DTWID Digest #7 | New Year Edition

Long time no see, cane comrades!

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2023. We did it, Joe! This edition of the digest is a little different, as it coincides with–and is basically the script for–the first episode of the Delete This When I’m Dead (DTWID) Podcast. Everything here is there and almost everything there is here, so if you prefer to read, this is for you. If you want to see or hear it instead, watch or listen to the episode! (Note: this is weeks old, as of publication date.)

What I’m Loving Right Now

Pokémon Violet (and Scarlet)

The latest Pokemon games dropped mid-November, and I’ve been playing Violet ever since. I finished all three paths in Pokémon Violet and the main overall story—credits rolled. The game has been super fun! The new mons are so cool and cute and the battles have been fun and interesting. And there are so many little tweaks to the mechanics, that the game feels genuinely different from the rest… but still comfortable and familiar. We’ve been discussing some of this on Outta Pocket, my Pokemon podcast, and will be talking more about the game, specifically, in upcoming episodes! A link will be somewhere—watch us on YouTube, like and comment, follow us on socials, and subscribe for the latest!

What’s Happening In Pop Culture

Warner Bros Discovery

Warner Bros merged with Discover and David Zaslav became head honcho and it’s been chicanery ever since, starting with entirely scrapping the fully produced Batgirl film. Zaslav went on a killing spree at HBO Max and not just canceled a bunch of shows–Legendary, Los Espooky, Westworld(!) and all the cute animated stuff, to name a few–they deleted hella stuff from the service entirely. It feels like shows created by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ folks were especially quick to get gone. Bad form, Zaslav.

What I’m Up To

It’s the new year, and thus I’ll be goal-setting, planning, and preparing myself to better execute on all of the things I want and need to do! My resolutions are to be more thoughtful, be more thorough, and be more consistent.

Some of the projects I’ll be working on are…

• The DTWID video podcast and the accompanying blog. I’ll be writing more, recording more, and—super importantly— actually publishing.
• Ambivirgin: I’ll be playing a wider variety of games and streaming more often.
• Black TARDIS: I’ll continue exploring Doctor Who from my Black AF perspective. I’ll dabble in more mediums, like the audios and comics, share more thoughts, and have more conversations!
• Outta Pocket, my Pokemon podcast with fellow Black, queer trainer DJ.
• That Shit We Do Like, a pop-culture podcast from me and my friend Bianca about the things we love, and love to hate.

Finally, I’ll be working on my original fiction. Whatever form that takes, and whichever mediums I create in, I plan to explore and expand worlds of my own creation.

Current Events

Reminder: I sometimes choose not to see when it comes to current events and politics. So when I ignore very huge things… it is intentional; a feature, not a bug. And since I am months overdue and also have no sense of time, just going to talk about shit I remember happened recently and actually have thoughts about… So let’s get into it.

AI Art

Folks used an iOS app to upload selfies and have AI generated art created in their likenesses. There’s been an interesting conversation ever since, about ethics, intellectual property, and the value of art.

• My primary issue with AI art is my issue with AI in general— that humans are responsible for determining what and how it learns.
• Humans bring their biases-explicit and implicit—into the process deliberately and unknowingly, and since we live in an anti-Black patriarchal cesspool of bigotry and foolishness, AI is learning real bad shit all the time.
• People get paid to teach each other. Not enough in almost all instances. But we agree, universally, teaching is labor that should be rewarded. But artists’ styles and techniques are stolen wholesale, without their consent, to train AI models. And their work is recreated, sometimes for profit they do not get a share of. On top of not being asked or compensated for training the AI.
• It actually blows my mind that folks paid to have their faces cataloged in an app to help train AI models and, potentially, make facial recognition—which is almost exclusively bad for privacy—more accurate. I admit, I was curious enough to see what the app would spit out, but once it asked for money, I was out! I made my crossroads deal with Google a long time ago. If I AM the product, I am NOT the consumer. My data gives me access to free shit… that’s the whole trade-off. (Whether it’s worth it is a question for someone else… it’s above me now)
• I have complicated feelings as a person who enjoys but cannot create or regularly afford to commission custom art, but ultimately I believe artists deserve to be paid for their work and should be part of the conversation of how their work is used with AI.

Twitter/Elon Shit

I was going to talk about Twitter and Elon Musk and that whole mess but honestly, everyone knows what a shitshow it is and we’re all just on the hellsite tweeting and cackling through it. I will say that I find it especially hilarious that Musty reinstated several banned users, and one of them managed to tweet themselves directly to jail by antagonizing a teenager. I hope 2023 is the year of immense suffering for racists, misogynists—bad people, and all their supporters.

That’s all folks!