J.Y.Amihud ( Jeison Yehuda Amihud; known also as Blender Dumbass; born July 30, 1997 ) is a Ukrainian-Born, Israeli filmmaker, freedom activist and programmer. Known for making the movie Moria's Race and for writing politically charged articles on his blog blenderdumbass . org.
Between 2016 and 2019 Amihud produced tutorials for a Free / Libre Program called Blender, which were made in an intentionally idiotic style for comedy purposes. This is where the name "Blender Dumbass" came from.
Early Life and Background
Amihud was born on July 30, 1997 in Dnepropetrovs Ukraine. His father, Arie, is orthodox Jewish, from the Chabad delineation. But in the same time, Arie is an artist and a programmer who introduced J.Y. to Free / Libre Software and taught him how to draw. His mother, Golda, was a woman of incredible rebellious spirit. Which in combination taught J.Y. not to yield to authorities and fight for freedom, using computers.
J.Y. is the older brother in the family, which consists of David ( also known as DRPIFFA; formely bypiffa ) who is unfortunately Streaming on Twitch, and also: Pinchas, Yoel Avraham, Shimon Tuvia, Ephraim Elimelech and Tirtza Emuna. Most of which were born after 2014 when Arie, J.Y.'s father, re-married.
J.Y. and his brother David moved to Israel in 2009. Since then J.Y. pursued educating himself in everything related to computers, filmmaking and art, kick-starting with a help of his father, who is a computer person himself.
Free Software advocacy
Amihud had been in many uncomfortable conversations with computer enthusiasts through out the childhood about various unorthodox software choices. Amihud started using Blender in 2009 to learn 3D graphics. And stuck with it, despite many children and adult arguing that it was inferior to expensive proprietary software. Similarly Amihud started using the GNU / Linux operating systems ( introduced to him by his father ) and liked it better than the more popular Windows. Those conversations started a new fascination in Amihud: a desire to prove to all those people that those choices were not terrible choices.
Later he learned about the Free Software Philosophy which cleared up some previously confusing concepts and inspired him to write his first articles.
The position of J.Y. is that non-Free Sofwate is inherently violating various human rights. And therefor it should not exist. Though to combat non-Free Software J.Y. is not in favor of a legislation which would make it illegal. This kind of legislation, would be out of proportion and violate too much freedom, to gain very little.
Instead J.Y. is in favor of steering the software industry toward respecting people's freedom, in various ways: Refusing to use non-Free Software; Making sure there is Free Software to replace it; Developing ways for Free Software to be competitive financially.
J.Y. Amihud's game Dani's Race is experimenting with one distribution model which could potentially give Free Software the bargaining power it needs to make money.
Anti Age-Discrimination advocacy
In 2013-2014 J.Y.'s friend Mushki Zohar ( credited for story in Moria's Race ) got pregnant from a man who was at least 10 years older than her. She had to go through a large legal procedure, qualifying first as a human being, to then have a right to claim consent in court, to let this man go. This whole situation was observed by Amihud as making very little sense and being extremely unfair. To everyone of Mushki's friends the consent was absolutely obvious, yet the law considered it automatically non-existent.
The first film by J.Y.Amihud called I'm Not Even Human was a meditation on those kinds of evils. And a call to action to start "Respecting Children".
Later Moria's Race was another entry into the same fight against age-discrimination. Moria's Race has characters named Moria and Dani, who were inspired by the children of Mushki, who are also named Moria and Dani. Moria being the girl born from Mushki being pregnant as a teenager. Mushki Zohar was involved with coming up with the story for Moria's Race. The final script was written entirely by J.Y. Amihud himself.
The position of J.Y. when it comes to age-discrimination is based on the philosophical conundrum of Paternalism. A violation of a person's freedom for this person's supposed good.
J.Y. is not advocating for child-abuse. In fact Paternalism ( or over-protectiveness ) of children is child-abuse in J.Y.'s opinion. He distinctly separates abusers from non-abusers, when addressing complex topics such as child-abuse. An abuser, in J.Y.'s perspective, is one that violates the freedom of a person. A child is a person, and therefor violating the child's freedom is abuse. Similarly to how violating any other person's freedom is abuse.
J.Y.'s view on age discrimination arguments, such as that "children do not have the capacity to understand what they are agreeing to", is that those arguments misunderstand 3 very important things: Freedom is beyond the well being of a person ( anti-paternalism ); most adults do not have the capacity to understand what they are agreeing to, so therefor it is not an age related issue; and requiring a person to have experience before giving that person a chance at getting experience is a catch 22.
Views on Artificial Intelligence
J.Y. being an artist is opposed to artificial intelligence or any other algorithm that is used to generate artistic media without the need for a skill. He does not see however in Artificial Intelligence some inherent evil, and thinks that some uses of it are okay.
He also doesn't see in in anything that will require it to be outlawed. Though he is in favor of metadata law of some kind that will require all generated art ( which was made in such a way as to avoid learning a skill or hiring a skilled artist ) to be marked as such, so people could boycott it. He is in favor of boycotting AI art.
He does not see the copyright argument against generative AI as valid, because he sees copyright itself a violation of human rights, unless used to enforce copyleft.
Filmography
Main page: J.Y. Amihud's Filmography
