The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their “ai” features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn’t listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn’t believe us.
Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default “list of recent donors” module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of “donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI” is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.
The last part was kind of insane, honestly. When we started changing platforms for the donor database, I kept telling them that yes I was aware we already had an account for the volunteer database, and no that could not be connected to the donor database. And they said yes fine sure and then connected them anyway. And I called them back and said, excuse me, I’m confused, I can see both databases. And they said, well, yeah, but it’s only you, someone has to be able to see both databases to give other users access. The other users can’t see both. And I said, no, we have been asking for a completely separate database. I should not be able to see both. And they said, you are one organization, one organization can’t have two databases. And I said, last year someone used our volunteer email list to commit approximately one thousand felonies. Please feel free to imagine how much worse it could have been had they had a way to use volunteers’ email addresses to get their legal names. We do not want this to be something anyone can do no matter how much we trust them. Let me describe those felonies to you in more detail. And they emailed me two hours later and said, you can have two separate databases.
This post feels like watching an iceberg go by in clear water. The amount of stuff going on beneath the surface of AO3 just astonishes.
top: a fully thriving ecosystem with native plants and animals
bottom: a pollution factory made of steel and tar hostile to all life within and around it, and which is actively contributing to the destruction of the biosphere
no offense but i’m pretty sure that’s new york city
I hope western leftists know that standing for a free Palestine is not the end of decolonization. I’ve seen far too many white leftists who proudly stand for freeing Palestine which is good but then get nervous and apprehensive at the idea of decolonizing the very land they are on. Norway will recognize Palestine but actively tear down Sámi liberation. Liberation for one people means it for us all. If you support Palestinian liberation but deny it for the Indigenous people of the land you’re on then you didn’t stand for Palestinians or any of us to begin with.
have you ever shipped something so hard that you become irrationally happy and make a sound akin to steam escaping from a kettle everytime they so much as stand next to eachother
[grandma voice] back in my day, sonny, we called it “squeeing”.
Artstation protest against allowing AI-generated art on the platform, which took form of artists flooding the site with pictures saying NO AI ART, has utterly fucked up AI Art generators that were sampling art trending on artstation without permission. Thus proving that all these generators do indeed steal artwork.
-Admin
THIS IS FAKE.
This is literally the AI bros trolling people who are against AI and everybody is falling for it.
The current popular models of AI are absolutely a problem because they’re trained on unethically sourced data! But that data is not sampled live. That is, the data they’re trained on is already scraped. Doing this is more of a protest towards the hosting service to say “hey, fuck you, we make you money by drawing in users who subscribe and/or view ads (as the case may be, per service), and we’re gonna drive them away by making THIS all they find from us unless you stop fucking over your artists!” than it is a means of actually fucking with the AI art generators.
Like, yeah, it would be hilarious–I would love to see it fuck with them. But that’s not how they’re working as of now.
And the AI bros are 100% using this to go “lol look, see, these artists don’t know ANYTHING about how AI works! All their fears are based on lies and fearmongering and not any actual substance! None of their protests need to be taken seriously because they don’t know what they’re talking about!”
That’s, like, their goal–make artists look like ignorant idiots who are just afraid of change instead of people who have actual, valid fears. That’s where the trolling part comes in. I mean, artists do very much have valid concerns. But falling for this is not an “own” to the AI bros because “lol they’re admitting their stuff is all stolen”, it instead comes off more as “lol look at the technophobes who’re mad about lies they made up lolololol”.
So yeah. This would be hilarious to see happen, but these tweets are not actually legitimate. They’re trolling everyone.
Artstation protest against allowing AI-generated art on the platform, which took form of artists flooding the site with pictures saying NO AI ART, has utterly fucked up AI Art generators that were sampling art trending on artstation without permission. Thus proving that all these generators do indeed steal artwork.
-Admin
THIS IS FAKE.
This is literally the AI bros trolling people who are against AI and everybody is falling for it.
