#Dance of Absolute

[planetdharma]

The Dance of Absolute & Relative Truths: Razor’s Edge

Online or In-Person | July 12-14, 2024

The Razor’s Edge is the line between wisdom and ignorance—and it lives inside of you. A paradoxical, joyous, and pristinely aware place, the edge is finer than any other. This weekend course is a precious opportunity to study with meditation master and Namgyal lineage teacher Qapel (Achariya Doug Duncan). He will share fundamental Buddhist teachings on the nature of absolute and relative truths, and how we can best dance between, within, and amidst the two. This is a priceless chance to learn with one who has danced on the Razor’s Edge for decades and dedicated his life to the welfare of all beings by sharing how to do so.

Know More:- https://www.planetdharma.com/event/absolute-relative-truths/

[louistonehill]

A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways. 

The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission. Using it to “poison” this training data could damage future iterations of image-generating AI models, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, by rendering some of their outputs useless—dogs become cats, cars become cows, and so forth. MIT Technology Review got an exclusive preview of the research, which has been submitted for peer review at computer security conference Usenix.   

AI companies such as OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Stability AI are facing a slew of lawsuits from artists who claim that their copyrighted material and personal information was scraped without consent or compensation. Ben Zhao, a professor at the University of Chicago, who led the team that created Nightshade, says the hope is that it will help tip the power balance back from AI companies towards artists, by creating a powerful deterrent against disrespecting artists’ copyright and intellectual property. Meta, Google, Stability AI, and OpenAI did not respond to MIT Technology Review’s request for comment on how they might respond. 

Zhao’s team also developed Glaze, a tool that allows artists to “mask” their own personal style to prevent it from being scraped by AI companies. It works in a similar way to Nightshade: by changing the pixels of images in subtle ways that are invisible to the human eye but manipulate machine-learning models to interpret the image as something different from what it actually shows. 

Continue reading article here

[egophiliac]

bring your son to work day

[shushmal]

Steve bites back a sigh when he sees a hand waving just out of the corner of his eye, trying to grab his attention from where Steve's gazing pitifully at his drink. The club is loud, music blasting, and maybe it's a little pathetic for Steve to be at his place of work on his day off, but Robin's behind the bar and he gets free drinks. Unfortunately, the kind of guys who frequent his workplace are usually the opposite of Steve's type.

So, he's prepared, for when he looks up, to gently let down whatever club boy who's decided to shoot their shot with him tonight. They all start to look the same to him: bleached hair, glitter, crop tops and low riding pants. Men who are too much like Steve to be what Steve's looking for.

When he looks up, however, his eyes go a little wide and his lips part from around the straw against his tongue.

"Hi!" yells the guy, long hair, long legs, long fingers. He's wearing way too much leather and denim for this place, and he must be boiling under that jacket. "W-would you like to dance?"

Steve takes a longer moment to take him in: his shoulders hunched up around his ears, fingers twisting his hair nervously, eyes big and brown and beautiful.

Straightening from where he's been hiding against the wall, Steve steps up into the guy's space, watches his eyes go bigger and his face go pink. He's perfect.

"I'm Steve," he says, leaning in so he can be heard over the music. "And you don't look like the kind of guy who dances."

"Oh, I'm not," the guy says, eyes flicking around Steve's face, dropping to Steve's chest, to his thighs and back up again. "Um, sorry. I'm Eddie."

Steve grins. "Nice to meet you, Eddie."

Eddie's mouth quirks up, an giddy, boyish smile. "P-pleasure's mine," he says. "And I may be terrible at it, but I'd love to dance with you. If you'd like."

"I would like," Steve tells him. He holds out his hand, feels his heart flutter when Eddie takes it. "I'd like that very much."

[harmonysixx]

what am I doing

[eloiscbridgerton]

LIZZIE VEREKER & FREDDIE JONES in Rivals (2024) I hope you don't mind, I read your chapters. They were brilliant and sexy... like you.

BONUS: Rupert rooting for them

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Aziraphale: I want a proper apology.

Crowley: No.

Aziraphale: With the little dance.

Crowley: I don't do the dance.

Aziraphale: I did the "I was wrong" dance in 1650, in 1793, 1941…

Crowley: Fine! [doing the apology dance:] You were right, you were right, I was wrong, you were right. Okay?

Aziraphale: Very nice.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

auction results done for @ouchpotatoex as a part of the 2024 @marveltrumpshate charity event: thank you so much for your generosity and donations !!!!

