#we could poison that data so big | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tolik-pawlusz · 8 months ago

Text

Some time ago i said i was working on the little art project on saraph 23. So here we go. I already stated that saraphs are creatures of the Night Pomel, the first layer of reality. They are powerful creatures made by Ancient Gods for serving their needs. Saraphs don't have names, their own ego nor free will. 23 was a project initiated by Witsichillinoah, the god of destruction. The purpose of their existence was to see the core of everything in this universe and destroy it in few moments. And this was fine till in their universe appeared something from another world. It was the human named Kazimir Fintou, who became the favourite creature of the oldest god Enmaru. 23 could hear Kazimir, but couldn't see or touch him. So when Enmaru asked 23 to imitate human appearance to not scare Kazimir, the appearance 23 took was some abstract mess based on what 23 heard of Kazimir.

When 23 was in the process of developing, gods already thought that this creature would be too powerful that it could kill a god or destroy the whole universe. The ancient gods once saw a catastrophe that almost caused the collapse of their world. Even though they never witnessed death, they were afraid of it, except for Witsichillinoah, the youngest of them, and Enmaru, who was almost killed then and don't remember much about these events. So gods heavily edited the project of saraph 23, to make it more controllable and less pleasant in communication so nobody would feel pity to 23 if something would go wrong and the only option would be to kill this saraph.

At first there were thousands of 23s. Gods found them pretty usefull for cleaning big areas in universe. But they still thought that even one of these things could kill them. And once they tested it. Witslichillinoah violated the rules of the ancient gods and attacked one of them. 23 was used to wipe existence of the young god out of their reality. After this gods decided to eliminate all 23s and put data of existence of every 23 in one of them. But since 23s didn't feel anything they were ok with it.

When the Day Pomel, the second reality, was created by Kazimir Fintou (or Dievas), the Night Guard was established to control the movement between the two realities. 23 was the head of this organisation cause it was loyal to gods as a saraph, had the ability to see when someone is affected by Distortion and could punish those who violated the contract between Invure (the oldest god after Enmaru's death) and Dievas. And again 23 needed to change their appearance to look less intimidating to rare humans accidently getting into the Night Pomel.

Once the Night Guard arrested someone called Witimur Forvardo. It was a man who turned himself into an immortal monster and performed a murder of a village with about 50 citizens. 23 usually dealt with spirits who lost their mind because of Distortion. So the human affected by Distortion was something new to them. Other problem was that Witimur was indestructible even for 23. The following events shew that Witimur left notes someone on Pomel started using for creating things similar to Witimur.

23 tried to investigate that case and something was off. They went to the second reality too often. But the case was becoming more and more weird so 23 decided to let Witimur help in solving it. And 23 let Witimur go. Even though after this Witimur didn't kill anyone, Invure gathered a meeting with other ancient gods to judge if 23 was acting under the affect of Distortion. They decided that even if 23 didn't act because of Distortion, it is poisoned by it quite enough, so it needs to reset the saraph's settings. And it was the first time 23 felt something. They wanted to solve the case. So they didn't want their memory to be erased. They asked Invure to seal their power of destruction so if they would be completely distorted they could not harm the universe. Invure agreed on this terms and 23 left the Night Pomel.

23 spent 70 years in the human world. Even though they didn't have their ego in their past life the speed of human world was too fast for someone who existed for 132 millions of years. Another problem was that 23's vision wasn't made for the second reality so they could see only silhouettes of things around them. Most of these 70 years 23 spent on the witch base, helping them to make the plan on defeating Dievas and to communicate to the first reality. Even though witches could help 23 to manage Distortion, it was slowly consuming them. So after the fall of Dievas 23 almost never left the bathtube with alchemic concentrate.

And then someone found out that there's something on pomel that reminds the remainings of an ancient god but they weren't Enmaru and it's weirdly to active. 23 knew it should be Witsichillinoah, the god they once killed. Saraph felt guilt because of murder of their creator even though they were just an instrument of ancient gods. So 23 started searching for the remainings of Witslie. In the process they met Nina, who accidently got involved in this story. 23 never thought that a human would be so useful in their adventure (since Nina had a normal human vision she could get 23 where they needed)

The time was running. 23 met what remained of Witslie few times. Surprisingly, ego of the god was still alive. But something was happening to the world around. The Distortion was becoming stronger and though 23 thought they had few years more, it affected them too much and the saraph couldn't keep their human appearance anymore. Nina refused to leave 23 even though it was dangerous to stay near them.

The next part isn't written well yet. But these two managed to get rid of Distortion and in the process 23 couldn't survive in the form of distorted being from first reality.

