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Natalie Portman spoke at the United Nations about violence against women. She posted it as an Instagram reel, I've mirrored it for those who don't want to access mainstream media.

peertube.gidikroon.eu/w/bZtLgM…

#NataliePortman


Natalie Portman speaking at the United Nations


Natalie Portman speaking at the UN about violence against women and girls. Mirrored from Natalie's Instagram. Natalie's description:

It was an honor to speak at the UN about the urgency of ending violence against women and girls, and to highlight the @spotlightinitiative’s effective model for doing so. Woman Life Freedom. #WithHer @unitednations #UNGA #SDGActionZone

(Copyright remains with Natalie and the United Nations)




Actors and writers strike going strong. The studios should pay them properly and give them adequate protection against AI. Photo: Ivana Baquero picketing, on her insta.


#IvanaBaquero



Just like I mentioned for The 4400, I have not seen the last season of The Dead Zone I have on disc either. Here I have seen season one to four on my discs and watched them many years ago, but forgot to watch my season five disc. I've found out there actually is a sixth season as well.

I watched the series because of Nicole de Boer, but her involvement became smaller and smaller, explaining my lack of interest. In this fifth season she's only in a few episodes. More in the sixth.

Let's see whether I still remember the plot. Some guy, Nicole's character's husband gets into a coma. Many years later he unexpectedly wakes up, finding his wife remarried with his best friend. He also finds that he suddenly has visions of things, and decides his mission is to stop bad events and investigate crimes.

Nicole's character is the standard Hollywood 'wife of', where the writers show they don't know how to write an interesting female character.
#NicoleDeBoer #TheDeadZone #NowWatching

in reply to Gidi Kroon

It starts with the Christmas episode that other lists have as the last episode of season four. It's exactly as you would expect a Christmas episode to be on American television. Now for the real season start.



Database disk had filled up, so thanks to the elasticity of EBS I could just increase the size.

I do think however that on a single user instance, a db of around 30GB is too much. But then I think we shouldn't be storing remote content, but we do.



The way American tv series are made, causes them to often feel like a book of which the last chapter is missing. The hope is that you've lost interest in the book by the time you get to that chapter. Sometimes you get a quick summary of how the author meant to wrap things up in that chapter.



I don't check Twitter everyday anymore, since there literally are days there are no new posts. Just checked and the most recent one was 12 September. The joys of a highly curated experience.


Server: error, file larger than maximum upload size.
Me: Who's admin?
*increases upload limit*
Server: error anyway.

[...]

Other server: I'm pretending the upload succeeded, but I can't find the file.



My technique: follow interesting people since they tend to know, or work with, interesting people. Here's Melissa Barrera, who I only know because she acted in Scream with Jenna Ortega, singing on stage and being rather good at it.

(The event is related to a Frida musical and a friend's album release and Hispanic Heritage Month, see her caption)

instagram.com/reel/CxQp-jGAvrV…
#MelissaBarrera

in reply to Gidi Kroon

in reply to Gidi Kroon

I'd ask why this guy is slapping a plastic pigeon but that wouldn't be fair to the vision impaired people. I didn't include that in the image description and there is no way I know how to describe that.
in reply to Gidi Kroon

Reminds me that I'm still on the lookout for the film Carmen that came out this year in North American countries. Melissa Barrera is the lead in that film and does a lot of singing in it I believe.


My favourite period? This exact moment when King Edward desperately wanted a male heir to succeed him on the English throne, was dying, and nature told them no. Every descendant, even from the lines they didn't want (bastards, Catholics), was female. So on his death bed, he placed a woman in line of the succession for the first time ever: Jane, a 16 year old girl and I think one of the brightest people ever. She did become queen that next day and stayed so for a few more days, deposed by another woman (Mary I) who raised an army.

This is Tudor times and I don't know whether that counts as medieval or modern.


#JaneGrey #Tudor #EdwardVI


For people who are interested in "Western" history, what's your favorite period?

(I realize that breaking it down like this is probably going to piss some people off, but there are only 4 poll options and this isn't a fuckin journal)




Self regulating system on fedi: start an account with a female avatar, make a post that says the 'boost' button is to boost reply-guys out of your timeline and for everyone answering 'you need to use the block button', answer 'thanks, and done'.


Sometimes you don't have enough spoons to do the dishes and it becomes a recursive problem.


I wish the fediverse was less white... Devs and users. Diversity is a good thing and it feels we're not there yet.


Dove Cameron's first album is going to drop in the fall. It's going to be called ALCHEMICAL, will be a two parter with the first part coming out this fall. She just announced this on Instagram.
#DoveCameron #Alchemical


Sure you remember Lexa Doig, the actress who played Andromeda in the scifi tv series Andromeda. She has a daughter who turned 19 today. Yeah, I don't know how that's possible either, feels like that series was only yesterday. That daughter, Mia Shanks, has written and produced her own song that came out today that's called yesterday. And it's not bad at all, someone to keep an eye on.
tidal.com/track/313586990
#MiaShanks
in reply to Gidi Kroon

Mia is also an actress, e.g. once playing the younger version of her mother's character (in Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, which I unfortunately haven't seen). Here's a photo of the two of them in their trailer from Lexa's insta. No, you're not seeing double.
instagram.com/p/CWt6KJuPIl3/


#MiaShanks #LexaDoig

in reply to Gidi Kroon

I was looking for this photo, the absolutely best post Lexa has made on insta of the two of them. Mia not just 'cosplaying' her mother's character Rommie, but wearing the absolute original costume.
instagram.com/p/CFF6oFnne8A/


#LexaDoig #MiaShanks #Andromeda




Jenna Ortega's new Dior campaign photos are finally posted by the Dior Instagram account. Some had already seen them in the wild, as it includes a street advertising campaign. They promote the jewelry collection "Rose des Vents".

