#centaur Az

[wishcamper]

“You’re the new ribbon, Az” except Gwyn just fucking cuts him in half

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conspiratorialism as a material phenomenon

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I think it behooves us to be a little skeptical of stories about AI driving people to believe wrong things and commit ugly actions. Not that I like the AI slop that is filling up our social media, but when we look at the ways that AI is harming us, slop is pretty low on the list.

The real AI harms come from the actual things that AI companies sell AI to do. There's the AI gun-detector gadgets that the credulous Mayor Eric Adams put in NYC subways, which led to 2,749 invasive searches and turned up zero guns:

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nycs-subway-weapons-detector-pilot-program-ends/

Any time AI is used to predict crime – predictive policing, bail determinations, Child Protective Services red flags – they magnify the biases already present in these systems, and, even worse, they give this bias the veneer of scientific neutrality. This process is called "empiricism-washing," and you know you're experiencing it when you hear some variation on "it's just math, math can't be racist":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/23/cryptocidal-maniacs/#phrenology

When AI is used to replace customer service representatives, it systematically defrauds customers, while providing an "accountability sink" that allows the company to disclaim responsibility for the thefts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

When AI is used to perform high-velocity "decision support" that is supposed to inform a "human in the loop," it quickly overwhelms its human overseer, who takes on the role of "moral crumple zone," pressing the "OK" button as fast as they can. This is bad enough when the sacrificial victim is a human overseeing, say, proctoring software that accuses remote students of cheating on their tests:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#cheating-anticheat

But it's potentially lethal when the AI is a transcription engine that doctors have to use to feed notes to a data-hungry electronic health record system that is optimized to commit health insurance fraud by seeking out pretenses to "upcode" a patient's treatment. Those AIs are prone to inventing things the doctor never said, inserting them into the record that the doctor is supposed to review, but remember, the only reason the AI is there at all is that the doctor is being asked to do so much paperwork that they don't have time to treat their patients:

https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-health-business-90020cdf5fa16c79ca2e5b6c4c9bbb14

My point is that "worrying about AI" is a zero-sum game. When we train our fire on the stuff that isn't important to the AI stock swindlers' business-plans (like creating AI slop), we should remember that the AI companies could halt all of that activity and not lose a dime in revenue. By contrast, when we focus on AI applications that do the most direct harm – policing, health, security, customer service – we also focus on the AI applications that make the most money and drive the most investment.

AI hasn't attracted hundreds of billions in investment capital because investors love AI slop. All the money pouring into the system – from investors, from customers, from easily gulled big-city mayors – is chasing things that AI is objectively very bad at and those things also cause much more harm than AI slop. If you want to be a good AI critic, you should devote the majority of your focus to these applications. Sure, they're not as visually arresting, but discrediting them is financially arresting, and that's what really matters.

All that said: AI slop is real, there is a lot of it, and just because it doesn't warrant priority over the stuff AI companies actually sell, it still has cultural significance and is worth considering.

AI slop has turned Facebook into an anaerobic lagoon of botshit, just the laziest, grossest engagement bait, much of it the product of rise-and-grind spammers who avidly consume get rich quick "courses" and then churn out a torrent of "shrimp Jesus" and fake chainsaw sculptures:

https://www.404media.co/email/1cdf7620-2e2f-4450-9cd9-e041f4f0c27f/

For poor engagement farmers in the global south chasing the fractional pennies that Facebook shells out for successful clickbait, the actual content of the slop is beside the point. These spammers aren't necessarily tuned into the psyche of the wealthy-world Facebook users who represent Meta's top monetization subjects. They're just trying everything and doubling down on anything that moves the needle, A/B splitting their way into weird, hyper-optimized, grotesque crap:

https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-being-overrun-with-stolen-ai-generated-images-that-people-think-are-real/

In other words, Facebook's AI spammers are laying out a banquet of arbitrary possibilities, like the letters on a Ouija board, and the Facebook users' clicks and engagement are a collective ideomotor response, moving the algorithm's planchette to the options that tug hardest at our collective delights (or, more often, disgusts).

