#and whether effort went into it

[honestlyvan]

Thinking about image model generated art and gifmaking is giving me some weird vibrations about how there really is some weird association of the virtuesvirtues of a medium with the virtues of the people working in it. Gifmaking being associated with KPop fans doesn't make the concept of frame interpolation racist, and someone marketing themselves as a cheaper alternative to some other artist doesn't make the concept of generative art inherently class antagonistic.

It's somehow reminiscent of CJ the X's distinction between "stupid art" and "evil art", how a medium that has a low skill floor can produce things that are very stupid and easy to perceive as low-effort but how that's not the same as them having something wrong with them. If you look at my animation tag, most of it is motion graphics done with AfterEffects, and while it's probably wrong to call it a low skill floor program the way an AI art generator is... there is still a world where instead of programmatically telling shapes to whizz by on a screen, a different Van would have drawn those same animations frame by frame, producing exactly the same animation.

And I don't think the fact that I did them programmatically somehow invalidates the artistic intent that went into them, y'know? I could open AE right now and produce a 250x250 looping gif of clouds and while I know how to do that quick, to make it look good and to make me like it, I would have to spend time considering how the various elements, colours, timings and whatever the particle system/noise generator I use spits out fit together. I would have to fiddle with seeds and levels and timings to make it look good. I would have to spend a long time just staring and thinking about what I'm making before I could make it good.

I don't know enough about generative art tools to know how much fiddling goes into them once they're taught and ready to go, but I do know enough about deep learning to know it's a haphazard, frustrating process that you as the artist have only limited control over, which is why it doesn't appeal to me. But I have made gifs in the past, and I know how that process requires an eye for consistency and composition, framing and colour that a lot of other visual artists don't have because they're not working with time as one of the creative dimensions.

And like... who am I, from my high horse as someone in possession of these skills, to tell someone who is still developing these skills or who has a different aesthetic concept of what is good than me, what they're making is low-effort. That's not my judgement to make. I didn't make it. Only the artist themselves can say if somehing was low-effort or not. I don't see why I should have so little faith in other artists to assume they have no interest in putting in any effort.

[untimelyambition]

very fond of these little interactions between the cast at the very end of the show as the finale starts

[radioactive-dazey]

I love you sanders sides artists i love you sanders sides fic writers i love you sanders sides fans i love you sanders sides

[blamemma]

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[crossdressingdeath]

One thing that I find both fascinating and deeply sad in TSatS is that when Will asks if they're going to Percy's house to ask him to come with them to Tartarus Nico says no on the grounds that he doesn't want to involve Percy in it... but when asked why Bob wouldn't ask Percy for help, Nico's immediate thought is that Bob didn't think Percy and Annabeth would help him. Like, that's his one and only theory. I suspect that there's a part of that where... Nico thinks to himself that Bob doesn't think Percy and Annabeth would help so that he doesn't have to think that he doesn't think Percy and Annabeth would help. In other words he's thinking it's Bob who didn't call for Percy and Annabeth because he didn't believe they'd help him, because the alternative is for Nico to say "I'm not asking them for help because I know they would say no and I don't want to face that refusal". And it's not that he wants them to come! If Nico had had his way he would've gone alone, he doesn't want to put anyone in danger, it's just that he managed to find the only demigod as stubborn as he is and made the mistake of telling Will what his plans were. But it's one thing to not want to involve people in something incredibly dangerous; it's quite another to know that if you asked for their help, and in this case their help saving the person they owe their lives to, they would say no. I'm sure they would be properly apologetic about refusing, they do seem to feel genuinely terrible about forgetting Bob (which... good) and "I'm not going to superhell again" is a perfectly understandable boundary to have, but I think Nico just... doesn't want to admit to himself that he was willing to go to Tartarus for Percy but Percy would never do the same for him. Hence him leaving it at "I don't want to make him do this" when asked if he'll ask Percy to help for his sake, but thinking quite openly to himself that Bob probably didn't think Percy and Annabeth would help, because Bob helped them out of loyalty to Nico so it isn't devastatingly sad to admit they'd never do the same for him the way it would be for Nico to admit that Percy would never go to Tartarus for him despite him going to Tartarus largely to help Percy.

