#nfts corrupt people

[aestheticbyais]

NFTs are toxic for our planet and steal the hard work of all aspiring artists online. Reblog this if you agree that they need to be stopped!

[apparentabstractions]

Some unstructured thoughts

My reaction to the trend of "AI artists" has been pretty viscerally negative—it's a clear off-shoot of the same Silicon Valley tech bro bullshit that gave us NFTs—but I've also been left grappling with the reality that there are very real similarities between much of my APPARENT ABSTRACTIONS work and images generated by AI. The latter involves someone inputting text and hoping for the best. My edited ROM corruption screenshots require similarly little "effort"—ask a program to inject some junk data or alter a few bytes, then wait for the results. In the end, we both have very little control over the actual output. I often make edits to the shape or color to make mine stand out more, but that's not a tall task either.

Furthermore, both are built off the backs of others' work. I think my only real saving grace here is that the "sources" I pull from are commercial, mass-produced products. Of course video games are an art form, and artists worked to create the graphics which I then ask a program to mangle, but at the end of the day I'm pulling from the works of corporations. Fair game for editing? Fair game for collages and sampling? The music enthusiast in me has always felt that way, at least. I wouldn't have a guilty conscience screencapping and editing something from say, Ninja Gaiden—as opposed to trying the same thing from some DeviantArt user's work. One like myself, maybe. I also illustrate as a hobby, and yeah, I don't want my drawings used in AI training datasets. And these days, it's getting harder to trust the websites we host our work on to protect us.

Maybe the big difference between what I'm making and what "AI artists" are doing comes down to ethos. AA is a project that's been going on for four years now. The works have always been released into the public domain. I just think what I'm doing is cool, and I wish more people would do it. It's not really even about the individual pieces but all of them as a unified gallery. I've always viewed AA as one singular ever-expanding art piece. I think it's why I enjoyed making the Tower Unite gallery so much. Very few "AI artists" ever seem actually interested in art. Or at least, they weren't interested in the concept of "art" until they saw that it could be an easy way to make them popular or rich. But you probably know that already.

We saw it with NFTs, too, though maybe less so percentage-wise—I saw a lot of legitimate artists I admired become grifters. I almost bought a John Karel (jjjjjjjjjjohn, the one with the low-poly skeletons) shirt and now I'm glad I didn't. Mark Vomit, the guy who made that "you are not immune to propaganda" meme, is actually a talented audiovisual producer that I liked a lot. Ironically, he tried making NFTs but threw a fit when no one wanted them and people started making fun of him. I don't think he's tried again since. Probably my biggest disappointment in this field was Osamu Sato—the guy behind LSD: Dream Emulator among a slew of great albums. And don't forget a bunch of musicians who were probably forced to engage with NFTs by their labels. But also, like, 80% of the people making "abstract digital art" like my own started getting into it! I had to unfollow the vast majority of them. At their height, it was so bad that you could just tell someone was probably doing NFTs by looking at their art because it had become so popular with certain cliques—my own included. I started using the "AGAINST CRYPTO / AGAINST NFTS" avatar around that time not just because I wanted to make a bold statement against it, but also because I didn't want people to have to check.

[doom-nerdo-666]

One reason i kinda like most skins and podiums in DE is because Doom never had a proper Earth, so these new assets almost "expand" the setting or have potential to do so.

If id ever wanted to do more with Hell on Earth, they could use these podiums and such as reference, to make new places or something, whether it's different types of stores/services, locations with purposes or even countries like Japan or concepts like beaches or graveyards.

That is if they could break apart certain bits of a podium and make new models/props out of it and come up with some actual new assets to visit different places, because trying to reuse things can be hard.

I guess enemies wearing these skins could be secret/easter egg enemies but not sure about the Slayer's skins, though some zombies wearing funny outfits could work.

Using podiums to create assets for single player levels probably also means reworking some assets and changing textures that refer to the demons or something, so MC Pain's assets could refer to a made up rapper in the universe and even stuff like the Mullet Slayer podium could refer to some guy's house.

Like how the Hipster Archvile podium is of a caffe place called Hell's Cup, when on Earth, it would be called something else (Unless you justify this by saying Hell corrupted Earth or that most people became devoted to Hell like the UAC... or just some tongue-in-cheek joke from the story and an unfortunate coincidence before the invasion).

(I think QC had lore about Doomguy's Cacodemon mask being made after the invasion was stopped and people bought it still)

Meanwhile the Plasma Revenant is like an actual potential enemy with a new role that fits the main setting.

And Le Manc could inspire like an underwater segment where Doomguy swims to find a pirate ship.

I think even the unused Bob Ross skin could lead to like an art class room on Earth.

Wonder if the reason this set didn't show up was because of how some companies used Bob Ross' image lately, even though this set wouldn't be disrespectful as that Montain Dew ad or the NFT/Funko Pop mess.

I thought at least the afro could've been used in some 70's Disco set and the Bob Ross skin could just use a beret to make him a more generic artist.

[emptymanuscript]

From the fucking article:

Beneath the common complaints that they're environmentally costly and more or less stupid, I think NFTs inspire so much repulsion on social media because they seem to corrupt something that people actually do want. Sameness is everywhere in this era of mass production, and what started on assembly lines was near-perfected by computers, which can duplicate data near-instantly. From that perspective, the scarcity and uniqueness of NFTs might be seen as subversive: They're pushing against the current of history. It feels like something could be cool about that, somehow.

Every time NFT's come up now, I think about the investor meeting I went to, before Crypto tanked, where one of the senior execs hurriedly added to the statement, "We did have one manager who bought some NFT's and Cryptocurrency," the pointed reassurance, "He's no longer with the company." Everybody who actually understands money knew from word one that NFTs were exactly as cool and subversive as the certificate of authenticity on a junk bond.

[blueberriesrainbowworldblog]

This is Blueberries RainbowWorld my original story which currently I'm writing right now

You can just call it BBRW if you want to if not I don't care

Blueberries RainbowWorld is a fantasy story which is about:

One day after school a girl named Mackenzie decides to walk a different way home from school and finds a strange box partially in the ground.

