#but my career has been replaced by AI

[lemonsharks]

Please do not reblog.

It's been such a long time since something good happened to me or since I sought and achieved something good for myself.

This year I have been hired three times for positions that all fell through at the last minute. I've been targeted by scam job recruitment twice. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know why it has to be this hard.

I'm never going to get to have a family. I'm never going to get to be in love again. I'm never going to live in a real standalone house again. I'm never going to get to meet all the people I desperately want to meet in real life.

I'm so tired. I'm so, so tired.

[aeolianblues]

I'm not an extrovert. At all. In everyday life, I'm a yapper, sure, but I need someone to first assure me I am okay to yap, so I don't start conversations, even when I really want to join in sometimes! It's just the social anxiety acting up. God knows where from and why I lose a lot of my inhibitions when it comes to talking to people about music. I don't know where the confidence has suddenly sprung from. I've made a crazy amount of friends in musical circles, either just talking to people about common music or (since it is after all in music circles) talking to bands about their own music. I let out a sigh of relief any time an interaction goes well, because in truth it's going against my every instinct. I wish I could do that in everyday life

[violainebriat]

It's a bit weird typing out a full post here on tumblr. I used to be one of these artists that mostly focused on posting only images, the least amount of opinions/thoughts I could share, the better. Today, the art world online feels weird, not only because of AI, but also the algorithms on every platform and the general way our craft is getting replaced for close to 0 dollars. This website was a huge instrument in kickstarting my career as a professional artist, it was an inspiring place were artists shared their art and where we could make friends with anyone in the world, in any industries. It was pretty much the place that paved the way as a social media website outside of Facebook, where you could search art through tags etc. Anyhow, Tumblr still has a place in my heart even if all artists moved away from it after the infamous nsfw ban (mostly to Instagram and twitter). And now we're all playing a game of whack-a-mole trying to figure out if the social media platform we're using is going to sell their user content to AI / deep learning (looking at you reddit, going into stocks). On the Tumblr side, Matt Mullenweg's interviews and thoughts on the platform shows he's down to use AI, and I guess it could help create posts faster but then again, you have to click through multiple menus to protect your art (and writing) from being scraped. It's really kind of sad to have to be on the defensive with posting art/writing online. It doesn't even reflect my personal philosophy on sharing content. I've always been a bit of a "punk" thinking if people want to bootleg my work, it's like free advertisement and a testament to people liking what I created, so I've never really watermarked anything and posted fairly high-res version of my work. I don't even think my art is big enough to warrant the defensiveness of glazing/nightshading it, but the thought of it going through a program to be grinded into a data mush to be only excreted out as the ghost of its former self is honestly sort of deadening.

Finally, the most defeating trend is the quantity of nonsense and low-quality content that's being fed to the internet, made a million times easier with the use of AI. I truly feel like we're living what Neil Postman saw happening over 40 years ago in "amusing ourselves to death"(the brightness of this man's mind is still unrivaled in my eyes).

I guess this is my big rant to tell y'all now I'm gonna be posting crunchy art because Nightshade and Glaze basically make your crispy art look like a low-res JPEG, and I feel like an idiot for doing it but I'm considering it an act of low effort resistance against data scraping. If I can help "poison" data scrapping by wasting 5 minutes of my life to spit out a crunchy jpeg before posting, listen, it's not such a bad price to pay. Anyhow check out my new sticker coming to my secret shop really soon, and how he looks before and after getting glazed haha....

[fangirleaconmigo]

As a tv super fan, I support the writers’ strike.

As creative industry becomes more and more automated and corporatized, the 1% at the top, the executives, CEOs, and venture capitalists, are getting (even!) more obscenely wealthy. And as they do, does it trickle down? Ha. No. They starve the creatives. They can be making billions and they will try to get art and writing for free.

They call it content, create an algorithm, and behave as though the least valuable part is the person drawing or writing or painting.

Massive global corporations are destroying art as a profession for the tiniest bit of extra profit.

The viewers know the faces of the performers, so singers and actors have a bit more leverage, but they’re still getting smaller and smaller slices of the pie.

The writers guild is fighting so that television and script writing can remain a valid professional career that can pay rent, instead of a soul crushing, gig economy, pennies for words, pipe dream. (You know, the way predatory capitalism and extreme greed destroyed journalism as a profession)

Look at Disney. When they acquired Star Wars they decided they didn’t need to pay the writers of the novels any of their meager royalties. They decided that buying a contract meant profiting from books and devaluing, ignoring, and cheating the people who created the books. (Look up #disneymustpay and Alan Dean Foster)

That’s the culture. Starve the creatives, little by little, until you can replace them with an AI, whose work has been edited by an under or unpaid temp with no healthcare.

That makes my skin crawl. That’s why I support creatives. I support workers. I support unions. And I think we all should.

[a-d-nox]

pluto in aquarius: a prediction of what's to come

this is a huge astrological event, pluto is moving into aquarius for the first time since the late 1700s. last time pluto was in aquarius america fought for independence from britain, uranus was discovered, the french revolution began, the bill of rights was ratified, etc.

so for day one, i want to create predictions of what is to come!

some house matters!!!

TWO PLUTO RETROGRADES WILL OCCUR - june 11th - jan 20th, 2024 is the first so we won't see too much wildness just yet as pluto will return into capricorn during this time and THE FINAL RETROGRADE BACK INTO CAPRICORN will be september 1st, 2024 - november 19th, 2024. then we are full steam ahead with pluto in aquarius until march 9th, 2043.

i personally am NOT a witch or anything wild, everything i am saying is purely theoretical - it is not fated to happen just because i am saying it. i am simply socially aware. i know what's up generally in the world today and what was up in world in the 1700s - "history typically repeats itself."

i live in the usa so my post likely will be slightly more focused there examples wise so i apologize in advance! feel free to comment, dm, or reblog with other examples from your country based on my prediction key phrases.

i am going to start light and get darker so mentally prepare yourself for that (tw: STI/STD outbreaks, war, 9/11, COVID-19, and other abrasive topics that may make people uncomfortable depending on where they are currently reading from) - but we are talking about pluto so... expect the unexpected?!

let's do this.