Also, it's deeply disappointing that it doesn't come up again later in the book because please for the love of god Rick can we please have a discussion around Nico's fatal flaw being his "will literally go to hell and back for people who he knows would never do the same for him" level of loyalty and not holding grudges, and also how literally the only evidence even his own sister could offer for holding grudges being his fatal flaw was that he's the son of Hades and also was still upset about his sister dying six months after it happened. Now that he's got someone as loyal to him as he is to everyone else (Will refusing to not follow Nico to hell is so good after so long of Nico constantly being prepared to give up everything for others and getting next to nothing in return) it's a great time to get into how despite basically every other POV character going on about Nico being creepy and morally dubious actually his most consistent character trait is being the most loyal character in the whole series (and possibly the whole Riordanverse, honestly) no matter how many times that loyalty burns him.

[deadandphilgames]

oversharing in the tags time :)

[thewingedwolf]

no this was ROUGH okay because i was just staring at the tv in horror as Sam shows Ellie his leg, knowing what’s coming, and when they bust through the door and Henry points the gun at Joel, my brain first went to “Joel is going to accidentally kill Henry in order to save Ellie from being bit by Sam” but then Henry is aware enough to shoot Sam to save Ellie and the moment the gun fired I knew Henry was about to kill himself, and because this is how my mind works when I watch shows like this, I thought “if B was Sam in this situation and I was Henry, I don’t know that I would react any different” and I felt a gut wrenching, sick moment of compassion and warmth towards poor Henry as Joel is begging him to give up the gun because he is also just as aware as I am what is about to happen, but then the camera switches to Ellie’s face and I switched into horror once again as I realized “oh my god but Ellie is going to watch Henry pull the trigger after she told Sam it would be alright no WAIT” and then the gun goes off again and Ellie screams

[aeolids-zenith]

i hate posts that are supposed to be positivity for people who lack friends or that say that social connections are like unexpectedly inevitable/straightforward to make or something, but then like. don't elaborate on how that is possible. it always just makes me feel more hopeless

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

having thoughts about like. how the flashbacks we see of setrákus, pittacus, and celwe are ambiguous enough--the tiny slices we get of their dynamic, and all of the missing context in between--that pittacus' nastiness toward setrákus might be in response to setrákus being abusive toward him while they were growing up. and setrákus' nastiness toward him might be in response to pittacus being abusive toward him while they were growing up. or maybe they were just shitty to each other and in general, with celwe and Everyone Else getting caught in the crossfire.

the authors probably intended for it to be the first option, to the extent they were thinking about it in those terms at all: pittacus grew up with a friend who's been shitty to downright abusive toward him, and by their big confrontation he's had enough time away from him to unpack how fucked up his behavior was, and understand his tactics in order to call them out. you could interpret it that way, and were probably meant to, and it would make sense.

but... that assumption is kind of the problem, to me. because the other very much valid way to interpret what we see is a certain kind of abuse that's bad enough by itself, but is primarily aimed at neurodivergent and otherwise marginalized people in particular. (and setrákus is autistic as fuck.) and it's abuse that widely goes unseen and ignored, and is most often perpetuated by people who know they can afford to do it, or think they can.

might have to come back to it in more detail in a reblog, honestly, because it's a lot to talk about; but essentially it comes down to silencing someone by either openly dismissing what they say as nonsense that no one can understand but them, and isn't important enough to try, or disguising it behind a bad faith ''attempt'' to understand so they can say they tried and there's no point. it's a lifelong trauma which has shaped enormous parts of my personality and how i communicate, i can spot it a mile away, and i see all the hallmarks of it in their relationship and how setrákus is affected by it.