So they got turned into a human. I guess they kept the name Twenty Three, but it would be funny if they would choose something like Steve or Lily (or the pomelian equivalent). Well, in any case, they're gonna have the greatest 60 or something years of human life. Twenty Three's sight wasn't formed normally and they see only the colorful areas around them. But they found out they don't like the black color. So them and Nina needed to find a lot of new clothes, cause their previous wardrobe was full of identical black costumes and blue sweaters (also Twenty Three got a bunch of tinted glasses of all colors cause they are funny to look through).

Well. That's all. Uphh. It was easier to draw the pictures than writing this post. I didn't tell a lot of details but i hope you could understand this mess, 23 is one of the most important figures in stories about pomel. Without them the plot would not be the same (lol they literally left a mark on Pomel surface). So there's a lot of more information about them left.

So. if you like it, reblog, if you can. I really put a lot of effort in this little project.

ah yeah. here there are all of them lol

38 notes · View notes

alpaca-clouds · 8 days ago

Text

About the Police and their love for Fascists

So, to talk a bit about what happened yesterday at the protest.

A quick explanation: In my city there was a Nazi protest yesterday, because they want a monument for a big Neonazu (we are talking the Swastica wearing kind, that GI Robot would shoot on sight) who died a couple of years ago. No, he did not get killed. He died of probably self-induced poisoning (read: medical drug overdose). And again, the guy was a nazi pig, and now the neonazis want a memorial for him - which they wanted to protest for in front of our court (because the court decides on that).

So, our local left wing groups organized a big counter demo. And given that during the two weeks leading up to it we had already several instances of police violence against some of us for just spreading the word about the counter protest (by using chalk to draw on street and hanging up posters, which we got formal permission for from the city), we were expecing police violence against the counter protest.

When we started to prepare the protest yesterday in the morning, it was also clear that the police really wanted to be violent against us. We were talking about something like 80 to 100 neonazis, 700 leftist counter protestors (a good 4th of which was senior citizen), and about 250 cops. So yeah, every neonazi had like 2 personal cops.

Now, one of the leftist groups had actually sued for the nazi protest to be forbidden, as in Germany neonazi stuff is outlawed due to obvious historical reasons. And the court originally agreed, but the neonazis went into revision, so while we were preparing the court had an emergy meeting on it.

So, we blocked off the central train station with about 500 of the counter people. (The other 200 were split up along the route the nazis wanted to take.) The cops really, really tried to get us to be violent so they could go against us with force. And they were basically acting as if it was a terrorism in process.

In our city we have an activist group called "Grannies against the Right Wing", who are very based. But also: They are cute old grannies. And the police tried to take some of them away as they were gathering. (They thankfully managed to escape to one of the safe zones.)

Meanwhile: Most of the Nazis came not from our city, because we know to beat them up. So they came from another city and over there activists tried to keep them from entering the train station, leading to the Nazis arriving in my city about two hours late. But they did eventually arrive, and the police blocked us from blocking the Nazis from leaving the train station.

So we started to move to the place where the Nazis wanted to make their first "announcement" - but again we were blocked off. So we moved to the central point where they would have to cross.

By that time our internal information gave us two news:

One of the two 100 people groups, who were literally doing nothing but waiting for the Nazis to arrive at the point nobody else had managed to get to (they had been waiting there before the barricade by the cops had been put up) got kettled and brutalized.

The court ruling was there and the court had decided that the Nazis were allowed to march, but not to make announcements and not to keep their flags, as those are technically outlawed either way. The Nazis were allowed to march till 8pm, then they had to disperse. And the police had to take the ids of every nazi, just in case.

This was around 3pm. 5 hours to go. But given that the police now had to take in the data of all the nazis, which obviously resulted in the nazis to be pissed at the police, it took a while.

So... The police people stationed where we now were - the biggest street crossing in the entire city with six streets going away from it - was starting to get bored.

Now, on the crossing it was clearly impossible to kettle anyone. Duh. Because there were too many ways to get away. So... Instead the bored cops started to kettle in those of us who went to get themselves a lunch down the street. I cannot stress this enough: the kettled in a bunch of folks going to a super market - half of which were not even part of the counter protest. There was some violence, and that... kinda turned on them, as the Black Block managed to kettle in the police kettling the shoppers.

At that point at the very least one of the top cops saw some reason and made the executive decision to let our folks go, if we stopped kettling in the cops in turn.

So, yes, uneasy truce. But then the cops thought of something else: "Yeah, actually, you are not allowed to cover your face. This includes medical masks." Now, German courts by now have made multiple decisions saying that cops cannot take away your right to wear a medical mask, because it is a medical device and guess what, some people need them for health reasons. To which the cops said: "Well, then those people need to leave the protest." Which obviously is also BS, because the right to protest is in the German constitution and saying chronically ill people cannot do that is ableist discrimination.

But yeah, other than that we were sitting on the barricaded crossing and waited. And waited. And waited. For three hours.