So, rather than thinking of AI spammers as creating the ideological and aesthetic trends that drive millions of confused Facebook users into condemning, praising, and arguing about surreal botshit, it's more true to say that spammers are discovering these trends within their subjects' collective yearnings and terrors, and then refining them by exploring endlessly ramified variations in search of unsuspected niches.

(If you know anything about AI, this may remind you of something: a Generative Adversarial Network, in which one bot creates variations on a theme, and another bot ranks how closely the variations approach some ideal. In this case, the spammers are the generators and the Facebook users they evince reactions from are the discriminators)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network

I got to thinking about this today while reading User Mag, Taylor Lorenz's superb newsletter, and her reporting on a new AI slop trend, "My neighbor’s ridiculous reason for egging my car":

https://www.usermag.co/p/my-neighbors-ridiculous-reason-for

The "egging my car" slop consists of endless variations on a story in which the poster (generally a figure of sympathy, canonically a single mother of newborn twins) complains that her awful neighbor threw dozens of eggs at her car to punish her for parking in a way that blocked his elaborate Hallowe'en display. The text is accompanied by an AI-generated image showing a modest family car that has been absolutely plastered with broken eggs, dozens upon dozens of them.

According to Lorenz, variations on this slop are topping very large Facebook discussion forums totalling millions of users, like "Movie Character…,USA Story, Volleyball Women, Top Trends, Love Style, and God Bless." These posts link to SEO sites laden with programmatic advertising.

The funnel goes:

i. Create outrage and hence broad reach;

ii, A small percentage of those who see the post will click through to the SEO site;

iii. A small fraction of those users will click a low-quality ad;

iv. The ad will pay homeopathic sub-pennies to the spammer.

The revenue per user on this kind of scam is next to nothing, so it only works if it can get very broad reach, which is why the spam is so designed for engagement maximization. The more discussion a post generates, the more users Facebook recommends it to.

These are very effective engagement bait. Almost all AI slop gets some free engagement in the form of arguments between users who don't know they're commenting an AI scam and people hectoring them for falling for the scam. This is like the free square in the middle of a bingo card.

Beyond that, there's multivalent outrage: some users are furious about food wastage; others about the poor, victimized "mother" (some users are furious about both). Not only do users get to voice their fury at both of these imaginary sins, they can also argue with one another about whether, say, food wastage even matters when compared to the petty-minded aggression of the "perpetrator." These discussions also offer lots of opportunity for violent fantasies about the bad guy getting a comeuppance, offers to travel to the imaginary AI-generated suburb to dole out a beating, etc. All in all, the spammers behind this tedious fiction have really figured out how to rope in all kinds of users' attention.

Of course, the spammers don't get much from this. There isn't such a thing as an "attention economy." You can't use attention as a unit of account, a medium of exchange or a store of value. Attention – like everything else that you can't build an economy upon, such as cryptocurrency – must be converted to money before it has economic significance. Hence that tooth-achingly trite high-tech neologism, "monetization."

The monetization of attention is very poor, but AI is heavily subsidized or even free (for now), so the largest venture capital and private equity funds in the world are spending billions in public pension money and rich peoples' savings into CO2 plumes, GPUs, and botshit so that a bunch of hustle-culture weirdos in the Pacific Rim can make a few dollars by tricking people into clicking through engagement bait slop – twice.

The slop isn't the point of this, but the slop does have the useful function of making the collective ideomotor response visible and thus providing a peek into our hopes and fears. What does the "egging my car" slop say about the things that we're thinking about?

Lorenz cites Jamie Cohen, a media scholar at CUNY Queens, who points out that subtext of this slop is "fear and distrust in people about their neighbors." Cohen predicts that "the next trend, is going to be stranger and more violent.”

