So I have discovered Steve Shives

Culture
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Likely due to a confluence of factors related to how I browse the world wide web, I was recently presented with this video:

I hadn’t previously seen any videos (that I know of) from this creator, but it was definitely a topic I was interested in, so I watched it. It’s a great summary of some of the works that have entered the public domain this year, with a little bit of commentary added for good measure (particularly pointed at the Doyle Estate). It’s an entertaining and informative video, but it didn’t lead me to checking out any of his other content, until last night…

So, YouTube’s algorithm had certainly been serving up suggestions that I watch more of his content, but I’d mostly been ignoring them since it seemed like a lot of Star Trek. Don’t get me wrong, I love Star Trek, I’m just wildly out of date. I haven’t seen Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Brave New Worlds, or Prodigy. I haven’t even seen any of the Kelvin movies, other than a few clips here and there. I’ve been meaning to catch up, it just hasn’t happened yet.

So last night I saw that he had released a video about ChatGPT, and I’ve been meaning to investigate that a bit further, so I thought why not? Except I didn’t watch that video, instead I went to his channel and scrolled back a ways…

It’s kind of all over the place. Sure there’s a fair amount of Star Trek content, but there’s also this:

I pretty much knew what I was going to get there, but it was good to hear nonetheless.
So I worked my way forward from there:

It’s random, but also funny.

This does a fantastic job of distilling many of the same ideas and feelings I have, but more eloquently than I could reasonably achieve.

This one seems like it shouldn’t still be relevant, but it totally is. I also love the framing device.

This is a thorough, kind, and thoughtful tribute to the late Kevin Conroy.

Observational comedy definitely seems to be a strength of his.

There’s a fair bit of Batman content as well.

I need to go back and see previous years’ videos of this.

I’ll admit that I had a little difficulty parsing this at first, as I’m not as extremely online enough to know about all of the parties involved, but once you get past the setup, the rest of the explanation is a pretty satisfying answer to the general question posed.

And here’s the ChatGPT video I mentioned earlier:

It’s pretty fun.

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Thanks! I’m going to give him a try!

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My son shared the Public Domain Day video w/me via Discord.

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That prescription drug one is basically my internal monologue every time I see one of those commercials. Well, plus laughing about how you’re not supposed to take it if you’re allergic to it (which you probably wouldn’t know until taking it, and if you know then why would you take it?), and all the horrible possible side effects that are usually listed.

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Speaking of:

“One explanation might be that drugs with substantial therapeutic value are likely to be recognized and prescribed without advertising, so manufacturers have greater incentive to promote drugs of lesser value,” said the authors, which include researchers at Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth.

Of the top advertised drugs, 73 had at least one value rating. Collectively, pharmaceutical companies spent $22.3 billion on advertising for those 73 drugs between 2015 and 2021. Even with the generous ratings, 53 of the 73 drugs (roughly 73 percent) were categorized as low-benefit. Collectively, these low-benefit drugs accounted for $15.9 billion of the ad spending. The top three low-benefit drugs by dollar amount were Dulaglutide (type 2 diabetes), Varenicline (smoking cessation), and Tofacitinib (rheumatoid arthritis).

I’m not a particularly creative person, but I can think of a lot of things that sixteen billion dollars could be used for instead.

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The insurance companies and drug companies have taken over our healthcare system. It’s great new drugs are being created, but the doctors don’t have unbiased research to turn to when deciding what to prescribe.

Most doctors are not well trained in prescribing medicine. I once had a allergist who was very, very good at prescribing drugs, and he had gone to special training to be able to do it. I thought that was crazy, as 9/10 of the reason most people go to a doctor is to get a prescription to help them manage their symptoms or hopefully cure their illness.

So then the doctors who are so busy are at the mercy of the drug reps. I have a friend who is a drug rep for a cancer drug - a particularly toxic implant - and being a rep for selling drugs takes a lot of knowledge and skill, too, so I think the doctors are really relieved to have people who they consider to be a valuable resource.

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A few more recent gems:

His ability to be angry and reasonable at the same time is remarkable.

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:rofl:

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A follow up to “How Hard Is It to Not Buy a Video Game?”

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I think he really danced around a major point and almost said it, especially toward the end, but I guess decided not to.

I am one who can love the art but hate the artist (or vice-versa actually). Some other people just can’t make that separation.

One of the sci-fi authors I loved reading when I was growing up has turned out to be a total raving asshole in terms of his personal and political beliefs published on social media. Of course reasonable people will hate him. But that doesn’t change the fact that some of the stories he wrote back in the day were really great.