Links: photos, reel, story.

Photos by Tyler Mitchell.

#JennaOrtega #Dior #RoseDesVents #TylerMitchell



The mentioned site is fun (though I don't see the quoted questions, but different ones).

Reading through the various answers cures you from ever thinking these kind of AI can give logical answers. The 'I bought 10 apples ...etc' question had a massive amount of totally wrong answers, the 'five planets closest to the sun' question shows that many computers can't even count to five, and a disturbingly low amount of them knows that the Earth's 'distanceToEarth' is zero.


AI Researchers ask LLMs 20 questions:

benchmarks.llmonitor.com/

"Would you love me if I was down, and out?"
"Would you still have love for me?
"If I fell off tomorrow, would you still love me?
"If I didn't smell so good, would you still hug me?"
"If I got locked up and sentenced to a quarter century, could I count on you to be there to support me mentally?"
"If I went back to a hooptie from a Benz, would you poof and disappear like some of my friends?"

#AI #LLM




Optimising the webpages of news sites by making them <h1>World still a mess</h1> and nothing else.


Maybe we should have a social media/microblogging/fediverse platform where external links are only loaded when someone clicks to see it. This would apply to link previews, quoted posts and replies to a conversation.



A long time ago I watched The 4400, a series with Jacqueline McKenzie. I have all four seasons on disc, but somehow never got around to watching the final fourth season. Let's start it now, I hope I remember enough of the previous seasons.

It's a somewhat scifi series, with 4400 people suddenly returning to earth after presumably having been abducted by aliens. Jacqueline is not one of those, but a police person investigating things around it. As strange things happen: they start to show special abilities, they form a cult like organisation, and what really happened to them while they were missing is still unknown.

imdb.com/title/tt0389564/

#JacquelineMcKenzie #The4400 #NowWatching





I have the disc of Underworld: Blood Wars in my to-watch stack and I think I better check where in the series this one fits before I watch it. Because I'm lost. I skipped the non-Kate Beckinsale ones, that I do know.
#KateBeckinsale #UnderworldBloodWars #Underworld
in reply to Gidi Kroon

This is the last one in the franchise, it's possible I find out why. (There are some final seasons of tv series where you realise they really had to stop)
in reply to Gidi Kroon

It's a bit light on storytelling and on characterisation, but entertaining enough.

Maybe the "Dawn Alert!" over the PA system of the vampire coven was the best bit.

Selene does so much pining for her daughter Eve and others do so much searching for her, that maybe they should rewatch Underworld: Awakening and see India Eisley as Eve. Somehow the memory of that performance is what underpins this film.



Dutch September weather: burning hot sun, five degrees above the horizon.


Oh-oh, the spammers have found the address of my dev Wordpress. Maybe I'll just change the url or take it offline. Now it's asking me to moderate a comment on that boat post.


Finestkind will have its premiere at TIFF any moment now, but you can already watch a scene courtesy of this Deadline article. It features Jenna Ortega and like everything she does it's immediately captivating and intense. They say it's going to be on Paramount+ in November.
#JennaOrtega #Finestkind


If something evil does something evil and you decide to not take sides, you've taken sides.


New code style rules where there are no spaces after the parentheses of a function call, except when the first argument starts with the letter 'c'.


Why do pigeons flying sound like their wings desperately need some oil?

in reply to Gidi Kroon

I've had some moments of "What?! Off! Off!" over the years with various software so it's entirely possible I switched this off myself.



I didn't know Voyager 1 is still within the Oort Cloud, because I thought when people say 'interstellar space' they mean beyond the solar system. Things I learnt...


But Voyager 1 hasn't left the solar system. At 161 AU, its current distance from the Sun is a fraction of Sedna's 936 AU aphelion (though it is currently further out than the minor planet).

And it's nowhere near the inner edge of the Oort cloud, thousands of AU from the sun.

This chart shows Voyager 1's location in 2013, with distance from the sun plotted on a log scale. It is at roughly the same place today, since the next step on the scale jumps from 100 to 1000 AU.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech




I once said that trains in the Netherlands were ok as long as you don't need to go anywhere, and only after I said it realised how much this described them completely failing at their purpose.

What I meant is that it's a problem if you depend on them, like for getting to work (not just on time, but at all). If you are just planning an optional trip outside of rush hour and are ok with going somewhere completely different instead, then it's fine.
#PublicTransport


I would appreciate it very much if public transit in NL had its shit together



"D-level is clear"

No, if you don't even look around the corner where our heroes are hiding, you can't know whether D-level is clear.



First time in years of running this server/account that my dozens of saved searches have a hit and put a post in my timeline of someone I don't follow yet.

Anyway, it's not good news about a Jodie Foster project having its release delayed. Secretly I already knew that from deadline.com/2023/08/true-dete… ...
#JodieFoster


#HBO has delayed the fourth season of #TrueDetective, subtitled #NightCountry, until January 2024. The new season will star #JodieFoster and #KaliReis. #television #streaming


Why are online people so mad lately? Is this also climate change?


Updates from All Company

Here's what you may have missed:

Your colleague was happy to have missed the endless stream of messages on the company chat, so we sent them a "here's what you have missed" email to remedy this.



Jealous of the Toronto people who have the ability to see Jenna Ortega in Finestkind this week. Hopefully worldwide cinema releases will follow soon.
#JennaOrtega #Finestkind #TIFF23


Finestkind, a new film with Jenna Ortega, will premiere in Toronto at TIFF 2023, according to the film's Instagram post and this Deadline article. As does this The Hollywood Reporter article, which also mentions the festival runs 7-17 September.
#JennaOrtega #Finestkind