One of those parents was a truck driver who was able to cross the Iron Curtain and always smuggled something interesting back.
Quality hardly matters when the real treasure was getting the movie in the first place.
[0] https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d5cc5f_5c451a5882264776a4...
https://deadly-prey-gallery.myshopify.com/cdn/shop/files/D18...
The net effect of this is that, while I can look at the pictures and admire them (if that's the word) I have no idea whether I can trust anything in the actual text, since any given claim might just be an LLM confabulation.
(Which is too bad, since on the face of it it seems quite interesting, and probably many of the things the LLM has generated are in fact true.)
Less of this, please.
The single live link suggests that they do.
> The posters were typically painted on used flour sacks, sewn together and primed for colour. These weren’t just any flour sacks either — they were durable, easy to roll up, and ready for reuse.
> And the designs? Let’s just say they didn’t rely too heavily on accuracy.
LLM writing tropes that are so bad, they're good.
The text adds some pieces of information you wouldn't get from the images alone: they were painted on flour sacks, used at mobile cinemas, now exhibited at galleries in the West, etc. And it provides citations and artists' names for those who want to learn more.
The art criticism is unsophisticated, the images don't completely match the descriptions, and some of the facts might well be hallucinated or at least taken out of context. But you got that with traditional media and human writers/editors too.
For what it's worth, I'd guess there is a real author, whose command of the English language is worse than ChatGPT, though his personality is more interesting, and who asked the LLM to rewrite his work in the right style for the website.
Sure. But if the author doesn't notice the nonsense that the LLM is introducing, it harms as well as helping.
"Primed for colour" is a strangely uninteresting thing to be saying about the sacks. If this requires any non-trivial effort, it would make more sense to describe the process. If the author actually wanted to talk about that, chances are the LLM removed useful information.
And putting aside that "These weren’t just any flour sacks either — they were durable, easy to roll up, and ready for reuse." is three "classic LLM tropes" in a row ("not just any"; a gratuitous emdash where any dash at all only becomes necessary because of that introduction; an ascending tricolon), it's just a bizarre thing to say. First off, if the sacks were sewn together to make a larger banner, then it doesn't make sense to talk about rolling up the individual sacks. Second, the phrasing suggests something exceptional, but these are all totally ordinary and trivial properties of pretty much any sort of flour sack. Many different materials are used, but all of them would be "easy to roll up" when empty, and making them durable and reusable is just common sense in that environment. The artists were clearly just using a fairly obvious material they had at hand, so this sudden bit of marketing-speak is entirely out of place. Third, the features highlighted all have to do with the sacks, but not with either each other nor the banners. In particular, a sack being "ready for reuse" is ready for reuse as a sack, not for its material being repurposed for something completely different (we typically call that "recycling", not "reuse").
The bit about "the designs" may well even be true, but it's a complete non-sequitur here, a point that doesn't really merit deeper explanation.
The writing isn't just "banal" but nonsensical in context, veering off into free-association. There's more potentially being hallucinated here than just the "facts". Never mind the accuracy or truth of what's written; this sort of thing makes it hard to accept that the prose even reflects the author's intent.
Anyway, those are usually avoided in comments unless they are particularly egregious, because as per the guidelines:
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
(the bbc seem to have lost the body of their original article)
The clickbait title is about "Africa" and "bad", but it's specifically about Ghana and awesome.
Anyway, I'm Ghanaian, and you can AMA. There's a lot of such art, many on walls of the erstwhile movie houses. Most of them are very realistic and collectible, but I guess only the garish ones command attention and so are easier to make into a story.
As a kid I once watched an artist paint one of these on a wall in a few hours, was very cool.
billions must die.
I like this movie poster art. I think it conceptually reflects what you will see in the movie. It also looks genuine and authentic.
A BBC article on it: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20181107-the-last-film-po...
alephnerd•2h ago
When will Westerners stop treating Africa as a monoculture.
TheCraiggers•2h ago
zdragnar•2h ago
Barbing•2h ago
Either of these better titles or no?