A lot of the Nazis had gotten bored and started to roam the city, to beat anyone who looked queer or non-white.

But eventually the Nazi protest (now reduced in numbers) was moving again. With some of the flags the court (and the German law) forbids in place, because the police decided that taking all the flags away was actually hindering their right of free expression. Which... yeah, once more. Great job there, cops.

Eventually the nazis reached the crossing, tried to give speeches. We screamed at them for about 30 minutes. And then the guy organizing the nazi protest realized they would not be able to make it to the court house and gave up.

So, in the end, there was less violence than expected.

But the cops were still bloody bastards. And I am pretty darn tempted to just fucking sue to police about the mask thing. *coughs*

#protest #activism #leftism #anarchism #police violence #police brutality #discrimination #organizing

9 notes · View notes

doodlemancy · 1 year ago

Text

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhh

so here's the deal re: this fucking horseshit. god i hate this.

i, personally, have mostly given up on trying to dodge inclusion in AI datasets. the stuff i make generally isn't what they're looking for anyway and there's no real way to 100% avoid being scraped short of becoming entirely invisible online, which would um, lead to me having no money and dying. that's part of the cruelty of all this, but also, in a way, it's the same risk artists online have always taken; if you want people to see your work, you have to post it knowing that some of those people are fucking lowlife piece of shit scumbags who will try to resell it on redbubble or something for a quick buck. AI is just a new and exhausting way for garbagey people to stink worse. i am not in any way excusing that behavior or trying to imply people should not be mad about it or that we shouldn't condemn this move and fight back. "if you don't want your work stolen, don't put it online" is the kind of shitty Internet Tough Guy talk i've always hated since my dA days. it's as useless and heartless as telling people that if they don't want their bikes stolen, they shouldn't leave them at the bike rack. i'm saying that i, personally, will not let a bunch of soulless thieving shitheads drive me offline. i belong here. they belong in a wifi-proof dumpster.

nightshade and glaze eat my artwork alive. they make it look terrible. when you have to sell things on the basis that they look nice, it's a big problem when protective measures make them look like dogshit. my work is not a good candidate for these processes. even if that weren't the case, i don't have the stamina, especially right now while my chronic pain is flaring for the third month in a row and my adhd meds are scarce, to go back and shade/glaze everything, and it wouldn't work on reblogs anyway. given the way midjourney and its equally stinky siblings have already scraped years and terabytes' worth of image data from popular websites, it doesn't seem worth my time. if you think it is worth yours i am not going to like, yell at you. i am just one person. but i want to be clear about the kind of situations some of us are being forced into.

i think some of the doomsaying about AI and what it will do to us has been overblown-- they need you, for marketing purposes, to believe that someday their shitty robot will be as good at "drawing" and as practical to work with as a human-- but the consequences of "AI" (which is not even actually AI) are already real and visible and obvious to anyone paying attention. i unfortunately am not infinitely wise and powerful and therefore do not have an ideal all-encompassing solution to this deeply stupid problem that the Most Unlikeable Manbabies On Earth have imposed on us after NFTs fizzled out.

what i do have is a very large repository of nice anime and game screenshots i've taken, knowledge of many archives of nice public domain images, a computer that can run nightshade overnight or while i'm off doing other things, and, most importantly, near-infinite capacity for pettiness. i do kinda feel like the jury is still out on how well nightshade/glaze will work in the long run, but in the meantime, i suppose it wouldn't cost me a lot to... perhaps... every time i get Mad About AI™, channel that anger into dumping some thoroughly-but-not-spammily-tagged, high-quality, inconspicuous poison onto this godforsaken hellsite via a secret side blog. i could make a batch of poison ahead of time, keep it on my phone, use my Toilet Scrolling Time or my Public Transit Time to post and tag up an image here and there. it could be a fun challenge to try to make some pretty robot poison that some humans will still enjoy.

the other thing we need to poison at this point, IMO, is the word "AI" itself, by being loudly and mercilessly critical of any company that dabbles in it, the same way we all clowned on any company that pushed their luck with NFT/crypto shit a couple of years ago. we need to have every corporation terrified that association with AI will tank their sales and hurt their brand. AI must = number go down and lots of people screaming at you. companies will fuck around. we must provide the finding-out. we shouldn't have to. but we can!

so make sure to let tumblr know you hate this. maybe you could include this interesting link (tw child abuse) about how Stable Diffusion was trained on some extremely serious crime. or these screenshots of Midjourney devs just sort of admitting what their whole thing is, which i got here but which have kinda been spread all over since January.

spite and anger can be forms of hope. that's all i have to say, or at least all i'm willing to type with my left hand tonight.

#long post #big long sigh

52 notes · View notes

n41r · 4 months ago

Note

I literally forgot to mention this last year

(Spoiler to Orega Fire's adventure im the Manga, to those who hasn't read it yet?)