This feels right to me. The corollary of mistrusting your neighbors, of course, is trusting only yourself and your family. Or, as Margaret Thatcher liked to say, "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."

We are living in the tail end of a 40 year experiment in structuring our world as though "there is no such thing as society." We've gutted our welfare net, shut down or privatized public services, all but abolished solidaristic institutions like unions.

This isn't mere aesthetics: an atomized society is far more hospitable to extreme wealth inequality than one in which we are all in it together. When your power comes from being a "wise consumer" who "votes with your wallet," then all you can do about the climate emergency is buy a different kind of car – you can't build the public transit system that will make cars obsolete.

When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about animal cruelty and habitat loss is eat less meat. When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about high drug prices is "shop around for a bargain." When you vote with your wallet, all you can do when your bank forecloses on your home is "choose your next lender more carefully."

Most importantly, when you vote with your wallet, you cast a ballot in an election that the people with the thickest wallets always win. No wonder those people have spent so long teaching us that we can't trust our neighbors, that there is no such thing as society, that we can't have nice things. That there is no alternative.

The commercial surveillance industry really wants you to believe that they're good at convincing people of things, because that's a good way to sell advertising. But claims of mind-control are pretty goddamned improbable – everyone who ever claimed to have managed the trick was lying, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA:

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Rather than seeing these platforms as convincing people of things, we should understand them as discovering and reinforcing the ideology that people have been driven to by material conditions. Platforms like Facebook show us to one another, let us form groups that can imperfectly fill in for the solidarity we're desperate for after 40 years of "no such thing as society."

The most interesting thing about "egging my car" slop is that it reveals that so many of us are convinced of two contradictory things: first, that everyone else is a monster who will turn on you for the pettiest of reasons; and second, that we're all the kind of people who would stick up for the victims of those monsters.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/29/hobbesian-slop/#cui-bono

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[puppypop5]

My zhrimpppp….dog….thing…. for my AAAUUUUUU!!!!!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Thiz iz Rocko!!! yez like the sesame street rocko, but thiz time a big ol zhrimp centaur!!!! you can take a guezz az to who i fuzed for thiz Main (itz Shrimpo and Pebble. Itz shrimpo and pebble.)

Out of all the Mainz, Rocko iz the loudezt, and the 2nd tallezt (bezidez Barry). He'z zeen az angry and rude, but hez really juzt a zofty who doeznt know hiz own volume or ztrength. big zilly guy

REBLOGZ ARE HIGHLY APPRECIATED AND ENCOURAGED!!!!!!

Below are doodlez and a Mezzed Up Twisted Concept

[sp1derc1der]

Some questions for the day.

Who would win in a fight, Cynthia or Volo?

How do weredragon Cynthia and Volo work biologically? Is it like insects or some sort of bizarre centaur anatomy thing.

Do you plan on doing any of the members (Like Agate, Amethio or Gibeon) from pokemon horizons?

Would Carmine’s weredragon be similar to Kieran’s if she had one?

How tall are Rose and Leon? Because I’d imagine that Rose looks kinda big in my mind.

Would Draconids/dragon tamers be considered allies of weredragons because of them being pretty much what I described?

Would Az have a weredragon form? And would be similar to like a sauropod or vhagar from HOTD?

1: Probably Cynthia since, well, she’s more bulkier than Volo and would probably beat him easily. Poor Volo got the string cheese Alastor Tumblr sexyman physique while Cynthia got the Aggron, but floof treatment.

2: They kinda work like praying mantises since they’re the closest thing we have to centaurs (four limbs for moving and two for attacking)

3: I haven’t watched Horizons, but I don’t plan on drawing them as weredragons. I’m more or less sticking to the games.