She decides to pick it up and check what’s inside, which is a collection of gyms that as soon as she touches them cause the ground beneath her to crumble, taking her into another world called the magic realm.

As she tries to find her way around things she makes a few friends who help her enter into a magic school.

where she is forced to participate in a game before an evil queen who wishes to take over the city she is currently in.

A few of Mackenzie's classmates get kidnapped which she decides to go after them and try and save them.

As time passes she ends up getting a team which will attract all kinds of danger all her way as she fights to survive in this new way of life the people she had decided to trust may not be who she thought they were.

And a prophecy scroll which might just ruin one of her new friends lives and as the secrets inside the scroll which the kingdom has kept from its people start coming closer and closer with time passing.

Will she find a way home,will she find a way to stop this prophecy from coming true,will she save everyone or will she fail and will everything fall into corruption?

read to find out:

(Chapter will eventually go here)

Other Teasers are right here:

(none at the moment)

Playlists:

[Scene/Story related playlists]

[Character playlists]

Shaun playlist

Alec playlist

Harrie playlist

Max playlist

Mackenzie playlist

Hey you! if you think you might be interested in reading it. Then please read the list of trigger warnings before reading ⬇️

Also a warning for cussing because there is quite a bit

The List of Trigger warnings:

!!TW Blood!!

!!TW Death!!

!!TW Gore!!

!!TW Suicide!!

!!TW Alcohol!!

!!TW Abuse!!

!!TW Self harm!!

(Also some characters might be transphobic and/or homophobic)

(And some drawings of the characters may include Bright colors,Eye Contact and All the TW's listed above⬆️)

If you want to draw art of my characters please just give credit and tag me so I can see it

----------------------------------------

Dni! Proshippers/Comshippers,pedos, racists, homophobics, transphobics, Zoophiles,NFT Supporters, NSFW centered blogs, Zionist, and mean people.

----------------------------------------

(I will add more stuff at a later date lol^^)

!!!THIS BLOG IS A WORK IN PROGRESS RN!!!

[ailtrahq]

One of developers that contributes to Dogecoin, @mishaboar, has taken to the X app (formerly widely known as Twitter) to share his take on the "bull markets" that many, including maximalists of Bitcoin and other cryptos, are promising to arrive soon.He addressed the Dogecoin army to say that many within the crypto community, including maxis, are doing nothing but pushing people to speculation by spreading promises of "bull markets."@mishaboar believes that it does not matter what crypto there is in your portfolio – Bitcoin, DOGE, etc. – crypto speculation is nothing but gambling, he stated.Dear #Dogecoin, many, including maxis, are already spreading promises of “bull markets” and pushing people to speculation.No matter if you are holding#Dogecoin, #Bitcoin or whatever else: crypto speculation is just gambling.The market is unfair and corrupted, building value…— Mishaboar (@mishaboar) September 22, 2023 He explained his take by saying that "the market is unfair and corrupted, building value out of sentiment and hot air." He urged the community not to invest "house money, farm money or important saving" into crypto – advice similar to that given to the community several times by Elon Musk.@mishaboar added: "Use instead crypto as a currency without centralized control. Try to understand how it works, what that means."As reported by U.Today, Dogecoin cofounder Billy Markus (the other cofounder is Jackson Palmer but is a rare user of the X app) expressed a similar opinion several times, claiming that no expert on earth can truly know why crypto market goes up or down. He has also referred to investing in crypto and NFTs as a mental disease. He shared that he would never buy meme coins or non-fungible tokens.Markus stated that he likes Bitcoin and Ethereum, while he does not believe in any ERC-20 altcoins. Source

[axioscreditbank]

NFTs have been a hot topic these days. And if you know a little bit about blockchain space in trade finance, you have probably noticed a lot of hype around these NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens. But, what are they? Almost every day, there is a newly published article on it stating the emerging popularity of people trading NFTs, digital art, and collectibles for extremely high prices. They are marking their presence rapidly as the latest blockchain-based innovation. This blog will shed light on this insanely surging section.

What are NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens)?

Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, are Ethereum-based digital tokens that are being used to show the digital ownership of unique things/items.

To put it simply, NFTs allow artists to declare/release their unique work digitally without experiencing the threat of counterfeits. Though a copy of an NFT can take place, it won’t be original.

People can tokenize different things like art, collectibles, and even real estate. It can only represent one official owner at a time, secured by this Ethereum-based blockchain ie. the records of the owner cannot be modified, corrupted, or copied. Apart from this, these tokens are non-fungible i.e. each token is unique and not interchangeable.

These can be expensive though, it is more than just a JPEG file. It provides you ownership rights and you can sell your NFTs on marketplaces like Opensea and Nifty Gateway. It is similar to traditional artwork but on a digital platform.

NFTs are cryptographically secure ways of possessing a unique asset. Once the asset, regardless of its type, is tokenized, it cannot be modified.

Originally published at https://www.axioscreditbank.com

[wurmeatworld]

omg yes! Ive already seen a bunch of these and they are super amazing (2, 5, 7, 9)

For anyone looking to get into more video essays, here's some more I reccommend!

A Full GamerGate Retrospective | DEEP DIVE by Savy Writes Books - A deep dive chronicling every detail of GamerGate, from the events leading up to it to its impact that lasts to this day.

Anti-Whiteness Is Good, Actually by Philosynoir - An essay explaining Whiteness as a construct designed to oppress people of color.

Hogwarts Legacy, JK Rowling, and Trans Advocacy by Ro Ramdin - A look at the ethics of buying Rowling's merchandise given her rampant transphobia.

Do You Remember Marble Blast? A "Series" Retrospective by Patricia Taxxon - An review of the mechanics and design of Marble Blast and its biggest mods.

Debunking Matt Walsh's "What is a Woman?" by Jessie Gender - A thourough rebuttal to transphobic rhetoric that explores some of the deeper connections it has to fascism and racism.

The Evolution of Vampires in Pop Culture by Shanspeare - A history of the vampire and how the trope has evolved over time in pop culture.

The Romanticization of Problematic Content by Mia Cole - An examination of how creators can still thrive after being called out online.

