Deeply, deeply aggravating when people stumble upon an ethical justification to hate something they already loathe for different reasons and get just insufferably smug about it.
Like shut up about how much water AI art uses. You never cared about water use in data centres before and assuredly never will again if it doesn’t help you win some dumb internet argument.
This example specifically annoys me because every single case people point to where the water use is gravely excessive reflects an existing problem with government corruption or lax water rights or reckless squandering of resources that didn’t appear when AI showed up and won’t go away if it disappears. The methods you’d use to ensure that high-intensity datacentres don’t permanently destroy the water table are the same methods you use to ensure that nobody else with a pile of money does that, and if those methods aren’t in place then that’s the actual problem!
not lashing out at people who make you feel you’re not a decent person is perhaps the most important interpersonal skill you can cultivate. alernatively you can freak out about this and retreat from society.
this is so funny/enraging to me because yes that is an actual disability called “aphantasia” and i know several ai artists who use ai specifically to compensate for that.
anyway collection of some awful ableism in the <name redacted> thread.
it’s grim out there, folks!
Hi!!! Physically disabled person here!!!
AI is not a disability aide in how it’s being used.
Repeat after me, AI art is NOT a disability aide in HOW IT IS BEING USED.
If you can’t draw and use AI art to create something the same way people may use picrew or doll divine or something similar, and aren’t posting it around, using it for personal use then it can be used as a sort of side for those who can’t draw because of a condition. Or if you’re using AI to create a niche reference to be able to copy aspects of the pose because you have aphantashia.
But posting this art and claiming it as your own or your art because you made the prompt, only to hide behind a “disability aide” then you’re not using it as such!!! It’s not an aide it’s stealing from many artists and enouragibg the use and postings of generated, stolen artworks.
hi, i’m a physically disabled person too. i am going to continue using ai to make the art that i want to, and it’s still my art no matter how mad you get at me about it. you don’t understand how ai works. you are also extremely condescending and rude and nothing you said has anything to do with what i posted - you just saw “ai”, decided to let your eyes roll back up in your sockets, and become an angry zombie on a total stranger’s tumblr post.
this is not a welcome place for you. go away and stop trying to police how i and others make our artwork.
People make a lot of good “thank god I’m not a kid anymore” posts about like school bullies or homework or puberty. But actually my #1 top of the “thank god I’m not a kid anymore” list is the fact that I can leave the event when I want to.
Any event I’m at! I can say “okay well I’m tired I’m going home goodbye.” Could not do that shit as a kid. If you’re a kid it’s like yeah you will sit here at your brother’s soccer game in the cold for the next 1.5 hours. You will sit here at your sibling’s football practice. You will stay at this BBQ until the whole family is done with the BBQ. You are stuck at the mall until mom finds the pants she needs. You are stuck at the grocery store. No we don’t know how long. You are stuck at band practice. It’s running late but you’re not allowed to leave. You are stuck at the party that the adults said you’re leaving soon but they keep talking to these 2 people who showed up late. What the Fuck.
Flashback Friday: Originally posted April 29th, 2020
This was a comic I made at a fan’s request.
Autistic POC are severely under-diagnosed and underrepresented in autistic spaces. I can’t speak for them, but there are plenty of Autistic POC creators out there who you can learn from!
I suggest Fidget and Fries on Facebook and Instagram.
hi! i find your stance on ai art a very interesting perspective that definitely makes me challenge what i've previously heard regurgitated about it. i myself have an interest in a topic that can be considered theft of intellectual property, but is still fascinating to me. generative ai and the workings of it is a really interesting topic to me. i feel like ai has become this "boogeyman" of intangible art theft to most people, which makes it hard for me to discuss what i find interesting. anyway, thanks for the challenge to what i've previously been told
hi!
thanks for sending this - this isreally ultimately what i (and most hobbyists) want to do - the mainstream discourse around this has been so utterly dominated by one, extreme, uninformed opinion - and it really sucks for those of us who genuinely love or just find interest in this really new, experimental, still-constantly-shifting medium!