renewable energy sources

aquarius is electricity, light, inventions, electronics, telephones, televisions, etc while pluto can be change! i recently bought a new tv and the back of the remote has a solar panel instead of a battery pack. i do believe we will see more evolution with technology; perhaps we will see solar changed phones! otherwise pluto is also pollution and natural disasters - the climate is in crisis mode perhaps we will see more responsibility and thus changes in our sourcing of energy! example: recently i read that japan has a great source of geothermal energy. currently the conversion to using this source (instead of coal, gas, and nuclear energy) is being held up by a higher up in the hot spring business who claims switching to a new energy system "threatens centuries-old traditions" (bang - a capricorn term - tradition - so perhaps after the retrogrades are through we will see a major shift in energy sourcing).

general technological advancements/inventions

last time pluto was in aquarius the cotton gin was invented; which aided in quicker production of goods and higher demand for american cotton. i strongly believe this is a general indicator that AI is going to become an even bigger part of day to day life. i have seen AI already replace those who take orders in the panera drive thru, there is a higher demand for philosophy/english grads to help teach AI, etc. aquarius is also new teachers/occupations so AI could become the new teachers OR new careers could be coming in the area of interacting with AI generally so it gains more consciousness. so it could be AI or it could be something else that is only just a dream in the back of someone's mind at this moment in time.

altruistic extremists

we may see utopian dreamers rise up! they are likely to advocate for the deconstruction of pre-existing political institutions in favor of either self governance or egalitarian policies. they will likely do whatever it takes to make this statement; we may see more protests / political statements similar to wynn bruce's.

fanatical/extremist announcers radio/tv

we already have biased stations and channels (fox, abc, cnn, nbc, etc). we are likely to see a further rise in politically biased newscasters and announcers.

demonization of astrology

astrology is aquarian in nature but pluto is fanatics, evil, demonics, etc. the community has been saying about the next world war for a while now. we are moving out of conservative pluto in capricorn, so we may find that those of deep belief systems accusing us [astrologers] of conspiring with the devil if/when something militant arises (similar to how the tarot community gets told constantly by christians that they must be satanists).

something with birds

i don't have this nailed down yet specifically, but both aquarius and pluto are rulers of birds. aquarius is large birds while pluto is wading/swamp birds and/or flesh eating birds. no one freak out and start thinking that i am indicating something like the 1963 horror film the birds. if anything i can see more bird-spread illness and/or parasites. OR pluto can be archaeology! there may be a bird related discovery or something to do with the distant relative of the bird - aka the raptor (dinosaur related).

a new STI/STD discovery/outbreak

aquarius represents the distribution of bodily fluids while pluto is often representative of sexual activity. this could either be an outbreak because pluto can be death, extremes, catastrophes, and/or casualties OR pluto can be ph balance in the body (possible new discoveries for feminine sexual health), kidneys (perhaps a discovery will be linked to the diminished functionality associated with syphilis, hiv, etc and how to combat more symptomatic issues), and even purification (aka a cure perhaps to help viral carriers to no longer pass the sti/std to sexual partners).

collapse of congress / house of commons/representatives

i mean it only stands to reason that the bill of rights was created/approved last time pluto was in aquarius that either those rights will disappear (pluto also represents dictators) OR simply the people rise up and demolish the institution as it stands: "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

airplane catastrophes

aquarius rules over planes and pluto can represent accomplices, catastrophes, casualties, b0mbs, and t3rr0r!sm. we may experience another event similar to 9/11 OR we may see air strikes in a potential world war 3 scenario.

societal change: crime, war, leadership, and more

world war 3 is on the horizon so say pluto in aquarius (probably in the wake of election year in the US - when the final retrograde into capricorn concludes). but this could also just be governmental restructuring - this could be seen as rebellions (similar to the French Revolution), the rise of organized crime if good become more scarce, religious shifts (pluto is the antichrist, aquarius is freewill (first amendment), and capricorn is the old church (christian schools of thought)), etc.

aquarian terms i can't think of change in but seem important to note / keep in mind: freethinkers, hamburg germany, heart weakness (biden - perhaps the early death of a president in office?), motion picture (already changing as more theaters close), photography, psychology (we are already starting to care more about everyone's mental health), science (general scientific discoveries?), social affairs (there is always something going on - the question is how big will this be?), society, sweden, syria, and xray.

plutonian terms i can't think of change in but seem important to note / keep in mind: abductions (aliens - ufo sights?), aliases, alibis (governmental riffing similar to how no plan was in place when for COVID-19), assass!nat!0n (hopefully not), betrayal, bootlegging (bootleg tiktok if america bans it?), cemeteries (removal of that method if too many are dying at any giving time - mass graves?), convicts (prison release due to overcrowding? the mega-prison of el salvador?), corruption (governmental likely?), demolitions, earthquakes (more environmental issues?), electrocution, executions (war?), fanatic, extremes, floods (environmental? emigration - society is aquarius after all?), liars, massacres (the rise of crime?), murder, nihilism (the rise of philosophy at the time of war?), ransom (war?), satire (rise of political satire?), stolen goods, and taxes (trump-esque no?).

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[yappingbitch73]

since the beginning of time, the ultimate hot girl activity has been laying about! modern society is trying to take our culture away from us DONT LET THE ART OF BEING LAZY FADE AWAY pliz!

to all the girls who still practise and keep the art alive: u are so brave, and I love u! they will try to stop u... everyone will get in the way... BUT DO NOT LET THEM BE AN OBSTACLE!!!! I believe in u, as an active member of the laying ab and of real nyph dissent, ik the struggle fr... I desire clean grass and flowers to lay on, but society SOCIETY!!! men want to conquer nature, women wanna be part of its beauty, that's the difference between smelly smelly yucky ew masculinity and being an actual angel (girl) and sadly as they have been successful in literally burning the planet alive and making nature extinct and isolating humanity from it, they have also disconnected us from where we belong!!!! WE NEED A RESISTANCE TO THE UNSTOPPABLE FORCE OF MEN AND THIER UGLY DICKS AND DESIER FOR A DISTOPIAN UGLY MINIMALIST FUTURE WITH AI WHORES REPLACING WOMEN!!! cuz god forbid their sex toys wanna take a walk in nature once in awhile and be a conscious being.... so, if u wanna join, our first course of action for a future closer to nature:

go to ur local park and lay around nude and get other women to join u (if we ALL do it I won't he weird frfr) who's with me guys 🙌🙌🙌 I can't be the only one tired of living in a world made from men for men w the only space for women being the domestic environment wich also is taken over by men somehow... I feel as if only nature is a truly feminine space rn... AND MEN ARE LITERELY TRYING TO GET RID OF IT!!!!! so tired of fast passed life, importance placed on achievement, the concept of "genius", "success", sensitivity being fought, art being stale, distractions, career driven lives... can i draw listen to music make movies read books swim around lay around be friends with everyone in the world and that be all? that be life? I don't need more, human connection, love, nature, art and being content is all I want out of life... and I'm tired of ppl thinking I'm stupid for it, or that it's not enough? are u stupid? that's all we need (mentally ofc) also I'm 15 why would I want anything more rn 😭

I just don't agree with most ppls definition of what is "great" "grand" "important" "worthy of attention and praise", idc what empire concurred more land! I care which one was most advanced in art philosophy and community! idc for ur "genius" technological guy, I think being content in life is the most admirable thing a person could ever do! and being an artist is also admirable to me!

so anyway, why would we wanna succeed in what men decided is success? let's make our own definition cuz ew wtf are they on ab w careers? I think knowledge and emotional intelligence should be the definition for us! also, community is very important so don't be a bitch ok? THATS EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT!!! US TO BE AGAINST EACHOTHER AAAA

ty fr if u made it this far and could handle my insane yapping. I hope u enjoyed! like and subscribe ♡♡♡ (the start was half satirical, tho I believe most of what is said, BUT IM NOT INSANE OK)

[gracefulserpent1207]

So in response to SAG-AFTRA pulling this BULLSHIT on voice actors, I'd like to say something that is an EXTREMELY important message to spread. Something that should be pretty fucking obvious that some people still seem not to understand.

DO NOT USE AI!!!!!

Like I said above, it should be obvious. But the amount of AI voice covers I keep seeing, the amount of AI written scripts, makes me think that some people just aren't taking the hint.

And I think the main reason why it is so important to NOT USE AI is because it is "fans" using AI, stealing voice actor's voices for their own fucking entertainment, that has caused THIS to happen.

SAG-AFTRA are disgusting for agreeing to this, especially since they were meant to PROTECT voice actors from this exact kind of thing. They should be held completely responsible and completely to blame.

But ANYONE who has EVER used AI to make/steal voices, art, writing, etc. should also be completely to blame. Because when you use AI, you advertise it. You support it. You say "Hey, I think we should be using AI for shit like this more often!" which is NOT something we should be saying. Especially since you are using AI ENTIRELY for your own entertainment, whereas there are actual real life people out there LOSING THEIR JOBS, THEIR LIVING, THEIR OWN FUCKING IDENTITIES WHEN SOMEONE STEALS THEIR VOICE because of it.

I am an aspiring writer. I am a teenager who is (and has been since I was SIX YEARS OLD) working hard towards that goal. And I am fucking TERRIFIED that I will get replaced by AI before I've even begun my career as a writer. That is fucked up. Nobody should have to be scared of that. Especially not someone as young as I am. SAG-AFTRA and anyone who uses AI to write scripts, stories, etc. is fucking up my future. And it is pissing me off.

IF YOU HAVE EVER, MADE, SHARED, LIKED, OR JUST OUTRIGHT SUPPORTED THE USE OF AI, ESPECIALLY FOR VOICE COVERS, YOU ARE JUST AS RESPONSIBLE AS SAG-AFTRA FOR THE NEW AGREEMENT! THE NEW AGREEMENT THAT SAYS THAT IT IS EASIER TO REPLACE HUMAN BEINGS WITH MACHINES, ALL BECAUSE OF PROFIT AND CONVENIENCE! YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE! PLEASE STOP SUPPORTING AI BECAUSE THIS IS THE DAMAGE THAT IT DOES!

I'd also like to ask ANYONE who is active/has a lot of followers on Twitter or TikTok to SPREAD THIS MESSAGE!!! Because I am not very active on either and it is EXTREMELY important that people know about this. Especially since this kind of thing seems to be most common on TikTok. In any way you can, PLEASE speak out against anyone you see using AI. And if you have ever used it yourself, or if you still use it, please STOP!

AI is causing a lot of damage already and it does NOT need to cause any more.

[achillestickler]

So after a lot of back and forth with myself and a poll of my members I decided to play around with AI, both as a tool for my traditional drawings and to create actual finished pieces. Every day in December I will be posting one of my AI creations on my Patreon for my members as a special bonus. Here's what I wrote about it there:

Well, the poll was overwhelmingly for showing what I've been creating with AI tools, so I've decided that for the month of December my Patreon fans will be getting daily updates of what I've been up to with this new tool. Consider them a Christmas gift. These will not replace my typical 4 traditional drawings per month, this is just a bonus.

I want to make it clear I intend to use AI in the future to help me with my traditional drawing. If there's a challenging pose I'm having trouble with or a piece of equipment I need at a specific angle, it's a great way to get reference material. But I was curious about what I could get it to create for a finished piece, using the very limited parameters at hand. I also didn't want to create "hot muscled guy in room with robotic arms" over and over again, which you see so much of. I wanted to create images with all ages and sizes of men. I also am going to avoid using celebrity likenesses and am only going to make generic people and not specific ones. I'll do my best to make interesting and unique scenarios. 

I know there is a faction of people that won't be okay with this. Honestly it feels to me like a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" kind of moment. At several times in my artistic career I was left behind by missing the boat on new technology (web design completely passed me by). Part of me feels that to keep current even in my real-world day job I need to know what AI is capable of. So consider all of this an experiment and you're along for the fun ride. 

In making some of my first AI pieces I came to the realization that the classic "circus strongman" is probably my ultimate type: bald, muscled, hairy, mustached. They push ALL of my buttons. I also love the old trope of "strong man tickled while trying to hold up something heavy". And let's face it: evil clowns make the perfect nemesis for a strongman. 