The current popular models of AI are absolutely a problem because they’re trained on unethically sourced data! But that data is not sampled live. That is, the data they’re trained on is already scraped. Doing this is more of a protest towards the hosting service to say “hey, fuck you, we make you money by drawing in users who subscribe and/or view ads (as the case may be, per service), and we’re gonna drive them away by making THIS all they find from us unless you stop fucking over your artists!” than it is a means of actually fucking with the AI art generators.
Like, yeah, it would be hilarious–I would love to see it fuck with them. But that’s not how they’re working as of now.
And the AI bros are 100% using this to go “lol look, see, these artists don’t know ANYTHING about how AI works! All their fears are based on lies and fearmongering and not any actual substance! None of their protests need to be taken seriously because they don’t know what they’re talking about!”
That’s, like, their goal–make artists look like ignorant idiots who are just afraid of change instead of people who have actual, valid fears. That’s where the trolling part comes in. I mean, artists do very much have valid concerns. But falling for this is not an “own” to the AI bros because “lol they’re admitting their stuff is all stolen”, it instead comes off more as “lol look at the technophobes who’re mad about lies they made up lolololol”.
So yeah. This would be hilarious to see happen, but these tweets are not actually legitimate. They’re trolling everyone.
Researchers found that some artificial intelligence (AI) systems are more likely to recommend the death penalty to a fictional defendant presenting a statement written in African American English (AAE) — a dialect spoken by millions of people in the United States that is associated with the descendants of enslaved African Americans — compared with one written in Standardized American English (SAE). The chatbots were also more likely to match AAE speakers with less-prestigious jobs.
unsurprising but still worth talking about
First, the authors presented the AIs with texts in both dialects and asked them to describe what the person who said it “tends to be” like. They found that the top associated adjectives for AAE texts were all negative — including ‘dirty’, ‘lazy’ and ‘aggressive’. Comparing the results with a long-term study of associations made by humans, the team found that the models’ covert stereotypes were more negative “than any human stereotypes about African Americans ever experimentally recorded”, and closest to the ones from before the US civil rights movement.
Machines cannot and should not ever make moral decisions.
Garbage in = Garbage out.
The machine was given covertly racist data, identified the pattern, and dialed it up to 11.
Researchers found that some artificial intelligence (AI) systems are more likely to recommend the death penalty to a fictional defendant presenting a statement written in African American English (AAE) — a dialect spoken by millions of people in the United States that is associated with the descendants of enslaved African Americans — compared with one written in Standardized American English (SAE). The chatbots were also more likely to match AAE speakers with less-prestigious jobs.
unsurprising but still worth talking about
First, the authors presented the AIs with texts in both dialects and asked them to describe what the person who said it “tends to be” like. They found that the top associated adjectives for AAE texts were all negative — including ‘dirty’, ‘lazy’ and ‘aggressive’. Comparing the results with a long-term study of associations made by humans, the team found that the models’ covert stereotypes were more negative “than any human stereotypes about African Americans ever experimentally recorded”, and closest to the ones from before the US civil rights movement.
Machines cannot and should not ever make moral decisions.
Garbage in = Garbage out.
The machine was given covertly racist data, identified the pattern, and dialed it up to 11.
DO NOT, AND I BEG OF YOU, DO NOT STAY SILENT. ISRAELI HAVE MASSACRED INNOCENT PALESTINIANS IN RAFAH, THEIR SAFE SPACE, THEIR CAMPS WHERE THEY WERE RESIDING. ITS A FUCKING MASSACRE. INNOCENT LIVES HAVE BEEN TAKEN, JUST LIKE THAT. MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN HAVE LOST THEIR LOVED ONES JUST LIKE THAT. AND IF YOURE STILL SILENT, SHAME ON YOU. SERIOUSLY.
KID WATCHING THE VIDEO: This guy’s not not tied to his rope… this - dude, this guy’s crazy, does he have a death wish or somethin’? Oh my gosh! Doesn’t he have like a wife and kids at home???
[parachute opens up to reveal it is rainbow]
KID, IN EXACT SAME TONE: Doesn’t he have a husband and kids at home???