4: She’d probably look similar to Kieran, but have a sharper snoot (she’d also look fiercer than her brother), so think of Haku from Spirited Away, but more fearsome-looking

5: Leon’s around 2.4 meters, so nearly a whole meter taller than his ace Pokémon, Charizard. As for Rose, he’d probably be around 3.9 meters (i have a headcanon that he and archie are somewhat related, so that’s why they share similarities and are large boyes)

6: Yep. Weredragons are pretty much respected in many regions (unless your name is Ghetsis and you’re from Unova), so the Draconids and dragon tamers would probably help to protect weredragons (yes, they’re powerful enough to potentially kill someone, but they can be killed easily, so think of dragon tamers and the Draconids as bodyguards)

7: AZ would probably be a weredragon. As for if he’d be sauropod-based, probably not. If I did design a dragon form for AZ, he’d have some Zygarde, tarrasque from French mythology, and tortoise inspiration. Maybe a few Ultimate Weapon and Eternal Flower Floette design touches as well. He’s not going to be a wyvern like Lysandre and Diantha

[adelainejdevyn]

Late for the Valkyrie Bookclub

Gwynriel week 2 day 4🌶

Gwyn knew she was late for her Valkyrie Bookclub meeting and that Nesta and Emerie would never shut up about it.

They were discussing the latest novel they had been consuming titled: The Kingdom of Gods. It was about the daughter of an ancient God that had been prophesied to be the hero of their world.

To be honest, Gwyn was more interest in the pairings of the book, and if the main character would end up with the devestatingly handsome servant of a Death God or with the Centaur that was currently her teacher. She hoped the upending choise would somehow involve a hot threesome, just as Nesta had logically suggested.

Currently however it was pretty tough for Gwyn to think about book tropes, pairings or plot, with Azriel's cock in her mouth. She moaned as she looked up at him from her position on her knees. The shadows around him twisted sharpy as he exhaled a shaky breath.

He sort of looked like a beautiful Death God himself, Gwyn thought, taking him deeper into her mouth. The taste of him ungodly on her tongue.

---

Azriel had lost his goddamn mind, he thought as he threw his head back. His black hair was damp and his throat was exposed to the closed air in a nook on the stairs of the House of Wind.

“Oh,” he panted and looked down, his scarred hand woven between auburn locks, “Gwyn.”

The Valkyrie batted her eyelashes up at him, and took his cock deeper in her mouth. He must have lost his goddamn mind. 

Do you wish to fuck me, Azriel? She had asked him one night as they flew from Velaris to the House. He’d almost dropped her from his grip as the question settled. When she giggled he knew she had been drunk, or tipsy enough to poke his cheek, Well?

She was lonely she’d said as they landed on the balcony of the House, the lights soft and the stars bright as they gazed down at the odd pair. And you are my good friend, who else can I trust with this experiment? 

Azriel was sane enough to admit to himself that he hadn't wanted another male to touch her intimately. And that he was lonely enough himself to consider her offer. 

When he'd said yes, he hadn’t known that Gwyneth Berdara would be the death of him. He pulled her up by her hair now, and pressed her back to the staircase as he kissed her mouth. Their kiss was wild and open-mouthed, and she tasted like honey. Her long fingers dug into his flying leathers, the strings unable to unfasten at the speed of which she wished they would.

Azriel picked her up, and her legs wrapped around his waist. He was too large for this small staircase, and his wings hit painfully against the stairs above him, but he only could think about how soft Gwyn’s skin was and how perfect she felt against him and how her hands- 

“Now.” She demanded, freeing his length “Now, Az.” 

Azriel was not going to argue with her. He sunk into her carefully, aware that his size brought some discomfort along with pleasure. Gwyn moaned, shaking in his arms. She gripped onto his shoulders as she wiggled on to his length, her nails digging in. Azriel saw stars behind his shut eyelids. She was going to be the death of him, he thought again, as he thrust into her. 

“Cauldron,” she was muttering, “Oh, I am close-” 

Azriel did not change his pacing, knowing well that he was exerting the magical amount of pressure on her body that would have her shatter with pleasure. Gwyn surged forward and kissed him passionately, her tongue teasing his lower lip. He growled against her mouth as she clenched around him, before he stilled completely. Gwyn’s eyes were glazed with desire as she looked at him, one of her hands had reached up, her knuckles softly grazing the inside of his wing. 

