When I tried to help SAG with AI education a couple years ago, I joined a committee that invited me to a meeting with an AI company that was flirting with the union. "We have to see how it works" they said. I said, "No we don't, we know what it does, don't you?". But they met anyway & I would be there just as a technical advisor. We got a demo, the tech guy assured us we'd all be feeding our voices in "on the ground floor" getting in before everyone & making more money with less work. "Make money in your PJs" always comes up as a trite, oft-repeated slogan for actors, as though we all hate what we do as much as tech bros. They all joked together & my side asked the most cringey tech-illiterate questions. When they did, I heard his voice smile because he knew he had them. My side played their cards & showed their ignorance & whole ass, trying to figure out the most lucrative way forward, while talking about how this is necessary to achieve AI protections. I was the only person to say "what do you have to say about the ethical repercussions? That all of this was built from stolen data and exploitation, in order to achieve more stolen data and exploitation". On my side, people interrupted me, apologizing for me. You know what I was told by my own people? "Well it will only affect the less talented, less in-demand actors." I contested, but as a new member I was told "sometimes you have to change things from the inside, Melissa". So I never went back to another meeting. It felt like Invasion of the Bodysnatchers & I was the only one uninfected. That's why I stopped. The damage was already done & already in too deep. And no one seemed interested in fixing it. I know a losing battle when I see one. The great hope is that a union is comprised of its members, & regimes change. There's no permanent jobs in the union. But there ARE some great people in the Union who are actually fighting for the good things, but the foundation is rotten. I hope things change. Even though SAG just renewed Duncan's contract until 2032 because he's doing such a good job. 👍 This was a committee member meeting not an official union negotiation. My point is that if this is happening so openly around lower leadership, I hate to think what decisions are made even further behind closed doors.

We are super thrilled that #LegendofGlaive Season 1 is officially physical media! Special thanks to @HikariTaiyo_ch for supporting the show! Get your copy on ULTRA today! #anime #dramaCD #audiodrama #englishdub #physicalmedia #physicalCDs - Season 3 is coming soon! 😮

Normalize telling new and aspiring actors that there are no true shortcuts in this industry. I see so many of these "Come to my seminar, buy my program, and you too can be a voice actor booking in high end animation and games in no time! No acting required! No need to get an agent! No need to spend money on demos!" type scams. I saw one telling people that they just have CD's sitting around itching to meet you and cast you in things like Diablo and Pixar animated features, right off the street. Pretty frustrating - and I am sure it is VERY frustrating for the tons of people who pay these folks a mint, only to find out that actually being successful in VO is really hard.

I am not making this up: Secretary Rubio actually sat before Congress today and said “the war is over.” It’s a bizarre lie to tell when Americans know there’s obviously a war underway - not just from seeing it on screens, but from paying its costs every day at home. Leaders with this little respect for the American people have no business in office.

One family, the right-wing Trump-aligned Ellisons, will soon control: TikTok CBS CNN HBO Discovery Channel BET Cartoon Network Comedy Central DC Studios Fandango Miramax MTV Nickelodeon Paramount PlutoTV Showtime TBS The CW TNT Warner Bros. And more This is oligarchy.

Rob Reiner’s great achievement was placing real people into the fantasies of mass culture. The films he made are “classics that entertain, tickle, and console, that can be watched a hundred times over and still give pleasure,” Alexandra Schwartz writes. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/vW…

I am now the most banned author in the United States--87 books. May I suggest you pick up one of them and see what all the pissing & moaning is about? Self-righteous book banners don't always get to have their way. This is still America, dammit.

Since MAGA is out there once again saying their Melon-hued Messiah is making “prayer great again”, let’s talk about God and Trump, shall we? When Donald was a 5 year-old boy, he was caught throwing rocks at a baby in a crib in the neighboring yard. When he was eligible for the draft, while his peers went off to war, he sought medical deferments for an ailment he didn’t have. He left his first wife, who said he raped her, for his second wife, who he cheated on with his third wife, who he cheated on with a porn star and a Playmate, who he then paid to keep quiet, before he lied about the money he paid them. Yes, really. He bragged about grabbing women by the pussy when he wasn’t making fun of their looks, their weight, their menstrual cycles, or calling them “dogs,” he cheated people out of their money, stole from charities, mocked a disabled reporter, joked about Paul Pelosi being attacked by a man with a hammer, opined about having sex with his daughter, insulted people who stutter, said he didn’t want war-wounded amputees in his sight, golfed and tweeted while Americans died from Covid, incited horrific violence in order to install himself in an office he was voted out of, and then pardoned every single person who perpetrated the violence he himself incited. He is named in the files of a notorious sex trafficker he spent decades being best friends with, and relocated said sex trafficker’s partner in crime to a bougie Club Fed cushioned with comforts most of the survivors of her abuse will never know. Yes, really. He’s a sociopathic, narcissistic, pathologically lying, serial sexual predator, and a bigoted, hateful, vitriolic criminal conman who refers to innocent immigrants as “vermin,” while praising murderous despots at the same time. He can’t cite a single passage from the Bible when asked but will still sell them for profit, he doesn’t attend church but worships instead every Sunday at Our Lady of The Perpetual Mulligan, and he’s even had the audacity to refer to himself as the second coming of Jesus. Yes, really. God has turned him into a tomato-sauce-stained sloth-like felon with bruised hands, slurred speech and swollen ankles. God impeached him twice, made him lose reelection once and visited upon his first term in office a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic which ravaged our country along with the rest of the world. And then God convicted him on 34 counts and found him liable of defamation, sexual abuse & business fraud. God created someone as hateful, impulsive, intolerant, needy, angry, vengeful, malevolent, selfish, sadistic, depraved, amoral, areligious, idiotic, envious, devious and evil as Donald Trump, made his first presidency the most infamous in the history of time, and then rained down upon him the hammer of justice in historic fashion all so that he could return him to the office he once tried to steal? That’s God at work, is it? He handed the highest political office on the planet to the physical embodiment of the seven deadly sins rolled into a sadistic, senile, septuagenarian who personifies everything Jesus spoke against because he is so “devout”? The truth is that slimmest plurality of Americans, comprised of the dumbest, most willfully self-sabotaging fools in this country put him back in office for a second term because they either couldn’t or wouldn’t vote for a Black woman. But that victory is what the cult will point to as the “proof” their spiteful psychopathic savior was sent “by God.” Really?!? That he was “chosen” by God himself. Well, that’s straight up bullshit. But it’s also what they have to tell themselves, because despite everything he’s done and everything he’s said, despite what they can see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears—MAGA will still believe what they need to believe. Because the truth is that this was never about God. These people don’t worship God. They worship Trump.