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meazalykov · 2 months

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the video

aitana bonmati x barca femeni x barca!reader

summary: on international break- a video circulates online that will cause your girlfriend, and club teammates, to be concerned

warnings: mentions of abuse, angst

on international break, you clashed with your coach over a situation.

you’ve realized that your national team coach was being overly aggressive towards some of the younger players– the 18 to 22 year old ones.

as the captain, you gave them a safe space to talk to you about it. you had the platform– as a 2020 ballon d’or winner, and 2 time champions league winner– to speak up about any situation that is bothering you.

even if that might piss off the “higher ups” of your national team.

after seeing your coach nearly scream, not yell, but scream at one of the youngsters on the team for not making a header during an international friendly.. you had enough.

you pulled your coach to the side and confronted him at halftime.

“hey, why did you scream at her over the failed set piece? its her debut?”

“don’t question me about my corrections.” he mumbled, looking away from you and waving at another staff member yards away.

“i will! you can’t scream at the players about their mistakes, it's affecting the team chemistry and they need to be nurtured into having experience– not screamed at. you can see that they’re SCARED to even come to training because of this.” you snapped.

this has happened for long enough.

little did you know, a few people in the distance were recording this interaction between your coach and you.

what shocked them was when the coach grabbed your arm, aggressively, and pulled you close to him so you’re just 3 feet from the left side of his body.

he squeezed your arm, purposely, which caused your face to squeeze as his physical assault caught you off guard.

“listen, you do NOT question me about my coaching! maybe if she scored that, she wouldn’t have been punished!” he said through clenched teeth, staring at you with darkened eyes and a vein nearly popping out of his forehead.

realizing that you wouldn’t let him do this to you, you smacked his hand off of your arm and sprinted off– completely shocked that he would do that to you.

the people who recorded the interaction sent the video to all news publications afterwards– the new york times, bbc, foxsports, tmz, 433– you name it.

at the end of the game, where you were benched after that confrontation before the start of the second half, everyone booed the coach.

everyone was confused– even you. at first, you assumed that your own country was booing you guys. that didn’t make sense– you guys won 3-2.

once you guys were in the dressing room, all of the fifa officials took your coach away to talk to him.

you had no idea that people recorded that assault that happened to you. some of your teammates noticed the red mark on your arm and the quietness of your voice– so they figured it had to do with the coach.

“y/n..” you turn around to see the young midfielder behind you with a sad smile.

the same 17 year old girl you defended after she was screamed over a missed header.

“hey! congrats on today.” you pulled her into a soft hug, rubbed her upper back before pulling away.

“thank you.” she smiled.

you couldn’t resent her for the moment between the coach and you– he is the problem not her.

when the national team got on the bus, the coach wasn’t there. the nice assistant coach (who has fallen to the main coaches abuse too) took his place.

your eyebrows knitted together as you saw a notification from your barcelona teammate and close friend– alexia.

ale

WHAT THE FUCK?

ale

are you okay?!!

y/n

i am?

y/n

what's going on!?

ale

there’s a video on the internet

alex

instagram.com/justwomensports….

when you clicked on the link, your face turned pale.

many people have recorded the moment between the coach and you from hours before.

you looked strong at first, until he grabbed your arm. the terrified look on your face was present until you smacked his arm away.

to say that the media was in an outrage– that would be an understatement.

almost every news publication has posted about it. there was no possible way that the coach wouldn’t be sacked for the amount of negative attention this has brought.

you didn’t want to imagine how aitana, your girlfriend, is reacting to the situation– as she keeps calling you over-and-over again.

y/n

tana, i’ll call you once i’m back in the hotel. i will explain.

aitana

i should kill him

aitana

are you okay mi amor?

y/n

i don’t know

y/n

i think my mind is trying to supress it, but i can’t explain how i feel

aitana

please call me asap

when you clicked off of your imessages– mapi texted you in the groupchat between ingrid, her, and you.

mapi

y/n are you active?

y/n

yes, hi!

mapi

do you want me to kill that pos?

you giggle at the message- not because you want to see him dead- but the barcelona girls have their extreme way with defending their loved ones.

ingrid

maybe you shouldn’t threaten ppl mapi

ingrid

especially not now

ingrid

y/n please tell me you’re okay

mapi

or will be okay?

y/n

i don’t know how to feel about it

y/n

it happened so fast

y/n

i think my brain isn’t trying to process it. i’m scared

ingrid

call aitana

y/n

i am once i’m back in the hotel, i’m on the bus with the team right now.

after turning your phone off and looking at your phone, your national teammates on the bus were very quiet.

as they’re scrolling on their phones– they’re understanding why the mean coach isn’t on the bus anymore.

your best friend on your national team taps your shoulder and you look over at her, seeing that she finished watching the video.

“WHAT THE FUCK?” she mumbles very quietly as she gives you a heartbroken look.

“when did this happen?” she asked.

“at halftime, remember when i had to pull him outside of the dressing room to talk to him..” you say.

your best friend frowns before pulling your head into her body for a hug.

“is this why you were benched once the game started again?” she whispers.