“Is this all right, shadowsinger?” She asked, and stroked his wing again. Azriel gripped her ass in his hands tightly and moved again, fucking her deeper, and slower than before. She whimpered at the changed pace. 

“That’s right, Berdara.” He said, as he bit her throat lightly, “Play with my body like you own it.” 

“Az-” 

“Oh, you are almost there, aren’t you, little Valkyrie?” He muttered, as he felt his own orgasm approaching, “Be a good girl and come for me, then. I’ll eat your pussy clean afterwards.” 

Gwyneth shattered at his words and he couldn’t help but spill inside of her as she grazed his sensitive wing with her nails. Azriel rested his brow against hers, both of them breathing hard, the sound echoed around them. 

Azriel blushed as he pulled out of her and felt his seed dripping down her thighs. His scarred fingers were there instantly, gathering the gleaming liquid up and then pushing it back into her. He could not, for Cauldron’s sake, understand this intense instinct that took over him in that moment. 

But Gwyn only gasped and said, “Let’s meet in the training ring tonight, Shadowsinger, I wish to ride you in the night air.” 

Gwyneth Berdara was going to be the end of him.

Author’s note: 

Curious to see which book the Valkyrie Bookclub is discussing? Check out Union of Souls and The Kingdom of Gods on my Wattpad page!

[lavena]

Fawcetts mood switches on a dime and people are easily swayed.

Which is good and bad

On one hand we have people storming the streets with pitch forks cause they saw other folks doin it.

On the other they will get fiercely defensive over the faerie kid who is being bullied by an out of towner and suddenly you have a giant group of parents ( centaurs other fae human faun sirin you name it they are there) berating the summer birds (like snow birds in AZ but it's Philly so no one is going there to escape the cold) and telling them to teach themselves and their children some basic human decency

someone needs to make “only in fawcett” a thing. It’s kind of like “only in Gotham” but instead of talking about Robin casually stealing your cat and returning them neutered it’s about how you just saw a mob of angry people with pitchforks and torches talking about how Captain Marvel did something terrible (again. It always turns out to beby that sivannah guy or whatever framing him but everyone falls for it every time, including you.) and your not quite sure how the heck they plan to harm the indestructible man and you have nothing better to do so you grab a nearby pitchfork and join in.

[nova-stardragon]

I really want to write an Az-centered fic where we learn more about his elaborate network of spies.

Specifically, I want Azriel to actually have more friends than just Cassian and the IC, and I want the IC to find out about it and be like "how tf does Az have so many friends?!?" and it's because he's a smooth bitch.

Specifically specifically, I want this to be a Cazriel fic (but of course) where one of Az's spy friends is in love with Az and I want Cassian to find out about it and get jealous as hell and not even know why and then realize he likes Az and then after centuries of not getting any romantic attention suddenly Az just has these two big strong males fighting over him incredibly obviously and he's just like "what the actual fudge is this" and Mor is laughing her ass off in the background.

Now you might be asking why I have not written this fic, because clearly, I've put a lot of thought into it.

And the inherent problem is Maas's world building. Namely, she's kind of bad at it. In order to have spies in other countries, I kind of need to know more about the other countries. Now I could do it to be court-centric, where the spies are just from the 7 courts we all know and love, but I want it to be bigger than that.

And I'm perfectly happy to do my own world building - like don't get me wrong I have written and will continue to write my own stories that arent fanfictions and have some pretty kickass world builds, if I do say so myself.

I'm just going to get really irritated if I write this fic, and then suddenly Maas comes out with the next book, and I found out that Rask is actually like, ruled by 17 different warlords who are actually the Fae equivalent of Centaurs. I don't even know lol.