I made a lot of these but this was one of the best in terms of expression and composition. On a technical note, I will tell you that it is extraordinarily difficult to get character A to actually touch character B. The word "tickling" has been blocked as a prompt, so you have to describe a different way to get fingers to actually come in contact with a body. It only works about 1 out of 10 tries. 

My Patreon is HERE

[ink-the-artist]

I saw some of your tags on your recent reblogs, and it made me wonder what you tink of the recent outcry against "AI art" tools? With your tags, it sounds like you'd have different thoughts compared to what digital artists posting about it right now, and it got me kind of curious. No pressure to answer publically if you think you'll get flak for it - I'm just curious to hear your perspective because of those pieces you resurfaced.

I typed out a bit long thing about my own thoughts, but then realised that dumping that in your inbox would be a little unhinged. TL;DR - I'm neither here nor there. Selling the results is wrong, at present at least, but the tools themselves... ehhh? are they really??

That's the jist of it. If you'd like me to, I can elaborate with some of the play in 5 acts that I edited out. For context, I do art but I don't want to pursue a career in art in the current digital age, and I've worked on """AI""" (text to speech vocalisation) in the past but I'm not a staunch defender or anything, I just know some stuff about what "AI" is.

the outcry against ai art is because people are worried it'll take the place of actual artists and more recently because there have been a lot of artists whos art has been used in these ai programs databases without their permission or against their will (I think there's even a few instances where they used art from dead artists.) And I definitely agree with the outcry against that. I don't think ai generated art can meaningfully replace actual human art because art isn't just about creating images, ai cant replicate the self expression and communication and, well, humanity of human art, but I do think in the future it may take some jobs away from artists if an employer/company can get the same thing they want for free or cheap from an AI as they could with a human artist. there is also a real concern that ai images (not art this time but photographs) will become convincing enough in the future that it can lead to misinformation being created and spread incredibly easily.

I use Artbreeder mostly and sometimes Wombo and I use it to generate photos rather than art, I like using the shittier programs bc the stuff they generate is very uncanny which works great for horror art lol. I also don't just post the thing I generate on artbreeder, all my ai posts are heavily edited and I'm basically doing photomanipulation and collage somewhat, they genuinely take a lot of work and time. Ive been inspired by uncanny ai images for my own horror art for a good while (back when that "this image is meant to simulate a stroke" post/hoax was going around, which is how I learned about artbreeder, then called ganbreeder) before I started seeing ai "art" become a thing or neuralblender get popular. Im rly into the idea of horror that comes from something that looks familiar but not quite right and you cant quite figure out what you're looking at. I think you can see the ai influence in some of these,

I think ai is a great tool for artists that should be explored, and I personally haven't seen people object to that use of it, there's artists that use it to visualize their ideas before making the art themselves or use it to help come up with ideas for their art. but i don't think just generating an image and posting that is really art, there has to be some element of transformation from you.

[neoyorzapoteca]

It is a piece of sage advice, a writer’s mantra, that I have made good use of through the years and that I now pass on to you: Ah, fuck ‘em. Use it whenever someone suggests that writing stories is not a real job. Or when you hear that print is dead. Books are obsolete. AI will replace us all. “Ah, fuck ‘em.” Whisper it whenever you’re told: You can’t say that. You can’t write that. You can’t sell that. Say it whenever someone tries to suggest that there are prohibitions to our art: that you’re not allowed to imagine yourself into certain worlds, or certain characters, or certain cultures. That you are barred from creating situations that you haven’t actually lived. That you are barred from borrowing too much from so-called “real life.” Say it when you’re told you are too late with your fictional premise—it’s been done before. Or too early—it’s never been done before. “Ah, fuck ‘em.” Say it with a laugh. Or a shrug. Say it kindly, in the same way you might mutter, “Poor fool,” or “Oh, well,” or, like a dismissive Southern lady, “Why, bless your heart.” Or say it patiently, ruefully as the Irish might say, “God help us.” (...) Say it as you begin your writing day, as you turn your back on all the people and voices that do not belong in your writing room: parents, siblings, spouses, critics—online or otherwise—opinionated friends and neighbors, the latest big book, the hottest new writer, some Tik Tok thing, the graduate school classmate who just scored a billion dollar deal with Netflix. Ah, fuck ‘em. Leaving—as Faulkner said—no room in your workshop for anything but the authorities and truths of the human heart. And after you’ve had your Night of the Living Dead moment, closed the door on the groping hands and the ghoulish faces of all that keeps us from confronting, unfettered, those authorities and truths—without which, Faulkner said, any story is ephemeral and doomed—look in the figurative mirror and say it to yourself. * Say it to your doubts, your hesitations, your worries about getting a real job. Ah, fuck ‘em. Say it to your fears about writing the wrong thing: the wrong phrase, the wrong character, the wrong genre, the wrong subject or sentiment. The story that dies on the vine. I mean, fuck those fears. Say it to every sensible, depressing, cowardly notion that visits your swirling brain, to all the things that paralyze your freedom to write. Ah, fuck ‘em. Same goes for your Cinderella fantasies of winning a big literary prize, as well as your Eyor-esque certainty that your work will never see the light of day. Fuck ‘em both. You will fail, of course you will. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll write some lousy sentences, unnecessary scenes, stories that run out of steam and novels that are not, perhaps, your best work. * It is, my friends, the occupational hazard inherent in choosing a profession—the storyteller’s profession—that keeps you, despite how many years you’ve labored at it, forever a novice, a debutante, a lone explorer setting out to define a new world. A profession that keeps you at the beginning, just the beginning, of your great career, because there’s always a new story to write, a new sentence to compose, a voice, made of words alone, that has not yet been heard, that only you can discover.

Alice McDermott’s Writing Mantra: “Ah, Fuck Em.” ‹ Literary Hub

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

What Future Historians Say Will Shock You | Real Time with Bill Maher

And finally, New Rule: Someone, maybe AI, has to figure out a way to slow down time. Because what everyone has been saying to me lately is, "I can't believe it's May." Oh, Americans, we do nothing but bitch about everything under the sun, but damn it, life goes by too fast. It's Memorial Day in a week? Christ, I might as well start my Christmas shopping.

