#or justifies selling it

[beardedhandstoadshark]

AI art is bad:

It's trained with millions of artist's drawings without their consent and on top of that it's used for profit. There’s even AI art NFTs 🤮

They‘re the same people. Ai and nft bros, that is. Always have been. Same pathetic attempts at justifying themselves, too. And general gleefullness in exploiting people who actually do something with their lives. (Drawslaves, isn’t that a cute word?)

No to mention the whole thing getting funded by giant corporations (Those oh-so-holy open source generators aren’t as "community“-driven as they pretend to be =) )

Gonna be fun when they realize they won’t be able to sell these images anymore either because they overflowed the market like they did nfts. The jobs are still irreversibly fucked, but at least there’s that I guess.

[gal-o-guacamole]

●Radiant is Gabriel●

Feb.2024 (stained and artistic glass, copper, lead, gold and silver paint)

Process pics + vid ↷

[teaboot]

Hey! Bamboo toilet paper person here. Your response was very thoughtful-- I want to apologize for placing the onus of climate issues on individual action, haha. I work at a zoo that bills itself as being very heavy on conservation messaging, but as a non-partisan organization we're obviously not allowed to talk about the evils of capitalism. This means that in our programming, we MUST place the responsibility of stopping climate change on individual guests, encouraging them to make more environmentally conscientious decisions like buying reef safe sunscreen or reducing carbon emissions by driving less. The most "political" we're allowed to get is telling people to stay educated and vote in favor of laws that will have a positive impact on the environment. I think I've been drinking the Zoolaid a little TOO much recently, because you're totally right-- the vast, VAST majority of damage to the environment is caused by major corporations, not random people working around their own unique needs. It was also low key a little ableist of me to take issue with that ngl.

Obviously no obligation to respond to this publicly (though it's fine if you choose to do so), but I did want to thank you for your response and mention that it did get through the nonprofit mission-based-organization propaganda living rent free in my head haha. Cheers!

Hey, you work at a zoo? That is SO cool, aadsdggjjg@!!!

And hey, no worries, you totally had a good point about endless waste and trying to counter it where possible- Just from personal experience involved in the barest edge of the fashion industry, I really, really, REALLY hate the idea that, like... people can't access simple shit like plastic straws, even if they're the best, most practical, least-harmful option for them.... because a 12 year old made up some random number for a school project about plastic waste

Where, as a zoo person, I imagine you're already aware that the average sea turtle is WILDLY more likely to die from abandoned plastic fishing nets or ocean-dump grocery bags than accidentally get a straw inside it

So here we are, using paper straws!- which may be an improvement, or may not, I don't have that data, and construction emissions are their own thing- BUT WE STILL HAVE OCEANS FULL OF ABANDONED NETS

WHICH ARE OBJECTIVELY WORSE, but MUCH harder to get rid of, and as the average person doesn't USE fishing nets, it'd much harder to market as a "You, not me" sort of issue.

Cleaning up fishing nets isn't trendy. It isn't sexy. You can't troubleshoot a cute little trendy solution for it that you can market to upwardly-mobile tweens.

But a reusable water bottle? A cute canvas tote? A metal straw? That's a solution you can buy and feel good about.

Never mind that you need to use a single cotton reusable bag somewhere like a million times before the cost of its construction counterbalances the cost of a single grocery bag every time you shop- which, hey, some of us were reusing as trash liners for their wastebaskets, or bundle bags for donating clothes, or lining for our leaky winter boots!

If a better option is available, I'll take it. But as ZERO HARM is next to impossible at this time, I personally am gonna aim for MINIMAL HARM as long as I can.

...sorry, I didn't mean to ramble off again.

But hey, if your nonprofit is doing good things, feel free to shoot me a link! I can post it on my blog :D

(Link to original post for context lol)

[wistfulpoltergeist]

Nothing unusual. Decided to play Divinity 2 with my sis. Created my characters there, found a home for them, decorated it, imagined a story and then went back to Sims 4 to recreate my Sims-Divinity Characters back in Sims :D

CC credit: Me :D, @simstrouble, Nelfeah, @giuliettasims, @chocobunsims, @golyhawhaw, @joliebean, @uxji, @thisisthem, @goppolsme, @johnnysimmer, @introsims, @pralinesims

[hellenhighwater]

Have you taken any pottery classes or were you entirely self taught? I REALLY want to get into it but classes are quite expensive

I took some sculpting in undergrad, but it was in the context of casting and mold-making, not ceramics. So I'm fairly comfortable with clay as a medium but not so much with clay as an end product--not being able to do armatures and having to think about firing is weird. (If I had the opportunity to do bronze casting again, though, I would, no hesitation.) That puts me in the minority of my current pottery peers, who are largely self-taught or only learned in our studio.