“i believe so.”

one thing that everyone knew– your girlfriend in spain wasn’t going to let *that* slide.

the next day-- your 2023 ballon d’or winner girlfriend scored a goal in a game against another country.. she held up two fingers on her left hand and one finger on her right, dedicating her golozo for you. since you wore the number 12 on your club and national teams.

next, an important post on instagram spoke up about abuse in the community. a post that went viral alongside your situation.

aitana was quick to repost it on her story– bringing more support for you as you struggled with that traumatic moment.

before you came back to barcelona a week later, you told the “higher-ups” of your national team that if your coach stays, you would retire from international football.

you are 24 years old, so that is an extreme ultimatum.

they couldn’t afford to lose you, one of the best players in the world.

the coach was sacked, charged for assault, and you are happy about it.

in barcelona, most of the girls came to your apartment to comfort you.

alexia, her girlfriend olga, ingrid, mapi, esmee, fridolina, patri, caroline, marta, and jana were all there to give you support.

you cried for the first time about it since the incident occurred. never in your life were you treated that way.

once the girls left your house hours later, aitana stayed. well– you guys lived together so it wasn’t an option for her to leave.

with aitana, you told more details about the things you’ve seen the coach do to the team. the way he ruined the chemistry and motivation of the girls is something you’re prepared to fix with the new coach coming onto the national team.

she cuddles you and plays with your hair as you talk. refusing to leave your side for a while.

the spanish national team had their own problems, which you know about, so aitana is able to help you as you help her through her problems too.

aitana and your club teammates vows to never let someone hurt you like that again.

authors note: this has been in my drafts for over a month.

my master list is linked here if you want to read more fics <3

#barcelona fc #barcelona femeni #woso fanfics #woso community #woso x reader #fc barcelona #aitana bonmati #alexia putellas #ingrid engen #mapi leon #wwc 2027

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bethevoice01 · 8 months

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Amplify Your Impact: Unleash the Power of Public Speaking Training with BeTheVoice

We’re excited to tell you about an incredible opportunity to use your voices to make a difference. You see, each and every one of us has a voice—a voice that has the power to inspire, encourage, and lift others up. But too often, we don’t realize our own potential or see how we can positively impact the world around us. That's where Be The Voice comes in. This organization believes that when we join our voices together, united around a common cause of empowerment and change, we become an unstoppable force for good. By participating in their programs and taking advantage of their public speaking training online, you can gain the skills and confidence to speak up, speak out, and be that driving voice that enacts real change in our communities. We invite you right now to consider joining them in raising your voice and we believe the others will hear what they need to hear.

#public speaking training online

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reigniteyou · 2 years

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5 Reasons Why Public Speaking is Important

Public speaking is a very important that anyone can attain with effort. It's one of the best ways to communicate what you know or want to know, and it can help you become a better leader in any field you choose. It can also help you make more money as well! If this sounds like something that could benefit your life, read on for the top five reasons why public speaking is essential!

It is the Number One Fear of People.

Most people are afraid of public speaking. It's the number one fear of people, which can be overcome with practice. When you're aware of your anxiety, it will help you to prepare for presentations and give a better speech overall.

If you have a fear of public speaking, it can be hard to get past that initial feeling. Here are some tips on how to overcome your fears and give an excellent presentation!

It helps build your Self-Confidence.

Confidence is the key to success. Public speaking is a great way to build your confidence and become more comfortable in front of people. Speaking in public allows you to practice being assertive and confident, which helps improve your self-esteem.

If you are afraid of speaking in front of an audience and want to overcome this fear, then public speaking is a great way to build your confidence. It also provides many other benefits such as: Helping you gain experience speaking with people who are not close friends or family members; Allowing you to grow as a leader;

It helps improve your Communication Skills.

Public speaking is a great way to improve your communication skills. It can help you learn to speak clearly and effectively, as well as how to talk in front of large groups of people, how to talk like ted talk speech.

Public speaking is one of the best ways to practice public speaking because it involves many of the same skills that you need for performing in front of an audience or group, such as:

● Speaking with confidence and energy

● Expressing yourself clearly through language

● Keeping your listeners interested and involved

Public Speaking is a Test of Your Personality.

Public speaking is a test of your personality. When you speak in public, you are not just showing off your knowledge, but also showing the world the kind of person you are. You can learn more about your values and beliefs this way than any other activity out there. In addition to that, it’s also one of the best ways to learn how to be an effective communicator and leader.

Public Speaking is important to Career Growth and Success.

Public speaking is critical because it helps you grow and prepare for your future. Public speaking is the number one fear of people, but it can be overcome with good training and experience. Public speaking builds self-confidence, improves communication skills, and shows you what type of personality you have when faced with an audience.

Public speaking can be terrifying for anyone at first, but with practice and preparation, anyone can become a great public speaker.

Conclusion

Public speaking is an important skill that everyone should learn. It will not only help you in your career, but it can also be a great tool for networking and meeting new people. The key to learn the art of public speaking is to practice as much as possible and take classes that will teach you the right techniques.

If you don't feel like taking classes, there are always online courses for public speaking with ReigniteYou! Get the soft skills training that you need. Build yourself up to become a successful speaker with the personality development courses online available at ReigniteYou. Register today and start your course today!

#public speaking #india #personality development #online courses #speak without fear #soft skills training in India #soft skills management courses

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dcxdpdabbles · 2 months

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God danny taking pics at the gala and tim just being enthralled by him while danny is completely oblivious to the fact that this is his birdie

When Danny reaches the podium, he realizes he doesn't have a speech ready. He doesn't even have a topic on what he should be speaking about. He barely knows what kind of art this charity funds.

Is it painting? The theater? Writers? Digital? Music? Who knows, not Danny. He just knows that it was for kids.

He is also still holding Ryan's hand, so the other man is forced to walk up with him. He didn't mean to cling to the overwhelmed ex-waiter, but Danny was really nervous right now, and he forgot his strength when holding on. So, despite Ryan's few frantic tugs, Danny's trembling fingers locked his plam in an iron cage.

A sea of faces is aimed at them, people who make thousands a day, waiting for Danny to open his mouth and deliver a speech on a donation that he supposedly made.

In the front row, Danny can spot Oliver Green and Bruce Wayne, who each recently gave five million to the art programs. Danny knows this because there was a joke online that the two were trying to outdo each other. It was a game to them, yet somehow, Danny Fenton is the name that appears with the most money donated.

The bright spotlight is blinding, to the point that Danny feels like he is going to sweat through his suit.

