#the bots masters

[turtletoads]

*astro bots your microsoft ips* (and some extras)

[thenewgirl76]

It's In My Blood

Okay, random idea centered around halfas that I just had to share.

What if besides death followed by resurrection via a source of ectoplasm, a human-ghost hybrid could also be created She Hulk style. And by that I mean the old school comics. Not that spiteful heap of garbage masquerading as a tv adaptation made by that toxically bitter hack Jessica Gao.

This can be applied to whatever hero/villain you choose, I'm going with Batman. Mostly because I haven't seen many half ghost Bruce Wayne posts.

Anyway, the scenario starts off with Alfred finding Danny roaming the streets in search of food due to running away from foster care. (Jack and Maddy left him there in the hopes of keeping him safe from the GIW after Wes finally succeeded in outing him to all of Amity) And through lots of gentle coaxing convinces him to let Alfred take him home.

Eventually Danny gets so attached he readily agrees to being adopted into the Wayne family by Alfred. Once enough trust has been built overtime to share identities Gotham automatically gains a new protector.

Then the further establishment of new relationships is suddenly interrupted by a full-scale alien invasion, requiring all hands on deck. Though all the heroes manage to hold their own for the most part it quickly becomes clear they may not win this battle if they don't find something to turn the tide in their favor.

They get that something in the form of Phantom rallying all his ghost allies/frenemies to join the fight. With their added power the entirety of the alien army is thoroughly beaten back. But not before Batman takes a hit hard enough to cause him to bleed out at an alarming rate.

The already dire situation worsens all the more when it's discovered that Batman is a rare blood type and no one in the batclan or even the other human heroes matches. All save for Phantom. Problem is, with all that ecto mixed with his blood a transfusion could possibly poison or worse kill his big brother. Everyone is aware of this. But any other option would take too long and Batman doesn't have much time left.

So with bated breath and reluctance Phantom gives his blood. For a few scary minutes it looks like Batman might be showing signs of rejection. But then he slowly begins to stabilize, giving the medical team much needed breathing room to get him properly tended to.

While Bats may be on the mend no one's relaxing just yet. And not for a lack of trying. It's just a little hard to be chill when Mr. Dark and Broody has started randomly going invisible or intangible, speaking with an echo, levitating over his bed, and overall become creepily unsettling to look at. Especially with that unnatural glow in his eyes.

[rocket-powered-socket]

Sillay robots!

They remind me of each other a lot, like old and new counterparts of each other. I think they should be friends

I’ve been wanting to draw these 2 for years, definitely not my first rodeo for Fandroid but Bots Master designs are so complex I had to retake and redesign a little bit for D’Nerd. I pray for the animators of that show because good lord😭 he’s still one of my favourite character designs ever and this is me trying to get people to look at him

EDIT - because of recent events I’ll get out there that i despise Griffinilla and groomers, Fandroid is for the community <3

[klirk-hammurton]

James Hetfield Gifs That Have Me Going Feral

@dedicatedtopapahet @delightfulcollectivetyphoon @bisexual-watermelons

[tsub1t]

i'm convinced that there're like 5 people who remember this show but man am i in love with robot designs it has

[fyeahsonicthehedgehog]

[megamanrecut]

Some Magic Man for fun~ Tried something a little more realistic with his design (I like his game canon design too, but it's difficult to draw in my RS style lol)

[emelinstriker]

We've gone so fast from burning corpses to cooking and i don't know how to feel about it.

Fun fact: Nezha wasn't even supposed to burn those corpses. That was Macaque's job during that time, but Macaque offered him the torch to let Nezha prove himself. Which is pretty much the first messed up thing he did. c:

Like- When he found Macaque in that village stacking those bodies, he was actually disturbed by the sight of it himself. But he was already infected and his own personality was getting affected by it. So after some talking with the monkey and getting to understand his side of things and why he was doing this, that's when Nezha decided to join in and test the waters.

I might actually do some kinda doodle or something on it at some point, not sure yet though cuz of the dark contents of that scene itself fhgnfhgnhfg

[angel---eater]

im ngl whenever someone writes alpha dirk as extremely compitent in a fight or even just a strife im like who is that!!!!! where is my beautiful boy who runs headlong into bullets bc he thinks he can slice them in half but he cant!!!!!!

[marchy-emmet]

I'm real sick of these things just multiplying all the time

[zayne-li]

Help... I've already made a Zayne bot, and an exclusive tutorial bot, but now I kinda want to make a Foreseer and Master of Fate bot too....

[hereissomething]

just finished watching all of the 90s Ruby Spears Mega Man show with the wife and im so sad there isnt more. i love these doofy robots, esp Gutsman and Cutman who are totally married and Protoman and Dr. Wily bc Scott McNiel is hilarious

[thepastisalreadywritten]

(CNN) — Jack Latham was on a mission to photograph farms in Vietnam — not the country’s sprawling plantations or rice terraces but its “click farms.”

Last year, the British photographer spent a month in the capital Hanoi documenting some of the shadowy enterprises that help clients artificially boost online traffic and social media engagement in the hope of manipulating algorithms and user perceptions.

The resulting images, which feature in his new book “Beggar’s Honey,” provide rare insight into the workshops that hire low-paid workers to cultivate likes, comments and shares for businesses and individuals globally.

“When most people are on social media, they want nothing but attention — they’re begging for it,” Latham said in a phone interview, explaining his book’s title.

“With social media, our attention is a product for advertisers and marketers.”

In the 2000s, the growing popularity of social media sites — including Facebook and Twitter, now called X — created a new market for well-curated digital profiles, with companies and brands vying to maximize visibility and influence.

Though it is unclear when click farms began proliferating, tech experts warned about “virtual gang masters” operating them from low-income countries as early as 2007.