Billions of Dead Genders: a MOGAI retrospective by Lily Alexandre - An essay examining MOGAI and why so many genders that have been coined have faded away into obscurity.

The Path - Psychological Horror in the Woods by Izzzyzzz - An analysis of a niche psychological horror game about girls in the woods.

The Lies of the Satanic Temple by Dead Domain - An exposé of the fascism and corruption of the founders and leaders of The Satanic Temple, and their attempts to cover it up.

The Neurosis of Cat Valentine by CJ the X - An analysis of the character traits and development if Ariana Grande's character in the Disney Channel show "Victorious".

How Fat Went Black by Foreign Man in a Foreign Land - A history of public perception of fat, and how racism turned it on its head.

Is it Okay to have Genitalia Preferences? by Kat Blaque - A nuanced take on genital preferences by a trans woman.

How "Anti Vaping" Ads Manupulate You by Maggie Mae Fish - A comparison of anti vaping ads to the war on drugs, and what that could mean.

Line Goes Up - The Problem With NFTs - by Folding Ideas - An in-depth look at cryptocurrency, NFTs, and Web 3.0, and their unsustainability.

ROBLOX_OOF.mp3 by Hbomberguy - If you havent watched this yet what are you doing. A deep dive into the true origins of the Roblox "oof" sound that descends into chaos once certain facts about a certain man are uncovered.

some recent very good video essays <3

James Baldwin and the Annihilation of Gender by Anansi's Library - stunning essay about gender, sexuality, and Blackness in the works of James Baldwin, and Moonlight (2016).

astronomy has a colonialism problem by Dr. Fatima - Libyan-American and former physicist Dr Fatima discusses the links between colonialism, scientific academia, and the Palestinian liberation movement.

Saltburn: The Tumblr-ification of Cinema by Broey Deschanel - fun essay on how Saltburn is a cheap rip-off of The Untalented Mr Ripley and refuses to admit it, and how such pastiche is a growing problem.

How Shirley Jackson exposed the horror of home life by Books n Cats

This Video Isn't Just About Taylor Swift. It's About You. by Alexander Avilla - a juggernaut of an essay about how so much of Taylor Swift's success is just about the weaponisation of whiteness in marketing.

Time Travelling While Black by Aishyo - comparative essay about media that portrays Black characters who time travel.

Why We Can’t Build Better Cities by Philosophy Tube - Abigail Thorn investigates the ideological links between gentrification and the 15-minute-city conspiracy theory.

Why Sci-fi Can't Fix Its White Savior Problem by Princess Weekes - an essay about how white supremacy and white feminism is baked into science fiction.

Eminem and the White Rapper Problem by F.D Signifier - a retrospective on Eminem's impact on rap, for better and worse.

Why YouTubers Hold Microphones Now by Tom Nicholas - a fascinating piece about how the slow corporatisation of YouTibe has impacted content creators' aesthetics over time, and how this is also a wider trend on the internet.

[crypto-currency-support-center]

How to recover lost bitcoin? Contact Us - 1888-230-9455

While Bitcoin spent the last decade soaring and making millionaires out of many people, other owners of the world’s largest cryptocurrency have missed out. Why? One major reason: they’ve lost access to their account. In fact, more than $100 billion in Bitcoin is estimated to be lost – but some is recoverable, says at least one firm.

A 2017 report from Chainalysis, a forensics company, estimated that between 2.78 million and 3.79 million bitcoins have been lost. That’s out of a total of nearly 19 million circulating today, and a maximum supply of 21 million tokens when Bitcoin is fully mined. At the high end, that could be about 20 percent of today’s supply that is gone forever. Or is it?

Traders who have lost access to their Bitcoin or other digital currencies and assets may have the ability to recover them, at least with the help of one high-tech firm.

Bitcoins may be recoverable

Bitcoin’s vaunted security cuts both ways, preventing the bad guys from getting your stash but also – and often – you, too!

One of the most highly touted aspects of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is their security. Not only are they nearly impossible to counterfeit, but transactions are almost irrevocable. Once someone has your bitcoins, they own them for keeps. It’s a similar situation if you forget your password, it gets tossed out as part of a move or you throw away a hard drive holding the coins.

But Chris and Charlie Brooks, father-and-son founders of CryptoAssetRecovery.com, have been recovering Bitcoin and other digital assets since 2017 for people who have lost their passwords, despite the high security.

“We estimate that about 2.5 percent of that approximately 20 percent of lost coins could still be recovered,” says Chris Brooks. The figure amounts to as much as $4 billion in recoverable assets with Bitcoin trading near $44,000, he says.

Of course, not all digital assets are recoverable. Corrupted hard drives or those that were thrown away are likely gone for good. But Crypto Asset Recovery says it has a decent chance of getting your lost loot back if you had encrypted private keys but forgot your password or if you had a failed hard drive with private keys.

However, even if you have a wallet and they are able to pry it open, you may not have any coins in it at all. Former Bitcoin owners who dabbled in the cryptocurrency years ago may simply be hoping that they had long-lost treasure left on that old hard drive but weren’t certain and decided to have a look just in case.

“About half the wallets we crack are empty,” according to Chris and Charlie.

How your trapped crypto can be retrieved from a locked digital wallet

All kinds of digital assets could be trapped on a hard drive somewhere – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin or any number of popular cryptocurrencies. But also increasingly trapped are NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which might be digital art, a collectible, music or something else. These are all potentially recoverable.

The typical success story at Crypto Asset Recovery involves “an early Bitcoin adopter with a Blockchain crypto wallet,” says Charlie Brooks. These wallets are more than half of what they see. An early enthusiast may have purchased a few coins and then forgotten about them. But now with a single bitcoin trading for big money, even just a few coins could be a nice haul.

Once they’ve been contacted, Crypto Asset Recovery consults with customers, asks their best guesses for passwords and gets to work. Even if you only know part of your password or have a general idea of what it might be, the odds of accessing your lost crypto assets go up significantly.

From there the team tries to “brute force” your account, trying all kinds of potential passwords based on your suggestions.