and that bothers me. it bothers me a lot that we're supposed to see one and not the other. it bothers me that it's not even 'pittacus' behavior is genuinely shit, but it's somewhat more understandable in the version of events where the context is that he was abused'; he's framed as the hero of the situation either way, who's acting out of pure kindness and reason and good intent. it bothers me that the person who is easy to interpret as having been abused this way would, even then, still be depicted as the Abusive Hate Sink Incarnation of Evil. (because he is abusive, and he is very much an evil son of a bitch. regardless of who was worse in his relationship with pittacus, that's true.) and it bothers me that that framing makes it harder to explore how the cycle of abuse manifests in this scenario, because it absolutely is a thing that happens and is worth telling stories about.

just, i don't know. thoughts. hm.

[peapod20001]

Haha I wish the one time I had a partner wasn’t a literal joke

[canthandlethishit]

ive spent my 18th birthday at home, alone, and that night wrote an entry in my suicide journal and had a breakdown because i thought 18th birthdays in books and shows always showed such optimism in the future, such drive to throw themselves into the world with all their passion and dreams.

i dont have any passion or dreams, because i know its not allowed, its risky, its an opportunity cost. Its not a warranted stable job, its not a respectable diploma, its not okay to stop and breathe because you’re wasting time that is money that will provide comfort in your elderly retired years.

i follow the guidelines and the rules, i take the major im supposed to, i take the club activities that will provide me the skills my future job would require, and i make the connections necessary for my future job. a job that maybe allow me to live comfortably, enough to retire and have some left over.

only

im not going to retire, neither are most of my friends, we don’t think about retirement, we know the cost of being old, our life plans share the expiration date of 30 years.

Maybe this is the wrong platform to pose this question given the average tumblr user but

Is it just me or did our generation (those of is who are currently 20-30 ish) just not get the opportunity to be young in the 'standard' sense?

Like, everyone I talk to who's over 40 has all their wild stories about their teens and 20s, being young and dumb, and then I talk to my friends and coworkers and classmates, and we just... dont.

[great-and-small]

When I was in vet school I went to this one lecture that I will never forget. Various clubs would have different guest lecturers come in to talk about relevant topics and since I was in the Wildlife Disease Association club I naturally attended all the wildlife and conservation discussions. Well on this particular occasion, the speakers started off telling us they had been working on a project involving the conservation of lemurs in Madagascar. Lemurs exist only in Madagascar, and they are in real trouble; they’re considered the most endangered group of mammals on Earth. This team of veterinarians was initially assembled to address threats to lemur health and work on conservation solutions to try and save as many lemur species from extinction as possible. As they explored the most present dangers to lemurs they found that although habitat loss was the primary problem for these vulnerable animals, predation by humans was a significant cause of losses as well. The vets realized it was crucial for the hunting of lemurs by native people to stop, but of course this is not so simple a problem.

The local Malagasy people are dealing with extreme poverty and food insecurity, with nearly half of children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. The local people have always subsisted on hunting wildlife for food, and as Madagascar’s wildlife population declines, the people who rely on so-called bushmeat to survive are struggling more and more. People are literally starving.

Our conservation team thought about this a lot. They had initially intended to focus efforts on education but came to understand that this is not an issue arising from a lack of knowledge. For these people it is a question of survival. It doesn’t matter how many times a foreigner tells you not to eat an animal you’ve hunted your entire life, if your child is starving you are going to do everything in your power to keep your family alive.

So the vets changed course. Rather than focus efforts on simply teaching people about lemurs, they decided to try and use veterinary medicine to reduce the underlying issue of food insecurity. They supposed that if a reliable protein source could be introduced for the people who needed it, the dependence on meat from wildlife would greatly decrease. So they got to work establishing new flocks of chickens in the most at-risk communities, and also initiated an aggressive vaccination program for Newcastle disease (an infectious illness of poultry that is of particular concern in this area). They worked with over 600 households to ensure appropriate husbandry and vaccination for every flock, and soon found these communities were being transformed by the introduction of a steady protein source. Families with a healthy flock of chickens were far less likely to hunt wild animals like lemurs, and fewer kids went hungry. Thats what we call a win-win situation.

