#identifying smartphones

[identifying-smartphones-in-posts]

i can't believe i fohnd this blog. ok i want to get my long distance bf a custom phone case but i don't know what phone they have . MY best guess is that its a galaxy s23 (+ or normal) but i need a second opinion (im almost 100% sure its a samsung phone) please help!?!?!?!?

idk if the case makes it harder to ID but. yeah

the case absolutely does make it harder to id, yes

firstly, i knew it was definitely not an s23, the camera rings on that phone are much larger and spaced out than these images, even with the case covering most of the camera bump(s). the flash is also much smaller in relation to the cameras on the s23 series.

my second thought is it must be a samsung A, M or F series, but most A series with only three cameras have the flash in between the two top cameras instead of inline with the first one like this one here, so that narrows it down to 3 samsung A series, the a41, a02s and a03s, one F series, the f02s. i then looked for a fingerprint reader, and found it to be in the power button. This rules out the f02s, a02s and a41 as those either don't have fingerprint readers or are under the display.

this leaves us with the a03s. this is not my final answer, as nokia have phones that are suspiciously similar to the samsung A series, notably the g100, g22 and c100. The alignment of the g100's camera does not match with this phone, and the c100 has a rear mounted fingerprint reader which would show though the case. the g22 is the closest match out of non-samsung phones, though the camera bump is two tier and would show, but as it is in a case we can't rule it out.

to decide between the a03s and the g22, i initially looked towards the positioning of the fingerprint scanner, however both are near identical. then, i looked back towards the flash. the g22 has a flash about 3/4th the width of the camera away, whereas the a03s has it only 1/2th the width of the camera away. the phone in the image is closer to having the flash 1/2th the width away.

the closest match of the phone from these two images is the samsung a03s from 2022. it would make sense, as it was one of the best selling phones from that year and the a0 series is very popular all around the world.

[identifying-smartphones-in-posts]

ipod touch 5 (2012), ios 8

[identifying-cellphones-in-posts]

Super slow day at work so I identified and labeled every recycled android we have in our parts bin.

Isn't it beautiful

[ms-demeanor]

Why reblog machine-generated art?

When I was ten years old I took a photography class where we developed black and white photos by projecting light on papers bathed in chemicals. If we wanted to change something in the image, we had to go through a gradual, arduous process called dodging and burning.

When I was fifteen years old I used photoshop for the first time, and I remember clicking on the clone tool or the blur tool and feeling like I was cheating.

When I was twenty eight I got my first smartphone. The phone could edit photos. A few taps with my thumb were enough to apply filters and change contrast and even spot correct. I was holding in my hand something more powerful than the huge light machines I'd first used to edit images.

When I was thirty six, just a few weeks ago, I took a photo class that used Lightroom Classic and again, it felt like cheating. It made me really understand how much the color profiles of popular web images I'd been seeing for years had been pumped and tweaked and layered with local edits to make something that, to my eyes, didn't much resemble photography. To me, photography is light on paper. It's what you capture in the lens. It's not automatic skin smoothing and a local filter to boost the sky. This reminded me a lot more of the photomanipulations my friend used to make on deviantart; layered things with unnatural colors that put wings on buildings or turned an eye into a swimming pool. It didn't remake the images to that extent, obviously, but it tipped into the uncanny valley. More real than real, more saturated more sharp and more present than the actual world my lens saw. And that was before I found the AI assisted filters and the tool that would identify the whole sky for you, picking pieces of it out from between leaves.

You know, it's funny, when people talk about artists who might lose their jobs to AI they don't talk about the people who have already had to move on from their photo editing work because of technology. You used to be able to get paid for basic photo manipulation, you know? If you were quick with a lasso or skilled with masks you could get a pretty decent chunk of change by pulling subjects out of backgrounds for family holiday cards or isolating the pies on the menu for a mom and pop. Not a lot, but enough to help. But, of course, you can just do that on your phone now. There's no need to pay a human for it, even if they might do a better job or be more considerate toward the aesthetic of an image.

And they certainly don't talk about all the development labs that went away, or the way that you could have trained to be a studio photographer if you wanted to take good photos of your family to hang on the walls and that digital photography allowed in a parade of amateurs who can make dozens of iterations of the same bad photo until they hit on a good one by sheer volume and luck; if you want to be a good photographer everyone can do that why didn't you train for it and spend a long time taking photos on film and being okay with bad photography don't you know that digital photography drove thousands of people out of their jobs.

My dad told me that he plays with AI the other day. He hosts a movie podcast and he puts up thumbnails for the downloads. In the past, he'd just take a screengrab from the film. Now he tells the Bing AI to make him little vignettes. A cowboy running away from a rhino, a dragon arm-wrestling a teddy bear. That kind of thing. Usually based on a joke that was made on the show, or about the subject of the film and an interest of the guest.

