Walrusbanana
LightNews LightNews
banner
walrusbanana.bsky.social
Walrusbanana
@walrusbanana.bsky.social
220 followers 1.6K following 380 posts
Solar punk is the way 🌱🌞

https://icelist.info/

ALT Profile: oil painting of a walrus with bananas as tusks.
Avatar: close up of a walrus’ face
Posts Replies Media Videos
walrusbanana.bsky.social
Senator Tommy Tuberville just posted this on Truth Social
Truth social screenshot of Senator Tuberville’s post that reads: Caption: I am headed to the Senate Floor to once again talk about RADICAL ISLAM. This isn't just an issue in the Middle East...it is in our own backyards, just waiting to ATTACK. I won't stop fighting until America WAKES UP to the threat of Islam. Poster, white background, red all caps text: SHUT DOWN SHARIA
November 5, 2025 at 5:31 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
On Truth Social getting my life and saw this.😌
Screenshot of truth social post by Lorena @lorenak Caption reads: Here's your leader, #nyc. You deserve each other. Poster reads: COMMIE MANDANI FUNDED BY BILLIONAIRE SOROS Wants to Defund Police. End cash Bail. Empty the Prisons. Legalize Prostitution: Ban Private Property: Ban Private Business. Take Over Grocery Stores. Destroy all Production. DESTROY CAPITALISM. HE WILL DESTROY CITY SERVICES, SCHOOLS, HOSPITALS, AND BUSINESSES.
November 5, 2025 at 5:11 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
Good to know 4 year olds can use the Indeed app!
Screenshot of the indeed app on the Apple App Store. The ages for the app indicates 4+ years.
October 6, 2025 at 4:45 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
Reading this has made me want to do a larger write up of why this is a totally destructive direction but while technology has always been a part of the film industry, which btw VFX companies have been using AI for a decade, making a well made film does require a lot of experts and crafts people
to visual effects, sound mixing, editing, production, and script writing in search of efficiencies. A recent study surveying 300 leaders across the entertainment industry estimated that Al will affect more than 200,000 jobs over three years, especially roles in visual effects and post-production, which focus on editing and finalizing content. MOST EXPENSIVE MOVIES OF ALL TIME ESTIMATED PRODUCTION BUDGETS, ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION, IN 2025 DOLLARS Cleopatra 1983 Jotn Corter 2012 SUSOM SaTeM Avengers: Endome 2019 Avengers: Age of Ultron 2015 Avator: The Way of Water 2022 Justice Leogue 2017 Fost X 2023 tonitor SUASM $423M 5392M $390M In the lead-up to the Oscars earlier this year, The Brutalist and Emilia Perez ignited controversy over their use of Al to enhance actors' voices (even with their blessing). But it's not that simple. Where some see an existential threat, others see innovation - an opportunity to lower the barriers to entry and democratize a field once reserved for the Hollywood elite and their offspring. Consider the multiple ways Al is already shaking up the industry: • The Tom Hanks and Robin Wright movie Here used Metaphysic's "aging" and "de-aging" technology to follow their characters over different stages of their lives. Studios otherwise would have hired multiple actors, relied on makeup artists, or used a small army of VEX artists at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. • An increasing reliance on tools such as Iruesnyc, which can manipulate the movement of performers' lips to accommodate dubbing in different lanquages s expected to lower demane for mumngua voice actors • Actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry put an $800 million studio expansion on hold after seeing OpenAl's Sora and realizing he might not have to travel to locations or build sets. Even if Sora, which generates short video clips based on written prompts, isn't yet good enough for Hollywood studios, it's just a matter of time. • With Luma Al's latest tool, according to the LA Times, "a hoodie becomes a superhero cape, a sunny street turns snowy, a person transtorms into a talking banana or a medieval knight. No green screen, no VFX team, no code." • The directors of Marvel's Avengers: Endgame plan to build a high-tech studio and craft Al tools to make films with smaller budgets. If they're successful, Al will be used to empower artists, rather than displace them. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who founded DreamWorks with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen more than three decades ago, captured the industry's attention in 2023 when he predicted that Al could cut the cost of animated films by 90%. Katzenberg is familiar with technological shocks. He was a pioneer in the animation revolution in the 1990s sparked by the advent of computer graphics and the success of Pixar's Toy Story. Today he sees promise amid the tumult, with Al accelerating a new wave of storytelling innovation. "I don't believe it's the end of Hollywood," he told Bloomberg. "Will it function the way it has in the past? Absolutely not." Now Pixar is the one feeling the heat. OpenAl and Vertigo Films plan to wrap an Al-driven animated feature called Critterz after nine months of production, in time for the Cannes Film Festival in May. Only a couple dozen people are working on it, and the budget is less