Spider Man: Into the Spider-verse Trailer... WOW.

I LOVED the first trailer for this project, but this one totally blew my tiny little mind!

The animation style of Spider Man Into The Spider-Verse reminds me a bit of Disney's "Paperman" on SPEED.  Paperman was an early test by Disney to try and make full CG animation with an almost hand-drawn look.   This has some of that feel,  slotting somewhere between Hand-drawn,  stop-motion, and a modern CG Animated feature.   It's utterly gorgeous.   Check it out.

Roseanne Barr blames Ambien for Racist Tweets

She must take a LOT of Ambien.

She tweeted, “guys I did something unforgiveable so do not defend me. It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting — it was memorial day too — i went 2 far & do not want it defended — it was egregious Indefensible. I made a mistake I wish I hadn’t but...don’t defend it please.”

She cited Ambien again in a later tweet, saying, “Not giving excuses for what I did(tweeted) but I’ve done weird stuff while on ambien — cracked eggs on the wall at 2am etc.”

Oddly, she later deleted all of her references to the medication. Nevertheless, Ambien became the #1 trending topic on Twitter on Wednesday morning, leading to Sanofi’s public rebuke. Barr’s explanation was deemed laughable.
— Brian Stelter and Ivana Kottasová / CNN.com

Best part about this?   Sanofi,  the maker of Ambien (a sleep aid medication),  later responded with this statement:

While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.
— Sanofi

Sick burn.

"Roseanne" cancelled after Rosanne Bar tweet scandal

UPDATE 4:30pm EST:

Welp.   That was a lot faster than I was expecting.

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

So much for "bringing conservatism back to television".   At least now she's free to become what she was always destined to be:  A contributor to Infowars.

From Variety:

ABC has pulled the plug on the revival “Roseanne.”

The move comes after series star Roseanne Barr made a comment on Twitter Tuesday morning referring to former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett as the “offspring of the ‘Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes.’”

“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said in a statement.
— Joseph Otterson / Variety.com

Wrath of Khan's Nicholas Meyer joins new Trek show!

Star Trek.png

This is the best possible news I've heard about this show.    Finally gives me some hope that Star Trek could actually come back in a real way.    The JJ-Abrams movies were fun for what they were, but they weren't Star Trek.   Trek has always been more of a Humanist-leaning Character Ensemble Drama.    Something that takes humanity's faults and holds them up in a mirror to us, so that we can learn from them.  Bryan Fuller and Nicholas Meyer seem to understand this intrinsically, which gives me hope.

Also, look at that photo of Meyer above?   He's the most vulcan looking human being I've seen since Leonard Nimoy! 

From StarTrek.com

It’s official. Bryan Fuller, who will co-create, produce and serve as showrunner of the upcoming Star Trek series, has just announced the news that Nicholas Meyer has joined the show’s writing staff and will be a consulting producer.
”Nicholas Meyer chased Kirk and Khan ‘round the Mutara Nebula and ‘round Genesis’ flames, he saved the whales with the Enterprise and its crew, and waged war and peace between Klingons and the Federation. We are thrilled to announce that one of Star Trek’s greatest storytellers will be boldly returning as Nicholas Meyer beams aboard the new Trek writing staff,” said Executive Producer, Bryan Fuller.
Meyer, of course, is beloved by Star Trek fans worldwide for directing (and co-writing, uncredited) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, co-writing Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and co-writing and directing Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
The new Star Trek series, produced by CBS Television Studios, will launch in early 2017. In the U.S., a special premiere episode will air on the CBS Television Network and all subsequent first-run episodes will be available exclusively on CBS All Access. The series will also be available on television stations and platforms in other countries around the world.

YouTube creates human copyright team in response to #WTFU

YouTube has finally made a statement following the campaign from YouTube movie reviewer Doug Walker decrying YouTube's unfair takedown and punishment policies.  

For those of you behind in this story the original video that Doug posted is embedded here.   Basically his argument is that most of his videos are fair-use and have been subject to DMCA requests fraudulently.   He had received strikes on his channel which had caused him to lose his monetization status,  which allows him to make ad-money from his videos.   Unfortunately, it seems there was no human team in place to review these requests and everything was run by an algorithm.   Also there is currently no penalty for filing a false DMCA takedown.   Giving studio executives and trolls alike the ability to send a takedown notice on anything, just because they felt they could.

Today Google responded on their Youtube blog:

Hi, I’m Spencer,

I’ve been a member of the YouTube Policy team since 2008 and throughout that time, I’ve seen how your input has helped YouTube get better. For example, when I started on YouTube Policy, we didn’t have an appeals process for video removals. Through user feedback, we realized that we needed to establish a channel for users to alert us to our mistakes. We eventually launched an appeals form for age-restrictions, and just recently launched an appeals form for videos rejected due to policy violations. YouTube isn’t perfect, but thanks to your feedback, we are able to learn quickly and get better.

Recently, there’s been a lot of discussion about the enforcement of our policies, from video takedowns to channel demonetization. We want you to know that we monitor video takedowns very closely, and while we haven’t seen a big change in the overall rate of removals, it’s true that we do make mistakes. For this, we’re sorry and we strive to do better by you, our community.

The good news is that the feedback you’ve raised in comments and videos on YouTube and beyond is having an impact. It’s caused us to look closely at our policies and helped us identify areas where we can get better. It’s led us to create a team dedicated to minimizing mistakes and improving the quality of our actions. And it’s encouraged us to roll out some initiatives in the coming months that will help strengthen communications between creators and YouTube support. We’ll also make improvements to increase transparency into the status of monetization claims. And of course, as we work to implement these improvements as quickly as we can, we’ll continue to take your feedback seriously.

— Spencer from YouTube’s Policy Team

The fact that there was NO human team reviewing these requests up until now borders on criminal.   Youtube is both a multi billion dollar business and the livelihood of many of the internet's biggest content creators.   The fact that their videos could be pulled down , and their channels shuttered indiscriminately with no human intervention is beyond negligent.  

Setting up a human team to review these requests a step in the right direction,  but it's a damning example of just how little Google understands its own creation and just how important it has become for many people.