i agree w this - i think a lot of varying anxieties and fears artists - esp illustrators and digital artists - have sort of culminated into this perfect singular “Bad Thing” that, to them, is like. this artistic Anti-Christ, almost? instead of this.. just, complex piece of technology with varying degrees of origins ranging from cool, open source, collaborative stuff (like stable diffusion) to career-ending, layoff inducing, closed source garbage (open AI do NOT interact)
in order to tackle the actual problems and threats of AI and machine learning, you gotta actually understand it. and that includes understanding the good and interesting of it, too!
as an aside - this is probably why such giants of digital, experimental, and derivative art like neil ciceriega/lemon demon are fans of the tech, use it for fun, and defend it online (much like i do). it’s really not as different from other kinds of derivative artforms as people act
by January 10th 1 in 3 people will have had this wave of covid. covid causes long term damage with each infection and wears down your immunity. you do not want this. there is no cure for long covid or me/cfs and there is a significant chance (last I checked I think it was 1/5 infections) of getting long covid that increases with each infection. please protect yourself and your loved ones by wearing a mask. variants have become more transmissible so a n95 or kn95 is the minimum protection to keep yourself reasonably safe® from getting covid.
it is important to understand often viruses do not simply clear up and go away. like chicken pox and shingles or what we now think of as polio that is actually post polio syndrome. polio symptoms were mild and 75% of cases are asymptomatic. we do not yet see the full scope of what this virus will do over our lifetimes. as someone who had my entire life derailed by me/cfs after having mono, (almost 10 years ago! it hasn’t gotten better!) we have to take pathogens more seriously if we care about ourselves and our communities.
I’m willing and open to talk with people who want to understand better what covid does to our bodies and how we can best practice community care and also harm reduction if we’re stuck in unsafe situations at home or work (certain mouthwashes and nasal sprays can help).
if you’re watching what’s happening in Palestine and live in the US, the government doesn’t care about your life either. They lied about palestine and they lied about covid too. It is not just a cold.
People always bring up the “yelling fire in a movie theater” analogy as an example of a reasonable restriction on free speech, even though it’s entirely unreasonable.
You know where that analogy comes from? The Supreme Court used it in Schenck v. US (1919) to justify jailing a man who passed out fliers which encouraged young men to resist the draft during World War I. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic” to make the case that there were certain circumstances in which free speech could reasonably be limited. Except the activist in question was accurately shouting fire in a crowded theater, he was informing others about a real threat to their lives caused by government policy.
His sentence was upheld because the court found his actions posed “a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent”- the evil of draft dodging during a pointless war. The government has the right to decide whether the fire is real or not. And somehow this disgrace has come to be seen as a reasonable limit on the right to dissent.
I keep seeing leftists casually refer to zionists “controlling everything” and having various governments in their sway - while a lot of countries do bend to zionist pressure, it’s usually out of a misguided attempt to protect Jews worldwide, rather than us having some sort of magical world-controlling powers. Most of us are actually anti-zionist and have been struggling for over 100 days to get our voices heard in mainstream media
Please do not rebrand Alex Jones-esque globalism conspiracy theories for your activism. Not only will you make all anti-zionists look illegimate and dangerous, but I can guarantee, you’re only going to further centuries-old antisemitic fear-mongering and hatred. Not only then will that potentially get us killed, but it’ll feed more into the zionist belief that the only safe place for Jews in the entire world is Israel. I am not Israeli, I refuse to ever become Israeli, and I want the colony dismantled as much as you do. Do not run the bus over me too
It’s not just AI that’s been so contentious when it first came on the scene.
I was THERE for it when digital painting was broadly seen as “cheating”. CNC machining got people heated because it was believed that Real Machinists would be run out of work in favor of Lazy Incompetent Button-Pushers. I still encounter people who think my textile crafting is non-work because sewing machines Do All The Work For You.
Using tools is widely considered one of the things that makes humans a contender for dominant species on Earth, and in fact tool use is a metric we use to determine human-like intelligence in other animals, so it’s funny how many major advancements in tool design are so widely looked down upon at first, and sometimes even well into the future by people who don’t understand the field.
Are other tool-using animals like this?
Even more than that, just how far back does it go?