than $30 million - 80% cheaper than a typical animated movie. Crossroads History is clear. Technological breakthroughs create short-term disruption and painful job losses but also unleash lower production costs, creative ideas, bold new businesses, and, over the long term, a net increase in employment. In the car industry, automation destroyed jobs on the factory floor. But we didn't envision the new jobs that building heated seats and car stereos would create down the road. In 1999 the average cost of developing and launching an e-commerce site was $1 million. Today you can set up a decent website for around $5,000. Your investment is 99.5% less, and you're entering a market that's more than 40 times bigger. Hollywood will follow a similar path as Al opens the door to independent filmmakers. You won't need tens of millions of dollars and Hollywood connections to produce a movie of theatrical quality. Ben Affleck is right: Al will make it easier for outsiders with compelling scripts to produce the next Good Will Hunting. Corporate Ozempic Al has become the Ozempic of the corporate world. While GLP-1 medicines switch off the signal in your brain that you need to eat more, Al suppresses the appetite to hire more, reducing companies' cravings for the protein of human capital. Hollywood is no different. Al will create new roles and elevate the careers of those who learn to leverage it successfully, but jobs will vanish. The collision between Hollywood and Silicon Valley signals the end of the blockbuster and the industry as we know it. The younger Ellison wants to bring the best of Southern and Northern California together. In this case, the "togetherness" is Northern California invading the city of Angels. Like most wars, the battle is over before it starts, based on which side has more brute force. Picture Iger, Zaslav, SAG-AFTRA, and 50%+ of the creative community hunkering down behind Chateau Marmont, armed with squirt guns.
September 27, 2025 at 1:31 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
@profgalloway.com this is comparing apples and iPhones. The labor involved in making a movie is actual labor, the film industry has historically worked on thin margins and has acted thin, balancing the needs of the studio and unions. The last thing any of us want is AI slop.
For David and Larry Ellison, the credits of The Fantastic Four: First Steps are the best part of the film. Specifically, they are the opportunity: The scrolling list of more than 3,000 cast and crew members is a sign of an industry ripe for disruption. The Marvel movie's staff - from visual effects artists and animators to costume designers and location scouts - is bigger than the entire workforce of Lyft or Reddit. The Ellisons, who are now one of the most powerful media and entertainment families in history, are the kid in The Sixth Sense. They see dead people. They don't care if Hollywood is ready for Al. Al is ready for Hollywood. HEADCOUNT FOR THE FANTASTIC FOUR VS. SELECT COMPANIES (graphic bar comparing headcount between a film and tech companies) Powerful Multiplier David Ellison, the Silicon Valley scion who bought Paramount Global with a sliver of his father's $349 billion fortune and is now pursuing a much bigger bid to acquire Warner Bros., is keen to drive the Al transformation. Buying Warner would combine two of the most storied movie studios and two major streaming services, Paramount+ and HBO Max. A deal announced by the White House gives Larry Ellison's tech company, Oracle, a stake in the new American TikTok, along with oversight of the app's algorithm for U.S. users. It also endows the family with more influence on our youth than anybody who doesn't live in the same home... and their bond with President Trump means they're unlikely to face any resistance. On Day 1 as CEO of Paramount, David Ellison outlined his vision to shake up the company by investing in "high-quality storytelling and cutting-edge technology." Adorable. He tried to assuage Hollywood's concerns and barely mentioned Al. "Technology is not - and never will be - a replacement for human creativity," he said. "Rather, it serves as a powerful multiplier. I wonder if lions sitting in the reeds, identifying their next meal, think of themselves as "powerful multipliers"? In the 50 days since he took over, Ellison has gone on a spending spree, providing some hope to a nervous Hollywood. Cool Stuff Paramount won an auction for the big-screen reunion of Timothée Chalamet and James Mangold, the star and director of the Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown, and lured the Stranger Things creators from Netflix with the promise of delivering large-scale theatrical films. The company also plans to expand its annual movie output to 20 films from 8. Veteran producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura told the New York Times that Ellison "wants to do cool stuff. That sounds very basic, but underneath it all 'making cool stuff" is the Hollywood dream." Spoiler alert: Don't count on a feel-good Hollywood ending for many/most of the crew members whose names appear in the credits of The Fantastic Four and other blockbusters. In his wider bid to take on Netflix and YouTube, Ellison is aiming for at least $2 billion in cost efficiencies and synergies (Latin for layoffs). The upshot will