“We might run tens of millions to hundreds of billions of password variations before we get it, or we decide that it’s not worth putting more computational resources into it,” says Chris Brooks.

Watch out for scammers advertising asset recovery services

Given the sensitive nature of the work, you may have to trust an asset recovery firm with potential passwords to your crypto account, which you may also be using elsewhere.

The promise of getting access to your lost bitcoins may entice even the most cynical owner to let down their guard around those who promise to help them retrieve their money. That’s easy to do if you may have hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, locked in a digital wallet somewhere.

But officials caution consumers to carefully verify any asset recovery firm they hire. Many supposed firms are simply scammers who access your account and then run off with the proceeds, if they can even access your account. They may ask for a fee upfront to do the work, with the promise that you’ll eventually get your cryptocurrency and then run off with that cash.

The scams are highly sophisticated, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Scammers may even issue press releases and fake testimonials that seem to vouch for their asset recovery services.

Officials point to several red flags that consumers should pay attention to:

•             You’re charged a fee before any services are provided.

•             The physical address for the firm is not provided or it’s located outside the U.S.

•             The firm does not have a phone number and you’re asked to communicate through chat apps.

•             The firm asks for your bank account details so that the recovered money can be deposited there.

Those are some of the most important signs, though the CFTC offers other warning signs and tips to stay safe.

3 common ways crypto traders lose access to their coins

Cryptocurrency has grown immensely popular over the last few years, and it’s a trendy trading vehicle for many young people who are new to investing. A recent Agnacy survey revealed that nearly half of millennial Americans were at least somewhat comfortable with owning cryptocurrencies. But regardless of age, crypto traders may be unfamiliar with the different ways these digital assets can be held, meaning they could lock themselves out of their account.

Cryptocurrency owners can lose access to their assets in a variety of ways, and here are some of the biggest.

1. Not fully understanding how custody works

Unlike traditional assets such as stocks or bonds that are always held for you at a brokerage, cryptocurrency can be held directly by owners using a cryptocurrency wallet or a trading firm may hold them on your behalf. But this difference is crucial to recovering your assets.

If a firm has custody of digital assets for you, then you can work through its system to recover access to your assets. So it’s like a traditional investment firm in this way. You can verify your identity and the company will reset your password, and you’re ready to roll again.

But if you take custody of your digital assets, you won’t have that luxury. Unfortunately, many of those who are new to cryptocurrency don’t understand when they’ve taken custody of their assets and the responsibilities that entails. To access your self-custodied assets you’ll need your seed phrase, a collection of 12 to 24 words generated by your crypto wallet.

Because of the potential dangers of holding assets yourself, Chris and Charlie Brooks strongly recommend that those new to cryptocurrency sign up with a custodial wallet. With a custodial wallet, you could contact your trading firm and relatively easily access your cryptocurrency.

“Understand what is required to manage a Bitcoin wallet before diving in,” says Charlie.

2. Losing your seed phrase

People misunderstand the risks with crypto, says Charlie. “The much more likely risk for most people is that they lose their seed phrase – not that it’s stolen from a hacker, though that happens, of course.”

“The largest misconception that gets people into trouble is not understanding that the seed phrase is a representation of your private key,” says Chris Brooks. “If you lose that, you’re in trouble.” Many people don’t realize that the seed phrase is that important, he says.

The seed phrase unlocks your wallet as well as all your crypto in the wallet. So it’s vital that you maintain access to this seed phrase. “It’s not like a bank account with a password that they can just reset,” says Chris.

Moving is a really common time for someone to lose their seed phrases, they say, but there’s a simple solution.

“Buy a $30 safe from Amazon and store your seed phrases in there,” says Charlie. “You need a place to keep them so that no one will think ‘Hey, I need to throw this away.’”

3. Self-sabotage

“One of the biggest hurdles we face is that clients self-sabotage,” says Chris.

Self-sabotage occurs when people try to fix the issues themselves and only succeed in making things worse.

“About 30 to 40 percent of the folks that we can work with have hard drive issues from an old laptop,” says Chris. “They reformatted it or gave it away, for example.”

But the solution here is relatively simple: “Stop touching stuff – don’t reformat or reinstall a wallet,” says Chris. Resist the urge to try to fix something, because you will likely end up making it worse.

Bottom line

While it appears that a substantial portion of Bitcoin is lost to the sands of time, your crypto stash may not be a casualty. So it may be worth your time to see if you can recover your lost assets. And it’s certainly always worthwhile to understand what you need to do to correctly manage your account so that you don’t run into trouble in the future.

[brufinance]

{Blockchain watch: Brú.Finance} 

 Bridging the gap between real & crypto world via tokenised asset backed lending  

This bank-less lending platform is a CeFi-DeFi bridge for lending against Real-World Assets (RWA) and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) that enables its users to leverage the US$4 trillion worth of RWAs on its decentralised finance (DeFi), framework.

Blockchain technology has given birth to a secure and democratic alternative to existing traditional systems, which has further led to the development of web3 that includes various verticals like DeFi, decentralised applications (dApps), asset tokenisation, NFTs, etc. These new features have facilitated blockchain in going mainstream but have been ailed with a few shortcomings.

Read more: {Blockchain watch: IoTeX} An ‘Internet of Trusted Things’

Brú.Finance, aims to improve upon these shortcomings, and in the process, assist the unbanked, small-scale owners and borrowers.

The Tech Panda spoke to Ashish Anand, Founder and CEO of Brú.Finance about how they are bridging the gap between the real and the crypto world through tokenised asset backed lending.

Ashish Anand

We focus on assisting the unbanked, small-scale owners and borrowers by linking a spate of RWAs such as agricultural commodities, real estate, precious metals, receivables, etc. to the DeFi sector through the mechanism of RWA-backed NFTs and providing security and stability to the user

“The RWA valuation is almost US$250 trillion, whereas the DeFi market value is hovering around just US$100 billion. The glaring gap between the RWA market and the digital assets market is what we aim to bridge,” he says.

Brú.Finance is a DeFi lending protocol that enables small-scale, unbanked and underbanked users to borrow or lend against RWAs.