But it is, it's May. A month I have been anticipating for a long time because my book comes out next week. A book I have waited my whole career to write. One that is based on collecting the creme de la creme of these end of the show editorials and reimagining them, but also cover some virgin territory.

For example, I'm kind of obsessed with the idea of what historians of the future will say about us. Imagine it's the year 3024, and you're living in a colony on the planet Musk, formerly Mars. What will the historian say about the Americans of 2024? Well probably, that we were self-absorbed, algorithmically enslaved, on drugs and worshiped a god named Apple.

But what they won't do is write about the very thing that consumes us: our petty squabbles. In the myopia of the present our partisan differences make each side believe they're nothing like the other side. Libtards and deplorables. Historians will disagree. They won't see red on one side and blue on the other. You're thinking of Jaws 3D.

But historians see the character of a people as a whole. The Scots were clannish, the Spartans stoic, the Mongols expansionist, the Greeks were too into anal. And for us, it will be no different. Historians will say, we're also too into anal.

But also, the other thing. They will see us as a singular people with the same pathologies and unappealing traits on both sides. Traits that simply manifest themselves differently. For example, I believe, they will say, Americans of our era were unscientific. One side thought, climate change was a hoax. One thought, gender was a construct. One warred against Mother Nature. One against motherhood. One doubts Evolution, one wears masks when they're alone in the car. Which is kind of like wearing a condom to jerk off.

In medical schools now, professors are so fearful of being labeled transphobic, they have to apologize for saying words like male, female and pregnant woman.

Katie Herzog writes, "Some of the country's top medical students are being taught that humans are not, like other mammals, a species comprising two sexes." "The notion of sex, they are learning, is just a man-made creation."

Okay, but generally, the people with breasts and vaginas who give birth are the women and the ones with the penis, hogging the remote are men.

Historians will say that as a people, Americans lost our rationality. They'll say, we were conspiracy theorists. The right wanted to believe that Obama was born in Kenya. The left wanted to believe in Trump's pee tape. We have January 6th Truthers but the Washington Post reports that there are also now October 7th Truthers who believe Hamas never raped anybody and the hostages all died of natural causes. Now, does the right do conspiracy more? I think they do. QAnon and Jewish space lasers. Hillary's pedophile ring, microchips and the vaccine, Sandy Hook didn't happen, the election was stolen, Jews are trying to replace us. Yeah, but of course, on the left… Jews are the Nazis now. Somehow even enemies always find a way to agree to blame everything on the Jews.

I think, future historians will see us as a sad people, saddled with a genetic predisposition to always break into factions and then be consumed with the hate that engenders. Each side in America right now considers the other an existential threat. To the point where both camps literally collaborate with foreign enemies over fellow Americans.

Republican news channels use Russian talking points. Their voters wear t-shirts that say, "I'd rather be Russian than Democrat" and their leader sides with Putin. When today's Republican watches Rocky IV, they root for Ivan Drago.

Meanwhile, on the left this happened. Americans chanting death to America. College professors and their students exhilarated by aligning with a theocratic murderous terrorist group with values fundamentally opposed to our own.

Finally, I think, the people of the future will ironically be puzzled by our common desire to live in the past. On Fox News they're always pining for 1950, to make America great again. And in The Huffington Post it's always 1619, and nothing has changed.

For people so being into the moment, nobody seems to wanna live in the year we're living in. Trump's entire shtick is to return America to some idyllic time when the traditional family was a husband, a wife, a couple of kids and a porn star on the side. A time when America was the only Superpower and you could drink at work. When a cheeseburger cost a dime and a girl brought it to you on roller skates and she liked it when you complimented her ass. Nikki Haley says, "America was never racist." And then there are voices on the left saying racism has never been worse.

And the normies in the center say, "how hard is it to meet in the middle and just not be stupid about shit?" And that's who my book is for. People who don't wanna be stupid about shit.

[realcleverscience]

Some of my picks and comments:

44% of companies using or planning on using AI believe it will result in layoffs in 2024

By the end of the decade (2030), 14% of workers will have been forced by AI to change career (Note: That wasn't change employer but rather, career. Find an entirely new field to work in.)

60% of the jobs in advanced economies are at risk of being replaced by AI (Most people think about AI replacing low wage jobs. The reality is that many mid to high paying jobs are at greater risk.)

But just 26% of jobs in low-income countries are similarly exposed

80% of the US workforce could have at least 10% of their tasks impacted by large language models

More than 7.5 million data entry jobs will be lost by 2027

47% of US workers are at risk of losing their jobs to automation over the coming decade (~2034)

It will take at least 20 years to automate just half of current worldwide work tasks (I am skeptical of this. But I also assume it means complete automation. Keep in mind, even 50% automation can mean 50% job cuts)

19% of workers are employed in the jobs most exposed to AI

27% of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher are employed in jobs most exposed to AI (again, showing how AI is currently set to transform white collar jobs more than blue collar.)

63% of business leaders surveyed by CEPR think AI won’t affect employment rates in high-income countries (I am skeptical of this)

Just 32% of employees think their company has been transparent about its use of AI

I think there's some hype in these stats (already a few months old) but also some aspects of underestimation (which I suspect stem from a more linear view of tech progress, compared to a more exponential view that myself and many tech enthusiasts endorse).

[zombiezonurlawn]

Casey and Pershing are so cute! They've seriously caught my attention, I really like that Pershing doesn't need to sleep but still cuddles with Casey and watches her, that is absolutely adorable!! Can you tell me more about them? I'm really curious!

AHH i will take any opportunity to infodump about my ocs tbh THANKYOU!!

I have really crazy lore just rolling around in my head for fun, but Ill just condense it down to Casey and Pershing because I love them so much!!