I should just?? Write the fic??? But it's hard enough keeping up with If Only You Knew right now so maybe I should just stick with my current one and put this one on the back burner lol.

[dorabarkoczidorart]

Trying to finish a piece with my character 'Uniqorn'. Started 1 year ago 🙄🥺 after all Rome wasn’t built in a day. 😅 | Megpróbálok befejezni egy rajzot az 'Unikális unikornis' karakteremmel. Kb. 1 éve kezdtem el 🙄🥺 jó munkához idő kell. 😅 . #creaturedesign #characterdesign #conceptart #conceptartist #centaur #kentaur #horse #zebra #unicorn #unikális #unikornis #unique #equine #creature #mythology #fantasy #fantasyart #karaktertervezes #illusztracio #illusztrator #illusztraciokeszites #grafikakeszites https://www.instagram.com/p/CeZn8ykoYXX/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[spaceexp]

Astronomers Discover Activity on Distant Planetary Object

Flagstaff AZ (SPX) Oct 29, 2020 Centaurs are minor planets believed to have originated in the Kuiper Belt in the outer solar system. They sometimes have comet-like features such as tails and comae - clouds of dust particles and gas - even though they orbit in a region between Jupiter and Neptune where it is too cold for water to readily sublimate, or transition, directly from a solid to a gas. Only 18 active Centaurs hav Full article>>

[wishcamper]

if Gwyn puts Az back together with centaur legs, does that make him a pegasus? :D

it.. it does.. oh my.. I need to lie down.. oh.. oh my..

[greekpara]

Reposted from @_chris_free_ (@get_regrann) - Big Iota energy all day 🏹🏹🏹 #iotaphitheta #georgiaiotas #ιφθ #1963 #foundersday #centaurs #bigiota #nphc #stroll #watchtheyard (at Lineupgreek) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2mYzS-Az-F/?igshid=170b8ttunvlex

[lemmyface0w0]

Re'em!!! a unicorn centaur, he'z the assistant to a very popular shapeshifter named Hozt

he waz hired az a body guard but ended up doing a lot more than that and ended up juzt being Hozt'z personal assistant along with still being a body guard

he doezn't mind all the extra work az the job payz very well and he getz a shit ton of perkz

i'll probably pozt art of Hozt sooner or later, we'll see when i draw Hozt again

[quirkwizard]

Qurik: Astrology zodiac signs! Every sign has its own Qurik that goes along with it. Like Taurus (OX) gives you super strength, Gemini (twins) makes a copy of yourself, Virgo (Maiden) allows you to heal yourself, Aquarius (water bearer) allows you to control water, Libra (scale) makes you super smart, Pisces (fish) allows you to breath underwater, Cancer (crab) hardens your skin, Scorpio (scorpion) makes the tips of your fingernails poisonous, Aries (Ram) makes you super fast, (AZ Con_)

(AZ_C) Leo (Lion) allows you to project a lion (kinda like in Harry Potter the patronus charm) that you can crontrol the size and weapons can’t harm it but element attacks can, Sagittarius (centaur) allows you to automatically be able to master any weapon you’re holding, and Capricorn (Goat fish) allows you to use 2 signs at a time but only at 75% power! If I was to have a Qurik it would be this ^^ though it might be a bit OP. I’m new to the fandom so idk if anyone has these in BHA!

Welcome to MHA, prepare to hit the ground running.

Not only is this Quirk ridiculously overpowered for the setting, your basically shoving twelve different powers into a single Quirk with no consequences, it also feels too supernatural to really fit in MHA. While you can take inspiration from mythical beings for your Quirk, making it about supernatural stuff feels out of place. I would recommend either taking only one of these powers and developing it. I say you should develop either the water breathing or the fingernails, as we haven’t seen either of those Quirks in canon before. The rest of the Quirks you submitted have been seen in the series. But most important of all, you should develop limitations for your Quirk.

[prrcyjacksons]

Excuse me!! This is beautiful! (●♡∀♡)

The girls, NESTA HAS WINGS, THEIR HAIR!! Just love the details!

