BI BUCK CONFIRMED FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Mom, the princess is flirting with her hotel manager again!"

-- some cannibal kid, probably

happy valentines 💖💕🌸

There's a super famous singing festival in italy that airs for a week every year. This year, one of the singers, Ghali, did some very remarkable things on that stage. Ghali was born in Italy from Tunisian parents, his career has been going on for a while, but this was his first time on that stage.

He made a song where he references Palestine where he sings: "how can you say everything is fine down here, where in order to trace borders with imaginary lines you bomb an hospital, for a piece of land or for a piece of bread there is no peace" . He also did a medley, singing also in arabic for the first time in the history of the festival.

Last night, during the final, he ended his performance asking to "stop the genocide!" I don't have to tell you that there's absolutely nothing pro-Palestine on italian media... and he used the biggest stage he could use to say that.

Today on a tv programme he was accused by the Isra*li ambassador of spreading hate and violence, to which he replied with those words in the following video (credits to the person who translated it here):

The italian TV broadcaster quickly posted a press release to distance themselves from this speech and to reiterate their whole support to Isr*el lol Towards the end of this tv programme, a few hours after Ghali said what you can hear in this video, they read the press release out loud. This is how Isra*li propaganda works everywhere, thanks to the complicity of our governments.

Just want to post about him because he really risked it all and I appreciate him incredibly for everything he did...if only everyone could do the same. And fuck italy and its fascist government.

If you saw the photo of the child hanging in the rubble with her legs blown off, this is her.

Their names are Amouna and Suazanna Hasouna. May they rest in peace

Just normal Sanremo things

russel crowe si sarebbe vestito direttamente da papera come i ballerini e avrebbe fatto il ballo del qua qua di sua spontanea volontà e avrebbe fatto proiettare il video a times square per minimo un mese

Prego

PADRE GHALI

Dumb idea i had

Italy's JANNIK SINNER celebrates victory against Russia's Daniil Medvedev during their men's singles final match on day 15 of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 28, 2024.

📸:MARTIN KEEP/AFP via Getty Images

Eurovision is allowing Israel to participate despite its ongoing genocide against Palestinians.

Boycott Eurovision.

Do not watch it. Do not support it.

That’s the way it happened, your honor

In light of recent events: snooji <3

WE LIVE IN A HELL WORLD

Snippets from the article by Karissa Bell:

SAG-AFTRA, the union representing thousands of performers, has struck a deal with an AI voice acting platform aimed at making it easier for actors to license their voice for use in video games. ...

the agreements cover the creation of so-called “digital voice replicas” and how they can be used by game studios and other companies. The deal has provisions for minimum rates, safe storage and transparency requirements, as well as “limitations on the amount of time that a performance replica can be employed without further payment and consent.”

Notably, the agreement does not cover whether actors’ replicas can be used to train large language models (LLMs), though Replica Studios CEO Shreyas Nivas said the company was interested in pursuing such an arrangement. “We have been talking to so many of the large AAA studios about this use case,” Nivas said. He added that LLMs are “out-of-scope of this agreement” but “they will hopefully [be] things that we will continue to work on and partner on.”

...Even so, some well-known voice actors were immediately skeptical of the news, as the BBC reports. In a press release, SAG-AFTRA said the agreement had been approved by "affected members of the union’s voiceover performer community." But on X, voice actors said they had not been given advance notice. "How has this agreement passed without notice or vote," wrote Veronica Taylor, who voiced Ash in Pokémon. "Encouraging/allowing AI replacement is a slippery slope downward." Roger Clark, who voiced Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2, also suggested he was not notified about the deal. "If I can pay for permission to have an AI rendering of an ‘A-list’ voice actor’s performance for a fraction of their rate I have next to no incentive to employ 90% of the lesser known ‘working’ actors that make up the majority of the industry," Clark wrote.

SAG-AFTRA’s deal with Replica only covers a sliver of the game industry. Separately, the union is also negotiating with several of the major game studios after authorizing a strike last fall. “I certainly hope that the video game companies will take this as an inspiration to help us move forward in that negotiation,” Crabtree said.

And here are some various reactions I've found about things people in/adjacent to this can do

And in OTHER AI games news, Valve is updating it's TOS to allow AI generated content on steam so long as devs promise they have the rights to use it, which you can read more about on Aftermath in this article by Luke Plunkett