People talk about "well AI art doesn't allow people to create things, people were already able to create things, if they wanted to create things they should learn to create things." Not everyone wants to make good art that's creative. Even fewer people want to put the effort into making bad art for something that they aren't passionate about. Some people want filler to go on the cover of their youtube video. My dad isn't going to learn to draw, and as the person who he used to ask to photoshop him as Ant-Man because he certainly couldn't pay anyone for that kind of thing, I think this is a great use case for AI art. This senior citizen isn't going to start cartooning and at two recordings a week with a one-day editing turnaround he doesn't even really have the time for something like a Fiverr commission. This is a great use of AI art, actually.

I also know an artist who is going Hog Fucking Wild creating AI art of their blorbos. They're genuinely an incredibly talented artist who happens to want to see their niche interest represented visually without having to draw it all themself. They're posting the funny and good results to a small circle of mutuals on socials with clear information about the source of the images; they aren't trying to sell any of the images, they're basically using them as inserts for custom memes. Who is harmed by this person saying "i would like to see my blorbo lasciviously eating an ice cream cone in the is this a pigeon meme"?

The way I use machine-generated art, as an artist, is to proof things. Can I get an explosion to look like this. What would a wall of dead computer monitors look like. Would a ballerina leaping over the grand canyon look cool? Sometimes I use AI art to generate copyright free objects that I can snip for a collage. A lot of the time I use it to generate ideas. I start naming random things and seeing what it shows me and I start getting inspired. I can ask CrAIon for pose reference, I can ask it to show me the interior of spaces from a specific angle.

I profoundly dislike the antipathy that tumblr has for AI art. I understand if people don't want their art used in training pools. I understand if people don't want AI trained on their art to mimic their style. You should absolutely use those tools that poison datasets if you don't want your art included in AI training. I think that's an incredibly appropriate action to take as an artist who doesn't want AI learning from your work.

However I'm pretty fucking aggressively opposed to copyright and most of the "solid" arguments against AI art come down to "the AIs viewed and learned from people's copyrighted artwork and therefore AI is theft rather than fair use" and that's a losing argument for me. In. Like. A lot of ways. Primarily because it is saying that not only is copying someone's art theft, it is saying that looking at and learning from someone's art can be defined as theft rather than fair use.

Also because it's just patently untrue.

But that doesn't really answer your question. Why reblog machine-generated art? Because I liked that piece of art.

It was made by a machine that had looked at billions of images - some copyrighted, some not, some new, some old, some interesting, many boring - and guided by a human and I liked it. It was pretty. It communicated something to me. I looked at an image a machine made - an artificial picture, a total construct, something with no intrinsic meaning - and I felt a sense of quiet and loss and nostalgia. I looked at a collection of automatically arranged pixels and tasted salt and smelled the humidity in the air.

I liked it.

I don't think that all AI art is ugly. I don't think that AI art is all soulless (i actually think that 'having soul' is a bizarre descriptor for art and that lacking soul is an equally bizarre criticism). I don't think that AI art is bad for artists. I think the problem that people have with AI art is capitalism and I don't think that's a problem that can really be laid at the feet of people curating an aesthetic AI art blog on tumblr.

Machine learning isn't the fucking problem the problem is massive corporations have been trying hard not to pay artists for as long as massive corporations have existed (isn't that a b-plot in the shape of water? the neighbor who draws ads gets pushed out of his job by product photography? did you know that as recently as ten years ago NewEgg had in-house photographers who would take pictures of the products so users wouldn't have to rely on the manufacturer photos? I want you to guess what killed that job and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't AI)

Am I putting a human out of a job because I reblogged an AI-generated "photo" of curtains waving in the pale green waters of an imaginary beach? Who would have taken this photo of a place that doesn't exist? Who would have painted this hypersurrealistic image? What meaning would it have had if they had painted it or would it have just been for the aesthetic? Would someone have paid for it or would it be like so many of the things that artists on this site have spent dozens of hours on only to get no attention or value for their work?

My worst ratio of hours to notes is an 8-page hand-drawn detailed ink comic about getting assaulted at a concert and the complicated feelings that evoked that took me weeks of daily drawing after work with something like 54 notes after 8 years; should I be offended if something generated from a prompt has more notes than me? What does that actually get the blogger? Clout? I believe someone said that popularity on tumblr gets you one thing and that is yelled at.

What do you get out of this? Are you helping artists right now? You're helping me, and I'm an artist. I've wanted to unload this opinion for a while because I'm sick of the argument that all Real Artists think AI is bullshit. I'm a Real Artist. I've been paid for Real Art. I've been commissioned as an artist.

And I find a hell of a lot of AI art a lot more interesting than I find human-generated corporate art or Thomas Kincaid (but then, I repeat myself).

There are plenty of people who don't like AI art and don't want to interact with it. I am not one of those people. I thought the gay sex cats were funny and looked good and that shitposting is the ideal use of a machine image generation: to make uncopyrightable images to laugh at.

I think that tumblr has decided to take a principled stand against something that most people making the argument don't understand. I think tumblr's loathing for AI has, generally speaking, thrown weight behind a bunch of ideas that I think are going to be incredibly harmful *to artists specifically* in the long run.

Anyway. If you hate AI art and you don't want to interact with people who interact with it, block me.