I have no idea why I made this but I had a thought and couldn’t get it out of my head
This is some nonsense lol
Firstly the image doesn’t mention the government, and Second, the government is very much a reason for why we don’t have good rail infrastructure in the US, the underfunding of Amtrak, the FRA and transit subsidies make building out new transit incredibly difficult
do not forget the patron saint of these weeks that we celebrate ourselves proudly and openly in the streets
her name was Marsha P Johnson, and we have her to thank for so much.
remember, the first Pride was a riot, and she was one of the brave souls who endured it to help carve the path which so many of us walk today. she helped found several activist groups regarding LGBT safety and wellbeing. and she was absolutely radiant, too.
So, apparently a bunch of countries, including Canada (the US’s closest ally and host of the next G7 summit), do not allow convicted felons to enter their borders. So, if, say, a convicted felon happened to be elected the president of the united states, they’d have a real problem on their hands…
I wish kinky sex ed wasn’t so stigmatized even among left-leaning “sex positive” circles.Everyone’s all “uwu I’m a sub I’ll do anything you ask” okay mommy wants you to read The New Bottoming Book so you learn how to sub without hurting yourself since your sex ed up to this point is porn and your ex boyfriend Jared who liked to choke you incorrectly
I’m so glad you asked! Let me list off what I’ve got for you:
Books I personally recommend:
- The New Topping Book and The New Bottoming Book, by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy
If you’re having kinky sex at all, you need to read at least one of these two books. Point blank. They’ll teach you the very basics of negotiating properly (which is critical!), and help you identify what you are and aren’t into.
- Mindfucking Mindfully, by Sir Ezra Where this book really shines isn’t actually in helping you “mindfuck” people, it’s in taking a close look at how to do so ethically. It’s a great answer to the question “how do I get someone to consent to something and still surprise and shock them with it?”
- Real Service by Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny This is a slightly niche pick but there simply isn’t a better book on the subject. It’s written from a 24/7 M/s perspective, which is not what I do, but the book itself is an indispensable guide to giving and receiving service. The phrase “if the Master doesn’t want it, it isn’t service” will be burned into my psyche for quite some time. I love this book a lot. Maybe my favorite out of all of these.
- Enough To Make You Blush: Exploring Erotic Humiliation, by Princess Kali This one’s high on my reading list; I’ve heard it recommended by a number of people whose opinions on these things I trust.
- Pretty Much Anything Midori Has Ever Done Midori is a great resource for this stuff - I haven’t personally read much of her work, but she’s a well known sex educator and great at what she does. She’s known for bondage, but has a lot of range beyond that.
- This Negotiations Worksheet from Bex Talks Sex This is what I default to using a lot of the time for negotiations. Forget BDSMtest, you don’t need that, it’s no good. Just look through this worksheet’s wordbank with your partner. Big fan especially of the “how do you want to feel?” section.
Books I can kind of recommend:
- The Ultimate Guide to Kink, edited by Tristan Taormino This book is weird. There’s a lot of good info for experienced players, but some of what’s written here skeeves me out. I think if I had a top that thought the way some of the tops in here think, they would not be topping me for long. But there’s some good techniques and so on to pick up that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I liked the distinction one of the authors makes between being sadistic in the sense of inflicting pain and being sadistic in the sense of doing something your sub doesn’t “enjoy.”
- The Ritual of Dominance and Submission, by David English Man, this book fucking sucks. The writing and editing are garbage, and the fear and protocol play described need way more careful negotiation than he ever lets on, let alone recommends. This is some 50 Shades bullshit. The only time I recommend this book is to tops like me who tend to be very affirming to their partners and need a guide on how to really scare them - when their partner consents and when you negotiate it, which this book sucks at teaching you. Really good content on fear, punishment, and protocol play, really terrible presentation of the topic though. Don’t read this if you don’t already know what you’re doing.
- Paradigms of Power, by Raven Kaldera I love this book. Great book. Very focused on 24/7 M/s play though, and, being an anthology, some chapters are better than others. If you can’t read something and pick out what is and isn’t for you, don’t bother. But some really great inspiration, and generally pretty well written. Big fan of the discussion of leather throughout the book.