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I was there for the “photoshop isn’t real art” and “CG isn’t real animation” tirades. It was absolutely real.
For a more specific example, when I was getting my degree in graphic design, there was major resentment from my professors and industry people about Adobe InDesign, because it auto-corrected inch marks to open and closed quote marks and minus signs to EN-dashes, which previous programs like QuarkExpress didn’t do.
This caused rage, because the (arbitrary) decision that this symbol: “ wasn’t a quote-mark was an industry protective measure, one there to suss out talented amateurs from "true” trained graphic designers. All of a sudden (gasp!) desktop publishers could (swoon!) make stuff that looked professional.
They used those symbols like aristocrats used place-settings to sniff out people who “didn’t belong” and were angry Adobe wasn’t just telling people which fork was for what course, but were putting the right fork in the diner’s hands at the right time.
WHETHER OR NOT AI ART IS ART IS A COMPLETELY SEPARATE ARGUMENT FROM LABOR ISSUES BROUGHT BY AI!!!
THESE ARGUMENTS HAVE NO BEARING ON EACH OTHER! IT IS ARGUABLY THE MOST USELESS ARGUMENT TO HAVE SURROUNDING AI! YOU ARE ARGUING ABOUT WHAT AMOUNTS TO A SHINY LITTLE BOTTLECAP!
I am going to add a small addendum here since I do think I was being a tad disingenuous here. Whether or not something is considered “art” can affect public perception and acceptability, think the early days of “are video games art?” arguments.
(note, the following sentiments are unresearched and highly speculative. So, like, par for the course with AI art discourse. If someone smarter than me without their head up their own ass knows if there are other merits to being considered “art” I would be happy to listen)
Now, here’s the thing, I don’t think the benefits of declaring AI art not art would actually be beneficial to the labor discussion. I think it would actually be a detriment. Why? Because being publically perceived as not art means people will often care less if the people making it are fucked over.
Now, before you go “Well that’s what we want! Fuck em!” keep in mind that said “fucking over” is going to be done by the people fucking hiring AI artists en masse to churn shit out for pennies. Like, look at the labor problems in videogames and CGI. I’m not saying that being perceived as not art/low art is the entire crux of WHY these places have labor issues, but I do think it is at least a factor.
Like, looking at the public perceptions of AI art and AI artists online I really don’t doubt that there are going to be a lot of labor issues once companies and corpos figure out where they stand with AI art. And that said labor issues are going to be met with “Good, fuck em” rather than realizing that attitude IS making things worse.
This post is your reminder that you are not obligated to blog about current events.
Things are bad. Really bad. Do not let people guilt trip you into tormenting yourself even further over the fact that things are bad. Doomscrolling is not activism.
If you’re just on tumblr to blorbopost or reblog pretty pictures, you are not harming people by inaction.
You are not a bad person for not dedicating every aspect of your life and leisure space to whatever disgusting mask-off attack on human life and dignity some government has decided to enact.
Take action where you can, but don’t confuse doomscrolling and digital self harm for action.
If you need to lose yourself in blorboposting, go for it.
If you need to log off for the day, whether it’s to take irl action or to protect what little sanity any of us have left over the past 7 years, then by all means, do.
Morale is important. Hope is important. Small joys keep us from burning out completely in times like this. Do not let any “if you don’t reblog this I’m judging you” guilt trip convince you otherwise.
Even investigative open source journalists at places like Bellingcat, who make a living sifting through this type of information, take breaks while dealing with this and make sure they have downtime. There are specific methods for reducing the amount of vicarious trauma that people get from seeing imagery of violence, and mixing that stuff in with the fun little escapist hobbies of one’s tumblr is not on the recommended list.
Synecdochic on how to block out seeing things related to current events, or on mitigating the trauma of seeing it if you feel you must stay informed: https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/803314.html
Thank you very much @sunlit-skycat for posting it; it was written about the war in Ukraine but goes absolutely just as much for current conflicts and everything else.
Remember that you don’t help by breaking yourself to no purpose. If anything, you literally make things worse; you create someone else that needs help.