[argumate]

The researchers “use de-identified smartphone geolocation data for a sample of US phones from January 2019 to February 2020,” obtained “from an online data vendor that provides data commercially to businesses, governments, and researchers” and “works with numerous mobile application providers that track ‘pings’ of the location of a phone while the application is either currently in use or is running in the background.” Then they use the addresses of SEC offices and corporate headquarters, and then match the smartphone pings to the buildings. A smartphone is assumed to belong to an SEC employee if it “pinged for at least 20 unique workday hours within one SEC location during the month” and “the accumulated time in that SEC building [is] greater than in any other buildings in the respective month.” And then they go measure which companies those SEC employees visited.

Matt Levine casually mentioning this in an aside like it's normal

[identifying-smartphones-in-posts]

ipod touch 4 (2010)

[elbiotipo]

In one of my posts the other day about how expensive smartphones are there were people saying that "the luddites had great ideas" like they were proto-socialists and all. And well. That isn't really the case, as some others explained their reaction to industrialization did not have any lasting change as a goal. I'm not really introduced to the historical specifics.

But anyways, what the luddites were like in 1800s England doesn't really matter as what identifying yourself as a luddite means in modern times: being anti-technology. And no, not skeptical of technology, not being in favor of a better use of technology, not hating on AI while liking other stuff. It's being anti-technology. Luddite is a word used for exaggerated positions like breaking machines. It's not a nuanced ideology or a thing you would like to be called.

And being anti-technology not only is as nonsensical as being anti-art or anti-philosophy, technology is one of the things that define humans since the Oldowan rock tools. But it also means being against progress. It is technology that has enabled social progress. It is technology that allow us to understand the world and also to build a fairer society. Material conditions and all that.

I will try to say this without getting into much theory or philosophy of science, but your focus should not be on calling certain technologies "good" or "bad" by nature, much less rejecting the advance of technology, as if that is possible or desirable at all. You should instead see how society uses technology and how the structures of society use it. And how to change society so that technology serves to the benefit of people instead of capital.

Anyways. Don't be a luddite.

[ad-caelestia]

basic ass witch tips 🔮

[revised post from ~2018 & last edited on 9.29.24]

please note that these are all related to things i have actually seen discussed or mentioned. please do your research before blindly following the advice of someone online, myself included.

if you're on some kind of medication, including but not limited to hormonal birth control, heart medication, and anti-depressants, double check with your healthcare professional/provider [HCP] before you drink that new tea you just bought.

always, always, always tell your HCP before trying any kind of herbal supplement, whether it’s something you made yourself or something you bought at the store.

have a diagnosed medical condition? talk to your HCP before ingesting anything or putting anything on your body that you aren’t familiar with.

don’t. drink. essential. oils. essential oils are not consumable!!!!!

citrus oils can cause photosensitivity, or being sensitive to light and more susceptible to sunburns so be mindful when using these oils on your skin.

if it hasn't been emphasized enough, PLEASE dilute your essential oils before use! common carrier oils are grapeseed, castor, olive, coconut, avocado, almond, etc.

oil and water don't mix, so you would need to use an alcohol based solution with essential oils to dilute them that way (if you plan to use them for a spray or something of that nature).

be mindful of using sprays, incense, powders, etc. that could release particulates into the air around pets or those who have allergies, respiratory issues, etc.

don't involve your pets in your practice in a way that could be harmful to them - no essential oils on them, no crystals in their water bowl, no moon water that's been sitting on your shelf for weeks.

i beg you, please don't put crystals in any uh bodily orifices.

there are some herbs you absolutely cannot burn (or use safely, really) for any reason, so make sure you're educated on all that beforehand; yew, for example, is highly toxic and potentially fatal if consumed or inhaled. the leaves, bark, and seeds contains a chemical called taxine, which is what some of the most hardcore chemotherapies are made from so keep that in the back of your mind.

that being said, please wear gloves and use common sense if you decide to forage for your own herbs or plants. i know that plant identifying apps exist so if you have a smartphone, that might be a good place to start.

putting salt on grass does a couple of things: salt removes moisture from the soil, thus drying out the grass and killing it; and, salt causes chloride to build up in the soil, thus making it toxic which inhibits chlorophyll production, leading the grass to eventually "starve" and die - please don't do this.

don't leave candles unattended - even small ones; it's not a good habit to get into.

also!! crystal balls in direct sunlight can cause a fire so be careful!

more fire stuff - be mindful of the environment and also safety so check for burn bans before you make a fire outdoors.

sterile lancets, not needles or pins. that's all i'm gonna say about that.

don't drink water you collected from anywhere outside unless you plan to properly filter it first.

if you plan to store water for later use (moon water, for example), refrigerate it or set it in a cool, dark place.

distilled water is free of minerals and contaminants so it has a longer shelf life than tap or bottled water - keep this in mind when making charged waters or other potion type things.

fresh herbs or other things of that nature left at room temperature can also grow super harmful bacteria. for example, putting raw garlic in olive oil and leaving it at room temperature will end as a breeding ground for botulism and mold.

be safe out there!

© 2024 𝚊𝚍-𝚌𝚊𝚎𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚊

[mariacallous]

As Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has ravaged its way though the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), cutting its workforce from 10,000 to just 300, hundreds of organizations providing vital safety services have been upended. Multiple children’s safety groups—including those fighting online child sexual abuse and exploitation—say their efforts have been severely hamstrung.