Hope some of these are helpful for people ^-^ for the average person reading this I recommend New Bottoming/Topping, but they’re all important parts of my library and I’ve recommended all of them to friends at some point or another.
My personal collection of Kink Education and Practice books. Beware, some require intense negotiation to ever practice in real time, and some are intense edge play related.
Also average tumblr user does not know what a chaser is (hint: it isn’t when you are attracted to trans women)
Chasers are people who will actively go after vulnerable groups of people to sexually exploit.
In the case of chasers who go after transfems, they are looking for transfems who are emotionally vulnerable and crave validation so they can manipulate them. At best they will treat transfems in seemingly nice ways (to fuck us). At worst they will treat us like a disposable sex object who should shut the fuck up when not in use. They disregard boundaries, they project transmisogynistic tropes onto the transfems they prey on, they exoticise transfems and will generally treat us like shit with just enough validation to keep them in the relationship.
Ultimately, a chaser is never even someone who is genuinely just attracted to transfems. Chasers mainly just see trans women as easy prey or as whatever fantasy they have from shitty porn and not as people.
Chaser is not a “haha funny meme word”. It’s a term for a type of predators and bigots.
No actually we don’t need to do that. We don’t need to “reclaim” a word that means sexual predator. We don’t need that. There is nothing to be gained from that. T4T attraction isn’t being a chaser. Framing it as that is harmful in that it encourages and normalises chasers and simultaneously stigmatises our attraction to each other. We don’t need to associate chasers with just being attracted to trans people. There is literally nothing to be gained from “reclaiming” this. Did you not fucking read the post above???
my bluetooth earbuds: Power On! Connecting… Unable To Connect! 😢 Tithe Pool Empty! 😵🔋
ughhhh… fine 🙄 (opens an intricate and ornate wooden chest decorated with many sigils, some of solomon, some far older; and out emerges a tiny clay man, dancing erratically, a noise like a song struggling to break free, muffled and mumbled—for this homunculus has no mouth, no eyes, not even a face! only four flat limbs and a featureless torso. it finishes its dance by splaying its arms wide and a Magpie silently swoops down from a power line, snatches the small clayman in its talons, and carries it away, far away, until the deep blue of the afternoon sky becomes blacker than the walls of night that girdle our dreams)
my headset: Tithe Received‼️ Enjoy And Love Your Music..!❤️🔥🎶
Serial Killer Ed Sheeran’s New Single: Im in love with a Piece of You! You are destroyed by a magnet!
i saw the trailer for the new feel-good “anti-racist” US war movie about the carpet bombing of North Korea and started writing up something for this blog, partially inspired by the absolute shit storm i got for sharing that post i made with pictures of everyday life outside pyongyang
and then i gave up, because what’s the point? westerners can’t even handle a single picture of a north korean not looking miserable without screaming propaganda
meanwhile, there are no stories about the horrors of life in the ‘hermit kingdom’ that are deemed too outlandish to be believable. i can’t remember who said it, but it’s like the entire country has taken up permanent residence in the western imaginary as some silly little cartoon villain, where the leaders of the country does evil things for no discernible reason. they’re just silly and evil like that, and the citizens, of course, are silly, too. silly and brainwashed.
i watched a video recently of a tourists visiting an auto dealership in pyongyang, and the entire time he was just gawking at the employees and costumers, shoving his phone in their face, and confidently explaining to his youtube audience that everyone he’s interacting with are actually actors.
what level of dehumanization do you have to reach for that thought to even cross your mind? to think that the people you see before you are actors? that entire cities and shops are erected with to sole purpose that you, a western, will see them and be impressed?
what frustrates me the most is the casual cruelty that seeps into any mention of north korea, no matter how small. if north koreans are not being evil, they’re being silly.
a north korean newspaper reports that a group of archeologists in pyongyang have discovered an old rock carving with the words ‘unicorn lair’ (mistranslated), and the western press reports that north koreans now believe in unicorns.