“So far, the DeFi space has largely been driven by speculative crypto assets. At Brú.Finance, we focus on assisting the unbanked, small-scale owners and borrowers by linking a spate of RWAs such as agricultural commodities, real estate, precious metals, receivables, etc. to the DeFi sector through the mechanism of RWA-backed NFTs and providing security and stability to the user,” he explains.

How Linking RWAs to the DeFi Sector Benefits Consumers

RWAs are credible, traceable, and tangible assets that people have experience dealing into, investing into, or borrowing against since ages. The current DeFi transactions involve highly over-collateralised crypto assets that are subject to rapid market volatility and variable interest rates.

Through our underlying blockchain technology, the process is decentralised without the need for tedious paperwork or intermediaries and thus open and accessible to all

Anand explains that Brú.Finance has introduced a bridge between the real and the crypto world through tokenised asset backed lending that allows users to borrow or lend against RWAs without being exposed to the volatility of crypto.

“Through our underlying blockchain technology, the process is decentralised without the need for tedious paperwork or intermediaries and thus open and accessible to all. Asset tokenisation further entails secure, immutable, and automated transactions that can prevent the entry of fraudulent and corrupt practices,” he explains.

What They Do

The platform is a DeFi lending protocol that allows users to lend and borrow against existing RWAs through on-chain RWA NFTs representing multiple asset classes such as agricultural commodities, real estate, precious metals, receivables, etc.

They are able to achieve this level of accessibility through their blockchain FinTech arm, Whrrl, that tokenises the commodities stored in warehouses, thereby creating a person-less and paperless system of real-time lending.

We enable a secure, authentic, and stable DeFi lending and borrowing protocol against commodity-backed NFTs that are already a part of our tokenisation platform and hence, are authentic and verifiable

“Through Brú.Finance, we enable a secure, authentic, and stable DeFi lending and borrowing protocol against commodity-backed NFTs that are already a part of our tokenisation platform and hence, are authentic and verifiable,” says Anand.

“Brú.Finance also uses credible third party market data and a combination of centralised and decentralised oracles to value and assay the quantity and quality of the asset backed NFTs,” he adds.

What is Whrrl?

Whrrl, Brú’s blockchain FinTech arm is a well-organised and successful on-chain lending platform that stands at the platform’s backend. A blockchain FinTech lending platform for commodity finance, Whrrl allows Indian farmers to put their harvest in the custody of a warehouse and borrow money against this warehoused crop.

Whrrl was established with the aim of solving the pertinent problems of commodity finance as well as providing an inclusive and safe financial platform for small and medium-scale farmers

This innovative product helps farmers avoid distress sale of their crop to middlemen, helps them tide over temporarily low prices just after harvest, provides them liquidity, and then helps them get a much higher price, thereby helping avoid socio-economic problems like exploitation, exorbitantly high-interest cost lending from money lenders, resulting in debt trap and on occasion farmers’ suicide menace.

“At Brú we are leveraging these on-chain tokenisation and lending capabilities to use DeFi as a change agent connecting real world economic activity to DeFi. Our blockchain FinTech backend creates a direct funnel between DeFi lending capital and retail consumers without the need for intermediary platforms or structures like securitisation that have been proven to be harmful to financial sector earlier,” says Anand.

Inspiration & Origin

Anand recalls that way back in 2018, much before the term DeFi itself was coined, the founders of Brú.Finance realised the need of a borrowing mechanism against tokenised RWAs.

This led to the creation of Whrrl, their blockchain warehouse receipt financing platform that tokenises commodities deposited in warehouses and allows farmers, traders, etc. to lend or borrow against these deposits.

Read more: {Blockchain watch: Biconomy} Reducing friction between blockchain-based apps and end-users

“Whrrl was established with the aim of solving the pertinent problems of commodity finance as well as providing an inclusive and safe financial platform for small and medium-scale farmers,” Anand says.

“Brú is an extension of the same blockchain platform but with the objective of using a bank-less DeFi protocol as global pool of capital serving the unbanked and underbanked in emerging markets,” he adds.

The Brú.Finance USP

Brú.Finance recognises a few competitors in the DeFi market such as Centrifuge and NAOS Finance but Anand insists that Brú excels with its real world traction, its back-to-back integration between DeFi and real world through a direct lending blockchain fintech arm.

“Lacking end-to-end tokenisation and lending platforms, our competitors are just intermediaries between DeFi lending protocols like Maker DAO and real-world entities. This is the very antithesis of decentralisation and its promise to remove intermediaries,” says Anand.

The challenges of commodity financing in India were recognised by us early on, and we have leveraged blockchain technology to solve those problems, both for the borrowers as well as the lenders

The platform’s offerings include assets that are already a part of the traditional financial system. Their blockchain FinTech arm is fully equipped to leverage these and connect them to the DeFi sector.

“The challenges of commodity financing in India were recognised by us early on, and we have leveraged blockchain technology to solve those problems, both for the borrowers as well as the lenders,” he adds.

Brú.Finance also provides a DeFi mechanism that is stable, depends on real-world assets rather than digital assets predominantly existing in the crypto world.

[phancanedoo013]

I am considering drawing stuff for you

I have been missing both a sense of purpose AND general motivation for the longest time. I've often considered making trashy animations in 3D or easy storyboard animations or other creative stuff, but all i end up doing is dreaming away.

I seek to make myself useful in some way, so i've decided to open "soft commissions", as in, i won't take them seriously, won't expect payment or even have a deadline. I think the expectations of another, no matter how high or low, are what i could need.

So here is a list of the necessary information for you to consider:

Art styles i could try: anything that isn't realism because ffff reality!

Stuff i'd most likely love to draw: VTubers, characters, action scenes, horror scenes, creatively awesome ideas, concept art (of less detail(for now?)) corrupt entities of all kind getting annihilated >=)

Stuff i'd be willing to try: scenery/background, gore & death, memes & screenshot redraws, cartoon or caricature, decent people and entities etc.

Stuff i'd be less fine with drawing but could try: high detail, nonsensical stuff, romance, mecha, focus on anatomy, highly controversal, highly political etc.