Casey and Pershing are just awkward teens trying to figure out their little path in life (very much inspired by a lot of my highschool experiences/figuring myself out). They are pretty much opposites of one another, kind of general nerd x jock trope to be honest

casey has had most of life handed to her, to be honest. She's the only heir of an extremely innovative, successful tech company (Branningco.) and her father is literally a supermodel. She is in her school's rocketry club and varsity flight team(kind of like futuristic cross country, how its treated at school). Despite this, she largely rejects the life thats been given to her. Her mother is an extremely paranoid transhumanist who believes in mechanical systems and hard schedule more than anything else, a woman who simply had a child to produce an heir to her massive wealth and was more fanatically in love with her own creations rather than her husband or child. When Casey was very young and ended up to be farsighted, her mother forced her to have cybernetic goggles attached which can't be taken off (they have an extreme magnetic attraction from the base of the goggles to a thin metal fiber which is embedded around the face and eye area), her mother would have preferred to have her eyes replaced altogether, but the treatment was considered too invasive, especially since Casey did not consent to any treatment whatsoever. Due to this trauma and just simply living with her mother, constantly falling short of her expectations, Casey deeply opposes any type of cybernetic upgrades or the development of conscious androids/robots and works as kind of a figurehead against the transhumanist movement (kind of a hot political topic in the story), although she hardly understands the true effect of exploitative businesses like her mother's simply because she has spent the majority of her life benefitting from it, class-wise. She's extremely extroverted, but often struggles with listening to others as deeply as she should.

Pershing has lived a mostly opposite life. Her mother is a worker at a humble start-up alongside a few family friends (they mostly work in inventing satellite and rocket travel safety mechanisms) and her father harvests metal scrap and trash from Venus's orbit (its kind of like a more intense version of arctic fishing-- massive ships with massive crews grab metal and trash slightly above the dense atmosphere and suffocating clouds of the planet, trash which they recycle and sell back to those on earth), typically the 'harvest season' happens in the summertime. Neither of these careers are particularly profitable, but they get by well enough and take very good care of their only daughter, Pershing, who they love more than life itself.

Pershing, obviously, isn't an 'ordinary' human daughter, despite both of her parents being human. I won't get into all of it how it works, just because its a LOT to explain, but Pershing isn't an ordinary domestic robot, while its not unheard of for human parents to raise androids (and rarely, full on robots) its certainly rare and usually prevalent with upper-crust society, not a lower-middle class family like Pershing's. Not only that, domestic robots look and operate extremely different, their inner systems being similar to personal AI (I guess the most similar thing I could compare it to is like, ChatGPT) with prepackaged parts for each life stage. Pershing is not any of that. Her origins are extremely mysterious. She was a primitive computer found by her father in Venus's orbit(somehow), when her father found her, she was deactivated and simply just her little head, alongside the mysterious jacket she wears throughout her life. Nobody quite understands HOW she learns, she doesn't possess the learning AI of conventional bots and more closely resembles, software wise, a military computer built purely for human function. Despite this, she learns, she persists, and she feels extremely deeply. Every physical part of her was built by herself, with the help of her mother along the way, from scrap copper on earth and from Venus. She isn't legally recognized as the child of her parents, but since they lived in a small town and her mother had good standing in the community, Pershing was able to attend public school and live a relatively normal life, despite othering from her classmates. In the summer, Pershing lived on the massive Venusian harvesting ships alongside her father, although she rarely did any of the dangerous harvesting and preferred to spend most of her time reading and writing (which she formed a real skill for). Pershing is generally extremely awkward and though she finds herself squarely in the robotics and rocketry groups at school(due to a slight talent for it simply due to years of repairing and building herself) she doesn't find any real joy in that trade, or real connection with the group, and is deeply artistic, intuitive, and introverted.

Pershing and Casey met in sophomore year of high school. Both of them go to prestigious school called Clearwater High, which is uniquely found on Jupiter's moon, Europa. Casey was bound to go there since elementary school, Pershing, however, was let in through a writing contest the school had in her freshman year, to cultivate more of a humanities culture within the science and robotics-centric school. They met through the school's rocketry club, which Pershing was hardly enthusiastic to be a part of but joined anyway for the sake of getting the 'most' out of her rare opportunity to be at such a prestigious institution. Although they initially didn't get along, they kept meeting through the concerts of the indie band "48 Hottake" (Annika, the lead guitar, being Casey's idol as she is the captain of the varsity flight team and Milly, the lead singer and bass, being Pershing's childhood friend who had won the student position much like Pershing but through her music). They realized they had a lot more in common: feeling isolated, a complicated relationship with conforming to their gender, and just a general appreciation for art. Its a lot deeper than that, of course, but this is already MASSIVE so I won't get into it too much. Pershing and Casey find each other deeply beautiful. Pershing, because she isn't a typical domestic android, doesn't have the software to imitate sleep patterns like some other bots. She doesn't sleep, doesn't feel tired, and doesn't WANT to sleep, she likes the extra time (although she is curious about it, and would fake sleeping at sleepovers when she was younger in an attempt to fit in). She usually spends the night quietly writing, drawing, or playing video games. The few times she has been able to sleep over with Casey, she doesn't do any of that, she just simply looks at her girlfriend, one of her favorite things to do.

[drst]

Folks, do yourselves a favor. Set aside 10 minutes, and read this. This is one of the best pieces of writing I've seen in months. In fact, the last piece I saw that was this good was a previous Cat Valente post from last December.

This piece distilled all my anger and hopelessness about not just AI art but the state of creative industries right now and somehow, by the end, I was crying happy tears. I found reassurance and inspiration and solidarity. This is a symphony in written form. Also she coined "WORDROOMBA" for AI which I think we should all adopt.

An excerpt:

"I find it pretty interesting that when most other advancements in automation have arrived, the sales pitch has usually involved describing ways in which it will improve the lives of every day people as a kind of sugary treat to drown out the taste of a dystopian future. Yeah, yeah, full self driving is RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER but everyone will be able to operate their own robo-taxis and get SO MUCH passive income with JUST THEIR CAR it won’t matter (don’t think about truckers or infrastructure or the supply chain)! You don’t want to have to make small talk with cashiers anyway, right? Everyone is going to have their own 3D printer manufacturing plant in their living rooms, so it’s fine if factory work gets Thanos-snapped! Tipping is just so onerous, wouldn’t a robot waiter be super fun and even less social interaction? COME ON HUMAN CONSUMER, GET ON BOARD, I’M LOVIN’ IT.

But with ChatGPT, literally the first thing I heard about it was a Reddit donkey-chorus of HA HA WHITE COLLARS ARE ALL REPLACED GET FUCKED. DOUBLE FOR WRITERS, YOU’RE NOT ENTITLED TO A CAREER JUST DOING BOOKS AHAHAHA CAN’T WAIT TIL IT CAN CODE BETTER AND MAKE YOU HOMELESS, TECHIES.