And Az and Cass as Centaurs! Perf✨

♥ 𝓥𝓪𝓵𝓴𝔂𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓼 𝓪𝓵𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓡𝓲𝓿𝓮𝓻

.

.

♥𝐼 𝒶𝓂 𝓈𝑜 𝑒𝓍𝒸𝒾𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝓉𝑜 finally be revealing this piece. I swear this took about a week, maybe two? My sense of time has escaped me because I have a literally put all of my blood, sweat and tears into this whole beautiful piece of art.

It’s not really something that I’ve done before because I’ve always stayed in the comfort of black lines, however I wanted to branch out and do something different and feed my fellow artist lovers and followers and mutuals. Originally I was just working on poses and was trying to just get used to drawing figures in different positions, and then I suddenly got the urge to draw a little bit more and then it kind of expanded and my imagination just ran wild and then this piece came to mind (and I spent too many late nights surfing through Disney+). But along the way I kind of just started to wonder what it would be like to envision the characters in a more classical sense of literature. And this is what I pretty much came up with. I hope you guys love it because I love it so much I feel like I’m going to cry because I’m finally done! And I am super excited for whatever next piece is to come.

[pharmaphorumuk]

Exscientia starts trials of first AI-derived cancer immunotherapy

Exscientia was the first company to start human trials of a new drug designed using artificial intelligence (AI) last year, and now says it has started testing of the first AI candidate for immuno-oncology. 

Oxford, UK-based Exscientia has been working with German biotech Evotec on the adenosine A2a receptor antagonist, which is being tested as a treatment for adult patients with advanced solid tumours.

The adenosine pathway has emerged as an attractive target for immuno-oncology R&D because it is thought to reduce the activity of misfunctioning regulatory T-cells that inhibit the immune response against cancers.

Tumour cells produce high levels of adenosine, which binds to the A2A receptor on T-cells and helps them escape immune system detection.

So far, the main interest in A2A has lain in combining it with other immuno-oncology drugs, in the hope of boosting activity and potentially sidestepping a resistance mechanism that allows some tumours to evade the effect of current drugs like the PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors.

Exscientia is entering a category with some heavyweight competition, including Novartis, Johnson & Johnson/AdoRx and AstraZeneca as well as smaller players like Arcus, Corvus and iTeos Therapeutics.

However, none of the rival programmes have advanced too far in clinical development, and a trial of one regimen – the combination of AZ’s A2A drug AZD4635 and a CD73 blocking agent called oleclumab – was abandoned last year after disappointing results in lung cancer.

Exscientia and Evotec think they have potentially a best-in-class candidate of course, based on a very high selectivity for the A2A receptor and low take-up into the central nervous system, which could reduce psychological side effects, according to the partners.

The A2A receptor is also present in the CNS and is a validated target for neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. One A2A antagonist drug, Acorda’s tozadenant, was abandoned in late-stage development in 2017 after five deaths in its clinical trial programme related to severely low white blood cells (agranulocytosis) and sepsis.

Exscientia said it had taken the A2A drug from concept to being clinical trial-ready in just eight months, topping the 12-month development of its first clinical candidate for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) DSP-1181.

Typically, taking a compound from discovery to the clinic takes around five years, but deploying Exscientia’s AI platform – Centaur Chemist – truncates that by narrowing down the hunt for suitable molecules so that much fewer have to be tested in the lab.

“Immuno-oncology medicines are bringing benefit to a range of cancer patients,” said Exscientia’s chief executive Andrew Hopkins.

“Our selective A2a receptor antagonist addresses a next-generation immuno-oncology strategy to empower the human immune system by reversing the effects of high adenosine concentrations,” he added.

Exscientia will lead the clinical development of the A2A drug, with Evotec retaining co-ownership rights.