Groups identifying victims and providing care for those who have been subject to online exploitation or human trafficking are struggling to support the vulnerable children, multiple organizations tell WIRED. Such child safety projects often take place in poorer countries, which can have fewer resources to support victims or investigate crimes. Sources say that funding for safe houses has been paused, potentially exposing victims to more harm, and efforts that identify criminals behind child exploitation have been put on hold.

“It will be very hard for us to identify the victims,” says Chantal Yelu Mulop, from the Coordination for Youth and the Fight Against Sexual Violence and Trafficking in Persons (CJVFFT), in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the war-torn country faces new fighting and humanitarian crises, children have long been trafficked to work in cobalt mines linked to the production of smartphone and EV batteries.

As USAID funding was withdrawn over the past week, Mulop says her organization had just started helping around 25 newly identified victims of human trafficking—all of them aged under 17. The group was taken to a support shelter run by another organization. “When we bring them there, USAID was ready to help. A few hours later they cancel,” Mulop says. “There’s no food, no nothing that we can provide to them,” she adds.

While the USAID cuts have been immediate, global child protection projects have also faced a funding pause from the State Department. This foreign aid “pause,” issued by the Trump administration, is set to last for at least 90 days. USAID did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment. The State Department had not provided a comment by time of publication.

Both government bodies have provided funding to help countries and people around the world. This includes USAID’s vast swath of health care and education programs—their withdrawal is putting millions of lives at risk and limits tackling the climate crisis. In Southeast Asia, several patients at a migrant camp reportedly died after medical support was removed.

Counter-human-trafficking funding often includes money for projects that help to crack down on online child exploitation and sexual abuse. Funding can be provided to international organizations that coordinate efforts and work with partners, like Mulop’s CJVFFT, on the ground. The funding can directly support victims, as well as providing expertise to officials in countries, and stop more children becoming targets.

“Many of these victims engage with their traffickers through electronic means,” says Jessica Ryckman, the executive director of the nonprofit Lawyers Without Borders (LWOB), which works on trafficking and child exploitation programs and has been impacted by the funding changes. “It is exploitation that is advanced through digital technology.”

Over the years, the programs have been effective. For instance, a four-year partnership between the US and the Philippines, which started under the first Trump administration and ended in 2021, helped protect hundreds of children: More than 350 kids were rescued and supported and almost 100 potential criminals arrested. The new cuts also come as record levels of online child sexual abuse imagery are being discovered.

“Victims and perpetrators alike originate from diverse regions and countries, underscoring the necessity for continued international engagement and coordinated efforts to address these crimes comprehensively,” says an employee of a South American child protection group that works to combat trafficking and online sexual abuse. The organization, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to speak given the sensitive nature of the work and uncertainty about future funding. “The interruption of these funds inevitably limits the scope and reach of these critical services,” it says.

One person, who works for an organization running multiple child protection projects, says operations in one southeastern European country have been widely disrupted. Within the country, the organization’s projects have 147 victims of trafficking in its care, the person says. “The ongoing pause and potentially the cessation of funding would have significant and negative impact on our capacity and ability to provide essential services to these victims who are in fragile stages of their recovery; some of whom are in ongoing programs for psycho-social counseling related to their trauma,” the person says.

Multiple members of LWOB say children are being put further at risk in the projects it runs in East Africa. “These children may not be identified, the practices to reduce their trauma aren't being supported right now,” says Ryckman. “Even if they are identified, they may be put in a pipeline where they are going to have to face ongoing interviews about their trauma or face their traffickers again.”

LWOB has, along with partner organizations, identified around 200 victims of human trafficking in Tanzania, with the majority referred to safe houses, says Lulu Makwale, a victim service coordinator at Lawyers Without Borders. “Most of the funding for the safe houses has been paused, meaning the services and the needs of the victim are also being paused too,” Makwale says. She says the organization has been linking up shelters to investigators up until now. “Victims may not be connected well now to the law enforcement,” Makwale says.

As well as supporting victims directly, many of the efforts also provide training or technical assistance to police forces, allowing them to better investigate crimes. One program listed on the State Department’s list of counter-trafficking funding says it is providing training to combat online child sexual exploitation for 10,000 police officers, prosecutors, and judges in 100 countries.

The person with links to work in a European country says their organization has 74 investigations into traffickers ongoing, plus 66 prosecutions that are underway. They say that the funding changes will have a “significant and negative impact on these criminal trials” and the safety of people who may give evidence in the cases.

Ryckman, from Lawyers Without Borders, says the organization recently completed work on an online database for identifying victims and tracking online child exploitation in Kenya. While the database is functional, Ryckman says, future work to train people has been paused, and there will be a slower uptake of the system. “I do believe it will be used, and it will be extremely useful,” Ryckman says. “But these victims are there now. They shouldn’t have to wait.”