probably be as many as 3,000 job cuts. THE WORLD'S IO WEALTHIEST INDIVIDUALS INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY RETAIL I DIVERSIFIED AS OF SEPT. 26, 2025 Bon Musk Larry Elison Mark Zuckerberg Joff Bozos Lory Pose Sergey Brin Steve Balmer Bernard Arnout Jensen Huang Worren Buffett $263B $241B $216B $202B $1748 $1678 $1548 $149B SOURCE: BLOOMBERG BILLIONARES INDEX $464B $3408 Riding the Al Wave Every (surviving) studio owner will rely on Al, which is reinventing the way movies are made, to generate content more quickly and cheaply. But David Ellison isn't just any studio boss. His father, the Oracle co-founder, who briefly surpassed Musk this month to become the world's richest man, is riding an "Al tsunami" with a staggering $455 billion pipeline of contracts to supply computing power. Paramount's new CEO, who envisions a next-generation studio that leverages cloud computing, Al, and other digital tools, likely won't waste any time in tackling Hollywood's bloat. As Gerry Cardinale, whose RedBird Capital helped finance the $8 billion Paramount deal, explained: "This is not a nice-to-have. This is a need-to-have moment in Hollywood. You have a balkanized situation between technology and content, between Silicon Valley and Hollywood." Ellison isn't just motivated by the fact that the attendees are much hotter at Cannes Lions than Dreamforce. With access to a seemingly infinite pool of capital, he sees an opportunity to meld the best of the tech and entertainment worlds. The younger Ellison will rely on former Oracle CEO Safra Catz and Scale Al Chief Financial Officer Dennis Cinelli - both now Paramount board members - as well as former Meta and Google executive Dane Glasgow, who will lead product vision and strategy. We know the script: First comes consolidation, then comes "efficiencies." It won't be long before the younger Ellison is spotted helming a tank division headed over the Sepulveda Pass with Al-guided projectiles. As they expand their empire, they'll brainstorm ways they can deploy Al to make three movies at $40 million apiece - or maybe 10 movies at $10 million a pop - instead of going all-in and producing a blockbuster such as The Fantastic Four for more than $200 million. Taking more shots on goal is a better approach given the risk complexion of a hit-driven culture. Yes, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice made hundreds of millions of dollars. But the studio gave that windfall back with Joker: Folie a Deux, which lost about $150 million. Winners and Losers In Hollywood, Al is often cast as the villain, whether that's onscreen - in movies ranging from 1984's The Terminator to the latest Mission: Impossible installments - or n reaio. n 2023 woters anc actors went on stnke ane shut cown tne misinees or several months, demanding protection from Al.
September 27, 2025 at 1:31 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
A screenshot of the article posted but the date is highlighted. The date reads: “July 10, 2024” nearly a year ago.
June 20, 2025 at 12:49 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
Since everyone is talking about this debate, I thought I should highlight two commentators who get at the absurdity of Jordan Peterson and his insistence on breaking down language, creating a “semantic fog” like a squid inks its enemies.
Screenshot of YouTube. The video is the Jubilee debate between 1 Christian and 20 atheists. The video title was changed to Jordan Peterson vs 20 atheists. The screenshot is at Claim #4 of the video, “Atheists accept Christian morality but deny its foundational stories.” The screenshot is of the video but also the comment section. First commenter: “Peterson did really well in this debate, depending on your definition of 'really', 'well', 'this' and 'debate', obviously.” Reply to first commentator: “I don't think I can agree with your ontological determination of the systematical epistemology that underpins the conscientiousness with which one ideologically defines those terms without understanding the fundamental phenomenal archetypes that prescribe the divine, as an a priori.” Another screenshot but this is of another commenter: In reference to the time stamp the commentator says “18:11” Commentator: “18:11 "I feel like you retreat into the semantic fog" - that line slaps” The replies are as follows: @connorlewis1150 • 1h ago “Peterson was approaching truth by shining light through the mist, elaborating details by making them clear to see.” @princepsbellum3413 • 1h ago @connorlewis1150 “I'm sure” @asare240 • 58 min ago @connorlewis1150 “no hes playing semantic games so he always has a way to wriggle”
May 26, 2025 at 8:00 PM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
Astroturf.
Chevron parking lot. There is a red sign with an illustrated person speaking with a speech bubble that says, “Nearly 25% of your gas money goes to state taxes and fees.” The sign is posted by the fill station and there is another behind it plastered on the column.
May 25, 2025 at 8:30 PM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
Palpatine meme where he’s saying good
May 6, 2025 at 5:07 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
Pete in the makeup room
Ginger Minj on Ru Paul’s Drag Race, full drag without a wig saying “you can’t tell me I’m not pretty.”