Momentum is building behind the use of AI in drug discovery, as the first candidates start to filter through into drugmaker’s pipelines. Earlier this year, for example, AZ’s two-year-old alliance with AI specialist BenevolentAI generated its first development candidate for chronic kidney disease.

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from https://pharmaphorum.com/news/exscientia-starts-trials-of-first-ai-derived-cancer-immunotherapy/

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Dior plays the tarot card as haute couture comes up trumps

New Post has been published on https://fashiondesigne.com/dior-plays-the-tarot-card-as-haute-couture-comes-up-trumps/

Dior plays the tarot card as haute couture comes up trumps

In the age of sweatpants, haute couture – fashion’s superleague, in which dresses are created to order and cost regarding £100, 000 – is definitely enjoying an unlikely boomtime.

The particular haute couture lineup continues to be invigorated by diverse brand new names including contemporary United states artist Sterling Ruby, that counts the thrash metallic band Slayer among their fashion influences and in whose new collection includes a reddish, white and blue loose-yarn coat, which alludes in order to “the current political weather, the Trump administration as well as the ongoing threat of rightwing anger”.

The house of Schiaparelli, clean from a triumphant Lady Coo moment at the inauguration, possess embellished this season’s dresses with jewelled seahorses plus gold casts of molar teeth.

Alber Elbaz, a cult figure much missed given that his departure from Lanvin five years ago, will start his new AZ brand name with a digital collection along with a livestreamed talkshow on Wed. Fendi join the The month of january haute couture schedule initially in their 95-year history, using a womenswear debut from brand new British signing, Kim Jones. The digital Fendi display is rumoured to celebrity Demi Moore, as well as Kate Moss and her girl Lila.

With catwalk shows off limitations, Dior designer Nancy Grazia Chiuri costumed tarot card characters for a 15-minute film shoot at a Tuscan castle by Gomorrah movie director Matteo Garrone: the Wizard wore a floor-length hooded evening coat embroidered along with feathers; the Sun a sundress with celestial embroidery upon pale gold lace.

Since 2016 Chiuri has rebooted Dior as a progressive brand, phasing out old-fashioned concepts associated with feminine charm in favour of the particular primacy of the female look. The tensions of the previous year have seen her escape from political statements in the direction of a daintier aesthetic and also a more whimsical mood, using the hot-take feminist slogan Tee shirts, which had become a trademark, on hold. In a Move call from her Paris studio before the display, an angelic beauty through Botticelli’s Pallas and the Centaur could be seen on Chiuri’s moodboard. The centaur, which the painting the goddess of knowledge holds firmly simply by his hair, was popped out of sight.

Garrone’s film had elegance – and, after final season’s criticism for insufficient diversity, a black Higher Priestess. There was a brief adore scene, suggesting that style is learning a few of Hollywood’s tricks of the trade to help keep audiences engaged, for as long as movie continues to sub in for catwalk shows. There was even a touch of Bridgerton spice within the cantilevered empire line mama of the Wheel of Fortune’s cloud-grey gown. “There any school of thought that says tarot cards are about the upcoming, but the point of view that fascinates me says that they enable you to learn about yourself, ” stated Chiuri.

Dior clients “are purchasing beautiful clothes to wear in your own home, ” Chiuri said. “There are many countries with a tradition of dressing beautifully inside the home. And the beauty of haute couture is that if a customer wants something simpler, after that we can make it for them. We are able to make pyjamas in our fashion atelier, ” she stated, before adding: “I are a little bit lazy, myself. Basically is alone, I don’t treatment so much what I wear. ”

The particular survival of haute fashion is a reflection of the inequity with which the pandemic offers hit incomes. The happy few who make up haute couture’s target market have been generally insulated from the economic low self-esteem of the last year. But it also factors to an industry shifting far from the four-seasons-a-year trend period which has driven the blockbuster ready-to-wear shows and a go back to a slower pace. Haute couture dresses are made to purchase over several months and used not just for several seasons, however for several generations – and thus do not pander to short lived trends.