This chicken vaccine program became just one small part of an amazing conservation outreach initiative in Madagascar that puts local people at the center of everything they do. Helping these vulnerable communities of people helps similarly vulnerable wildlife, always. If we go into a country guns-blazing with that fire for conservation in our hearts and a plan to save native animals, we simply cannot ignore the humans who live around them. Doing so is counterintuitive to creating an effective plan because whether we recognize it or not, humans and animals are inextricably linked in many ways. A true conservation success story is one that doesn’t leave needy humans in its wake, and that is why I think this particular story has stuck with me for so long.

(Source 1)

(Source 2- cool video exploring this initiative from some folks involved)

(Source 3)

[philautia-agape]

She veemo on my woomy til I splatoon

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[orangerainforest]

🌻

[abby-howard]

Some folks were asking for my boiled peanuts recipe (as they feature in our game, Scarlet Hollow, and we made a big batch this past weekend), but it's unfortunately a bit difficult for me to post with lightness in my heart right now because this past weekend the entirety of western North Carolina, where Scarlet Hollow takes place, was devastated by hurricane Helene.

Towns I have been to and have fond memories of have been described as "washed away." The region is almost entirely still out of power, the water is all contaminated with repair efforts expected to take weeks, and there are hundreds of people stranded, including my relatives, as roads have been totally destroyed. My uncle sent a photo of the road near his house, thankfully his home is okay but I have to image it's going to take a while for roads like this to see repairs:

I know this photo has been making the rounds, but it bears posting for those who haven't seen it-- the main strip of Chimney Rock, before and after:

Trees, cars, buildings, everything is gone. And now all that debris is just sitting in lakes and rivers. This is Lake Lure today:

Pictures from Swannanoa, an absolutely lovely town with so much character, where my sister went to folk music camp as a teen, where mobile home parks were hit hardest-- people's houses just floated away downriver:

And of course Asheville is the town most people will have heard of. A city of 95k, completely isolated in the days after the storm. The River Arts District was still underwater as of yesterday:

People throughout the entire region are without power and transport and fuel and water and food, they've lost their homes and their businesses, and people have had to resort to hiking to reach loved ones to see if they're safe or whether their homes were just wiped off the face of the earth-- hundreds are still missing because it's been so difficult to get in contact with people in these isolated, rural communities that are now nearly impossible to get to because roads were washed away or collapsed in landslides.

I honestly don't even know where to start when it comes to relief funds or ways that people can help. I've been listening to the local radio station and it sounds like the area is in shock, people are coming in to help pick up the pieces but there is so much recovery that will have to happen that it's hard to know where to start.

This article from the Citizen Times has a list of places that are currently helping with relief efforts.

It's absolutely unfathomable that a hurricane could hit the mountains. The effects of this are going to be felt in western NC for a long time, and my heart goes out to everyone who is currently stranded or trying to get in touch with people who are.

[is-the-post-reliable]

(reposting as I am unable to reblog the original.)

requested by @kodicraft

🔶 Rating: Partially Reliable 🔶

The Devils Hole is home to the endangered Devils Hole Pupfish.

From the National Park Service's page on Devils Hole: 'Devils Hole--a detached unit of Death Valley National Park--is habitat for the only naturally occurring population of the endangered Devils Hole Pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis).'

The existence of the pupfish does prevent the pumping of groundwater in the area, after a legal battle. I am not sure this would apply to all mining.

From a High Country News article on the pupfish: 'The Cappaert case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, testing the power of the Antiquities Act and the weight of the new Endangered Species Act. In 1976, the High Court affirmed the federal government’s right to maintain water levels sufficient to support the pupfish, even at the expense of water rights held by nearby ranchers.'