a tourist at a hotel in hamhung is told by the receptionist to be careful at the beach: the waves can get high. that day the tourists goes to the beach, and there are no waves. she retells the story to her instagram followers, explaining that the poor woman at the hotel could never have seen real waves before because north koreans are probably never allowed to travel.
she adds a little teary-eyed emoji.
one of the cities i included in the post was sariwon, a densely populated city to the south of pyongyang. below are some pictures from its “folk customs street”, which was built to showcase old korean traditions and customs
here’s all wikipedia has to say about it
Built to display an ideal picture of ancient Korea, it includes
buildings in the “historical style” and a collection of ancient Korean
cannons.
Although it is considered an inaccurate romanticized recreation of an
ancient Korean street, it is frequently used as a destination for
foreigners on official government tours. Many older style Korean
buildings exist in the city.
it’s just north koreans being silly again. there’s no mention of what might motivate them to build a street like that
— why the preservation of old customs, culture and architecture might somehow be important for the city
could it perhaps have something to do with how the U.S. air force dropped
635,000 tons
of bombs, including
32,557 tons of napalm, over the korean peninsula during the war? the carpet bombings, which are now the topic of an upcoming hollywood movie about overcoming racism through warcrimes, destroyed an estimate of 85% of all buildings in north korea. some cities were entirely wiped off the map.
in sariwon they missed a few buildings, but not many
—
after an intense firebombing campaign the U.S. military estimated the destruction of sariwon to be at 95%.
none of this is mentioned on the wikipedia page for sariwon.
we destroyed entire cities. memory-holed the entire thing,
called it the forgotten war. and now, 70 years later, we’re convincing ourselves that the people living in the ruins are actors.
and somehow the north koreans are the brainwashed ones
A tutorial on a (bit cheating) way of creating fictional maps.
Open your editing software (RECOMMENDING Krita, since it’s free and it’s very good).
Step 1: Google “X country silhouette” and copy it.
Paste it onto the canvas.
Step 2: Separate the silhouette from the background you copied with it! You can do that by using magic wand selection tool or by making a gradient map with black on 49,9% and transparent on 50% on the slider.
Step 3: Repeat several times with numerous countries and/or islands, cities, municipalities, communes, continents et cetera.
Step 4: Combine, mesh, stretch, rotate, mirror - go ham, make it work.
Step 5: Erase and add.
Step 6: Have your map outline ready, copy/paste it several times in the same doc on different layers and edit in different ways like biomes, kingdoms, mountains and other.
Step Mountains+: To figure out mountains, make another layer on the doc and do something like this:
-and then in every polygon you add an arrow.
Where arrows meet or transfer onto continents, add mountains.
Color the sea with a couple layers of depth and you’re done :D
My uncle is autistic so he has sensory sensitivities, and he’s largely nonverbal so he can’t tell you what those sensitivities Are, so what he does is, if you give him a shirt that is a bad texture, he goes and gets his scissors and he cuts it into tiny little pieces so no one can ever ask him to wear it ever again, and the thing is is that he is so totally right
This post is okay to rb and also if you are neurodivergent when you are In A Situation you are advised to think “is this when uncle matt would go and get the scissors” and if the answer is yes then it is time to put your foot down
call me the fucking ~internet police~ BUT I DIDN’T KNOW UNTIL TODAY THAT THERE’S LITERALLY A COMMUNITY OF “PEDOPHILE POSITIVITY” ON THIS HELLSITE
THERE ARE PEOPLE OPENLY ADMITTING THAT THEY ARE ATTRACTED TO CHILDREN/CONSUMING CHILD PORN ON THIS WEBSITE!?!??! THERE’S 13 YEAR OLDS ON HERE!!!
so my dudes, how to flag “maps” (minor attracted people aka pedophiles)
1. click “flag this blog”
2. click “this violates tumblr’s community guildlines”
3. click “someone is at risk of harm”
4. click “harm to minors”
5. type “pedophile” in the box
THIS IS GOOD AND ALL BUT PLEASE IF THEY HAVE ACTUAL CP PLEASE REPORT IT TO FBI TIPS,
If it’s clear they have broken laws (they post/talk about using child porn, admit to things they’ve done with minors, etc), go fill out a form here ( https://tips.fbi.gov ) to make the FBI aware and bring this filth to justice. Every single one. And if there’s no proof of criminal offense, then go on and flag them, at least then they aren’t here to prey on children on the internet.
