sketch-shepherd

[sketch-shepherd]

you tell a bitch to keep their cat indoors and suddenly their town is the first in the world to have eradicated every viral, bacterial and parasitic disease, they invented completely harmless cars, dogs and predators dont exist either but somehow the native songbird population is fine since the cats in this place have lost the hunting instinct, there's no pollutants or toxic plants and human cruelty has ceased to exist. and mr mittens has a chip in his brain that will explode if he doesnt go outside 10 hours of the day

[sketch-shepherd]

AI hasn't improved in 18 months. It's likely that this is it. There is currently no evidence the capabilities of ChatGPT will ever improve. It's time for AI companies to put up or shut up.

I'm just re-iterating this excellent post from Ed Zitron, but it's not left my head since I read it and I want to share it. I'm also taking some talking points from Ed's other posts. So basically:

We keep hearing AI is going to get better and better, but these promises seem to be coming from a mix of companies engaging in wild speculation and lying.

Chatgpt, the industry leading large language model, has not materially improved in 18 months. For something that claims to be getting exponentially better, it sure is the same shit.

Hallucinations appear to be an inherent aspect of the technology. Since it's based on statistics and ai doesn't know anything, it can never know what is true. How could I possibly trust it to get any real work done if I can't rely on it's output? If I have to fact check everything it says I might as well do the work myself.

For "real" ai that does know what is true to exist, it would require us to discover new concepts in psychology, math, and computing, which open ai is not working on, and seemingly no other ai companies are either.

Open ai has already seemingly slurped up all the data from the open web already. Chatgpt 5 would take 5x more training data than chatgpt 4 to train. Where is this data coming from, exactly?

Since improvement appears to have ground to a halt, what if this is it? What if Chatgpt 4 is as good as LLMs can ever be? What use is it?

As Jim Covello, a leading semiconductor analyst at Goldman Sachs said (on page 10, and that's big finance so you know they only care about money): if tech companies are spending a trillion dollars to build up the infrastructure to support ai, what trillion dollar problem is it meant to solve? AI companies have a unique talent for burning venture capital and it's unclear if Open AI will be able to survive more than a few years unless everyone suddenly adopts it all at once. (Hey, didn't crypto and the metaverse also require spontaneous mass adoption to make sense?)

There is no problem that current ai is a solution to. Consumer tech is basically solved, normal people don't need more tech than a laptop and a smartphone. Big tech have run out of innovations, and they are desperately looking for the next thing to sell. It happened with the metaverse and it's happening again.

In summary:

Ai hasn't materially improved since the launch of Chatgpt4, which wasn't that big of an upgrade to 3.

There is currently no technological roadmap for ai to become better than it is. (As Jim Covello said on the Goldman Sachs report, the evolution of smartphones was openly planned years ahead of time.) The current problems are inherent to the current technology and nobody has indicated there is any way to solve them in the pipeline. We have likely reached the limits of what LLMs can do, and they still can't do much.

Don't believe AI companies when they say things are going to improve from where they are now before they provide evidence. It's time for the AI shills to put up, or shut up.

[sketch-shepherd]

SCREENSHOT EDIT COMM SALE!

Half body - $15!

examples:

Full body - $20!

examples:

!!disclaimer!!

only have a few slots open! My wife and i need some extra funds for food. We're finally going to be getting our own food stamps soon so this wont have to be a frequent thing, but currently our stamps have yet to come in and i wont lie we do not have anything to eat in the house currently💀 please bear with me! Im aware i still have a million of other commissions to get to (i'm still getting to them and will update with wips soonly)!!!

[sketch-shepherd]

Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.

DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).

Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.

edit: apparently tum "queerest place on the internet" blr hates disabled people so much that this post got automatically filtered. cool!