How much did Lady Gotham donate?

Rayn nervously shifts on his feet, his hand also starting to get sweaty in Danny's hold. He gives the other man what he hopes is a comforting smile and only receives a bewildered, nervous grimace in turn. Danny wishes he could offer to comfort him, but with the very little Gala training he has from the Ghost Nobility Meeting, he knows he can't afford it.

He turns to the crowd, leaning towards the mic with a crooked smile. Danny swears that whenever he had to uphold the duties of his title, it felt like the transformation of Phantom overtaking his body, covering every inch until the uncool nerdy Fenton was gone. All that remains is the High King Phantom.

"Good evening. I am Danny Fenton, and I just want to thank Mr. Wayne for organizing such an important event for the arts. What is art? Art is everywhere- the melodies of our music, the design of our clothes, and the wonder in our stories, movies, plays, and books. Even the shelter of our homes has art. It's proof of humanity, for it was the first way humans ever recorded their existence, and we used it to change our reality."

He smiles at the crows, using one hand to gracefully gesture to the ceiling that Mr. Wayne's family has tastefully decorated with wood carvings. "It's this wonder that we are now offering to our youths so that they may one day look up at a similar world and fine the wonder in it"

He has no idea what he's going on about. Public speaking has never been his strong suit, but thankfully, he has enough regal to make it appear he does.

Danny's articulation has smoothed out, turning each word into a hypnotic, soothing rumble that washes over the party. He knows it's working because the people's expressions have now shifted, looking both surprised and captivated as more and more phrases fall from Danny's tongue.

If you were to ask him how he knows this, well, he would mention that Sam had once taken a video of him while he was practicing his King's address, and he had been stupefied that Phantom had always sounded so confident, sass, and in control. He never raised his voice, but his words were sharper, and an accent from the high class appeared in his tone.

It had been enough to make Phantom look like a King since the start of the human race, and Danny was grateful that, like invisibility, it could pass along to his human side without a full transformation.

It felt like an out-of-body experience—he knew he was speaking, he could see the absolutely enthralled audience, and he could even feel Ryan's hand and the heat of the light, but for the life of him, Danny could not understand what he was saying.

If this was a movie, it would be the montage of a slow pan over the people, dramatic, inspirational music playing in the background to draw out whatever he was saying, and only the visible of Danny dramatically talking, but not actual speech was heard.

It was Lady Gotham. She had taken over his body and set it to autopilot. He knew because Clockwork had once done it to him when Danny was unsure about the move to Gotham.

At least she stepped in when he needed her the most.

"Thank you for your time," Danny finishes, feeling Phantom's confidence melt away as the roaring round of applause echoes through the ballroom. Slowly, he feels the control of his limbs return to him as he pushes away from the podium.

"Wow," Ryan gasps, staring at him with wide shining eyes. He looks like his breath has collapsed in his lungs. Danny feels his face heat up as the handsome man continues to stare. "That was the most beautiful speech I've ever heard. You're... incredible."

"Nah, man, I just really like...the arts." He fumbles. "Like taking photos 'cause I have...a camera." Danny shutters, gesturing to the thing hanging around his neck. "It got lens and everything."

Ryan blinks at him. "Are you nervous?"

"Yeah"

"Why? You just gave the most impressive inspirational speech I've ever heard."

"It's because you're hot and you're talking to me, and I'm not good with people," Danny tells him honestly, dropping Ryan's hand to rub at his neck. I also really want to take the Waynes' photos and be gone, back to the streets."

Ryan laughs, throwing his whole head back and trying to cover his mouth with his hand. Danny's eyes widened, utterly shocked by how bright he seemed now. "You, Danny Fenton, are the strangest man I have ever met, and I've only known you for an hour!"

Danny's face turns hotter. "Yeah...I ugh...I get that a lot."

There is a moment of silence, during which the clicking of people's wine glasses and the slow mutter of voices wash over them. Ryan considers him with a critical eye before he holds out his hand once more. "Do you care for a dance?"

"Dance? With me?" Danny repeats, but at Ryan's answering smile, he feels himself melt. Retaking the hand, he held through the long speech, Danny grins, "I love to. But only one song. I have to find the Waynes afterward."

"Why?"

"I'm on a job, actually. My client hired me to take photos of them."

"That's an odd request," Ryan comments, bringing Danny in close to sway to the music that plays. Danny shrugs his shoulders, carefully following the steps Princess Dora had taught him.

"She's an odd lady."

_________________________________________________________

Across the hall, Jason is watching the pair with intensity. Tim can understand the urge to figure out the new player because he knows who Danny Fenton is and where on earth he had hidden his wealth until this sudden splash.

However, that was mostly due to Tim's upbringing and current CEO job. What made Jason so focused on him? His brother usually never even blinked on any new money or old money.

He thought them too annoying and only came to galas to keep the civilian image up.

"Something on your mind, Jay?" He asks quietly, leaning on the wall and sipping his sparkling water.

"That's Ryan Aetos. One of my...employees."

Ah, a Red Hood Goon.

That could mean two things: Aetos needed more money for whatever reason and took a legitimate part-time job when not making rounds with the rest of the gang, or he was going rogue and planning on betraying Jason.

He was going to break one of Jason's rules, likely where they don't target the crazy rich because the crazy rich could buy the law and bring down it's wrath until the gang's territory.

In Tim's experience, it was seldom the first option.

"Do you think he'll do something?"

"I don't know. He seemed genuine when he spoke about his sick sister- she's why he's been trying to make a quick buck to pay for her medical bills- but he also has a reputation."

"What kind of reputation?"

"Manipulating and one hell of a Romance scammer." Jason grunts. "I've seen him trick three people into funding his lifestyle by batting his eyelashes. I've let him be since he never targeted anyone who didn't deserve it, and it was one less corner boy I had to worry about. But if he's pulling that now on Fenton...."