[identifying-smartphones-in-posts]

pixel 7a (2023)

can they kick you out of the roller rink for getting too horny about it

[avcdgrdn]

what if the OG mystery trio was born in 1997 instead of the 50's? welcome to my very self-indulgent AU:

[ explanation & more info below cut 😏 ] ↓ ↓ ↓

my fancy lil' name for the AU is RWFF [ rewind, fast forward ]

having been born at the very beginning of gen Z, this puts the trio at around 27 years old present day! it's a modern AU with a little bit of seasoning to it ...

no bill cipher [ let my boys be happy & un-traumatized ]

by 2014: the machine incident still happens, but stan never gets disowned: he apologizes, ford forgives him & stands up for him when his father gets mad. this allows stan to stay in the house, and he never sets out on his own.

staying true to canon, ford attends backupsmore, meets fiddleford, and does like a crap ton of PHDs until he receives the massive grant that allows him to explore gravity falls. however, since he never meets bill cipher, he never delves into the portal project. instead, he finds massive success with all of his other paranormal discoveries and ingenious inventions [ COUGH filthy rich COUGH ]

all throughout his studies, ford would often contact fiddleford for assistance on random projects. they hung out a lot for sure and got super close :)

meanwhile, stanley's chillin & working with a car repair shop back in new jersey. thanks to ford, his family is really well off, so he doesn't necessarily urgently need to provide for himself. he takes an interest in cars, so he loves his job. he keeps in touch with his twin almost every day [ we love smartphones ]

by 2024: having found such good success in gravity falls, ford remembers his twin brother & extends the invitation for stan to move in with him so that they can work on the stan-o-war together, which he readily accepts. :D

present day: stan & ford are living together in gravity falls & working on the stan-o-war. [ basically what the canon timeline twins end up doing after many more years ]

fiddleford often comes to visit, either for a scientific project or just to chill with the twins. he's also a successful inventor, just in a different font [ he for sure has that manor fr 🤑 ]

the beauty of this being present day is the aesthetics:

ford heavily identifies with the classic academia aesthetic

fidds takes on a 70's artsy-fartsy hippie granola guy aesthetic [ septum piercing & tattoos fidds pls save me ]

stan sticks to street fashion/racer jackets for suuure. he's thinking about getting into motorcycles... he heard that chicks really dig that nowadays.

so like ........ yeah 🕺

who would you date first please lmk 😘

[coochiequeens]

Good news for my same sex attracted sisters.

Lesbian dating app to use facial recognition to exclude trans women from matching with biological females

By SANCHEZ MANNING and SUE REID

PUBLISHED: 19:03 EDT, 1 June 2024 

The first dating app for lesbians is set to launch – using sex-recognition technology to exclude trans women and ensure only biological females can sign up.

It is the brainchild of feminist campaigner Jenny Watson, who says there are currently no dating apps which cater purely for women who want same-sex relationships.

The current crop of dating apps, she says, are increasingly being used by males who identify as female and who say they too are lesbian.

L'App will use facial recognition technology to verify a person as a biological female.

Ms Watson said would-be users will have to go through a process when they sign up where the app scans their face via their smartphone.

It is the brainchild of feminist campaigner Jenny Watson (pictured), who says there are currently no dating apps which cater purely for women who want same-sex relationships

The software, which Ms Watson claims is 99 per cent accurate, analyses features including bone structure, the shape and positioning of an individual's eyes, eyebrows and nose shape or size. It will also be able to detect if a person is presenting a live image rather than just putting a photo of a woman up to the camera by detecting movement, blinking motions and heat emissions.

Tests have revealed that if someone tries to disguise themselves as a woman by putting on a wig or make-up, the technology will spot the deception.

Ms Watson, 32, a town planner, told The Mail on Sunday: 'There is no female-only dating apps at the moment. Lesbians need an app which they can use without being messaged by trans-identifying males.'

She said L'App had also been developed in response to many lesbians finding that they were being banned from existing apps if they dared to specify that they wanted to date only natal females. Speaking about her own personal experience, she said: 'Any time I've joined a lesbian dating app or any other dating app myself, I get banned.

'To avoid trans-identified males, I will always write a little blurb, nothing disrespectful, saying my preference is for women and please respect my boundaries.

'And every time I do that I get banned. On one app I was asked to put down my most controversial opinion, so I wrote that J. K. Rowling was right and was banned for that. It's insane.'

Ms Watson has previously campaigned to protect lesbian spaces, by hosting female-only speed dating nights. She plans to open UK's first single-sex lesbian bar.

She has been criticised as transphobic for excluding transgender women – which she rejects. Her launch comes as a court case is being heard in Australia over whether a trans woman can be lawfully excluded from a female-only social networking app called Giggle.

[mbari-blog]

Welcome to FathomVerse 🦑🐟🦀

A new mobile game launching today allows anyone with a smartphone or tablet to take part in ocean exploration and discovery. Now available for download on the App Store and Google Play, FathomVerse allows players to interact with real underwater images to improve the artificial intelligence that helps researchers study ocean life. 

Scientists are collecting massive amounts of images and video to study marine life and assess ocean health. AI can help researchers analyze this deluge of visual data more efficiently. Before AI can be used for ocean exploration, machine learning models need to be trained to identify ocean animals. 