[sketch-shepherd]

To all Americans out there:

[sketch-shepherd]

hey did you know that by not voting because you think neither candidate is good enough, you're giving your vote to republicans.

did you know that by not voting, you're giving your vote to republicans.

vote, i beg you, even if you don't like kamala harris. vote, because otherwise you will be handing victory to republicans on a silver platter

check your voter status here

vote forward (volunteer letter writing encouraging people to vote, super easy)

[sketch-shepherd]

[sketch-shepherd]

[sketch-shepherd]

People don't really talk about how scary depression can be. It's terrifying to feel like the ambitious person you were is gone, like you don't recognize the person in the mirror, like you're falling or underwater. You are safe. You won't always feel like this. No matter how awful this feeling is, it won't last forever. You will feel comfortable in yourself again. You are still the same person you were before you started feeling this way.

[sketch-shepherd]

hey reminder that connecting humanity is extremely low on esims rn and desperately needs esim donations and also that there are a lot of cool things you can get in exchange for a donation

[sketch-shepherd]

[sketch-shepherd]

If you write a fearless hero, let them feel afraid.

If you write a confident leader, let them doubt themselves.

If you write a rebellious teen, let them follow the rules, just once.

If you write a wise mentor, let them be wrong.

If you write an independent loner, let them need someone.

[sketch-shepherd]

It's really easy to ship rosegarden with the hurt/comfort trope because Ruby and Oscar are canonically always being hurt. All the time. Just constantly in the hurt phase. It's time for them to enter the comfort phase. Vacuo will be the start of it. V10 will be their volume. They will finally get the comfort they deserve, together. I believe.

[sketch-shepherd]

SHE STARTED A SECOND FIRE, HOW, WHEN?

[sketch-shepherd]

I was thinking about my grandfather recently. It's been 11 years since he's been gone, but every now and then I still get the feeling that he's here. I was also wondering how I was going to celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Lion King. So, I thought, what better way can I pay tribute to both my grandfather and childhood? Mufasa and Kiara, of course... I like to think that Mufasa would be so proud of his granddaughter, and Kiara finally getting a chance to see her grandfather. I truly wished there was some way these two interacted in the sequel or in that hideous Lion Guard but oh, well...

I guess this is more of wish, than a tribute, for more than one reason...

[sketch-shepherd]

Philogeia’s future as Pegasus Island’s best flier had been practically spread out for her. That was, until the accident. 

Now too scared to take off, Philogeia’s delicate position in the herd is thrown into jeopardy; if she cannot pass her Flight of Passage to become a fully fledged member she’ll risk banishment, where beyond the island lurk monsters thirsty for Pegasus blood.

When tragedy strikes the herd one night, Philogeia has no choice but to face her fears, spread her wings, and soar to new horizons on a quest to find the legendary Golden Bridle, a piece of headwear once worn by her godly Pegasus, himself, in hopes to restore order to her homeland. On her way she will have to learn to put her trust in others and, ultimately, herself.  

A new graphic novel passion project I want to get off the ground sometime next year! I hope to make some progress and start uploading pages by either next summer, or next winter. It really depends on what I can do with the little time I have and how much more my old laptop can tolerate rendering before it gives out and I have to get a new one aaaaaa-

I've been doing lots of homework and reading lots of graphic novels before deciding to change Philogeia's story from a written piece to a comic. That way I get to write a story and draw magical ponies pulling funny faces at the same time! Win, win!... I hope!

[sketch-shepherd]

YES Ruby would definitely put a personalized voice box that says “now that’s a katana” inside her Build A Bear amazing addition

Meanwhile Oscar puts the voice box in it and says some Ozpin joke/quote. He pretends his plushie is possessed like he is/was

If you want some Rosegarden brainrot then let me tell you about my cuteass dream about you last night where Ruby and Oscar went on a mall date and went to a Build A Bear together. And Oscar was so clueless about how BAB works because he tried stuffing his bear by himself by hand rather than letting the employee use the stuffing machine to do it

NOOOOO THATS SO CUTE AND ALSO DEFINITELY ACCURATE.

Also Ruby would totally roll with it and turn it into a competition and then when it comes to the voice thingy, oscar has no idea what to say for his so he just lets out an awkward “uh hi?” While Ruby says “Now that’s a katana” because of course she does. Ugh I love them and miss them