#The New Creation Model

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

[mt1820today]

Theological Systems and the New Creation Model

Dr. Mike Vlach talks about his new book, The New Creation Model, in which he discusses the New Creation Model and the Spiritual Vision Mode. How did these two paradigms have influenced interpreters for thousands of years? How do Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology understand the storyline of the Holy Scriptures? Do premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism reflect the New…

[xanna-tose]

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2025 🥳

[suchacomet]

“the locked tomb is about love vs. freedom” “the locked tomb is about death” “the locked tomb is about the dangers of codependent relationships” “the locked tomb is about climate change” “the locked tomb is about identity with regards to the soul” yeah sure but above all else. the locked tomb is about bodily autonomy

[nonbinary-sticks-the-badger]

i really wanna do perci + staci redesigns because UGHHH

[cupowhale]

One finished hat!

Also with the help of modeling, Chunky Yarn!!

[03349656115]

appleiphone

[sirquacklesdefoof]

HAVE YOU SEEN ANYTHING CUTER LITERALLY EVER

[wachi-delectrico]

Tbh i don't know what to think of AI art anymore. I don't find any utility, personally, in centring the discussion on law and copyright; there are far more interesting things to discuss on the topic beyond its use as a replacement for human artists/workforce by the upper class

[unkstaarwysbr]

Uncertain Horizons: The Evolving Landscape of ESPN and the Quest for Relevance

In TSDS 278, the hosts kick start their discussion by expressing their waning interest in traditional television shows like “First Take” and “Undisputed,” programs they hadn’t engaged with for years. This realization sparks their curiosity about the future and relevance of traditional TV networks, such as ESPN. This article delves into their insightful dialogue, exploring the challenges and…

[othernaut]

Character Creation Challenge, Day 12: Brindlewood Bay

Let me tell you about the Sub Rosa. Let me tell you about Brindlewood Bay.

Back in the late 70s, I was a busy little bee, getting both into and out of a bad marriage in the span of two and a half years. Kids happened, Gary kept them, he made hilariously more than me, what are you going to do? I got over 100k in alimony which, again, I'd like to remind you that it was the late 70s, and that was just a stupid amount of money at the time. I had a real minute where I wondered if I wanted it to go up my nose or into the bank, then decided, fuck it, and bought a bar.

I'd grown up in Brindlewood Bay, but I hadn't stayed. I spent half a year in New York, half a year in Chicago, a year undocumented in Montreal (which was where I met Gary; never trust a guy pretending to be French). It was my coming of age, that slow, slick smear when the free-love 60s had thoroughly degenerated into smooth jazz and weird fetishes. I couldn't be expected to stay at home. I didn't expect it of myself; I didn't expect much of myself, to be honest, which is why I was content to wreck my life with the twin idiocy of drugs and marriage. Had to get it out of my system before I came home. Destined to bring a little bit of it back, when I returned.

At the time, the Sub Rosa was enduring about four different identity crises at once. Originally designed as a bed and breakfast, the owners had responded to every economic downturn with a violent branching-out into a new industry. No one wants to stay? Expand the bar, turn it into a tavern. Clientele slows? Open up the back room, convert it into a theater. That's not doing it? Raise a bit of floor, call it a stage, start bringing in heavy metal bands and those snake-handling preachers. Still barely making utilities? Sell it to a divorcee and fuck off to Florida.

(That's me. Snapshot of an early-20s idiot, bottle blonde, probably coming off an acid trip.)

Two years, I tried to make the Sub Rosa work as it was. There was a world of difference between slinging drinks and managing, subtleties I had to learn one regulation after the other. I tore through my alimony quicker than I'd have liked, spending it on empty Thursday nights with bleary-eyed locals hoovering down half-dollar well shots and nodding along to jukebox crooners. It was staring me in the face and I didn't have the heart to see it: death, bankruptcy, loneliness, the failure they told me I'd always face.

Then came a midnight showing of a little movie called the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

In one night - one fucking night - I made the month's mortgage. I played the thing the next week just to be sure, and it fucking well happened again. I began noticing patterns. There were the obvious queers, the ones who couldn't help but be obvious; they were what clued me in. Then there were the quiet ones, the ones I saw a certain familiar uncertainty about; the ones who wanted to check, wanted to be sure. The third daughters of respectable families with short haircuts and a shadow in their eyes. The strangers from somewhere out west who never managed to end up anywhere but here. They all bought drinks. Some bought rooms.