FathomVerse seeks to address this challenge by engaging ocean enthusiasts around the world to help review and label images so AI can correctly recognize ocean animals. The game combines immersive imagery, compelling gameplay, and cutting-edge science to inspire a new wave of ocean explorers. Learn more on our website.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hey sex witch, you’ve talked a lot about porn addiction on here but I have some other questions if that’s ok.

I go to Christian highschool and we often have discussions about porn addiction.

my teacher says that most addicted people start consuming porn at around 9. And that even seeing one naked person or one porn or whatever on the internet can put you at higher risk of developing an addiction to porn.

does absolutely any of this have a base in science? Or is this all fear mongering and what not?

hi anon,

first of all, I just want to say that I think it rules that you're seeking information outside of what's being taught at your school. learning how to question what you're told and seek out answers from other sources is a really important skill that can be VERY hard to even begin if you aren't given the resources to easily go looking for information, and I think it's great that you're taking the initiative of seeking out other perspectives :)

now, let's break this down: the concept of "porn addiction" is one largely discredited by psychologists. while people can certainly develop maladaptive coping mechanisms around sexuality, porn, and/or masturbation, this isn't strictly the same as addiction, and several studies have found that the people who are most likely to identify themselves as porn addicts are people who harbor religious or cultural shame about sexuality and porn use, rather than people who use porn more than the average person. it is, largely, a matter of perception.

while access to smartphones means that many people first encounter pornography at a young age - the current average age is somewhere between 9 and 13, depending on the study - and that can be confusing to a child who isn't given the proper framework to understand what they're seeing, it's also not a new phenomenon. in my role as a sex educator I also get to talk with a lot of parents about their early sexual experiences, and many of them recall encountering printed pornography as children when they find it in gutters, the woods, the bedroom of parents or friends' parents, or even stowed in farm equipment. these adults tend to remember being intrigued and excited along with a little confused or alarmed by this first brush with sexuality, but crucially it did not define them as people. as evidence by the fact that they've grown up to send their children to queer-friendly, sex positive, nonjudgmental sex ed classes, early exposure to porn did not stop them from growing into curious, thoughtful, and supportive parents who want to encourage healthy attitudes toward sexuality for their children. porn alone does not have the power to determine the direction of someone's life.

just seeing a naked person or pornography on the internet also cannot immediately make you an "addict." as you've already guessed, this is what we call fear mongering, using information in a way that's exaggerated to make people nervous to even engage with a topic. fear mongering about sex is common among adults and education systems that don't want to young people to be curious about their bodies; another common one is "teaching" young people about sexually transmitted infections by only showing them pictures of untreated cases that have become drastic and painful while insisting that no STI can ever be treated, which is definitely not the case. but the facts don't matter; the priority is trying to make sure teenagers are too scared to have sex until they're adults and the school system is no longer responsible for them.

(and it doesn't even work; states with higher rates of abstinence only education are CONSISTENTLY among those with the highest rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.)

when presented with absolutist statements like this, it's worth poking holes in the logic. for instance, if seeing any naked figure is bad, what about classical art? do nude marble statues put you at risk of being a porn addict? what about other artistic depictions of nudity? or anatomical illustrations? what about real people just changing clothes in a locker room, or young siblings bathing together? does it not count for people who are nearly or partially nude, like someone wearing a bathing suit or athletic clothes? people changing in a locker room together? what about young children being bathed together? and what about all of those depictions about Jesus on the cross wearing nothing but a loincloth? what's the line between "good" and "bad" nudity, and who's deciding where that line is? can such a line even really exist at all?

the truth is that people are undressed or partially undressed in all kinds of situations, and none of them are a corrosive influence on your brain. just looking at something is not enough to completely rewire your brain and permanently change your behavior. ultimately, you are responsible for your own actions.

I hope this has been a helpful answer, and that you stay curious about what you're being taught.

[mindblowingscience]

A farmer notices an unfamiliar insect on a leaf. Is this a pollinator? Or a pest? Good news at harvest time? Or bad? Need to be controlled? Or not? That farmer can snap a picture, use a smartphone or computer to feed the photo into a web-based application called InsectNet and, with the help of machine learning technology, get back real-time information.

Continue Reading.

[fictionstudent]

Novels are not movies.

Visual media has taken on the world by storm. It’s the next big thing in the evolution of humanity, maybe. It’s quite certainly changed the way we entertain ourselves. And with the recent spread of short-form content, visual media has also become cheap, disposable, and easily accessible to the masses—perfect recipe to make a product famous.

Alright, I’ve been a little too dramatic, lol. But for real, I’m one of those who’s severely addicted to Instagram Reels. Whenever I’m done scrolling, I feel like I’ve completely wasted my time—I could have read a novel, watched a movie, or caught up with my favorite mangas. But instead of all those ways to relax—and believe me (pwlease) that I only open Insta to relax, when I’m free—I just waste my time.

I love my novels and manga, mind ya, so when I catch myself wasting precious time that I could have instead used to consume them, I cuss myself. And then I go scroll some more Insta, because I’m an absolute idiot.