There was real hostility to some of this sentiment. Maybe. It’s been hard to say who online is a real person and who is a script for some time now. Perhaps it’s because one of the canned responses to other industries falling to automation was: writing code is always safe because someone has to make the robots go. Or that art would be safe because human creativity can’t be automated. But now we’re all seeing that it’s entirely possible that it can, and no one is safe at all. So perhaps there is some schadenfreude at play as a big cultural domino falls and virtually no profession remains a safe bet to get out of the first half of the 21st century intact.

But fucking hell."

[arkus-rhapsode]

So I try to keep recent news out of my posts. Usually I like to wait for a situation to pan out to avoid snap judgements. But recently, some news has been playing out that really made me upset.

If you haven’t heard, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) had recently signed a deal with an AI voice production company known as Replica Studios for licensing actor’s voices in video games.

This is coming off the massive strike where SAG was fighting against things like AI implementation in film and script development. Though the claim is that this will be an “ethical” implementation of the technology. And the irony and backlash was quite apparent. But the important thing that should be obvious to everyone is the ones this affects the most, voice actors.

This article by Forbes has many links to some of the people I’ll be citing and their reactions. So please check that out if you want a more professional run down: https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2024/01/10/video-game-voice-actors-criticize-sag-aftra-over-agreement-with-ai-company/amp/

So the reaction from VAs has been pretty understandably upset. Well known VAs like Steve Blum, Veronica Taylor, Allegra Clark, and Brenden Blaber. Expressing disappointment in the union and that this opening a gateway for video game companies to cut use their voices without actually needing them to record. Now this deal is for just Replica Studios, but it’s still very disheartening that this was a concession.

Now I am not an actor. My career and life doesn’t hinge on the choices of millionaires running film production companies and what policies or investments they make that would require me seek out a union’s protection. Any discussion around how SAG itself internally operates and it’s treatment of certain professions over others is not my place to talk about. I instead implore you to listen to people have been a VA and part of that Union and listen to their experience with them. So why make this post? I’m not particularly important or an influencer. Well the answer is simply I love voice acting and care about it as a profession. Even if I’m not one, I can’t tell you how so many of my favorite moments in fiction/media were elevated by someone’s acting. And this is prominent in video games.

This blog has many times devoted itself to live blogs and posts about games. Games like Fire Emblem Three Houses, Persona 5, and Danganronpa. Games with noticeable voice acting involved in their presentation and their narratives. And in my experience some of those performances are tied to some of the enjoyment and identity of the game. And it sucks knowing how all those things you love or admire can potentially be replaced by machines. When there was a union that had been fighting to avoid things like this for on screen actors.

I cannot imagine the hurt this has caused for people’s whose job is to be a professional VA, and you are hearing about companies in the video game sphere like Square Enix and Microsoft going hard in AI. I can imagine many are scared for their livelihoods. And knowing how greedy or unscrupulous some game companies can get, the possibility they go through with AI will be not in the favor of “ethics” it’s in the favor of profits.

All I can say is that im a VA fan. And I know plenty of games that have been elevated by their voice acting. And I will say that voice acting is acting. It is an art form that deserves the same amount of protection as screen actors.

Please support the VAs. Even if you don’t think about it as much, if there’s a character you liked in Persona or Fire Emblem game, please check out who is doing those voices. Because their work is part of the experience.

[you-cant-fuck-megaman]

megaman AI box art

there’s a pretty big discussion around AI art, it seems i’m not super-familiar with The Discourse but if my programming experience has taught me anything it’s that random generation has to springboard off of something (usually called a seed), and you have to feed stuff in to an AI to get material to build off of that springboard so i’ve got several big goddamn questions as to where t f these guys would get their seeds and material from

but me being me, the first thing on my mind is “can you draw megaman with it?” so i decided to insert in "megaman box art" to a handful of different ones, see what happens

first off is a place called Nightcafe Studio, which allows you to pick one of three styles to make art in: cosmic, matte, and cyberpunk. nacho cheese and cool ranch were out, sorry.

this is "megaman box art" as done in its cosmic style and it certainly looks cosmic megaman got a nose guard to defend against space pollen, i guess and either his arm got detached and is floating down there or he's got a vacuum cleaner attached to his shins but it sure is cosmic

6/10, pretty colors but not very megaman

next style was matte, and

this actually looks pretty fucking cool! you've got a rad cityscape in the background, lighting’s really neat, and background to the MGA AIN MGATAN logo as sponsored by pepsi is cool

i guess that's kind of sort of Model ZX aile if you squint and tilt your head, but she’s the main part that turns the entire thing sinister. did you know that when you’re dealing with the fae shapeshifted as a human, you should count the features to make sure everything’s accurate? count the knuckles, count the fingers, count the shadows... oops, six fingers hah hah hah hah hhhhhhhhhhhh this is not Model ZX aile, this is not your friend.

7/10 you’re not stealing my goddamn teeth today, oberon

last to go is cyberpunk style and

holy shit this is a fucking WWE poster roman reigns dressed in pink and got a fucking beam tonfa??? or something a very distorted vince mcmahon puts on a power glove while brock lesnar looks disappointed to the side, and fiery font tells us that the meemen meeaiiaininaihiniahin is gonna happen at 2 / F' / 20 i could imagine you could probably print this out, put it through photoshop for edits, and then try to pass it off as an official poster for a synthwave megaman reboot. if you were a moron who wanted to get fired, i mean. fantastic way to commit career suicide.

1/10 coolest shit i've ever seen but very bad megaman art tbh

still, i'll give cyberpunk another shot. maybe it was confused, thinking it was going to have men that were mega, rather than megaman

HOLY SHIT

fuckin AXE DADY megaman over here this has it all it's got the dictator cam, looking up like it's hitler it's got the stance, holding a black vylon slinky to the side while he contemplates shooting above it it's got the logo sleekness, i've never seen MEEMN AXE DADY rendered so well it's got the color contrast, bright blue city in the left while a goddamn laser rips through time and space on the right and it's got a cool robot that actually kind of has a buster arm, though the computer is clearly confused as to what megaman’s buster actually looks like maybe should’ve let an artist handle that?