I do pottery now at a co-op studio space, and technically that means that I'm taking classes there--but the classes are more like guided lab time? There's not really assignments or anything, and there's only a couple other people who sculpt, none of whom are in my class. Mostly the class just means that the person in charge demonstrates a technique or two once a week and then lets us do our thing.

Personally I think that shared studio space is the absolute best way to go. You spend less in startup costs (kilns are EXPENSIVE, running kilns is expensive, glaze is expensive) and it plugs you directly in to a group of fellow artists who can help and support you at whatever skill level you're at. Yes, classes are expensive--my class is $250 per season. But for me that includes lab space, 50 lbs of clay per season, almost all of the glaze I use, kiln time, and other people doing all the maintenance and kiln loading/unloading etc. Very much money well spent.

Artist-run shared spaces are often not turning a profit on anything with studio fees, just covering operations costs, so while it's pricey, it generally is just...what it costs to do that hobby. And it is sooooo much easier to be motivated when you're going to what is, basically, Grown-Up Art Club.

But if costs are prohibitive for you to do pottery via classes, and you want to learn to sculpt, then get some polymer clay and see what you can do. It's a different game than actual clay, but form is form, and the medium is secondary to figuring out how to translate an idea into reality.

Polymer clay is relatively affordable and doesn't require nearly the infrastructure of ceramics. If you can't spend the money on classes or a shared studio, then polymer clay is a great way to develop technique and an eye so that when you're in a position to spend the money, you already have the skills to make it worth what you're spending.

[hilacopter]

leftists when there are bigots in their country: obviously not everyone here is a bigot because we're human beings with differing opinions and political views, people who generalize all of us as bigots are being xenophobic.

leftists when there are bigots in the country they don't like: SEE THIS IS PROOF THEY'RE ALL EVIL ULTRA-RIGHT WINGERS AND WE ARE JUSTIFIED IN WANTING THEM DEAD WE MUST CLEANSE THE WORLD OF EVIL

[randomnameless]

Why do the FEH devs insist on ignoring Nabatean lore so much?

I recently had a surprisingly cordial discussion on redshit with someone about the "nabateans = colonisers" take, and one of the main points raised was that the game was purposedly foggy around Nabateans/Sothis/their story because it would obviously favor a certain narrative (and thus make another narrative look, uh, not that marketable anymore).

To be honest, we still ended up with a product that had a lead go "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and yet that lead is still marketable enough to have raunchy cipher cards and 5 FEH alts, so I actually wonder if, while pissing on that lore had that purpose, it was ultimately pointless since Supreme Leader can still sell goodies despite her incarnation in FE16.

And not only Supreme Leader - but the entirety of WC where we basically have 70% of the cast crying/complaining about their "mixed blood" or lack of and basically adding their 10 cents to the "this race and its blood is the reason why the world sucks".

I mean, can you imagine Sylvain selling any goodies and alts if Flayn replied to his "wah wah people only are kind to me and want to fuck me because I have Nabatean blood :(" by some uncharacteristic "good for you, I have to hide my ears, had to dye my hair, have to lie about my family because if the truth is found out about my identity, I will be hunted and vivisected like an animal and harvested for parts by people who call my kin abominations - just like what happens in the game where the same people who call my kin "abominations" ally with a classmate who calls me a creature and pretends I am incapable of human feelings based on my race".

FE Fodlan's main selling point is its cast of students, for various reasons, but even if I tried to kid myself, Nopes and FEH made it clears : students are the main selling point.

If you spare more time and attention to the Nabatean plot/lore, the students either grow from "likeable" to "despicable" or worse, you won't gaf about them because yeah sure, Hilda might be upset because people expect things from her due to her crust, but it would feel like a "peanut" compared to Seteth's irrational (granted, it's not so irrational since GW exists) fear that Flayn's newest friends would dissect her if they learnt she was a Nabatean, and being conflicted by finally letting her have human friends and form bonds she crave, or protect her due to the trauma from the genocide of their species.