(You learn to pivot quick when mortgage is due.)

I never made it my business to define who I am. That could change tomorrow. Who can tell? But I know what it's like to look at thighs chafing in a Jazzercise video and wonder. I know how important it is to have a place for this, to have people to bounce yourself off of. I showed Victor, Victoria; Salome; Dressed to Kill. I somehow secured a showing of Dune a week after it hit the box office. I tailored the jukebox and the karaoke lists. I had "Sadie Hawkins" nights. Halloween, 1985 had the theme, "Gender Bender"; I made enough to cover until the following March.

You learn. You have to. You talk to people who had their husbands die, even though no preacher would have called them married. You see good, god-fearing people come in off the highway looking for a drink and turn immediately back around. You start to keep a bowl of condoms by the rooms. I didn't have to do a damn thing; it was building itself around me, I just had to let it happen. Brindlewood Bay, the part with the fishmongers and whaling museums and nautical disaster memorials, that was outside; inside, you didn't have to be anything except exactly who you wanted to be.

Brindlewood Bay doesn't change much and it doesn't change quickly. There's a lot of people who did what I did, only they took the long way around: left, made money, came back. They settle into hollows in the sand, build their beach houses and investment portfolios around themselves. But anywhere there's people, those people are going to be queer. And queerness doesn't exist in isolation. You can be who you want, wear what you want in your room, alone, but when other people see you and you know who you are in their eyes? Magic and rainbows. Glitter and sparkles and condoms and cheap beer.

I did an interview in 2016. People looked into the record, saw only one registered partner, that he was male, and made assumptions. I got Yelp reviews on the Sub Rosa saying I rebranded for the money or something. But when I sold that damn bar, she was more than she ever could have dreamt of being. Kara and Julia are good people, valuing the right things. They keep her safe. And they sold me the house on the back end of the property for a price that'd make Gary salivate.

It's hard to know who you are in retirement. I still got my table by the back corner, near the curtains into the theater, but I've heard the younger patrons whispering: "Who's the old lady? What's she doing here?" I get my 65+ discount at the drug store and, hours later it seems, flyers for lawn bowling and Caribbean cruises and the amazing offer to sell and then rent myself my own fucking house. I still make sure I show up, every Pride, every fundraiser, every protest I can manage, but there's a whole world out here I ignored while I was making the Sub Rosa bloom - and fuck, I think I already experienced the best of it.

I don't know. Maybe I'll join a book club or something.

*****

Name: Roxy Bishop-Howell Style: Rainbow leopard print Cozy Activity: Charity events

Abilities: Vitality: 0, Composure: 0, Reason: 0, Presence: 2, Sensitivity: 0 Maven Moves: Jonathan Hart (I used to live it up hard, and that style will never fade; +1 Presence) A Cozy Little Place: "Roxy's Table" at the Sub Rosa; Like six cabinets full of mementos and charity buys; Bowie the Burmese python.

Deceased Partner: Too many to count, hon. Only married once, though, and far as I know, Gary's still kicking. Children: Britney and Travis. Good kids. Britney's doing tech stuff in the movies. Travis has kids of his own, now. Career, Before Retirement: Owner of Sub Rosa, the only gay bar in Brindlewood Bay.

*****

I've got a theory, but I'm three whiskeys down and you have to bear with me for a minute.

There's this split in roleplaying between simulationist games, games that try to model the world within the rules and the dice, and story games, games which try to model the pacing of a set narrative within the inherently chaotic actions of player choice and dice randomness. Like with most things, this isn't so much a definition as it is a spectrum. You know that, on one side, sits rolling dice to figure out your splatter radius after taking falling damage and, on the other, is rolling dice to figure out whether you trigger a story beat upon delivering a line of dialogue.

I've been trying to figure out why Brindlewood Bay has been landing for me as a PbtA game and Avatar Legends didn't. I think there's more overlap than I originally assumed. I think you can have simualtionist-story games, and I think that's where my displeasure sits.

Brindlewood Bay is, in essence, rules-light, story-forward, and Powered by the Apocalypse. There's very little to define about your character, rules-wise, but you know exactly who they are. The world it evokes is primarily plugged into accessible tropes, to the point where you probably already have been watching the anchor media, wondering, "What would I have done here?" The rules it invokes do their best to define their story while at the same time getting out of the way. They don't want to model every turn in combat; they want to know what beat you want, what you intend to do, what beat you want to hit next.