“…from Ghana, Africa…”
“…from Africa’s Ghana…”
(China, Asia & Asia’s China don’t really fit so probably not?)
em500•2h ago
cogman10•2h ago
The Asia comparison would work better if instead of talking about China we were talking about Laos.
prmph•59m ago
mitthrowaway2•2h ago
TheCraiggers•2h ago
ozgrakkurt•2h ago
exFAT•1h ago
sometimes_all•1h ago
No need to cherry-pick some random metric and try and justify a point that's not worth justifying.
exFAT•1h ago
I'm not justifying anything. I also think it's more polite to say "Ghana" rather than "Africa". I just don't agree with the arguments.
sometimes_all•1h ago
This goes beyond mere politeness; that you used this word is a bit suggestive. Refusing to acknowledge an identity is far more than just a lack of politeness.
vitus•46m ago
Now, if you asked the same about Pakistan or Nigeria (#5 and #6 in terms of population, but far smaller and with far shorter sea borders), I'd bet that far fewer people would be able to pinpoint those with the same accuracy (whether in the English-speaking world or not).
f17428d27584•1h ago
Asia is only ~50% larger than Africa.
croes•2h ago
I expected different posters for the same movie from different African countries.
Imagine buying a cook book of European cuisine only listing UK dishes.
Elidrake24•2h ago
alephnerd•2h ago
jchw•2h ago
croes•2h ago
Like a tour guide for the US and you only list places in Texas.
jchw•42m ago
This is merely an example where the writer of the headline believes that the average reader may not be familiar with the country of Ghana. If the demographics include Americans, I'd have to guess they were spot on. (I'm American, I know how Americans are.)
Would it really be similarly offensive if a headline referred to something happening in "South America" when actually it happened in Guyana? Or, a headline about something happening in "Europe" when actually it happened in Andorra? None of these headlines are inaccurate. They're just not specific.
I can obviously see why this is frustrating but to me it's a complete misunderstanding to blame the person writing the headline.
sometimes_all•30m ago
Yes. It's like saying that the art and culture in Georgetown is very similar to the art and culture in Santiago. Especially when you claim to be an arts-and-culture website. Would a Texan like being stereotyped by a tourist who thinks all of America is just like New York City?
> Or, a headline about something happening in "Europe" when actually it happened in Andorra?
What many people here are trying to point out is that the chances of seeing such a line about a European country (even a relatively unknown one) is waaaay less than the chances of seeing such a line about African/South American countries.
cogman10•2h ago
The only debatable part is that it's not all of Africa. But otherwise it's a very accurate description of the whole article.
Clickbait is "You won't believe the art that came out of this continent!" or "Look at the wild things artists did to attract an audience!".
sometimes_all•1h ago
A sample from the website's About page:
> this site is my attempt at creating something that’s dedicated to discovering the hidden gems of the online realm (whether they be in the form of academic discourse, cutting-edge technology, cultural commentary, or artistic expression) and sharing them with care and consideration.
How is treating a country in the second largest continent in the world - which contains more than 50 countries, most of which have very distinct cultures - as representative of that continent showing care and consideration? Ghana is not an unfamiliar country, and most people, at the very least, know it's in Africa. If I confused Mexico with Canada, or Germany with Albania, I'd be treated as a dimwit, but somehow it's totally fine if I don't know the difference between Ghana and Kenya.
I agree with the parent comment; this "unfamiliar country" business needs to stop.
prmph•44m ago
- To sensationalize the story by positioning it as a another manifestation of a supposed "African" nature/character.
- The idea that African countries by themselves are too insignificant to seek/need to know about, but an entire continents? OK, maybe. Many people are comfortable in ignorance, real or feigned.
Putting Ghana on the title would have been just fine. I'm Ghanaian btw.
hiccuphippo•1h ago
ndsipa_pomu•1h ago
fart-fart-FART•1h ago
ALM•1h ago
fart-fart-FART•57m ago
a shit stirrer shows up and now 2/3 of the comments in the thread are offtopic. is that the kind of commentary you seek?
Razengan•52m ago