NO-GO: sexual, corrupt acts unpunished, tracing, NFT-related (unless to make fun of them), products of disgust (e.g. excrements), fetish art etc. >=(

If you have further questions, ask me anytime =)

If you ask me to draw for you, please consider that i'm just starting out, and i don't take kindly to negativity in comments (I'm already paranoid af and done with non-people's bs). Have a good day, pure people!

[piosplayhouse]

Ah I didn't realize everyone else was also responding to these tags, so I'm very sorry for just compounding that reblogger. I'm sure it was just an honest mistake of not knowing and I'm sad some people are being bitchy in the tags about it so soon after you rbed this; I actually had to look up whether or not the pirates are canonically gay to make sure you weren't referring to them while I was writing up this response, so I am also guilty of the grand crime of unknowing, but we can frolic together in the seas of learning : ) so I hope this is merely educational to everyone and not accusatory in any way

if it helps your conscience, wangxian are indeed also canonically queer. As in they are canonically married and have a whole lot of kinky gay sex multiple times in the original book series, which is officially a danmei (Chinese bl) series haha. They're boybestfriends v

I'm guessing by queer coding you're thinking of the live action adaptation The Untamed (or maybe the animation) which is indeed, not flat out canonically queer, though that's mostly because the censorship required for a Chinese television show to come to air wholly forbids any depiction of queer relationships. Actually, mdzs was first published on the net (2015? 2016? Sorry I'm waiting for clay on my model horse to dry rn), but has since been deleted due to an increased crackdown on explicit gay content on the platform it was previously hosted on. It's a very fraught topic in-fandom between people who argue that the only-coded tv show depiction is better as it takes the "gross" explicit content out of the relationship, and people who are quick to bite back that the idea that canonically kinky gay relationships should be censored onscreen to present a false sense of "queer purity" is inherently homophobic.

As mdzs is largely the most mainstream danmei in China as well, it takes center stage in a broader discussion on the reality of how people who make queer art in oppressively homophobic societies can be used and abused by mainstream culture looking to exploit their popularity, as seen in discussions regarding the danmei author who was arrested and the recent swell of morally corrupt Untamed properties (nfts, whatever the hell they're doing now with that live 2d model) that show no signs of input from the original creator who should be the sole copyright owner of her intellectual property.

But regardless either one that wins is indeed canonical, so don't worry about that

AO3 Top Relationships Bracket- Round 4

This poll is a celebration of fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

[retrogradeyeo]

Wanna know who made me or created me??

My haters & doubters!

They created this motivational animal you’re dealing with today! ALL of them including my friends and best friends laughed at me when I told them I’d lead the world. Laughed at me when I said I was joining the Marines

Joined the Marines and FLEW past Boot Camp! Picked up Sergeant in under 3 years! After that they had nothing to say! My haters & doubters are WAITING for me to fail! BUT IT WONT HAPPEN!! BECAUSE THEY DRIVE MEEE!!!! When someone says no you won’t or no you can’t! I say thanks!

I am where I’m at right now because of my negative friends who said I couldn’t do it. Now they’re broke and living a life they hate. You’ve gotta be uncomfortable to be comfortable. I love my haters and doubters!

Just like #crypto people were saying #Shib won’t go anywheres??? NOW LOOK AT $SHIB & #SHIBARMY we’re worldwide and used everywhere’s right now! Soon we’ll be used as payments too! They said #Shib wouldn’t pass #Doge WE DID IT A COUPLE TIMES NOW!! Now I want to beat #BTC  #Shib

They said #xrp wouldn’t do or be anything… #XRP will be backed by gold and everything will utilize #XRPLedger too! You’ll see #Crypto keep doubting me because it fuels meeeee!!!!

They laughed at me when I said I’ll be a Millionaire! NOW WHOS LAUGHING!!! MEEEE!!!! And they’re all asking me for money and asking for handouts! I DID IT NOT THEM! My next big goal is to become President come 2024!! #GENO2024 👊🏼🤙🏼🌱🌹🕊️🤍

Number #1 #crypto trader and already a millionaire!!!! NOW I WILL BECOME A BILLIONAIRE!!!! AND ILL BE LAUGHING while they’re still hating on me!! I’ve been nothing but true to the game and sticking to my lane! 👊🏼🤙🏼

I’m not stopping for nobody either!

I’m a bad motherfucker and I’m just getting warmed up! 😈😈 don’t tell me I can’t because I’ll find a way to do it!! I beat my higher ups in the Marine Corps!! They laughed at me when I said I’ll be a Sergeant just like you! NOW WHOS LAUGHING!!!!! MEEEEE!!!!

They said #Shib has to many tokens! WE SPILT THAT IN HALF!! Now we’re working with just half the supply!! $SHIB WILL GO ABOVE $1 and some!! ILL MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!! Because of my haters and doubters!! KEEP DOUBTING #SHIBARMY because we’re not stopping just like #XRP too!

They said #doge wouldn’t see a .01cent until 2025 if that! WE HIT .73cents AND NOW LOOK AT US!! $doge!!! We’re accepted by big corporations and some!!! LFGGGGG!!!! #crypto!! LETSSS GOOO!!!! Lets grow!!!!

#Doge broke a penny! NOW ITS #SHIBARMY TURN!!!! It’s our turn to WINE & DINE!! The only reason why #xrp is being held down is because of the corrupted #SEC WE DONT NEED THEM TO BREAK ATHs!! FUCK THEM!! Let people judge us!! WE ARE THE FUTURE!! #crypto

They’re the fucking losers for doubting us!! #crypto!!! NOW LOOK AT US!! THE WORLD WANTS TO BE US!! They said #NFTs wouldn’t be a thing NOW LOOK!!! #NFTs are being traded worldwide!! FUCK THEMMM!!!! FUCK THOSE HATERS AND DOUBTERS!!! THEYRE LOSERS!! THEY CONTINUE TO DOUBT US!

[historyhermann]

The Indie Animation Boom Continues in 2022 [part 3]

Reprinted from Pop Culture Maniacs, my History Hermann WordPress blog on Jan. 21, 2023, and Wayback Machine. This was the ninth article I wrote for Pop Culture Maniacs. This post was originally published on January 27, 2022.