Simulationist-story, then, turns every element into a resource. You don't let the theme build up in obscurity; you model it, you have +2 to Theme, you roll Theme when you take an action or commence an attack related to Theme. And that obscurity has been something I've always been attached to in fiction. If something wants to model fiction, it has to allow for obscurity in order to feel correct and pure to me. The ambiguity has to exist within moments of narration, rather than within a 7 to 9 on a die roll.

Brindlewood Bay presents with very, very little game, but because of this, it succeeds as a storygame for me. It leans hard into one side of the spectrum, the bluest blue. It inserts rules into only the most absolutely necessary moments; until then, it's happy if you just sit around with your friends playing make-believe. The bits where it wants you to tick boxes and mark progress are bits where it would make sense for everyone, player and character, to tick boxes and mark progress. It leaves room for mystery, the most important part of what it tries to be.

In the end? I'd come back to this one. I'd want to see who Roxy can be, contrasted with the stories other people can make. And that says what it says, alone and absent categorization.

Next up: Meine dunklen Augen wenden sich fremden Ufern zu.

[doodlemancy]

Hey, so, Patreon is lying to you about Apple forcing their hand.

Patreon is getting rid of 1st-of-the-month/per-creation billing, claiming a new decision by Apple has forced their hand. This will hurt a lot of creatives, and their excuse is bullshit. Allow me to explain.

In 2018, Patreon tried to impose a new ill-considered fee structure on everyone that would have cost creators a lot of smaller pledges. They ended up apologizing for this profusely; they have now deleted this apology from their website and unfortunately I was unable to find it on the Internet Archive. This was shameful, but to their credit they backed off quickly when things got ugly.

Back in 2021, Patreon discussed plans to force all creators into a rolling bill structure and get rid of first-of-the-month/pay-up-front billing. The community once again very decisively shouted them down, and they had to walk it back again. This whole fiasco damaged the already shaky trust between Patreon creators and staff.

This week, Patreon announced that, along with extra fees, Apple's policies were supposedly forcing them to move everyone over to the rolling fee structure that they first tried to get us to agree to in 2021. Patreon will tell you they are not happy about this. As a person who spent a long time watching Patreon make terrible decisions, I can tell you-- they are probably very happy about this, because it's exactly the smokescreen they needed to do what they've been trying to do for years, which is pull ALL Patreon creators away from 1st-of-the-month and per-creation billing.

The spin in the news I've seen so far is "Apple bullies Patreon, boo hoo hoo poor Patreon". This is very obviously not what's happening. Mind you: Apple does suck, and they are doing something bad here. Fuck apple. But Patreon and Apple are BOTH the asshole in this situation; Everyone Sucks Here. Patreon has options: they can make the iOS app a reader app and do billing through the browser to avoid the restrictions and the extra fees (Netflix and Amazon, notably, both do this), or they can allow creators to opt-out of iOS billing if they want to use billing models that don't work with it.

It seems most likely to me that the Apple situation is a real fire that Patreon has chosen to use as a convenient smokescreen to do what they've been wanting to do since at least 2021, and maybe since 2018.

What do we do?:

They have a feedback form specifically about this.

They also have a creator discord.

And they have lots of social media pages where they probably really, really hope that this doesn't blow up again, because they never learn. The incidents I've described here aren't the only two other times Patreon has pissed off their creators. They know if they don't contain the noise it'll be harder to get away with it, so make some noise. They've done a lot of work to spin this cleverly so you'll have sympathy for them and they won't get the kind of backlash they know they deserve.

Please don't misuse these links and make threats or spam or something. All you have to do is give well-reasoned feedback. Patreon hates feedback. Make sure they get a nice heaping helping of their least favorite vegetable.

[snazum]

i hate how my brain works LOLLOLOOL not like actually well sort of but also not like seriously where i'm upset just it's really funny i feel like crying it's so funny ToT But like, i'm living vicariously thru yters rn i want to create I'm too much energy. I CAN'T WAIT LIKE LITERATLY 5 DAYS FOR SCHOOL. And then it's school that's boring I fucking wish I knew people who liked to create and enjoyed the process and it's fun! It's so so fun!! And I mean I want video creation around me I'm done with drawing. Hopefully I meet people like that on campus.... god please let me meet people like that they're my soulmate.