Don't get me wrong, I love peanuts, I mean, not everyone can have a tragik of loaded backstory!

And yet, given how this verse's DNA is "can you fight against the red emperor who uwus about you", they had to add copious amounts of Earl Grey to their games so there's no clear-cut factions :

The "Your alien blood and its influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command" vs "I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

is turned to :

"Your alien blood Crests and its your church's influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command"

"I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

Sprinkle with the cast's hammering here and there that the "reforms" might be needed - but never develop on what they are - and add a few baseless and groundless takes as a toping (basically everything Claude says about tolerance and the general "isolationism/foreign policy" stuff) and you get FE Fodlan where the Red Emperor's war isn't seen as the catastrophe it is in the other entries from the series!

Now, for FEH...

FWIW, the F!F!Billy's trailer had them try to explain that Sothis was a bit pissed about her slaughtered/massacred children when Nopes never gave any reason about why she was pissed - maybe on Billy's behalf bcs Jerry's dead, but come on, she would indeed deserve the medal of the worst parent in the franchise if that was the case, since Billy can murder her daughter without Sothis taking over ! - but given that they cannot write/go against the source game those characters are from.

They tried a bit, with B!Supreme Leader and Hegemongard's FB, but then it stopped (because she had no "new unit" released since then lol) and I can understand why : Hegemongard came out before the Supreme Emblem, and Hegemongard hates dragons who are seen/perceived as gods by some of their human followers. Come FE17, and now Supreme Emblem accepts Alear because they are "one of the good ones". We can come up with HCs and details and talk about what are emblems or if Hegemongard's views were only hers at the end of AM all day long... But imo, Doylist wise, it still feels it's a retcon because the devs from the main games tried to scrap and remove the most "controversial" traits she had.

For the other characters... Well, you see what Marianne is in FEH (but even in her base games), she's one of the few characters who reacts - in a way - to the partial history about relics and demonic beasts and all... only to give sad uwus to Maurice.

FE16 (and Nopes) refused to have any "student" character react to the Nabatean lore/reveal, about what are relics and all. There are no lines, Claude shared some knowledge in the explore section of VW's last chapter, but we don't have anyone muse or think or even talk about what are relics, what are crests, and what kind of fuckery their ancestors or the ancient humans of Fodlan did.

With that in mind, FEH can't do much : either they write Marianne in a retcon-y way like what happened for Hegemongard (and they're not afraid to piss on characterisation, look at Lyon!), or they flanderise her "character" and develop her around 3 lines she had in the game in her paralogue, and continue to give sad uwus about Momo when he was at best a guy who slaughtered and murdered so much that he abused the Nabatean turned into a relic to the point where he turned in a demonic beast even if he had a matching crest, or at worst, had been part of Nemesis's piñata party in Zanado and was something of a genocider.

Tldr :

Why FE Fodlan never gaf about Nabateans : earl grey + the marketable cast has to stay marketable and you can't sell peanuts at the same price you'd sell swordfish

Why FEH dgaf about Nabatean lore : they can't afford to retcon characters + they have to sell peanut alts with the same seasoning they had in their base game.

For what it's worth though, I think FEH is more daring than the base game(s) given how they gave more lines and screentime to Rhea - through her different alts - than GW. And they even designed her Halloween!alt's lines to piss on some of Claude's assertions, while the various FB involving members of the church also - indirectly - reply to some accusations thrown their way in FE16 when, FE16, never gave them an opportunity or lines to explain that those takes were full of dung.

*"but random, maybe she doesn't know that the crests she often decries is "dragon blood"!"

It's highly debatable, especially given what she and Hubert throw to Billy in CF - but even if she doesn't, Doylist wise we still have a character who, knowingly or not, says "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and who is never called out on her prejudice. That's more of an issue regarding the general writing though, she has to be a red emperor and took pages from Ashnard's book, and yet, the player must still feel bad and want to romance her, so her mindest/goal cannot be looked at too closely, because, I guess, even the devs thought it would be difficult to romance her (thus sell goodies!) if more light was shed on the "blood from this race corrupts our people" schtick -> which in turn would also make characters whose backstory and gimmick rely on "crying about crests" be way less likeable, thus marketable and able to sell goodies.