In the following decades, click farms exploded in number — particularly in Asia, where they can be found across India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, and beyond.

Regulations have often failed to keep pace: While some countries, like China, have attempted to crack down on operations (the China Advertising Association banned the use of click farms for commercial gain in 2020), they continue to flourish around the continent, especially in places where low labor and electricity costs make it affordable to power hundreds of devices simultaneously.

‘Like Silicon Valley startups’

Latham’s project took him to five click farms in Vietnam.

(The click farmers he hoped to photograph in Hong Kong “got cold feet,” he said, and pandemic-related travel restrictions dashed his plans to document the practice in mainland China).

On the outskirts of Hanoi, Latham visited workshops operating from residential properties and hotels.

Some had a traditional setup with hundreds of manually operated phones, while others used a newer, compact method called “box farming” — a phrase used by the click farmers Latham visited — where several phones, without screens and batteries, are wired together and linked to a computer interface.

Latham said one of the click farms he visited was a family-run business, though the others appeared more like a tech companies.

Most workers were in their 20s and 30s, he added.

“They all looked like Silicon Valley startups,” he said. “There was a tremendous amount of hardware … whole walls of phones.”

Some of Latham’s photos depict — albeit anonymously — workers tasked with harvesting clicks.

In one image, a man is seen stationed amid a sea of gadgets in what appears to be a lonely and monotonous task.

“It only takes one person to control large amounts of phones,” Latham said. “One person can very quickly (do the work of) 10,000. It’s both solitary and crowded.”

At the farms Lathan visited, individuals were usually in charge of a particular social media platforms.

For instance, one “farmer” would be responsible for mass posting and commenting on Facebook accounts, or setting up YouTube platforms where they post and watch videos on loop.

The photographer added that TikTok is now the most popular platform at the click farms he visited.

The click farmers Latham spoke to mostly advertised their services online for less than one cent per click, view or interaction.

And despite the fraudulent nature of their tasks, they seemed to treat it like just another job, the photographer said.

‘There was an understanding they were just providing a service,” he added. “There wasn’t a shadiness. What they’re offering is shortcuts.”

Deceptive perception

Across its 134 pages, “Beggar’s Honey” includes a collection of abstract photographs — some seductive, others contemplative — depicting videos that appeared on Latham’s TikTok feed.

He included them in the book to represent the kind of content he saw being boosted by click farms.

But many of his photos focus on the hardware used to manipulate social media —webs of wires, phones and computers.

“A lot of my work is about conspiracies,” Latham said. ” Trying to ‘document the machines used to spread disinformation’ is the tagline of the project. The bigger picture is often the thing we don’t see.”

Click farms around the world are also used to amplify political messages and spread disinformation during elections.

In 2016, Cambodia’s then-prime minister Hun Sen was accused of buying Facebook friends and likes, which according to the BBC he denied, while shadowy operations in North Macedonia were found to have spread pro-Donald Trump posts and articles during that year’s US presidential election.

While researching, Latham said he found that algorithms — a topic of his previous book, “Latent Bloom” — often recommended videos that he said got increasingly “extreme” with each click.

“If you only digest a diet of that, it’s a matter of time you become diabetically conspiratorial,” he said.

“The spreading of disinformation is the worst thing. It happens in your pocket, not newspapers, and it’s terrifying that it’s tailored to your kind of neurosis.”

Hoping to raise awareness of the phenomenon and its dangers, Latham is planning to exhibit his own home version of a click farm — a small box with several phones attached to a computer interface — at the 2024 Images Vevey Festival in Switzerland.

He bought the gadget in Vietnam for the equivalent of about $1,000 and has occasionally experimented with it on his social media accounts.

On Instagram, Latham’s photos usually attract anywhere from a few dozen to couple hundred likes.

But when he deployed his personal click farm to announce his latest book, the post generated more than 6,600 likes.

The photographer wants people to realize that there’s more to what they see on social media — and that metrics aren’t a measurement of authenticity.

“When people are better equipped with knowledge of how things work, they can make more informed decisions,” he said.

“Beggar’s Honey,” co-published by Here Press and Images Vevey, is available now.

[longelk]

Just had a thought on your version of Kaycee, and our canonical knowledge of James... James was made more and more bot, slowly becoming a bot and enjoying the insane process (if I remember right) as he eventually lost himself. Your version of Kaycee while assumably somewhat embarrassed of the beastly changes (and if I remember right, it's probably because of Leshy, since the myths were that you'd turn into one if you were around one, and it probably got shifted and changed during the process of creating Leshy the character) enjoys the changes. Just... a thought.

what can i say, two gigachad transformation enjoyers stay winning and suffering!😊✌

[moeblob]

Right in time for bad weather to roll in!

There's a game on the Vita that I adored because you created both your character and also a second character that followed you around. (in that game, you're a little fella and your secondary is basically your babysitter who can't feel emotions and is programmed to be not be fond of you)

On many consoles, there's another game where you create your character and also create a secondary and it's very much your first in authority. (Arisen and Pawns? Multiple people knew of the game when I posted fanart of my silly duo so.)

However, there's tragically a third game I found in which you also have two characters and the first one is a fella, a hooman... and the second is AI. And absolutely adores you. Buuuut I made my primary a kind of indifferent fella named Adam and then in honors of the first one I mentioned, I named my secondary 'sqlmn' which is basically pronounced 'salmon'. Which is what my angy babysitter was named, Salmon.

Anyway I'm too embarrassed to admit which game I'm playing so have fun guessing!

[trenchgender]

D&D campaign idea

The kingdom of Acechul is being invaded by fiendish robots and the party must retrieve the revered Fermentum Allium from the Cult of the Pib (stands for "Cat" in bio)