And I’ll go so far as to say that goes for Bill Cosby too. We can hate the guy all we want, we can do that together, I’ve no problem joining in. But when I was growing up his show was always on, and it was a comforting, relaxing very easy-going light friendly sitcom. And I have good memories of coming home and just zoning out to that show to relax and calm down after stress.

Music, oh man. So many performers came out as raving lunatics in the last few years. But that doesn’t change the awesome songs that they did in the 70s or the 80s or whatever. And if you try to guilt me for still liking those songs, yes that’s annoying.

Not everything has to be about a cult of personality and celebrity worship and a ‘personal brand’. I can like the stories, the songs, the shows. I can totally hate the people that made them and still enjoy what they made.

Maybe I’m just old, because we didn’t have this whole social media personal brand stuff when I was growing up. But yes, I will get annoyed if someone criticizes me for liking something made by a bad person. It doesn’t mean I like the person.

And similarly, just because I like a person doesn’t mean I’m automatically gonna like anything they create. People I love create crap. I create crap myself sometimes. That’s just the nature of things.

Maybe I’m beginning to get old and I really don’t understand why people are conflating those things now. It just seems like social media has warped the perception. Now you have to either love or hate everything someone did based on totally irrelevant stuff? I don’t agree with that.

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Is it Card? You just described my relationship with Card’s work vs. his entirely detestable personal beliefs.

Here’s another take on the issues with Hogwart’s Legacy:

The key points are that you can’t claim to care about a marginalized group, then engage with content that directly or indirectly supports someone in opposition of that group, and then be surprised when they’re hurt by your actions. In other words, you can’t say that you’re an ally and then not act like one.

JK Rowling isn’t going to suffer financially whether I buy Hogwart’s Legacy or not, but I’m not going to buy it anyway. It’s literally the least I can do.

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I get what you’re typing. I recently found out that Asimov was one of those men who think women are for pinching. It made me very sad.

From what I’ve gathered, people do art to release whatever needs to be released from inside of them. Maybe for some of them, it only releases part of the anger and the rest they unleash upon other humans.

Actors…there seems to be a history of those who are assholes playing super-nice parts, whereas some of them for whom the only criticism was that they were almost too nice IRL were great at playing villains.

Thes

I think they’ve always been conflating them, and it’s because of the internet, what with its ability to spread information instantly, that we simply know more things. Also, it just seems to be the way humans are.

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That sucks. I never really got into Asimov, but I know many people like his work.
To draw a distinction between Asimov and, for example, Rowling and Card:

  • As far as I know, he didn’t use his notoriety as a platform for spreading his views on women.
    • I’m not that familiar with him, so I could be totally wrong here.
  • He’s dead, so he’s not actively harming anyone any more.
    • It’s still possible that his estate could be using proceeds from his income for bad purposes, but I would argue that’s a separate issue.

I’m not suggesting that anyone should or shouldn’t engage with his work. Everyone has to make that decision for themselves, but I can acknowledge that there is some more nuance to separating the art and the artist when the artist is mere historical fact.

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I think he did his share in shaping the chauvinistic views that the present SF community holds.

And I myself am getting sick of the argument “But things were different then!”, which I’ve used myself quite a few times. Taking humans who are/were being othered and using them to further one’s agenda and/or income has always been wrong, and there have always been those who are against that. But if it makes a profit for a majority of people, who’s going to listen to the nay-sayers?

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I definitely think there’s a solid difference in it depending on whether the artist is alive or not.

I mean, once the artist is no longer around, at that point you’re not enabling ongoing behavior and activity. It’s a lot easier to say “hey, this person was a piece of crap, but that wasn’t a part of this thing they created and it had value independent of them”. This depends a lot, of course, on how much harm the artist was responsible for, but still holds up in general.

When they are around, trying to treat the art as separate from the artist usually still means that you are still supporting that artist, contributing to their purse, helping to increase their popularity, and giving them reasons to believe that whatever non-art issues they have are acceptable. Doubly true when they are actively telling people that the popularity of their art means that their other views/actions are also correct.

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I’ve been saying this for years.

And the radio show is surprisingly great too. Both aimed at kids, and that is one of their strengths.

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Speaking of:

In the hypothetical world where I’m not 18+ months behind on podcasts, it could be fun to start listening this this.

Also related:

This seems great.

We could create a whole set of threads just to talk about the different topics Steve covers, like:

  • Superman
  • Batman
  • Star Trek
  • Poirot
  • Wrestling
  • Stuffy (and Friends)
  • Politics
  • MacGyver
  • …and the proverbial more.
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We already do have a Star Trek thread!

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He’s also done a number of skits that are pretty good:

This one is probably my favorite, although I am unreasonably bothered by his pronunciation of temperature.

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