Calyn aka Fruit-Bat-Phoenix

It's not even halloween yet!

I'm very late to this party, but Kpop Demon Hunters truly lives up to the hype. 10/10.

Making an art about grief today. It is sky blue. Not because of the trope, but now I see that maybe that trope exists for a reason. I just always thought it would be a grey-blue, not the brilliant color of the summer sky when the air is a balmy caress.

This literally happened to me some time back and I genuinely find Linux Mint a much easier and more pleasant experience than Windows ever was

Extreme close-up of a bronze metal sculpture of a carpenter ant worker against a white background.

Worker ant, bronze, finished at last. Got her to sit for a proper portrait.

She is absolutely majestic!

The BBotE coffee is really excellent. 10/10.

Seconded.

Here is a moral argument: "Using artists' works for profit, in ways they find reprehensible, without compensating them or getting their consent, is a morally shitty thing to do"

Here are things that are not counterarguments:

"It's legal"
"You can't stop it"
"It's already too late"

Linux Mint is where it's at!

Cool cool cool. I’ve lost my adjunct teaching job for pushing back on AI being adapted into the program.

The person replacing me doesn’t even have a working website.

My students love me & they’re PISSED.

Real cool of them to do this to a single mom with no notice. I had to figure it out myself!

Who do I scream at/write to/whatever would actually help and/or be cathartic? I'm dead fucking serious. You are a hero for fighting against genAI, you have my respect, and I am LIVID on your behalf.

I really and truly need people to understand that a chatbot does not and cannot know anything. Like, I need them to understand that in their bones. It is very good at looking like it knows something, but it does not and cannot know anything.

Look you just have to make the cool weird shit that excites you. You must. In this world besieged by bland, scrubbed boring, computer slop, you must. Make the thing you’re embarrassed to make, the thing that feels “too much” because otherwise we get drowned in a sea of cowardly work made by a button

If I have to explain to you why it's a bad idea to use a machine that makes shit up 15-80% of the time AND destroys the environment AND contributes to rising fascism and genocide AND puts brilliant skillful creatives out of work by stealing their work, then we're already speaking different languages

🫂

Defanging this kind of resentment/envy takes realizing that it's about what you don't have. It's not about them, it's about your unmet needs & what you think you deserve.

i think straight men can get laid if they have like a lot of pictures of bugs maybe? like in their wallet

True facts. The stuff is good

🥁

It's going to be gorgeous though. The way I'm going to be re-reading it just focusing on all the background details...

As an artist, I see people/organizations doing this, & I instantly distrust everything they do (and block them on social media). Saying no to genAI is EASY.

I've just been reading their free stuff! Not all of what they do is free though, you are right

404 Media

IIRC, CultureHustle used someone's work without credit not that long back, and didn't handle it gracefully when it came out. I'd steer clear.

I remember as a child, encountering the idea of parents closely tracking kids' locations was a specifically formative moment of visceral moral outrage. Kids, especially older kids, have a right to privacy. A child's relationship to their parents should be based on trust, not surveillance.

Never.

An eloquent image:

Setting aside the content under the tarp for a moment, teens were asked to make art expressing what it is like to be a teen, and the end result was a mural wrapped in a tarp by adults.

I bet a lot of teens would find this expressive of their experience.

@carlbergstrom.com has a great mini-course on AI that talks about this: thebullshitmachines.com

And if you want a thicker read that explains how genAI works in a more thorough fashion writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what...

Traffic is real bad around UW and Seattle in general, I will say. But the PNW is good