Anyway, back to the topic. Visual media has absolutely taken over our lives. I won’t go into the debate of whether this is a good thing or not, but we all can agree that it’s an undeniable fact. Video is everywhere.

Because—and lemme repeat myself—it’s cheap, disposable, and easily accessible today.

And because of such exposure to video storytelling, beginning authors forget that novels are not a visual medium. Yep, here goes my rant.

***

#01 - The Problem

The problem is simple—these kids have too much access to their smartphones. And these smartphones are filled with videos, like a dustbin with its lid hanging on because of all that garbage overfilling it. (Damn, I sound like a boomer.)

And therefore, when these new authors begin writing, they can’t help but imagine a sort of movie or a TV show as their story. And that’s where the problem is—novels are not supposed to be movies.

Movies are a visual media. That means they’re composed of pictures. Images. But guess what novels are composed of?

Text. Words.

It seems pretty basic. I mean, everybody knows this distinction. But what they don't know, however, are the implications of this distinction.

Personally, I began writing with film-novels too. And those novels are bad. Genuinely. I cringe at the fact that I could even mail editors and believe they’d accept them. Good thing they never did.

What’s a film-novel, though? Well, the idea is pretty clear—it’s a novel, but imagined in the form of a film. So, it’s like a film, but in text.

It’s like you’ve written the film as a novel, instead of writing it as a screenplay or something, maybe.

But you’d ask me—why? Why is it even a mistake? Everybody has a different writing style. And to that, I’d tell you one thing—the audience. The audience is different. The media is different. You can’t expect a cinephile to read your book. And since it’s not like a professional novel, a (Googles the correct term) bibliophile certainly won't.

So, who’s gonna read your story?

No one—because it’s neither a film, nor a novel. It’s a film-novel, an illogical mix of the two.

Everyone drinks water, and everyone likes ice-cream. But you can't… No, I’m not even completing that sentence. Ew.

Anyway, you get the idea, lol.

***

#02 - Identify

So, what does a film-novel even look like?

And for that, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you,

The lean figure was standing on the other side of the railing three floors up on the ground of the school building where children below were shouting and kicking football upon each other, wearing white football jerseys. The figures, as they ran all over the ground, seemed very small as I looked at them. The goalkeeper of the right side, who was just beneath my white shoe, kicked the ball so hard that it flew in air and went directly to the other foot of mine. The other players shouted “Whoaaa!” as they saw the ball flying. But suddenly, two of them looked upwards and saw me. One of them pointed towards me and then shouted, “Hey, who’s he?!” All the other players started walking towards that boy who was in the middle of the field with their heads tilted up above on me. Another one shouted, “Hey! What’cha doin’, eh?!” My narrow eyes, which had dark spots beneath them, looked at the boys from behind my spectacles. I then moved my head a little up and saw my shiny gakuran jacket fluttered by my shiny yellow colored buttons as the wind started blowing from my left side. I was able to feel the wind dancing upon my soft skin as I closed my eyes and turned my head upwards. I took a deep breath, and then exhaled it out with my mouth. I then again took a breath. This time, when I exhaled it out with my mouth, I was able to feel the saliva of my mouth upon my lips. I tilted my head and turned towards my arm, which was trembling a little. Both of my hands were still holding the railing of the school’s rooftop. I then turned left and then looked on my other arm. “Hey! Get down!” One of the persons from beneath shouted. I turned my narrowed eyes towards the ground, the teachers, a large gang of footballers and students, and some even workers had gathered in a circle. I turned my head towards the front. I looked at a couple of brown colored and blue-green colored houses in front of me, which stood high and mighty. Beneath them was the clear blue sky.

A wall of text!

Warning: you don’t really need to read all of it. But you probably did, lol.

Anyway, it’s the opening scene from one of my first novels. And, as much as I hate to say this—it’s pretty sh*t. It has a lot of problems—no paragraph divisions, for example, as well as a lot of grammatical mistakes too. But the biggest problem with the text is that it’s just images.

Reading this text, I dare you to highlight one single sentence that might tell you anything about the narrator.

The narrator is narrating the motions, not the emotions.

(Damn, that was a dope line to say, man.)

The narrator is only telling you about the images and actions and dialogues and thoughts. Even though it’s in first-person POV, you feel distant from the narrator. And, even in third-person POV, authors are supposed to make sure the distance between the narrator and the reader remains at a minimum.

That’s how you get a film-novel—that’s filled with scene-descriptions, actions, and dialogues. There’s no narrations in it. The readers don’t know the thoughts of these characters.

***

#03 - Is it really a problem, though?

Well, you might ask me—is it really such a big problem?

Heck yeah.

The reason is pretty simple, actually—no one wants to read a film-novel. These novels are filled with only descriptions and actions—that’s too much of mental effort. these novels make their readers keep on imagining stuff, and no reader wants to do that.

Because it’s easier to look at pictures than to imagine them based on text. And that’s why your film-novels won’t work.

See, you need to understand this—novels are different than film. Sure, novels are a form of storytelling too, and they do include visual effort, such as descriptions, action, and all that. But, all that is not the main selling point of a novel.