10/10, great megaman art, fucking amazing, would play, would watch, would let axe dady shoot things

next up is deepai's Machine Learning Model doesn’t seem to have any parameters, just put in a text box and go, so i did

thanks i've been wondering how it would be possible to turn megaman into a horror icon i didn't think hollowing his face out and replacing it with a fucking skull would be the answer but this is a pretty handy way to ensure my insomnia persists through the night

0/10 i

fucking

hate it

hastily getting the fuck away from that abomination unto both god and man, next up is dream.ai it seems to be a service mostly for developing and providing NFTs, but it's actually completely free with a little finagling so i don’t get where the value is supposed to come from

anyway, there's a lot of different options to provide a customized art style for the prompt, and you can even see it with different things it's got a lot of options too many to safely delve into, in fact, so i'm going to do the game journalist thing and generate maybe a handful of things and judge it entirely off that

first off is a comic art style generated without a seed

and at first glance this looks partially like the megaman 1 box art characters decided to pvp with each other at second glance as you look closer, though, you can clearly tell it's an i don't know what the fuck

4/10 colors look cool at least

maybe weird shit is the best part of it, though maybe weird shit is what it specializes in so let's try psychadelic

well, that's psychadelic all right i guess the dude in the middle is kind of sort of vaguely megaman but i don't know what the fuck else there is, there's actually less sensible shit going on here

2/10 i like listening to shpongle too, dude

but it's safe to say this system needs a bit of help let's go back to comic style and feed in some nice art from existing megaman

in my opinion, this poster is the peak megaman experience. it’s the quintessential representation. this pretty clearly dictates what megaman's about guy in blue shooting things robots getting shot at ominous shitbag in the background castlevania for some reason

favorite promo art, hands down. so let’s see how the AI works with this.

all right, finally, we're getting somewhere. guess this AI just needed to copy from someone else’s homework first. wow, that brings up a lot of questions about the nature of the materials AI art generators use to build their random images. well, that’s goddamn horrifying to contemplate. am i a monster unwittingly contributing to a system of artistic exploitation for the sake of making a shitpost on a megaman shitpost blog? fucked up.

anyway, we got a robot dude, he's got a gun, he's even got a little strut i like this guy a lot, he's got moxie and a rad face-visor thing

all right, i'm feeling generous 6/10 you fucked up but now you're getting better

let's go once more for comic style and

all right, holy shit, you're learning fast yeah this is undeniably megaman he's even got the weird helmet and weird boots and everything

there's a cool cityscape, a sci-fi sky, and he's trying to give the underside of a ship the highest of fives he doesn't look like he's standing very well on his taco bowl of destiny, though but i can't fault him with his dildo leg, must be difficult to stand on and judging by his pants, he's got trouble with testicles the size of texas growing in after kicking wily's ass 69 times understandable problem, really, after you go through 10 games that’s when you turn from a mega boy to a real mega man

9/10, good box art

you know, i'm feeling confident, i think dream's got a good idea as to what's going on with megaman let's take a risk and go for a different art style synthwave looks good, it's all about that retro shit and megaman's a retro series

this doesn't look like a new picture that just looks like you took the original picture and put a shitty smear on it

god fucking damn it

0/10, apply yourself, pick up a goddamn pencil and then see me after class

getting away from that, next up is stable diffusion, apparently a state-of-the-art AI generator hosted by Hugging Face, which i hope is a legitimate company and not a front for xenomorphs

and HOLY SHIT

on the first go we have some actual fucking box art good background, very clear, we've got a skyline with a forcefield pyramid in the background i guess wily's a space egyptian now? rad.

napalm bomb megaman's doing some fucking pelvic thrusts ready to spread war crimes all about bit distressing for our sweet friendly superhero boy but i'll admit i'd react the same way after getting a fucking napalm gun for an arm.

we've even got a rating on the bottom right, indicating that it's suitable for ages Video Game and up got a clearly-defined line for letting the publishers rub their dick all over, filling it with logos or titles or other corporate information

i feel confident about this, i like our MEAAN game, shit's looking pretty good

10/10, good box art. real good box art. little timmy would probably be confused seeing it on the shelf but this strikes me as something Bob Capcom would reasonably okay after five lagers and an existential crisis.

getting a little concerned here, looks like crisis on infinite megamans

i don’t want to imagine how many official variants of rock there are, especially if you count all the fangame/indie game knockoffs, but having them all collide together into a single Enter the Megaverse sounds like it'd be effectively impossible to handle do you want to play megaman, megaman x, megaman volnutt, megaman.exe, star force, zx, x over flavored? dos-flavored? bad box art flavored? captain n flavored? pachinko-flavored?

NGL though if rockman taisen ends up being some sort of dumb megaman battle royale then i would actually punch a cactus out to be able to play as ruby spears megaman frankly, huge missed opportunity that they're not even in X Dive the tagline even writes itself, "I knew you'd pull for Mr. Lincoln!"

oh yeah i was rating the cover uhhhhhhhh i dunno, there's dudes i don't know, they're doing poses, ominous guy in the background i guess it's serviceable? this doesn’t really tell me anything about the game, there’s just guys.

6/10 i'd pass it over and look at something else

holy shit are you okay? either he's (she's? they're?) taking a dump and all their lower intestines got caught in it, or something is burning out in the thinkpan and won’t be coming back

that dead-eyed glare is actually legitimately haunting this is the expression someone makes in anime after they realize you stabbed them and you were never their friend i've only seen that gaze in my life twice before and let me tell you, you remember things

1/10 someone call the police

all right, i’m moving away from that before i bring up more questionable ground our final contestant for the night is hotpot.ai, a website for general purpose game asset AI generation. they’ve got AI-handled copywrite, too, which strikes me as risky ground. if i can’t trust a machine with megaman, can i trust a machine to legally cover my ass? i would never trust a machine with my pants, ass or no. we’ve already firmly established that robot masters are always a pants-on debacle.

anyway, let’s give this a shot

aaaaaand hit “Generate”, and

EXCU

NOPE

FUCK THIS

I’M DONE