[jcmarchi]

As AI improves, what does it mean for user-generated content? - AI News

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/as-ai-improves-what-does-it-mean-for-user-generated-content-ai-news/

As AI improves, what does it mean for user-generated content? - AI News

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The rise of the creator economy was one of the most disruptive forces to emerge from the internet, paving the way for independent writers, artists, musicians, podcasters, YouTubers and social media influencers to connect with audiences directly and earn money from doing so. 

Creators have flocked to platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Vimeo, Substack, TikTok and more, where they can not only create but also publish and share their user-generated content. Social media enables individuals to become self-publishers and independent producers of content, disrupting existing business models and enabling an entire generation of creative minds to establish their own path to success. 

Until recently, the creativity such individuals express was always thought to be a uniquely human quality and therefore invulnerable to disruption by advancing technology. However, the rise of generative AI, which comes so soon after the emergence of the creator economy, threatens to disrupt this nascent industry and significantly alter the way new content is produced. With generative AI models, anyone can churn out paragraphs of text, lines of software code, high quality images, audio, video and more, using simple prompts. 

How does AI aid with user-generated content?

Generative AI burst into the public consciousness with the arrival of ChatGPT in late 2022, taking the internet by storm, and since then tech companies have rushed to create all manner of consumer-friendly applications that can aid in content creation. 

For instance there’s ChatGPT itself, which is all about text-generation, capable of writing blog posts, essays, marketing copy, email pitches, documents and more, based on a simple prompt where the user tells it what to write. 

More impressive forms of content generation include image generating models such as Midjourney, which can create dramatic pictures based on user’s ideas of what they want to see, and there are now even video generators, such as OpenAI’s Sora, Google DeepMind’s Veo and Runway that can do the same. 

Generative AI is also having an impact on video game content generation. Take the novel technology developed by AMGI Studios for its hit Web3 game My Pet Hooligan, which uses proprietary motion capture and AI algorithms to capture the gamer’s facial expressions and replicate them on their in-game avatars. It further uses generative AI to provide each user character (which is a unique NFT) with its own distinctive personality that users can learn about through a chat interface. 

Other ways people use generative AI to enhance creativity include Buzzfeed’s personalized content creation tools, which enable users to quickly create customized quizzes tailored to each individual, and its generative AI recipe creator, which can serve up ideas for meals based on whatever the user has in the fridge. 

Three ways this can go

In the eyes of some, AI-generated content has emerged as a major threat to user-generated content, but not everyone sees it that way. It’s unclear what kind of impact generative AI will ultimately have on the creator economy, but there are a number of possible scenarios that may unfold. 

Scenario 1: AI enhances creativity

In the first scenario, it’s possible to imagine a world in which there’s an explosion of AI-assisted innovation, in which content creators themselves adopt AI to improve their performance and productivity. For instance, designers can use AI to quickly generate basic ideas and outlines, before using their human expertise to fine-tune those creations, be it a logo or a product design or something else. Rather than replace designers entirely, generative AI simply becomes a tool that they use to improve their output and get more work done. 

An example of this is GitHub’s coding assistant Copilot, which is a generative AI tool that acts as a kind of programming assistant, helping developers to generate code. It doesn’t replace their role entirely, but simply assists them in generating code snippets – such as the lines of code required to program an app to perform standard actions. But the developer is the one who oversees this and uses his creativity to design all of the intricacies of the app. 

AMGI’s in-game content generation tools are another example of how AI augments human creativity, creating unique in-game characters and situations that are ultimately based on the user’s actions. 

Such a scenario isn’t a threat to creative workers and user-generated content. Rather than taking people’s jobs, AI will simply support the people who do those jobs and make them better at it. They’ll be able to work faster and more efficiently, getting more work done in shorter time frames, spending more of their time prompting the AI tools they use and editing their outputs. It will enable creative projects to move forward much faster, accelerating innovation. 

Scenario 2: AI monopolises creativity 

A more dystopian scenario is the one where algorithmic models leverage their unfair advantage to totally dominate the world of content creation. It’s a future where human designers, writers, coders and perhaps even highly skilled professionals like physicists are drowned out by AI models that can not only work faster, but at much lower costs than humans can.

From a business perspective, if they can replace costly human creators with cheap and cheerful AI, that’s great, translating to more profitability. But there are concerns, not only for the humans that lose their livelihoods, but also on the impact of creativity itself. 