"Then Fenton may not react very well when he finds out. And we don't have enough information on him to know what he would do to Aetos." Tim finishes turning now to also observe the couple. Fenton is a flustered mess, seeming to be rambling and far too interested in the man wearing the waiter outfit.

Aetos, for his part, is smiling down at him with a content little grin and an adoring expression. It's hard to say if it's an honest one, though, because whenever Fenton glances away, hunger bleeds into Aeto's face.

Is the hunger of a man attracted to another man?

Or the hunger of a man attracted to greed?

Crude.

"What's your call?" He asks Jason since it is his employee. Betrayal or not, Jason has always cared deeply for those he considered his, including the men and women in his gang.

Jason watches for three more songs in silence before sighing. "Separate them. I'll take Ryan and see if I can figure out his plan. You find out more about Fenton. Maybe it is just New Money falling in love with a man down on his luck who's trying to care for his little sister."

"Sounds like a Hallmark movie," Tim jokes, pushing away from the wall. "I've always hated how cliche those movies are"

#dcxdpdabbles #Danny and Fan Blog #Part 5 #Ryan is not who he appears #Or is he???#jason is not amused #Danny really had his main character moment #Lady Gotham had to step in because she can not afford Danny ruining this #Tim is on his way to make contact #Love rivals? Love rivals!

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 months

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AI “art” and uncanniness

TOMORROW (May 14), I'm on a livecast about AI AND ENSHITTIFICATION with TIM O'REILLY; on TOMORROW (May 15), I'm in NORTH HOLLYWOOD for a screening of STEPHANIE KELTON'S FINDING THE MONEY; FRIDAY (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

When it comes to AI art (or "art"), it's hard to find a nuanced position that respects creative workers' labor rights, free expression, copyright law's vital exceptions and limitations, and aesthetics.

I am, on balance, opposed to AI art, but there are some important caveats to that position. For starters, I think it's unequivocally wrong – as a matter of law – to say that scraping works and training a model with them infringes copyright. This isn't a moral position (I'll get to that in a second), but rather a technical one.

Break down the steps of training a model and it quickly becomes apparent why it's technically wrong to call this a copyright infringement. First, the act of making transient copies of works – even billions of works – is unequivocally fair use. Unless you think search engines and the Internet Archive shouldn't exist, then you should support scraping at scale:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

And unless you think that Facebook should be allowed to use the law to block projects like Ad Observer, which gathers samples of paid political disinformation, then you should support scraping at scale, even when the site being scraped objects (at least sometimes):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/06/get-you-coming-and-going/#potemkin-research-program

After making transient copies of lots of works, the next step in AI training is to subject them to mathematical analysis. Again, this isn't a copyright violation.

Making quantitative observations about works is a longstanding, respected and important tool for criticism, analysis, archiving and new acts of creation. Measuring the steady contraction of the vocabulary in successive Agatha Christie novels turns out to offer a fascinating window into her dementia:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/apr/03/agatha-christie-alzheimers-research

Programmatic analysis of scraped online speech is also critical to the burgeoning formal analyses of the language spoken by minorities, producing a vibrant account of the rigorous grammar of dialects that have long been dismissed as "slang":

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373950278_Lexicogrammatical_Analysis_on_African-American_Vernacular_English_Spoken_by_African-Amecian_You-Tubers

Since 1988, UCL Survey of English Language has maintained its "International Corpus of English," and scholars have plumbed its depth to draw important conclusions about the wide variety of Englishes spoken around the world, especially in postcolonial English-speaking countries:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/projects/ice.htm

The final step in training a model is publishing the conclusions of the quantitative analysis of the temporarily copied documents as software code. Code itself is a form of expressive speech – and that expressivity is key to the fight for privacy, because the fact that code is speech limits how governments can censor software:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech/

Are models infringing? Well, they certainly can be. In some cases, it's clear that models "memorized" some of the data in their training set, making the fair use, transient copy into an infringing, permanent one. That's generally considered to be the result of a programming error, and it could certainly be prevented (say, by comparing the model to the training data and removing any memorizations that appear).

Not every seeming act of memorization is a memorization, though. While specific models vary widely, the amount of data from each training item retained by the model is very small. For example, Midjourney retains about one byte of information from each image in its training data. If we're talking about a typical low-resolution web image of say, 300kb, that would be one three-hundred-thousandth (0.0000033%) of the original image.

Typically in copyright discussions, when one work contains 0.0000033% of another work, we don't even raise the question of fair use. Rather, we dismiss the use as de minimis (short for de minimis non curat lex or "The law does not concern itself with trifles"):

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

Busting someone who takes 0.0000033% of your work for copyright infringement is like swearing out a trespassing complaint against someone because the edge of their shoe touched one blade of grass on your lawn.

But some works or elements of work appear many times online. For example, the Getty Images watermark appears on millions of similar images of people standing on red carpets and runways, so a model that takes even in infinitesimal sample of each one of those works might still end up being able to produce a whole, recognizable Getty Images watermark.

The same is true for wire-service articles or other widely syndicated texts: there might be dozens or even hundreds of copies of these works in training data, resulting in the memorization of long passages from them.

This might be infringing (we're getting into some gnarly, unprecedented territory here), but again, even if it is, it wouldn't be a big hardship for model makers to post-process their models by comparing them to the training set, deleting any inadvertent memorizations. Even if the resulting model had zero memorizations, this would do nothing to alleviate the (legitimate) concerns of creative workers about the creation and use of these models.

