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Ugh. My hometown went from zero roundabouts to like, IDK even know, I think there's like 6 of the fuckers in town now, in like 3 years. For some reason the city planning office just got a massive hard-on for roundabouts a few years ago and there's been some massive construction work being done around the city for the past couple years, so they've just been shoving them everywhere they can. One of them (the largest, of course) is a 3 lane roundabout IMMEDIATELY after the off ramp from the highway, immediately turns off into another roundabout on one of the exits, and is a major thorough fair for 3 different industrial areas. And HOLY SHIT does everyone hate them.

It doesn't help that, as per standard Red Deer construction procedure, the intersections are done exactly enough to be functional and then basically abandoned. No signs, no crosswalk markings, no directions, nada. In a city that has had exactly one roundabout, in it's hundred and some year history, for all of like a decade or something. Oh yeah, it's going about as well as you'd imagine.

To be fair, it's only slightly worse than the little shitstain nothing of a town out in the middle of nowhere that decided to replace every single intersection on it's main drag with one lane roundabouts. Literally all they did is take their 4 way stops add a barely visible, barely raised, circle in the middle of it and called it a roundabout. So you have this 3 block long strip with 8 different roundabouts one after the other for absolutely no reason, it'd be hilarious if it wasn't so flipping annoying.

The billionaire/old system thing is still very much alive, I /still/ have filmmaker friends that desperately feel the need to move to LA to make it big as a director.... and I'm like, dude's no.... the opposite of that, other way guys. But eh, what are you gonna do.

I think there's still a pretty big divide between the "filmmakers" I know and the "content creators" I know, the filmmakers still think of everything in terms of government grants and corporate funding, where as that just /doesn't/ exist for online creators, even ones working in narrative formats, and the most filmmakers will stoop to like, Kickstarter in terms of public funding, but there's still this weird, uppityness about "Filmmakers vs Content Creators" from the "Filmmakers" I know that's just bullshit, and becoming more bullshit every year.

So anyways, a lot of online creators are adopting the Patron system because it's their only option right now. Youtube CLEARLY gives zero shits about creators so relying on them is tantamount to suicide, but the only other option, really, is do what Roosterteeth did and diversify your revenue streams 10 years ago so you have a solid base now, or Patreon.

It definitely works for some, but again, that just adds a whole other thing where now you have to convince people to give you money directly, and you have to have to good enough perk rewards to make it worth it for the 99% of people that aren't going to be convinced to give you money just out of their charitable willingness to support an artist. And Patreon is basically useless for finding new audience, so you're still relying on the algorithm to get new audience to hopefully funnel the 2% of them or whatever the latest stat is, to Patreon.

As for the actual question.... I think the online creator community in general is getting more on board with the Patron model, Youtube just launched a Twitch subscription like service so you can subscribe to channels you want to support for like 5 bucks a month. But even then the people relying on that are mid level creators, the guys that are already big have sponsorships out the wazoo and diversified income from merch and other platforms, so they're fine; and the really little guys don't have a big enough audience to actually make enough from Patrons to even remotely support themselves, so it's just the people that have a large enough audience to drive that 2% to Patreon and that's enough to make it a part-time or full-time job, what have you, and even then, by the time you reach that level, you've probably started off-setting that with sponsorships anyways.

AND, the really fun part is that a lot of these creators are solo creators still trying to do what they want to do and make what they want to make, while still balancing the algorithm and the perks and the and the and the and the.... so for the most part (Unless they're just the shitty money hungry fame whore creators*) it's still this crazy blend of independent actual artists visions caught up in this clusterfuck of trying to survive.

*I have a theory these people are still what the majority of people think of when they hear Youtuber. Which is a shame.

Youtubes actually a really bizarre example, because while the old school systems were just trying to optimize for what got people in the door, full stop. Youtubers have this whole other layer now, where they have to optimize for the algorithm. They're trying to figure out what is the best way to stay in the light of the algorithm, and sure part of that is just getting eyes on content, but it's also getting people to interact in comments, motivating people enough to actually subscribe, getting people to hit the bell so they can be notified when a video goes live because maybe sometimes it's hard to know if youtube is actually sending out the notifications to subscription boxes, and mostly producing enough content at a fast enough rate that the algorithm doesn't forget about them but still producing high enough quality that they don't lose the audience.

It's like the entire phenomenon of film and music Teague was talking about, condensed into this little hyperspeed simulation bubble. Either you figure out what works and keep riding that wave until you burn out, or you fall off your board and tread water with whatever audience you managed to build up, and that can all happen in like, a year. It's crazy.

EDIT:

And oh yeah... about the actual thing. I've had pretty much the same opinion that the studio-system-movie was a dying breed for a while now, at the rate budgets keep increasing and the increasing rise of streaming platforms and people looking elsewhere for content (Youtube), it's only a matter of time until it can't sustain itself, and either the system falls back to the more-lower-budget-projects or the entire thing collapses under it's own weight and Netflix swoops in to pick up the power vacuum.