© 2022-2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Notes

[1] Of note are animated series in development like Re: Quest, The Alyssian, Don’t Touch the Props, Bloop and Friends, Gadzooks and the Cryptoid Kids, Project: Tideaway, Please Stay Tuned, Finding Alyx, Bleating Heart, Marabelli: A Scoundrel’s Tale!, Accidental Gehenna!, Hockey, Love, and Guts, The Crystal Eden, Dragon Falls, The Incredible Adventures of Detective Cat, Blackwater Creek, Defender Squad, Framed, Violet, Revamped, Destination Unknown (to be re-imagined), Broken Hearts Club, Alfred the Alien, Zeyka, The Cosmos in Your Eyes, Captain Zero, The Fantastic Warriors (tentative title), Sorein (working title), Royal Pain, Atomic Horseman, Swift Spark and the Defense Five, Space Landers, Crescent Fire, Dark Pages, Crash in the System, The Crystal Eden, and Aleph Stars. 

Additionally, Final Frontier, a sci-fi/dark satire webtoon may be turned into animation if there is enough support. While I would include Fruition of the Damned, the creator of that series, JrRMack, strongly supports NFTs, a morally corrupt cryptocurrency scheme which is harmful to the environment and the livelihood of artists. So, I cannot, in good conscience, support him or his series. The same applies to Roads to Rome, which is also funded by an NFT. Compare this to Whitman, who has said publicly that “NFTs are garbage as is, and you wont find my work involved in them,” as did the official account of Wild Card and the account of Faeduck Studios, which is producing Howdy Cloudboy.

[2] Century Park is said to include Indigenous characters. Christopher Wade noted his film, in development, The Will of Monsters. Jenn noted their indie animation studio, Sunflower Club, and their animatic pilot for The Figments. It is not known the progress of Dark Harvest, with the official account saying that the episode is 45% done, and the show’s creator calls himself an “expert procrastinator.”

The same can be said about Aisle99 which has an inactive YouTube channel, but semi-active Twitter, or CriTORA. The social media accounts for animated series like Harri’s World, Dirt: The Series, Romancing Roslyn Cherry, Phantom Hollow, Deranged, Zoolaplex, Cabiria Intermezzo, Here We Are, and Demonic Crepes (created by Bubblegum Cartoons, and has a pilot in 2019) are inactive.

While there is a listing of those working on the show Mayhem by Magpie V. Raven’s website, she is stepping back to pursue her own projects, like the Kina’s Adventure series while Sir Mayhem / Paul may continue the series after the animated film Mayhem Zombie Oblivion premieres. Raven is also an artist for Lackadaisy, Mystery Skulls, Ollie & Scoops, and more.

The pilot episode of Stars Align has been written, and it will “premiere when completed on YouTube,” with characters redrawn, people cast for roles, in a series with The Owl House and Infinity Train vibes. It is possible that Sara Eissa’s Astur’s Rebellion might be pitched somewhere again, as that animation is now under a company named Toon Cave, according to the updated website.

[4] The author of the webcomic based on the series, Jocelyn Samara DiDomenick, said that there was a number of reasons for the series ending, but said that “the very short answer…is that things just kinda weren’t working out” and called it “a bummer,” but is trying to look at the positive here.

[5] Cirque Du Monstro (CDM) is an additional series which fell apart, but for different reasons than Rain. The CDM Twitter account was deleted. The YouTube channel is empty. The creator, Krisis, seems to have scammed those who wanted to work with them, and sexually assaulted (and harassed) people, according to animators and storyboarders. For information on the latter, see Céline Heijnen’s thread beginning here, Bakakoujin’s tweet (and tweet thread), Antonia Pinnola’s Facebook post, and other tweets. Even a month before the tweets in December 2021, various animators promoted the show. According to a private tweet of Krisis‘s account, M0nsterParent, on December 8, 2021, the “CDM crew has been officially disbanded” and the animation is no longer being made. This is unfortunate because I felt that the project had some promise. Animators like Shou Tuzi (creating Tallyho!) stepped away from any affiliation with the show or the company producing it, 3M Productions, as did voice actor Mark Allen Jr.

[ooora17]

This set of NFT actually serves the Reauty app, a beauty aggregator under Blingy Tech. Reauty advocates a real, transparent, inclusive, and diverse community atmosphere, and recently released ReautyCoin and Reauty DAO, officially announcing its march into Web3. The prototype of the sick & childish NFT series is Reauty IP - Baebee, a little bee. We hope to use this set of NFTs to advocate a more childlike, real, and friendly worldview to fight against some globalized sick social phenomena

In the morbid series, we mainly aim at the social phenomenon: when global aesthetic standards are gradually unified by the Internet, many people give up their true selves, diversity is disappearing, and everyone wears a unified mask, which is against individuality. Destroying and plundering, the real individual hides under the mask—painful, twisted but numb. The vibrant plant world in Frida's works has turned into dry, thorny thorns, and the butterflies have turned into moths. The gorgeous, rich, organic world in her eyes no longer exists, as if burned by a fire The fire is exhausted, and this fire is lit by human beings with the product of industrialization: matches. Moreover, harmful cosmetic product ingredients and non-degradable commercial packaging have threatened the earth's environment and exacerbated global warming. Not only that, the advertising language that guides consumption is also corrupting and coercing our thoughts

The Tongqu series hopes to form a strong contrast with the morbid series, calling on people to use the purest and cleanest way to talk to people after seeing pretentious lies and poisoned thoughts. All things receive nourishment from the same sun, and all life in nature is equal—protect the living environment of marine, land, and sky creatures, and return their living space. Under the same sky, the LGBTQ+ group, racial issues, girls' growth, and the friendly relationship between humans and animals are all sociological issues we pay attention to - not to let everyone become a product of standardization, and to pay attention to the discriminated and oppressed groups needs, and live in harmony with the natural environment and creatures

[dvandom]

Past a certain basic grasp of the mechanical aspects, how do we advise people learn creative arts?