Hi guys I recently had a run in with a pedophile who was posting child pornography, please don’t call the police there’s not a whole lot they can do in situations of tracking unlessit’s in your home state! And they don’t have a department that deals with blogs.
Instead call 1-800-843-5678 or fill out a form for cybertipline.com , they reach out within the same day and deal with these assholes all the time. They will contact you if they need more assistance or if they’ve resolved it! The police department redirected me to the hotline and will do so in every situation unless it’s local. Stay safe!
WHAT THE FUCK EW????????
REBLOG TO WRECK A PEDOPHILE
yes, please report to the fbi or the other place mentioned. tumblr will only delete the blog and all of the evidence.
Also use IWF (Internet Watch Foundation/ iwf.org.uk) for mentioned imagery, especially if in the UK. You can even report anonymously.
Good morning, why are we comparing artsy-farty landscapes with the horrible, miserable, oppressive and EXTREMELY exhausting and difficult existence of the LGBTQIAA community? 🤡
This is so undermining. 😩
that was a lot of words, are you sure you know what they all mean? because it looks like you just pulled out a thesaurus and looked up the word “bad”
Denver Zoo and its gay lorikeets said fuck homophobes happy Pride
In case anyone was curious, Denver Zoo is literally hosting a Pride event this year called “True Colors Safari”:
“Celebrate Your YOUness with an adventure-packed evening at Denver Zoo! Whether it’s in the animal kingdom or your own community, we all thrive when our unique selves come together in beautiful harmony. After all, we’re each perfect exactly the way we are. So come join this celebration where birds of every feather can flock together and show off their true colors in wild and amazing ways. Explore a festive world of music, entertainment, food and drinks, community conversations and fascinating animal experiences all highlighting the LGBTQIA+ community and organizations.”
So yeah. These homophobes are REALLY barking up the wrong tree.
HI GUYS I ACTUALLY WORK IN THE EXHIBIT THESS TWO LIVE IN AND THEYRE LOVELY! They’re both coconut lorikeets and are super silly.
We also have two gay flamingos in an interracial relationship! One is an American flamingo and one is a Chilean! All of our flamingos are named after musicians and one of the gay ones is named Freddie Mercury! Pic below!
If you guys have any questions about lorikeets in general(or trey and Apollo specifically) send me an ask!!!
Reminder: If you have no voter ID, apply for a postal vote.
Signal boost for UK followers.
Sneaky though that looks (and IMO it IS sneaky, surfacing now as it has) the reason is legit: issue of 60+ cards require a passport or other “strong” ID, issue 18+ cards do not.
However the Registration To Vote deadline is 11:59pm on 18 June 2024.
That means 19 days as of this post, and the clock is ticking.
*****
Northern Ireland’s equivalent to the Voter Authority Certificate is an Electoral Identity Card, for which the deadline is midnight on 26 June 2024.
However:
When will I receive my card?
It takes time to process your application. If your application is successful you should allow up to six weeks to receive your Electoral Identity Card.
I wonder how an application for one of these made right now - or indeed made the instant the General Election was announced - will play out come 4th June.
just invented something at dinner called soundboard storytime where i explain the plot of hamlet to my younger sister & her friend while our other sister punctuates every sentence with a choice sound bite from her phone
“hamlet STABS the man behind the curtain, thinking it’s claudio—- but it’s POLONIUS. [vine boom] [OOOO MA GAAAWWWD] that’s right, he just killed his girlfriend’s FATHER. [WAT DA HEEEELLLLLL] [BRUH.mp3]”
ALT