[zarla-s]

Imagine...

[patreon]

[nex-has-gender-envy]

Meal's served .

🧎🫣💦

part II w/ Eddie kneeling down and V tugging his hair- in near future

[evelyn-and-art]

Who in the world gets entertained by this stuff? Hey, won’t you tell me? With a smile—up, pull, pull. (MoeChakkaFire by Issey)

[krazieka2]

Here's a big old Fire Emblem Search & Find I did for the FE3H Masquerade Zine! Find the Golden Deer, but see if you can't find the rest of the students as well! For the ultimate challenge, see if you can't name every character! (Disclaimer two characters are NPCs with no names)

[valarinde]

Eros and Psyche, Gustav Vigeland (1908) Dirty Dancing, Emile Ardolino (1987)

[notnotravenpond]

i just think john would have zero respect for venom lol

[redthemarten]

Long enough, Wriothesley.

[starmocha]

pain is all you'll find [Sylus/Reader ★ 630 words ★ Masterlist ★ Series Index ★ AO3] It was karaoke night at Onychinus’ base. A/N: I am so, so sorry. I have no excuses for this one. It’s just full-on crack.

It was karaoke night at Onychinus’ base.

You didn’t even realize Onychinus had karaoke nights, but here you were in a room surrounded by other henchmen all applauding and cheering its fearless leader as he wailed—er, sang—the fourth song of the night.

You grimaced, and chugged your bottle of beer, wishing the alcohol would just take effect already. Beside you, Luke and Kieran were also happily (and soberly?) applauding Sylus. They couldn’t possibly be enjoying his cat-yowling rendition of Careless Whisper, could they? It was honestly hard to tell since the twins refused to remove their masks. The masks were probably there to hide their suffering, you thought grimly, unable to think of any other plausible reasoning in your semi-tipsy state.

When you turned your sight back to the TV screen and the current talentless singer hogging the mic, your cheeks pinked up when you made eye contact with Sylus and he winked at you. For just an instance, you felt your stomach flipped, captivated by his smoldering eyes and suave smile.

And then he opened his mouth again. You mentally screamed in agony, wondering why a good person like yourself was being punished so cruelly like this.

You wanted to bury your head in your arms, or maybe suffocate yourself with these tacky looking throw pillows at Onychinus’ base. Hell, you would even happily let Mephisto peck your eyes out if it meant ending this torment. How could someone with a great—no, sexy—speaking voice not be able to carry a goddamned tune? God truly had a very particular sense of humor, you realized, as you forced a stiff smile and shakily gave Sylus a thumb up.

When the song finally ended (dear god, why did he pick the extended version?), you finally let out the breath you were holding in. You politely clapped and smiled, thinking Sylus was about to return to his seat next to you, but you instantly froze mid-clap, face paling as you watched him scrolled through the song list once more.

He smiled. You worried.

Your ears bled as he rasped the first three verses, before belting out: “Hello, is it me you're looking for?”

Onychinus henchmen were clapping and cheering, and you couldn’t take this anymore. You leaned over to both Luke and Kieran, hissing sharply, “You guys can’t possibly be enjoying these murders on classic songs, right?”

You blinked, dumbfounded, when Luke casually pulled out an earplug.

“Did you say something, Miss Hunter?”

Kieran pulled both of his own earplugs out. “What’s wrong?”

“You guys have been…”

“Oh, damn,” Luke said, reaching into his pocket, “I forgot to give you yours. My bad, Miss Hunter.”

You curiously received a pair of earplugs and you looked up, seeing Kieran motioning you to put them on. The moment you did, you realized that silence truly was golden. You cracked a grin to the twins.

Suddenly you found you were enjoying Sylus’ performance more. All eye candy and not a fucking tuneless sound out of him. Thank fucking god, you thought, this time joining Luke and Kieran in their zealous cheering.

Everything went on well for a few minutes, but unfortunately, the night seemed to drag on, and everyone watched with dismay as the leader of Onychinus showed that he had no intention of letting anyone else have the mic. Your brief moment of faux enthusiasm died down after each song he performed until you could do nothing but mentally sighed as you clapped like a trained seal with your stupidly rigid smile plastered on your face.

You watched the lyrics danced on the TV screen as Sylus ‘sang’ along: Welcome to your life.

You mentally groaned for the umpteenth time. It was going to be a long, long fucking night. Goddamnit.