April 23, 2025 at 8:41 PM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
Senator Palpatine telling Anakin “Good” as the Senator looks extremely old and wrinkly. Anakin’s back is to the shot and is in a silhouette. Star Wars Ep III
April 23, 2025 at 5:22 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
February 17, 2025 at 5:57 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
American politics influence on my search history
February 8, 2025 at 3:06 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
Oh Gods of fire and disasters, please accept our sacrifice of Anita Bryant.

What I want to point out is the “being polite to policemen” should be an automatic disqualification of queerness.
Segment from Anita Bryant’s ad in a paper where she was advertising her gay conversion therapy. Text reads: SEVEN DEADLY SIGNS OF HOMOSEXUALITY 1. Carrying your books funny 2. Short sleeve shirt 3. Spending too much time with girls 4 Wearing wrist watch backwards: 5 Being careful with parents car 6 Yoga 7. Being polite to policemen — What I want to point out is the “being polite to policemen” is an automatic disqualification of queerness.
January 10, 2025 at 2:08 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
Controlled burns are conducted ALL THE TIME! They’re literally part and parcel of wildfire mitigation strategy in California. Speaking of, look at the controlled burns CURRENTLY happening in CA.
Screenshot of the app Watch Duty: wildfire tracker. Image is of California with icons scattered around the map. The green flame icon with the RX letters indicate controlled burns occurring in the state. There are dozens of these green dots on the map.
January 9, 2025 at 7:00 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
As an LA resident, the only thing on my mind has been the shareholders of Shell. 😌
Meme. Image: firefighter using a house to put out a fire while a wildfire blazes behind them. Shell logo on fire with the text of logo says, “HELL.” Text: “At least the billionaires are getting richer.”
January 9, 2025 at 6:56 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
And just like that… I’m evacuating.
Carrie Bradshaw in the HBO show, “And Just Like That…” typing on a computer for her column.
January 9, 2025 at 3:41 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
For any Angelenos that got the boil water notice, the city sent the message county wide but it is only for the Palisades and north of San Vicente.

ktla.com/news/local-n...
A screenshot of the Pacific Palisades and parts of LA and Santa Monica. There is a yellow highlight that encompasses the entire Palisades as well as any street north of San Vicente.
January 9, 2025 at 1:39 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
Rusaster Girl
RuPaul’s Drag Race billboard but the only portion that is in frame is an image of Ru looking at the camera while a brush fire is being extinguished off Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood
January 7, 2025 at 11:49 PM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
I’m thinking about privacy even more considering the next 4+ years. The capitulation of tech companies to Trump should be anyone’s wake up call.

Reminder that two students achieved a doxing software for Meta’s glasses. STUDENTS. www.theverge.com/2024/10/2/24...
A quote from Edward Snowden, “Ultimately, arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” Mark Zuckerberg wearing Meta Ray-Bans, a pair of transitioning glasses that can record video and can now describe environments.
January 6, 2025 at 8:36 PM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
I grant people can fence their property to their hearts desire but I really want to understand why someone wants to live in what looks like a ritzy prison? Never mind what it looks like to neighbors, why do you want to live in an enclosure with barbed wire adorned on your 15ft tall fencing?
Single unit dwelling in West Hollywood with a concrete base, additional fencing on top of the concrete with barbed wire on top. Additional ficus hedges obscuring any pedestrian view. The house is modern - looks like a mincecraft house.
January 6, 2025 at 7:39 PM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
You will be visited by three spirits.
From left to right: Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton This is a photo before an iconic night out in 2006. #HolyTrinity #Sliving
December 25, 2024 at 9:53 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
I’m just glad I’ve never seen a Milton Friedman quote at BevMo.
December 15, 2024 at 3:11 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
One more lane and one more tunnel isn’t gonna fix the traffic problem we have in so many US cities. It seems the world over has done a better job solving congestion and it’s a technology that has existed for a couple hundred years (e.g. THE TRAIN).
Screenshot of the linked Politico article. Text of note: “They have already aired grievances about several of their targets, including federal support for high-speed rail and expanded telework for civil servants.”
December 7, 2024 at 2:25 AM
walrusbanana.bsky.social
The power of a lawsuit. What a piece of 💩. #dinesh

deadline.com/2024/12/dine...
Screenshot of a Deadline article. Title: “Dinesh D’Souza Admits That 2020 Election Conspiracy Movie ‘2000 Mules’ Relied On “Inaccurate Information”
December 3, 2024 at 10:07 PM