So here's the first nuance in the AI art debate: as a technical matter, training a model isn't a copyright infringement. Creative workers who hope that they can use copyright law to prevent AI from changing the creative labor market are likely to be very disappointed in court:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sarah-silverman-lawsuit-ai-meta-1235669403/

But copyright law isn't a fixed, eternal entity. We write new copyright laws all the time. If current copyright law doesn't prevent the creation of models, what about a future copyright law?

Well, sure, that's a possibility. The first thing to consider is the possible collateral damage of such a law. The legal space for scraping enables a wide range of scholarly, archival, organizational and critical purposes. We'd have to be very careful not to inadvertently ban, say, the scraping of a politician's campaign website, lest we enable liars to run for office and renege on their promises, while they insist that they never made those promises in the first place. We wouldn't want to abolish search engines, or stop creators from scraping their own work off sites that are going away or changing their terms of service.

Now, onto quantitative analysis: counting words and measuring pixels are not activities that you should need permission to perform, with or without a computer, even if the person whose words or pixels you're counting doesn't want you to. You should be able to look as hard as you want at the pixels in Kate Middleton's family photos, or track the rise and fall of the Oxford comma, and you shouldn't need anyone's permission to do so.

Finally, there's publishing the model. There are plenty of published mathematical analyses of large corpuses that are useful and unobjectionable. I love me a good Google n-gram:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fantods%2C+heebie-jeebies&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3

And large language models fill all kinds of important niches, like the Human Rights Data Analysis Group's LLM-based work helping the Innocence Project New Orleans' extract data from wrongful conviction case files:

https://hrdag.org/tech-notes/large-language-models-IPNO.html

So that's nuance number two: if we decide to make a new copyright law, we'll need to be very sure that we don't accidentally crush these beneficial activities that don't undermine artistic labor markets.

This brings me to the most important point: passing a new copyright law that requires permission to train an AI won't help creative workers get paid or protect our jobs.

Getty Images pays photographers the least it can get away with. Publishers contracts have transformed by inches into miles-long, ghastly rights grabs that take everything from writers, but still shifts legal risks onto them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/19/reasonable-agreement/

Publishers like the New York Times bitterly oppose their writers' unions:

https://actionnetwork.org/letters/new-york-times-stop-union-busting

These large corporations already control the copyrights to gigantic amounts of training data, and they have means, motive and opportunity to license these works for training a model in order to pay us less, and they are engaged in this activity right now:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/22/technology/apple-ai-news-publishers.html

Big games studios are already acting as though there was a copyright in training data, and requiring their voice actors to begin every recording session with words to the effect of, "I hereby grant permission to train an AI with my voice" and if you don't like it, you can hit the bricks:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d37za/voice-actors-sign-away-rights-to-artificial-intelligence

If you're a creative worker hoping to pay your bills, it doesn't matter whether your wages are eroded by a model produced without paying your employer for the right to do so, or whether your employer got to double dip by selling your work to an AI company to train a model, and then used that model to fire you or erode your wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

Individual creative workers rarely have any bargaining leverage over the corporations that license our copyrights. That's why copyright's 40-year expansion (in duration, scope, statutory damages) has resulted in larger, more profitable entertainment companies, and lower payments – in real terms and as a share of the income generated by their work – for creative workers.

As Rebecca Giblin and I write in our book Chokepoint Capitalism, giving creative workers more rights to bargain with against giant corporations that control access to our audiences is like giving your bullied schoolkid extra lunch money – it's just a roundabout way of transferring that money to the bullies:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/what-is-chokepoint-capitalism/

There's an historical precedent for this struggle – the fight over music sampling. 40 years ago, it wasn't clear whether sampling required a copyright license, and early hip-hop artists took samples without permission, the way a horn player might drop a couple bars of a well-known song into a solo.

Many artists were rightfully furious over this. The "heritage acts" (the music industry's euphemism for "Black people") who were most sampled had been given very bad deals and had seen very little of the fortunes generated by their creative labor. Many of them were desperately poor, despite having made millions for their labels. When other musicians started making money off that work, they got mad.

In the decades that followed, the system for sampling changed, partly through court cases and partly through the commercial terms set by the Big Three labels: Sony, Warner and Universal, who control 70% of all music recordings. Today, you generally can't sample without signing up to one of the Big Three (they are reluctant to deal with indies), and that means taking their standard deal, which is very bad, and also signs away your right to control your samples.

So a musician who wants to sample has to sign the bad terms offered by a Big Three label, and then hand $500 out of their advance to one of those Big Three labels for the sample license. That $500 typically doesn't go to another artist – it goes to the label, who share it around their executives and investors. This is a system that makes every artist poorer.

But it gets worse. Putting a price on samples changes the kind of music that can be economically viable. If you wanted to clear all the samples on an album like Public Enemy's "It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back," or the Beastie Boys' "Paul's Boutique," you'd have to sell every CD for $150, just to break even:

https://memex.craphound.com/2011/07/08/creative-license-how-the-hell-did-sampling-get-so-screwed-up-and-what-the-hell-do-we-do-about-it/

Sampling licenses don't just make every artist financially worse off, they also prevent the creation of music of the sort that millions of people enjoy. But it gets even worse. Some older, sample-heavy music can't be cleared. Most of De La Soul's catalog wasn't available for 15 years, and even though some of their seminal music came back in March 2022, the band's frontman Trugoy the Dove didn't live to see it – he died in February 2022:

https://www.vulture.com/2023/02/de-la-soul-trugoy-the-dove-dead-at-54.html

This is the third nuance: even if we can craft a model-banning copyright system that doesn't catch a lot of dolphins in its tuna net, it could still make artists poorer off.

Back when sampling started, it wasn't clear whether it would ever be considered artistically important. Early sampling was crude and experimental. Musicians who trained for years to master an instrument were dismissive of the idea that clicking a mouse was "making music." Today, most of us don't question the idea that sampling can produce meaningful art – even musicians who believe in licensing samples.