As impressive as generative AI-created content sometimes is, the outputs of these algorithms are all based on existing content – namely the data they’re trained on. Most AI models have a habit of regurgitating similar content. Take an AI writer that always seems to write prose in the same, instantly recognizable and impersonal way, or AI image generators that constantly churn images with the same aesthetic. 

An even more alarming example of this is the AI music generators Suno and Uncharted Labs, whose tools are said to have been trained on millions of music videos posted on YouTube. Musicians represented by the Recording Industry Association of America recently filed lawsuits against those companies, accusing them of copyright infringement. Their evidence? Numerous examples of supposedly original songs that sound awfully familiar to existing ones created by humans. 

For instance, the lawsuit describes a song generated using Suno, called “Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orle” which seems to mirror the lyrics and style of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” It also highlights a second track, “Prancing Queen” that seems to be a blatant rip off of the ABBA hit “Dancing Queen.”

These examples raise questions over AI’s ability to create truly original content. If AI were to monopolise creativity, it could result in true innovation and creativity screeching to a halt, leading to a future that’s sterile and bland. 

Scenario 3: Human creativity stands out

Given AI’s lack of true authenticity and originality, a third possible way this could play out is that there is a kind of backlash against it. With consumers being overwhelmed by a sea of mundane, synthetic imagery and prose, those with an eye for flair will likely be able to identify true, human creativity and pay a premium for that content. After all, humans have always shown a preference for true originality, and such a scenario could well play into the hands of the most talented content creators. 

It’s a future where being human gives creators a competitive edge over their algorithmic rivals, with their unparalleled ability to come up with truly original ideas setting their work apart. Human culture, fashions and trends seem to evolve faster than generative AI models are created, and that means that the most original thinkers will always be one step ahead. It’s a more reassuring future where humans will continue to create and be rewarded for their work, and where machines will only ever be able to copy and iterate on existing ideas.  

This is perhaps the most likely scenario and, reassuringly, it means there will always be a need for humans in the mix. Humans, after all, are characterised by their creativity – everything that exists in the modern world today was created by someone, whether it’s the shoes on your feet, the device you’re reading this article with, or the language you speak. They’re all human creations, inspired by original ideas rooted in the human brain, and humans – especially those who find AI can do their jobs for them – will have more time to sit and think and potentially come up with even better ideas than the ones we’ve had so far. 

[angelskysposts]

Unjustable sins 🥲🤭

[yusuke-of-valla]

WE LIVE IN A HELL WORLD

Snippets from the article by Karissa Bell:

SAG-AFTRA, the union representing thousands of performers, has struck a deal with an AI voice acting platform aimed at making it easier for actors to license their voice for use in video games. ...

the agreements cover the creation of so-called “digital voice replicas” and how they can be used by game studios and other companies. The deal has provisions for minimum rates, safe storage and transparency requirements, as well as “limitations on the amount of time that a performance replica can be employed without further payment and consent.”

Notably, the agreement does not cover whether actors’ replicas can be used to train large language models (LLMs), though Replica Studios CEO Shreyas Nivas said the company was interested in pursuing such an arrangement. “We have been talking to so many of the large AAA studios about this use case,” Nivas said. He added that LLMs are “out-of-scope of this agreement” but “they will hopefully [be] things that we will continue to work on and partner on.”

...Even so, some well-known voice actors were immediately skeptical of the news, as the BBC reports. In a press release, SAG-AFTRA said the agreement had been approved by "affected members of the union’s voiceover performer community." But on X, voice actors said they had not been given advance notice. "How has this agreement passed without notice or vote," wrote Veronica Taylor, who voiced Ash in Pokémon. "Encouraging/allowing AI replacement is a slippery slope downward." Roger Clark, who voiced Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2, also suggested he was not notified about the deal. "If I can pay for permission to have an AI rendering of an ‘A-list’ voice actor’s performance for a fraction of their rate I have next to no incentive to employ 90% of the lesser known ‘working’ actors that make up the majority of the industry," Clark wrote.

SAG-AFTRA’s deal with Replica only covers a sliver of the game industry. Separately, the union is also negotiating with several of the major game studios after authorizing a strike last fall. “I certainly hope that the video game companies will take this as an inspiration to help us move forward in that negotiation,” Crabtree said.

And here are some various reactions I've found about things people in/adjacent to this can do

And in OTHER AI games news, Valve is updating it's TOS to allow AI generated content on steam so long as devs promise they have the rights to use it, which you can read more about on Aftermath in this article by Luke Plunkett