The enshittification of the internet and increasingly the software we use to access it is driven by profit. It happens because corporations are machines for making profits from end users, the users and customers are only seen as sources of profits. Their interests are only considered if it can help the bottom line. It’s capitalism.
For social media it’s users are mainly seen by the companies that run the sites as a way for getting advertisers to pay money that can profit the shareholders. And social media is in a bit of death spiral right now, since they have seldom or never been profitable and investor money is drying up as they realize this.
So the social media companies. are getting more and more desperate for money. That’s why they are getting more aggressive with getting you to watch ads or pay for the privilege of not watching ads. It won’t work and tumblr and all the other sites will die eventually.
But it’s not just social media companies, it’s everything tech-related. It gets worse the more monopolistic a tech giant is. Google is abusing its chrome-based near monopoly over the web, nerfing adblockers, trying to drm the web, you name it. And Microsoft is famously a terrible company, spying on Windows users and selling their data. Again, there is so much money being poured into advertising, at least 493 billion globally, the tech giants want a slice of that massive pie. It’s all about making profits for shareholders, people be damned.
And the only insurance against this death spiral is not being run by a corporation. If the software is being developed by a non-profit entity, and it’s open source, there is no incentive for the developers to fuck over the users for the sake of profits for shareholders, because there aren’t any profits, and no shareholders.
Free and Open source software is an important part of why such software development can stay non-corporate. It allows for volunteers to contribute to the code and makes it harder for users to be secretly be fucked over by hidden code.
Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are good examples of this. There is a Mozilla corporation, but it exists only for legal reasons and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla foundation. There are no shareholders. That means the Mozilla corporation is not really a corporation in the sense that Google is, and as an organization has entirely different incentives. If someone tells you that Mozilla is just another corporation, (which people have said in the notes of posts about firefox on this very site) they are spreading misinformation.
That’s why Firefox has resisted the enshittification of the internet so well, it’s not profit driven. And people who develop useful plugins that deshitify the web like Ublock origin and Xkit are as a rule not profit-driven corporations.
And you can go on with other examples of non-profit software like Libreoffice and VLC media player, both of which you should use.
And you can go further, use Linux as your computer’s operating system.. It’s the only way to resist the enshitification that the corporate duopoly of Microsoft and Apple has brought to their operating system. The plethora of community-run non-profit Linux distributions like Debian, Mint and Arch are the way to counteract that, and they will stay resistant to the same forces (creating profit for shareholders) that drove Microsoft to create Windows 11.
Of course not all Linux distributions are non-profits. There are corporate created distros like Red Hat’s various distros, Canonical’s Ubuntu and Suse’s Opensuse, and they prove the point I’m making. There has some degree of enshittification going on with those, red hat going closed source and Canonical with the snap store for example. Mint is by now a succesful community-driven response to deshitify Ubuntu by removing snaps for example, and even they have a back-up plan to use Debian as a base in case Canonical makes Ubuntu unuseable.
As for social media, which I started with, I’m going to stay on tumblr for now, but it will definitely die. The closest thing to a community run non-profit replacement I can see is Mastodon, which I’m on as @autolenaphilia@chaosfem.tw.
You don’t have to keep using corporate software, and have it inevitably decline because the corporations that develop it cares more about its profits than you as an end user.
The process of enshittification proves that corporations being profit-driven don’t mean they will create a better product, and in fact may cause them to do the opposite. And the existence of great free and open source software, created entirely without the motivation of corporate profits, proves that people don’t need to profit in order to help their fellow human beings. It kinda makes you question capitalism.
Israel has long abandoned any pretense of peace process or negotiation with Palestine. Most of the world, except for the US and its allies, recognizes Palestine as a legitimate, independent state. For Israel, all Palestinians are criminals that must be expelled or imprisoned such as in Gaza. Israel has repeatedly ignored any kind of international negotiation for peace, brutalized Palestinians in ways that are crimes against humanity, kept on annexing land that belonged to the legitimate Palestinian state and expelling and brutalizing them, not even hiding the Israeli intention to erradicate the Palestinian nation from the face of the earth, or keeping them under Apartheid vassallage. For the Palestinians, the war did not start today, they have been living in a war zone for decades. These events should be not a surprise to anyone.
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