Having lived through that era, I'm prepared to believe that maybe I'll look back on AI "art" and say, "damn, I can't believe I never thought that could be real art."

But I wouldn't give odds on it.

I don't like AI art. I find it anodyne, boring. As Henry Farrell writes, it's uncanny, and not in a good way:

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/large-language-models-are-uncanny

Farrell likens the work produced by AIs to the movement of a Ouija board's planchette, something that "seems to have a life of its own, even though its motion is a collective side-effect of the motions of the people whose fingers lightly rest on top of it." This is "spooky-action-at-a-close-up," transforming "collective inputs … into apparently quite specific outputs that are not the intended creation of any conscious mind."

Look, art is irrational in the sense that it speaks to us at some non-rational, or sub-rational level. Caring about the tribulations of imaginary people or being fascinated by pictures of things that don't exist (or that aren't even recognizable) doesn't make any sense. There's a way in which all art is like an optical illusion for our cognition, an imaginary thing that captures us the way a real thing might.

But art is amazing. Making art and experiencing art makes us feel big, numinous, irreducible emotions. Making art keeps me sane. Experiencing art is a precondition for all the joy in my life. Having spent most of my life as a working artist, I've come to the conclusion that the reason for this is that art transmits an approximation of some big, numinous irreducible emotion from an artist's mind to our own. That's it: that's why art is amazing.

AI doesn't have a mind. It doesn't have an intention. The aesthetic choices made by AI aren't choices, they're averages. As Farrell writes, "LLM art sometimes seems to communicate a message, as art does, but it is unclear where that message comes from, or what it means. If it has any meaning at all, it is a meaning that does not stem from organizing intention" (emphasis mine).

Farrell cites Mark Fisher's The Weird and the Eerie, which defines "weird" in easy to understand terms ("that which does not belong") but really grapples with "eerie."

For Fisher, eeriness is "when there is something present where there should be nothing, or is there is nothing present when there should be something." AI art produces the seeming of intention without intending anything. It appears to be an agent, but it has no agency. It's eerie.

Fisher talks about capitalism as eerie. Capital is "conjured out of nothing" but "exerts more influence than any allegedly substantial entity." The "invisible hand" shapes our lives more than any person. The invisible hand is fucking eerie. Capitalism is a system in which insubstantial non-things – corporations – appear to act with intention, often at odds with the intentions of the human beings carrying out those actions.

So will AI art ever be art? I don't know. There's a long tradition of using random or irrational or impersonal inputs as the starting point for human acts of artistic creativity. Think of divination:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/31/divination/

Or Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies:

http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html

I love making my little collages for this blog, though I wouldn't call them important art. Nevertheless, piecing together bits of other peoples' work can make fantastic, important work of historical note:

https://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/famous-anti-fascist-art/heartfield-posters-aiz

Even though painstakingly cutting out tiny elements from others' images can be a meditative and educational experience, I don't think that using tiny scissors or the lasso tool is what defines the "art" in collage. If you can automate some of this process, it could still be art.

Here's what I do know. Creating an individual bargainable copyright over training will not improve the material conditions of artists' lives – all it will do is change the relative shares of the value we create, shifting some of that value from tech companies that hate us and want us to starve to entertainment companies that hate us and want us to starve.

As an artist, I'm foursquare against anything that stands in the way of making art. As an artistic worker, I'm entirely committed to things that help workers get a fair share of the money their work creates, feed their families and pay their rent.

I think today's AI art is bad, and I think tomorrow's AI art will probably be bad, but even if you disagree (with either proposition), I hope you'll agree that we should be focused on making sure art is legal to make and that artists get paid for it.

Just because copyright won't fix the creative labor market, it doesn't follow that nothing will. If we're worried about labor issues, we can look to labor law to improve our conditions. That's what the Hollywood writers did, in their groundbreaking 2023 strike:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Now, the writers had an advantage: they are able to engage in "sectoral bargaining," where a union bargains with all the major employers at once. That's illegal in nearly every other kind of labor market. But if we're willing to entertain the possibility of getting a new copyright law passed (that won't make artists better off), why not the possibility of passing a new labor law (that will)? Sure, our bosses won't lobby alongside of us for more labor protection, the way they would for more copyright (think for a moment about what that says about who benefits from copyright versus labor law expansion).

But all workers benefit from expanded labor protection. Rather than going to Congress alongside our bosses from the studios and labels and publishers to demand more copyright, we could go to Congress alongside every kind of worker, from fast-food cashiers to publishing assistants to truck drivers to demand the right to sectoral bargaining. That's a hell of a coalition.

And if we do want to tinker with copyright to change the way training works, let's look at collective licensing, which can't be bargained away, rather than individual rights that can be confiscated at the entrance to our publisher, label or studio's offices. These collective licenses have been a huge success in protecting creative workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/26/united-we-stand/

Then there's copyright's wildest wild card: The US Copyright Office has repeatedly stated that works made by AIs aren't eligible for copyright, which is the exclusive purview of works of human authorship. This has been affirmed by courts:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

Neither AI companies nor entertainment companies will pay creative workers if they don't have to. But for any company contemplating selling an AI-generated work, the fact that it is born in the public domain presents a substantial hurdle, because anyone else is free to take that work and sell it or give it away.