I've pretty much just stopped caring about almost everything coming out of the big studios, partly cause I just don't have the time or the money to bother, and partly because there are so many more interesting things happening in smaller indie levels (Youtube, podcasts, web series stuff). And honestly, my life has gotten so much better since I did. Let them fall, there's more than enough other stuff out there, something else will fill the pop culture void, just like something else was there before, and just like something else will be there in 50 years.

EPISODE 15!

Oh, it's not most. It's hilarious because this one overpass is like 100 years old and a lot lower than minimum guidelines would allow these days, but it's too expensive to change the road, so they just put the signs up and tell trucks not to go under it. But it's still tall enough that a lot of people ignore the signs and think they can make it through with their smaller trucks, or just ignore the signs and go through anyways.

There's a whole website about that one overpass: http://11foot8.com/faq/

EDIT: I think the standard height for modern overpass's is 17 feet according to the google machine.

I'm fairly certain that's a this forum thing. I'm not saying we're all a bunch of cynical assholes (yes I am), but basically everyone else I know is fucking /LOVING/ the new Doctor.

Added a master list of all the episodes to the first post since we lost all the updates in the great GoDaddy explosion of 2018.

And BOOM, new episode.

Kind of? The problem is that the show doesn't really do either very well. Going back to what I said before this trailer is really really good at picking out all the bits and putting them in order that makes it seem like DW is this amazing superheroic figure travelling through space and time, saving lives. But in the moment it's all drowned out in the noise of all the bullshit, and different writers having different visions of what the Doctor should be, and having to stick inside the case of the week format without a lot of attention to the arc of the doctor and his companions over the course of the season(s), leaving this sort of muddy mess.

Also, the different Doctor's all definitely have their own vibe around them so it's hard to pin down the one thing "the Doctor" should be. Eccelston was the damaged war vet trying to put the pieces back together, Tennant was the childlike wonder seeing everything there is to see and sharing it with his friends that he absentmindedly puts in harms way along the way, and Smith is the fairy tale manic pixie dream boy that swoops in and saves you and shows you how amazing the universe is. I just have a personal affinity for the "mythical legend of the Doctor" version.

EDIT: I think the better word for what I'm thinking of would be the Gandalf Doctor. He shows up one day, can do all sorts of fantastic and amazing things, takes you on an adventure that changes your life forever or helps you save the world, and then he vanishes again leaving you and the world slightly better than it was before.

Holy shit that literally gave me chills.

And it saddens me that very very very little of the show has ever made me feel like that. And the times it has it's been buried as the shiny gem in what's otherwise not.

I stopped watching about an episode into Capaldi's run and haven't gone back yet. But I might have to if Jodie's keeps getting the  reviews I've been seeing.

https://apnews.com/97b06cede0c149c492bf25a48cb6c26f

I'm not where exactly it sits on the list, but the Trump administration's hatred of immigrants and the gleeful willingness at which they are willingly to treat them as subhuman is pretty far up there.

For the record, in absolutely no way was I referring to Trump starting a war. That, honestly, doesn't even factor into the situation at the moment for me, sure he could, but that's very clearly not the gameplan right now.

I'm talking about the fact that Trump and the republicans just ramrodded a clearly unfit, possibly to illegal and almost certainly immoral levels, Supreme Court judge through the process, despite massive outcry from the public and official institutions, and with active effort to cover up anything that might be there to be found, because they wanted HIM.

Kavanaugh is a firm believer that the President should be exempt from the law for the simple reason that he is President, he also believes that any sort of federal pardon should also pardon that person at a state level. And the US currently has a sitting president that also believes those things because he is a man overburdened with shady criminal activities and connections, surrounded by people with the same. And I have no doubt the thought that he could pardon himself and his entire corrupt little family and they could all get away scott free gives him waves of orgasmic pleasure unparalleled in modern history. And I'm sure there's more than a few Republicans that wouldn't mind having someone with that power in their back power, owing them a favour for giving them that power.

How long until those bills start hitting the floor do you reckon? A month? Maybe two? Hell, they might try to push it through before novembers vote while they still definitely have the numbers for all I know. But what happens if they go through? We have a sitting president with the power to pardon himself and anyone around him.

That sure as hell sounds like a solid first step to proper dictatorial take over to me.

And if the blue wave doesn't happen? What then? They've got another 2 years to kill off programs, plant their puppets in more sectors of the government, push through more bills to funnel money to themselves and corporations, and who knows what else. Are we so sure a democracy would still come out the other end of it?

Maybe this seems a little doomsday crier or what have you, and maybe it is, maybe they'll be satisfied with just taking over the government and shaping it to their whims as is and then give it up in 2 or 6 years like the good little proud Americans they all are. But the fact that we're even having a discussion where it's even a possibility let alone one that seems to be pretty likely is more than enough cause to say something is wrong and that maybe the people in power, shouldn't be.