The main selling point of a novel is the emotions. Emotions captured in words, in situations—caught in context like a butterfly in a child’s hand. Films can display emotions, but novels put those emotions into words.

Narration is what forms the greatest part of a novel. Narration is where a novel actually shines. Narration is what the readers come to read.

And, as you could guess, films don’t narrate. Consider this,

And rain made him feel like crying. He gulped down, trying to keep the lump of his throat in check. He couldn’t cry in the middle of so many other kids. They’ll ask questions, and what will he say to them, huh?

He was sorry.

For what?

For everything he did. And for everything he didn’t.

The day had just begun. It’d be long before it ends, y’know. He just couldn't wait for it to end. There was no lifting up his mood. Not until tomorrow.

How do you display this in a film? The answer—you can't. However hard you try, you can't.

Such narrations are where the art of novels shine. Such narrations are what differentiates a novel from a visual media.

***

#04 - Is it really a problem, though? (pt.ii)

All this talk constantly reminds me of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It’s a literary achievement and really experimental in a lot of stuff that it does. For example, the novel has no dashes or apostrophes—and it’s not like these punctuation marks were not needed, they’re just not used. So, you’d find a lot of grammatical mistakes throughout the text.

And also, one thing that McCarthy ignored—and that’s relevant to the discussion we’re having—is that there’s literally zero narration. Zero.

McCarthy adopts a style that’s similar to a third-person POV, and is kinda like how I used to write when I was little—just with paragraphs and better scene-descriptions and action-descriptions. A lot better, as you can observe if you read his work.

Anyway, he didn’t have any narrative elements in his text. So the readers don’t really know what these characters are thinking or planning to do. They just know that these characters are somehow surviving.

I don’t wanna give away most of the plot of the novel, but the basic premise of the novel is that there’s a father-son duo who’s been caught in this apocalypse-type situation, and are traveling down the road to the south part of the country to escape the harsh winters that the north experiences. The novel doesn’t reveal a lot—the readers don’t know the names of these characters, the thoughts of the characters are hidden most of the time, and you don’t know what actually happened that most of humanity is dead and society is completely gone.

Now, McCarthy did it for a reason. A scarcity of punctuation marks reflects a form of scarcity in the scenery around them. Because most of it is, well, gone. Humanity is gone, and stuff is decaying. You don’t find fresh food anymore. Scavenge all you want—one day, all the canned food will expire, and there will be nothing to eat. Except fruits and veggies, that need to be grown somewhere. And nobody likes the latter, honestly.

And the scene-descriptions are so tough to read. They’re an actual pain. I have had a really hard time deciphering most of it, because the vocab is too high, and probably the sentences do not flow into each other easily. I can’t say anything about the sentences if I don’t understand them, y’know.

But, man, maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. Maybe that’s why McCarthy wrote the descriptions in this way—to symbolize the mental stress that the characters go through as they experience this world, this form of reality that they were not meant to be in.

And maybe the novel is so lacking in narrations because the characters’ minds have gone numb. They’re forgetting language. With almost zero human interaction most of the time, they are forgetting how to think and interact in words. You lose the skills you don’t really use anymore, y’know. And these guys are so obviously depressed, so they don’t think about the world. They are used to the sad reality they live in. No point in complaining how bad the food is if that’s all you’re gonna eat all your life.

So, a scarcity of narrations tell you a lot about the story and its characters. It reflects something, it symbolizes something. The Road is a masterfully crafted piece of prose, please don’t get inspired to write in this style just because. This style won’t work on most of the stories.

Yeah, just because he wrote like this means you can too. Let me tell you, dear reader, that all of what we call rules are meant to be broken. Nothing is absolute. But here’s the catch—you can’t break the rules just because you don’t know how to apply them.

Authors need to learn these rules, because that’s what constitutes most of the written prose. That’s what forms the basics of the craft. So, learn them, understand them, and know how to use them. And then make a conscious decision not to use them.

See, these rules are like tools or weapons in your arsenal. And you need to keep your arsenal ready for everything. And then, you can decide which weapon to use, when to use it, and how to use it. Because you don’t know what sort of idea hits your head next and you’d suddenly need some of them.

***

#04 - Solution

So, how to make sure your novel actually comes off as a novel and not a film-novel? Unfortunately, the answer to that question… is that I don't know.

I know this sounds so absurd, but it is what it is. As someone who’s so recently started studying prose, I know this problem exists, but I still don’t know how to fix it. You could say I know my novels are film-novels, and I’m trying to fix it. But I, personally, am having a lot of trouble with it.

However, one way I can recommend is to write from your character’s POV, not your POV. You probably imagined your story as a film, but that’s now how you’re supposed to write it. Get into your characters’ head, see what they’re seeing, and write that.

But it’s tough. For me, at least. I always find myself going back to my old ways, and I think I need to re-write almost all of my scene-descriptions and actions because of it.

Lol, how ironic.

***

Conclusion

Yeah, and that’s it. I hope you liked this blog. Sorry I hadn’t posted in along while, I was going through a writers’ block. Stuff is happening these days, y’know.

Anyway, I’ll see you again in a couple of days, with something new. Bye-byee!