaster said:

I'm conflicted, or maybe I can just see different sides of it. And I suppose I'm not so much talking about the broad digital vs. analog debate as I am these newer AI tools that generate some pretty compelling custom images from verbal prompts. There's no barrier to entry anymore. Part of me hates it. I'm staunchly against using it for my own stuff because the joy and self-exploration of visualizing things is the reason I make art in the first place. Actually producing the stuff isn't really the fun part. And thinking about a mass of AI-produced art dominating everyone's visual experiences, or weakening people's abilities to visualize things on their own, makes me feel a bit hopeless.

On the other hand I think a large proportion of band illustrations and book covers and similar stuff could be handled by software like this, quickly and cheaply and well. So many bands just want something that looks cool that maybe has something to do with their lyrics, and they can't afford to pay a whole bunch. It doesn't matter who made it or if it exists as an object somewhere. I'd have a problem with someone passing it off as their own creation, because that seems like lying. But if x up-and-coming band wants a pile of skulls in a pit surrounded by demon boobs on their album cover and they can't afford Paolo Girardi, well, have at it? Maybe? 

Late to the party on this. I remembered seeing the post and a bunch of replies and it seems too massive a subject to just gloss over, this AI in art business.

I briefly had a look at some of the AI art videos and it is terrifying in terms of its potential. 

Got me thinking that it is not a giant leap from AI static images to having a whole movie produced by AI, based initially on some human direction. If you can create a character from text cues, why not - once a character is created - say "ok now have the character walk down a street in Berlin 1945 and get into a fight with a cthulhu worshipping elephant."

AI will be making the movies, at least the visual aspects and potentially writing scripts too that are engineered for maximum emotional impact.

Next - or before that - comes music being produced by AI. There are no boundaries. How do we know that GG's goat metal isn't already produced by AI according to text cue "filthy war metal with HM2 tone and satanic lyrics... and also make the album cover with a goat and titties on it please" ?

Movie soundtracks would be an obvious task for AI.

The singularity comes pretty soon after the first full AI movie is released. For a short period there may be a time when all TV programming is bespoke shows made according to your personal preference. 

 

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2 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

"ok now have the character walk down a street in Berlin 1945 and get into a fight with a cthulhu worshipping elephant."

Gotta admit, I'd watch this.

2 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

"filthy war metal with HM2 tone and satanic lyrics... and also make the album cover with a goat and titties on it please"

And would probably buy this.

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