After nearly a year, with 68 members leading 352 forum discussions, Subvert has published its AI policy:
- No AI-generated music
- No AI-generated visual art
- No AI training on your work
This policy was built by Subvert’s membership.
Read the full policy at subvert.fm/ai-policy
I contributed to these long discussions. Impressive how well Iz and Hannah synthesized it all.
My speculation: Stu Levy is looking to cash out via an acquisition and is trying to improve the finances in an attempt to make Tokyopop more attractive to a potential acquirer. (But he’s not going to get a 2.8 x revenues valuation.)
ANN should have mentioned the loss but did not. Also, “The company currently earns about US$15 million annually” is misleading; that’s revenue, not earnings.
Subvert just hit 20,000 co-op members and co-owners
I wrote a newsletter about some personal inspirations for building a cooperative: a punk, a priest, and an anarchist
open.substack.com/pub/cultures...
I really like the David Ferry translation, it takes liberties but works really well as poetry. I wrote about it on Cohost, but can't find the archived post. But here are the opening lines: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57374/...
For others: "An investment in [Tokyopop's] Securities offered in this Offering involves a high degree of risk and you should not purchase the Securities if you cannot afford the loss of your entire investment. You may not be able to liquidate your investment for any reason in the near future." 6/6
Calling @animenewsnetwork.com, @animeherald.com, or other anime/manga news sites: If you have a finance-savvy staff or guest writer, the Tokyopop SEC filing is chock-full of other interesting items suitable for an in-depth story. 5/
Other tidbits: Stu Levy owns 55%+ of Tokyopop Class A (voting) shares and thus has majority control, a Japanese company owns 28%+, other insiders presumably own the remainder. Public investors get no votes but do get a frame-able stock certificate, one free release a year, and other minor perks. 4/
This valuation presumably reflects Tokyopop's belief that it can achieve $50M revenue by (in?) 2030. This would correspond to over 25% annual growth, compared to < 8% revenue growth from 2024 to 2025. Plan is to do this via publishing, IP licensing, anime production, merch sales, and live events. 3/
Per the SEC filing: Tokyopop is looking to raise up to $1M+ through this offering, had losses last fiscal year of almost $1M on $16M of revenue, and values itself at $44M+, or 2.8x revenue. This is at / beyond the high-end of typical publishing company valuations. dealstream.com/industry-gui... 2/
I'm seeing misinformation about Tokyopop "going public". Not true. They are offering people a chance to purchase non-voting Class B shares in a private company. To quote Tokyopop's SEC filing: "There is not now and may never be a public market for the Securities." See: www.sec.gov/Archives/edg... 1/
TokyoPop is not "going public" in the sense commonly meant. They are offering people a chance to purchase non-voting Class B shares in a private company. To quote TokyoPop's SEC filing: "There is not now and may never be a public market for the Securities." www.sec.gov/Archives/edg...
Oh, wow, this reminds me of 25+ years ago when I contributed some annotations to www.barbelith.com/bomb/index.htm Good luck to this new project, I hope it finds some folks who have even more thoughts on The Invisibles than we did back then.
In its double premiere, Witch Hat Atelier conjures a living, breathing, magical world, but not one devoid of danger.
This is an excellent point. People who published stuff before 2022 will likely get the benefit of the doubt. People who didn’t don’t.
Left: In an illustration from the manga Witch Hat Atelier, the young witch Coco explains how to create a magic spell by drawing a diagram. Right: A Feynman diagram showing a neutron (composed of one up quark and two down quarks) decaying into a proton (composed of two up quarks and one down quark) and a weak boson, which then in turn decays into an electron and an electron antineutrino.
Since today is Witch Hat Atelier Day, to mark the release of the anime I thought I'd link to an old post of mine riffing on a major theme of the show: we can create our own magic with pen and paper, but making it real is not nearly as easy as it is in fiction. frankhecker.com/2022/11/03/r...
new: you can now start a voluntary, sliding scale subscription or one-off tip to support @blackskyweb.xyz from directly in our app. 💸
Live now at blacksky.community/support
Built by @rishkebab.blacksky.team
My suggestion: Even if you don't rely on Blacksky (and I don't), consider supporting them financially (like I do). They're doing valuable work and they don't have $100M+ in the bank to get it done. And consider making a recurring contribution: it will help Blacksky get to a sound financial footing.
I feel guilty that I prefer Pope’s Iliad to any of the modern translations; I find it compulsively readable.
Yeah, I read all of Pope’s Iliad translation and it’s amazing how he can keep going and going like the Energizer bunny for thousands of lines
For Thorium Reader, we're working on an iOS version that will bring comics/manga specific features.
You can test it at: testflight.apple.com/join/2NhKXjSU
We support CBZ, EPUB and PDF, including LCP protected ones.
Based on my testing the BookWalker app and website offer a better reading experience for manga than Thorium Reader and FBReader, except for the lack of offline support. So I'll wait & hope that M12 Media can deliver the promised new features & offer an experience similar to "BookWalker Classic" 3/3
Sam Pinansky has mentioned OPDS support as a longer-term solution for reading BookWalker manga/LNs in other apps. This would presumably allow creation of "catalogs" of all your purchased titles that could then be accessed by OPDS-supporting readers like Thorium Reader or FBReader. opds.io 2/
Final thread on exporting BookWalker manga/LNs: It's clear that launch of the new BookWalker website and apps was rushed to meet a March 31 deadline for the change in ownership to M12 Media, hence the missing features. .lcpl export is a stop-gap solution for reading in other readers or for backup 1/
You can
Pros of FBReader: mobile apps. Cons: FBReader for macOS is prone to hanging in my experience, both when reading and syncing. FBReader for iPadOS will sometimes not display manga pages at full size. And FBReader has the same problem with not displaying cover images as Thorium Reader. 5/5
You can also copy exported BookWalker .lcpl files to iOS/iPadOS using AirDrop or by copying files to iCloud. (I presume there are similar mechanisms for Android.) As with FBReader desktop, mobile FBReader will need to know your .lcpl passphrase (BookWalker userid). 4/
Screenshot of FBReader for macOS showing the cloud synchronization icon: a black cloud with a white checkmark.
A screenshot of FBReader for macOS, showing the synchronization dialog that comes up if you click the synchronize icon. It shows the Google account you are logged in as, with buttons "Synchronize" to start syncing and "Disconnect" to disconnect FBReader from your Google account.
You can move your BookWalker manga/LNs to the FBReader iOS/iPadOS app in multiple ways. If you have a Google account, FBReader has a built-in synchronization mechanism based on Google Drive; look for the cloud icon with checkmark. You will need to login to Google to allow FBReader to use this. 3/
Screenshot of Fbreader for macOS showing the "File > Open..." and "File > Import multiple files..." menu items.
You can import a .lcpl file into (desktop) FBReader, similar to Thorium Reader, with "File > Open...". If you have multiple .lcpl files you can import them in bulk using "File > Import multiple files...". FBReader will ask for your passphrase (your BookWalker userid) and download the EPUB files. 2/