Whether or not AI "art" will ever be good art isn't what our bosses are thinking about when they pay for AI licenses: rather, they are calculating that they have so much market power that they can sell whatever slop the AI makes, and pay less for the AI license than they would make for a human artist's work. As is the case in every industry, AI can't do an artist's job, but an AI salesman can convince an artist's boss to fire the creative worker and replace them with AI:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

They don't care if it's slop – they just care about their bottom line. A studio executive who cancels a widely anticipated film prior to its release to get a tax-credit isn't thinking about artistic integrity. They care about one thing: money. The fact that AI works can be freely copied, sold or given away may not mean much to a creative worker who actually makes their own art, but I assure you, it's the only thing that matters to our bosses.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

#pluralistic #ai art #eerie #ai #weird #henry farrell #copyright #copyfight #creative labor markets #what is art #ideomotor response #mark fisher #invisible hand #uncanniness #prompting

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vrskwork · 7 months

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goldenwilliamson · 10 months

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more than friends | leah williamson

a/n: please send any recs you have my way! probably most comfortable writing for leah, lucy bronze, mapi leon, and some of the matildas. but feel free to send anything through and i'll see how i go x

pairing: leah williamson x reader

summary: reader and leah both play for arsenal and england. reader and leah get together after being friends for many years, but they decide to keep it a secret from their teammates. they don't do a very good job though.

word count: 1.2k

You and Leah had been teammates for several years now, playing together at Arsenal, and representing England together since you were just teenagers. It was a strictly platonic friendship as for most of this time you were both in relationships with other people. More recently though, since you were both single, you'd helped each other through your breakups, and had become closer than ever.

You didn't see it coming, but you started to feel yourself developing feelings for your old friend. At first you brushed it off, telling yourself that it was just platonic love. You loved hanging out with Leah, you always had. Upon some reflection though, you started to realise that your feelings were deeper than friendly affection. Every moment with Leah started to carry a new weight. You began to replay every conversation and every touch over and over in your head, dreaming that she would admit she was also harbouring hidden feelings for you.

One night while away on international duties you were rooming with Leah, as you had since you were in U17's together, and after a day of training and team dinner you had sat down on the end of Leah's bed. You decided it was time to tell her. With your heart in your throat, you tried to suppress your anxiety and mumbled your way through a romantic confession. She had laughed at first when you told her, then opened her arms.

"Come here," she told you.

As the two of you embraced she said, "You know, I've been meaning to tell you the same thing."

"Really?" You looked at her, not quite believing it.

"Yeah, but I was too bloody scared, I'm glad you're braver than I am," she said.

You two had spent the rest of the night talking about realising you had feelings for each other, and giggling about how you had both been so scared to act on it. The conversation was sealed with a kiss that made you both wonder what had taken you both so long to get to this point.

While you were ecstatic about having your feelings reciprocated, both of you were nervous to break the news to the girls that you played with. Within teams there is a very unique dynamic that everyone settles into, and you didn't want to do anything to disrupt that. Both of you were also very individual players, and you didn't want your relationship to become a defining part of your football. This was something you both agreed on, as you both felt your relationships with teammates in the past had influenced your play on the field more than you would have liked. Especially once people in the public knew about it.

So you and Leah decided that you would keep it between the two of you for the time being, until you were both 100% ready for it to become a public thing. However, the development in your relationship didn't fly under the radar in the way that you both had hoped it would.

There were whispers among your teammates, people noticing the lingering touches between you and Leah, and the way you looked at each other with such love and adoration every time one of you were speaking. You both were glowing, and the girls knew you too well. People online too had started speculating purely based on some brief interactions you guys had on the pitch.

It all came out one night when a handful of the Arsenal girls were around at Kim Little's house for some dinner and drinks. Leah found it hard to contain her loving touches, letting her hand rest on your leg when you guys were on the lounge, or rubbing circles into your back as you stood around the kitchen counter chatting.

Pizzas were spread out across the dining table for everyone to help themselves to. You grabbed two plates, making up one for yourself and one for Leah. She was speaking with Jen in the backyard when you carried it out to her.

"Here, Lee," you hand it to her and she took it from you with one hand, allowing her other hand to pull you into her side so she could kiss your forehead.

"Thanks baby," Leah said, your heart swelling at the unexpected display of affection.

Your eyes shoot to Jen's face, noting the smirk, and the realisation dawning upon her.

"Oh, are you two...?" Jen asked immediately, knowing what was going on.

You looked at Leah, shaking your head, knowing you couldn't keep it a secret any longer. She nods, and you nod, and you both look back at Jen.

"Yeah," You both say, affirming everyone's suspicions.

"God, Beth was trying to say that there was something going on, but I was saying nah nah, if there was they'd tell us," Jen said, scoffing.

"Bloody Beth, she knows us too well," you say a bit too loudly, alerting the girls inside the house to your conversation.

"You called?" Beth says.

"You knew about this," you says, motioning between you and Leah.

"Oh!" Beth says, seeming caught of guard, "So this is a thing then?"

Leah chuckles, unconsciously letting her arm snake around your waist, "Yeah mate."

"Oh my god," Beth exclaims, sheer joy spreading across her face, "My sweeties, I've been waiting for this."

"What have you been waiting for?" Steph asks, stepping into the conversation.

"Cats out of the bag then," you say, laughing.

"What are we talking about?" Kim calls from across the room.

"Okay, since everyone would like to know," Leah says, raising her voice to invite everyone into your conversation, "Y/N and I are together, we have been for a couple of months."

"Hey, I told you!" Steph says, turning back to point at Kim.

"You love birds were so obvious, why'd it take you so long to tell us?" Beth asks.

You and Leah both look at each other, suddenly unsure of how to answer that question. It all seems redundant now.

"We didn't want it to change anything," you explain.

"You worry worts, as if this would change a thing!" Beth tells you both.

"Thanks Bethany," Leah smiles.

"You guys are perfect for each other, we've all been saying it for ages," Steph says, making everyone laugh.

"It's true, you know," Kim adds in her two cents.

"Thanks guys, sorry we didn't tell you," you say.

"Don't be sorry, we're just happy for ya," Jen says, wrapping her arms around both you and Leah.

"Alright, alright, this is getting sappy. Why don't we sit down and eat," Leah suggests.