The habitat of this fish is incredibly small. However, it is slightly larger than suggested, as the fish swim at least 20m deep; the rock shelf referenced is the only place where the fish feed and spawn in the wild.

From the same National Park Service page: 'Although pupfish have been found as deep as 66 feet (20 m), the fish forage and spawn exclusively on a shallow rock shelf near the surface, feeding on the algae and diatoms found there.'

It is true that multiple conservation attempts have failed. Previous attempts to breed or crossbreed the fish have not been successful.

From a National Park Foundation article on the pupfish: 'Despite past efforts to create a similar artificial platform for the pupfish, as well as attempts to breed Devils Hole pupfish and hybrids in captivity, this small ledge remains the sole spawning and feeding shelf for the fish.'

I have not been able to find any references to 'assassination attempts'. One individual did threaten to pour pesticide into Devil's Hole, but it seems this was never attemped. If anyone can find anything on this, please let me know, but in the mean time I have to say this claim is unsubstantiated.

From a High Country News article on an incident of tresspassing and the pupfish: 'A Pahrump newspaper editor even threatened to throw the pesticide Rotenone into the sunken cave to “make the pupfish a moot point.”'

The fencing was initially installed after two people drowned, not after an assassination attempt. Later, more fencing and security was installed after three men drunkenly tresspassed and killed a pupfish.

From the same National Park Service page: 'Subsequently, the Hole was fenced after two divers drowned in its water.'

From a High Country News article on the incident of tresspassing : 'Since the incident, Devils Hole has become an even more formidable fortress. The Park Service capped its towering fences with additional barbed wire. The public can only view the sunken cave from a distance now, more than 20 feet above it. And inside the fenced viewing area are even more cameras, motion sensors and “No Trespassing” signs.'

There is a breeding program at Ash Meadows Facility, where scientists have attempted to mimic the natural habitat of the pupfish.

From a National Geographic article on the breeding attempts: 'And when they built the Ash Meadows facility, the scientists tried to create a mirror image of Devil’s Hole, which meant bringing in water, substrate, and algae from the natural environment.'

It is possible that a different research/breeding facility is being referred to, but the Ash Meadows Facility does not seem to have a secret location. In fact, the facility is open to visitors, according to their website.

I wont attempt to fact check whether the cave is haunted, but I can confirm that at least two people drowned and were not recovered from Devils Hole. Whilst the cave is not truly bottomless, the bottom has not yet been found.

From an SFGATE article on Devils Hole: 'When the bottom of Devils Hole is one day found, the skeletons of two brothers-in-law may finally be recovered, fathoms below the frolicking pupfish.'

The breeding program has been more successful in recent years. This may be due to the discovery that diving beetles were eating the eggs and larvae, and the beetle population in the artificial environment being controlled. (This fact was not included in the original post, but I thought it was cool.)

From a National Geographic article on the breeding attempts: 'As Feuerbacher watched the infrared footage, which can visualize objects in the dark, a tiny pupfish larva smaller than a peppercorn flitted into the camera’s frame. This was big news. When a population gets as low as that of the pupfish, every animal—wild or captive, larva or adult—is critical to the species’ survival.

“I was pretty excited to see there was reproduction going on in the tank, and I just watched it for a little bit,” says Feuerbacher, a fish biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Then I saw a beetle swim past.”

It began circling the fish, and closing in.

“Then it just dove in and basically tore the fish in half right while I was watching,” says Feuerbacher.

[...]

During the first beetle collection, facility manager Jennifer Gumm says they caught 500 beetles in three hours. And on the very next pupfish egg collection, which is done by leaving out pieces of carpet that the fish like to lay their eggs on, the team retrieved close to 40 pupfish eggs.

Before this, they had been lucky to find four or five pupfish eggs during a refuge collection. Usually, it was zero.'