[gece-misin-nesin]

lowkey think that if jorge really wanted to sell us on the "odysseus is a monster thing" he should have had odysseus continue to stab poseidon even after he begged. bc like. Looking at odysseus now? he's less a monster and more like a morally grey protagonist. All of his questionable actions have pretty good explanations behind them. if you want to tell me he's a MONSTER, you need him to do something really fucking vile. without good justification. killing the baby? (also. he fought in a war. i reckon plenty of babies died indirectly as a result of his actions somehow) zeus literally told him he and his family would die otherwise. blinding the cyclops? pretty self-explanatory. sacrificing the men to scylla? bad, but has an understandable reason behind it and you can theoretically justify it. choosing the crew to die? saving his own life+you could argue they are the ones at fault for eating the cows anyway. torturing poseidon? there's literally no other way poseidon would let him go at that point AND he immediately stops after he begs.

point is, if you're going to tell me a character is a monster then at least make them do something that cannot be defended. something that CANNOT be justified at all. continuing to stab poseidon after being begged would have done that. but who knows, maybe the suitors being killed will be shown as something like that? still unlikely though considering they plot to kill telemachus and rape penelope.

[anarchypumpkincowboy]

just started episode 4 and look i was already on sofia’s side, but now?? i support her in anything and everything she can do whatever she wants

[hextechmaturgy]

I'm so convinced the reason they placed so much focus on the magical bullshit this season instead of..... you know...... solving the sociopolitical conflicts and sisterly relationship we actually tuned in to see from the start, is so that when arcane 2 comes to bring us more of noxus, we can find SOME reason not to detest every demacian on sight lmao

[belzebong]

Gonna be real if my friend who i was in love with got killed and then revived in a fate worse than death and killed a bunch of people and her brother would only talk about all the food they ate to get there i would Travis the chimp him

[demisexual-eddie-diaz]

just ordered my first official max verstappen merch and so what if the second picture was convincing enough to get it

[galway-bae]

saw this candid pic on the selling sunset subreddit and had such an intense vision of jason oppenheim being run down like a frightened deer that I had to make this right away

[omg-snakes]

I have a snake question (snestion)! Are you breeding towards a specific Morph Combo that you want to be consistently producing, or are you spreading out, aiming for variety?

Ooohhh that's a good snestion and one I've been asking myself a lot lately.

I was originally looking at variety, hoping to explore multiple morphs and hit a wider customer base, but I realize now that it's better for me to be a specialist in a narrow range of morphs that genuinely interest me. That said, I am still exploring a few things. Here's where I'm focused:

How Peach interacts with Palmetto, Charcoal, and Anery

What in the world Hatshepsut's red-enhancing gene is and if it's RF or maybe even Peach this whole time

Revitalization of the Sunglow morph and maybe a revamp with inclusion of Tessera

Very Obnoxiously Pink Snake

Something something Moonstone

I have a couple of het Scaleless snakes still, and I think I'll prove them next year before I go making any firm decisions about where to go from there. I know that Scaleless is a controversial morph, but as long as they have belly scales I really don't see it as any more deleterious than Snow, which removes eye pigment and makes snakes much more sensitive to light and possibly functionally blind... But of course nobody's calling THAT "unethical..." 🤔

Also scaleless adult snakes are found occasionally in the wild so it's clearly not a fitness-reducing trait.

Aaaanyway I've been rehoming a good number of my adults and holdbacks and reconsidering what I really want out of this hobby. Currently it's not sparking much joy, if you get what I'm saying.

If the recent trends continue, I may be forced to downsize further or get out completely and just keep my favorites as pets.

[casualavocados]

this is such a solid show so far, i dont even know what to say. episodes feel long, but they're not boring. they're lingering, they last. it takes everyday emotions and everyday experiences and lets them play out; it confers importance to the small things. the story and overall plot-per-ep is simple yet genuine, and everything and every character feels so lived-in. i like the mix of fun and serious, i like the steady growth and trust between mork and day and the little buds of tension starting to bloom. i love the way the camera brings things to the forefront of the viewer's attention, the way expressions are shot and how long those shots are allowed to last on screen...you really feel the emotion coming through, and it really impresses me from both an acting and directing standpoint.....im just rambling but the jist of it is that i'm really enjoying this

[gatalentan]

Lisa Ann Walter in JERSEY (2020)