Read the works of other authors. Copy paintings of other artists. Play music written by other composers. Study the technique of other sculptors. Watch movies by acclaimed directors.

Students of the creative arts are traditionally encouraged to copy the style of the acknowledged greats in their field as a step in their training. Sure, the goal is to find your own style eventually, but every halfway talented professional comics artist can do a Kirby pastiche. Every wannabe composer can make something that sounds like a Beethoven symphony or a Beatles song or whatever's closest to the specifics of their training. Sculptors have historically been hired to create works that would fit in with the works of past artists. And so forth.

Generative AI is an attempt to model how this learning works in humans. Yeah, techbros have grabbed it and corrupted it, just like they do with every new technology that looks like it might be used to make a quick buck (NFTs and blockchain were horribly corrupted by the techbros, for instance). But it's not a plagiarism machine, it's a LEARNING machine.

Hey there, saw your post re: harassment around artists using gen ai and thought it was great esp with the debunking of data usage myths. Would you share your thoughts regarding concerns that models are being trained to copy specific art styles and thus pose a direct threat to the artists whose art styles are being used?

Well, there's several levels to that.

The main one is that on copyright grounds, styles are explicitly non-copyrightable. Moreover:

No one's style is unique

No one's style is unimitatable by analogue means.

The second point is important, because anyone can go on Fiverr right now and and find someone to replicate any given art style, and every competent draftsperson has to be able to do it to some degree or another. No major animation house, art studio, or comic company has ever hired someone because they couldn't find someone else that could imitate the surface-level aspects of their style.

The first point is just a matter of basic reality. Ex-nihlo creativity either doesn't exist or is so rare as to be a once-in-an-epoch thing. Everyone builds on the influences that they learn from, and if you think someone has a unique style what they really have is a different media diet than you.

For example, Don Bluth. Born 1937, aged 15 in 1952.

Same year Time released this this picture of Burlesque Performer Dale Strong.

Someone made an impression.

Marilyn Monroe was also a national sex symbol when Bluth was a teen, putting some context to most of his other ladies, but especially Goldie Pheasant (or maybe she's more Jayne Mansfield, hard to tell through the bird-ness). His art style has obvious roots with Tex Avery and I would guess he read Mad Magazine a lot as a kid.

And Not to hang the guy out to dry alone, I was a teenager in the 1990s, and most of my sexy fictional ladies are 9/10 some combination of Dana Scully, Peg Bundy, and Rhonda Shear.

The point being that style isn't something you create intentionally so much as an accumulation of influences, drawn from the commons. Attempting to claim ownership of such a thing is by itself an act of theft in my view, and allowing them to be protected under the law would mean a judge being shown exactly how many pieces of prior art the Walt Disney Corporation owns that your work superficially resembles. Why, they'll even run it through a style recognizing AI to make sure they catch them all.

But let's talk about style matching.

It just takes one image now, and doesn't require training.

Which I'm sure sounds frightening, but this has been the situation since February for Midjourney, and it was available in the Stable Diffusion ecosystem long before that. If the threat were as pronounced as feared, we'd have seen the impact by now. And we haven't, and we're unlikely to, for several reasons, several of them listed above.

The largest is that style isn't even close to the be all/end all of what an artist brings to a given project. And the kinds of execs who are making a 'replace 'em with a robot' kinda decision aren't the kinds of people who care about art style beyond how much it looks like the most recent successful thing. And nobody's ever needed a robot to ride coattails.

But the next largest part is that AI style imitations aren't really accurate because the robot doesn't see style in the same way we do. It's all just math to the robot, and it prioritizes what it notices, not what we do.

I'll demonstrate.

Jack Kirby will be my example, for several reasons.

He has a bold and identifiable style, he's arguably the most famous artist in western comics history, and he has many analogue imitators and homagers.

Using Midjourney and prompting "an illustration of dana scully by jack kirby, 1968, in the style of 1960s marvel comics --ar 3:4 --s 15"

Using the base model, on the first roll we get three complete style mismatches and one that's kinda close, though I'd say that's way more Sal Buscema or John Byrne.

Kirby's women had a certain, difficult to describe oddness about their faces that the robot doesn't seem to grok, and it doesn't touch on the kinds of wild patterns and bold black/white swatches that make Jack's work feel 'jack'.

Tom Scioli's take on Kirby is a sort of lovingly flanderized parody, but it captures the spirit of Jack's art much more directly even if a lot of individual details aren't period-accurate. He draws Kirby the way you remember Kirby from your childhood, but I don't question whether the page above is trying to be a Jack Kirby homage or one to Sal Buscema.

But Midjourney has style reference, so we can inject the Kirby right in. Using the picture of Sersei dancing from above with the same prompt, we get:

Well, the work is more convincingly period, but again, we're not terribly close to being on-point. In fact, they're not very consistent between each other. Top left is any 80s marvel fill-in artist. Top right is maybe Kirby-esq. Bottom Left is flat out Jim Lee, bottom right is very Byrne-y.

Using three reference images to give the best shot, I'm also moving to using images of a similar color style, and all with a woman as the central focus. I have included the infamous Crystal pin-up shot because as I said, Kirby women have a certain oddness to them (fondly).

Results (MJ 6.1 on the left, Niji 6 on the right):

It all says 60s-70s Marvel, but I don't think Kirby would be the first guess for any of them. Maaaaaaybe the lower-left Dana in image #2 if you squint.

And that's Jack Kirby. Massively popular and prolific with a career spanning decades. If anyone in the comics space should be impersonatable by this thing, its him.

I'm sure you could train a LORA to get closer, and sure, the tech is only going to get better from here, but by the nature of how the system works no generation pulls just from what is referenced. Every generation is both blended with other concepts and emphasizes only what the machine catalogs as relevant, not what we might.

There's not much to stop someone from imitating your style with a machine, but there was nothing stopping them from doing the same with an underpaid freelancer. The results are likely to miss the mark regardless.

If the client wants you, they'll try and get you. If they just want something kinda like you, they've always had an avenue to that.

Fortunately, you're more than your style, and whatever anyone can do with the machine, you can do better because you've got access to both.