"Please," you agree, desperate to have the attention off of you.

The girls all agree too, and you move inside, finding seats on the lounge and on the floor as you dig into the pizza. As everyone is distracted by the food and the game on the telly, Leah leans into you.

"I'm glad we told them," she says.

"Me too," you say, and now that you can kiss Leah without any inhibitions, you do.

You can feel the room fall into silence as you do so before Jen says, "That'll take some getting used to."

"Better get used to it quick Jenny," Leah says, kissing you again, and then planting several kisses all over your face for good measure.

#lionesses #woso x reader #woso community #leah williamson #leah williamson x reader #awfc #lionesses x reader #arsenal women

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wosohermoso · 1 year

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Lucy Bronze - Live Stream

Warnings: Fluff?, none

Lucy and readers relationship becomes known after Lucy accidentally shows affection during a live stream.

This one is really short I am sorryyyy

It was five thirty in the evening and I had just propped up my phone ready for an instagram live. Being a content creator meant that I could indulge in my job - sometimes - from the comfort of my own home. I gathered all my ingredients on the counter as I kept a close eye on all of the followers and comments popping up on the screen.

“Hello everyone” I smile, half of my attention directed at trying to find the herbs in the cupboard above me. I was planning on cooking whilst live streaming, something I did quite often. Cooking brought me joy, and evidently brought joy to my viewers too.

Once I had gathered my ingredients, I sit myself down on the barstool - that I had taken from the other side of the kitchen - in front of the counter, to give the viewers a proper welcoming.

“Hey guys” I grin, my eyes flicking between the fair few comments that were already flying down the chat box.

[ Are you cooking?!

Hellooo

How are you y/n

Where is Lucy

What are you cooking?

Luciaaaa

Ily ]

“I’m cooking chicken wraps” I chuckle. “Quick and easy”

I scan the screen for more comments.

“Lucy should be on her way home I think. Shes been at training” I reply to the increasing amount of fans that were asking about her.

Myself and Lucy lived together. We had been living together for the past year as well as dating, but the public didn’t officially know that, although a lot of Lucy’s fans had suspicions. Being a content creator and advocate for women’s football meant that I was constantly online, and had very much noticed the edits that fans had made of the pair of us. A lot of the time I’d show Lucy and we’d giggle at them knowing that although our relationship was supposed to be private, the fans just knew.

I turn on the cooker and heat up a pan whilst chuckling at all the comments.

“Chicken, yes” I reply to someone who had re-asked what I was cooking, a lot of people answering for me in the chat box.

“I’m gonna get straight into it because I’m starving, but we can chat whilst I’m at it. Have you guys had your dinner yet?” I ask to engage with my viewers.

I begin cutting up the chicken, seasoning it with the herbs and spices that I had gathered from the cupboards before chucking it in the pan to fry off.

What have you done today

“Today-” I reply as I watch the chicken cook in the pan and recall my day. “I helped out with some promotion with the lionesses.. which will be up in a few days. And then I went to lunch with a few friends which was nice.. and now I’m just cooking dinner with you guys”

“So a busy day, but not too strenuous which is great” I laugh.

Once the chicken was cooked I throw in some peppers, add a tiny bit more seasoning and stir them all together. After a short while of speaking with my viewers I take everything out of the pan, reaching for the tortillas.

Just as I was spooning the mixture into a tortilla I hear the front door slam and a familiar pair of keys jingle through the house. I grin at the screen knowing that my viewers would be thrilled to know that Lucy was home.

[ Is that Lucy?

Where is Lucy

Dinner is served miss Bronze

LUCIAAA ]

“Hello” Lucy mumbles as her feet pad through the kitchen towards me.

“Tired?” I raise a brow and she pouts at me.

“Yeah” She huffs as she approaches me swiftly, heading straight into shot as she wraps her arms around me and gives me a small kiss on the side of the mouth. I panic slightly knowing that we were live, but not enough to show, as I carefully prize myself off of her.

“I’m live” I smile innocently, watching her head bolt in the direction of my phone.

“Oh-” She strains out, sitting down on the bar stool to look at the phone to try her very best to divert any attention on us away.

“Whats for dinner” She grins, looking knowingly at the comments as she tries to compose herself.

“Fajitas” I state, pursing my lips together at the flood of comments flying through my phone.

I continue to wrap up the fajita, handing one to Lucy as the pair of us watch the screen in bewilderment before Lucy gasps in excitement, grabbing the Fajita from my hands.

“The best thing-” She takes a bite, “about living with Y/n-” She swallows, “is that I am always fed well” She grins like a child at the screen, trying to completely ignore the comments.

The both of us look at each other. It was a knowing look. Neither of us had to say anything to know that the both of us were thinking the exact same thing. They know, no point hiding it.

Lucy places her hand on the small of my back to bring me in closer to her, my arm subconsciously draping over her seated shoulders as she brings the half eaten fajita to my mouth to let me have a bite.

“Yum.” She states placing a small peck on my jaw before lifting herself up from the stool.

[ SHIPPPPP

I knew it🤭

DID THEY KISS

WHAT😮

WHAT IS GOING ON

We were right….

Oh.. my.. god ]

“I’m gonna go take a shower, i’ll leave you to deal with all of this” She laughs as she holds onto my waist to stable herself. “Save me some” She pleads with a small smile before peering down at the live stream.

“I will see you all in a sec” She says before heading off to shower.

I sit down on the stool, reading all the comments with an embarrassed, but relived smile. Maybe people knowing about us wasn’t too bad after all, even if it did come out in ways we didn’t plan.

“She’s gone to shower” I wince at all the comments.

“Yes, she’ll be back”

#lucy bronze #woso x reader #leah williamson #lionesses #reader x lucy bronze #woso #england #celebrities #smut #woso smut

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