_____

So...I was reading the Orega Fire's adventure in the manga because I got bored and...

I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO ROBBED BEFORE

You're telling me that the Oreca Battle could've actually go on a different story if they were to choose the manga's storyline??

We're so robbed...

1. The main character introduction felt more natural

2. The adults can see the monster instead of just the players

3. Orega Fire can kickass?? I wish to see more of that

4.I was not expecting the manga went for a darker turn (I know they're gonna removed the blood in the anime but..holy crap)

5. Maybe I forgot about the anime but I really love that version of Mafuyu's backstory.

6.I adore seeing Nanawaraig's other personality, kinda wish they kept that

7.I know they gonna need a bigger budget for this but man, I wish we can see the other monsters that weren't show in the anime

8.Pazuzu was supposed to be a big threat in this story?? And that Mus became Orega Fire's Ally in the anime too?? Yeah we're totally robbed.

The list can go on and on...

That's how I felt reading the manga for the very first time, it became my favorite manga of the year

GOSH, I FELT- The anime and manga felt so much different, it was so wild- Both have their own uniqueness in their execution for the story, like how the anime is really trying to give the highlights to the protagonists from New Chapters series

First off, I am very much in agreement with how much better the introduction for our battlers are in the manga! Data and Gantetsu didn't just suddenly appear, and also get a highlight of how their personality are like!

Also the dark turn that the manga took, that was actually one of the aspect I like from the manga as well! The shocking card ripping, Fire who actually got hurt from the battle, and even how the adults can see the monsters and the damage of what happened after a battle as well, that put much more stakes in the battles! The anime instead give us the arc where Tanta fall into darkness and betray the team at episode 4 which is... actually pretty shocking and cool as well tbh-

Also, the pacing the manga have with the demon kings' respective arcs was much better as well I especially loved how they let Data fought against Demon King Azul by himself first, it makes much more sense for his character growth! I felt like that moment was stolen by the duel/rivalry between CuChulainn and GeBulg-

Like, friggin dammit man, we could have more time to process the Kazegakure Village arc to give Oroshi much more believable motive for poisoning Nanawarai as well- If only Saqqara's arc didn't hoard that much episodes ksjrgrehrh-

But also, the end arc after all of the Demon Kings finally defeated in the manga... feels a bit uncooked tbh- Even tho Pazuzu being the new threat to the Oreca Boys group is really cool (especially with him disguising himself as a human-), I still feel like the arc with the New Chapters' protagonists feels a bit under-prepared

I can definitely felt the lack of preparation within Rock's chapter the most Like, since the group have defeated both Saqqara and Enma early on, we end up having Gozumezu as the enemy of this chapter Which... kinda funny because Gozu and Mezu should've been defeated along with Enma on chapter 16-

...I end up rambling as well, lmao-

Anyway, the anime did have some pacing issue toward the end, while the only issue with the manga is within the new arc after all of the Demon Kings were defeated Kinda making it feels like the manga was planned to end after defeating Evil Lord Mus-

#answering asks #long post #spoilers #WHY DID I WROTE THIS MUCH AND TOOK THAT LONG TO WRITE LMAO-#But still; the anime and the manga man-#they felt like different stories-#not completely different but you know what I mean-#yea definitely budget issue-#Oreca related

7 notes · View notes

xannador · 1 year ago

Note

Have you considered going to Pillowfort?

Long answer down below:

I have been to the Sheezys, the Buzzlys, the Mastodons, etc. These platforms all saw a surge of new activity whenever big sites did something unpopular. But they always quickly died because of mismanagement or users going back to their old haunts due to lack of activity or digital Stockholm syndrome.

From what I have personally seen, a website that was purely created as an alternative to another has little chance of taking off. It it's going to work, it needs to be developed naturally and must fill a different niche. I mean look at Zuckerberg's Threads; died as fast as it blew up. Will Pillowford be any different?

The only alternative that I found with potential was the fediverse (mastodon) because of its decentralized nature. So people could make their own rules. If Jack Dorsey's new dating app Bluesky gets integrated into this system, it might have a chance. Although decentralized communities will be faced with unique challenges of their own (egos being one of the biggest, I think).

Trying to build a new platform right now might be a waste of time anyway because AI is going to completely reshape the Internet as we know it. This new technology is going to send shockwaves across the world akin to those caused by the invention of the Internet itself over 40 years ago. I'm sure most people here are aware of the damage it is doing to artists and writers. You have also likely seen the other insidious applications. Social media is being bombarded with a flood of fake war footage/other AI-generated disinformation. If you posted a video of your own voice online, criminals can feed it into an AI to replicate it and contact your bank in an attempt to get your financial info. You can make anyone who has recorded themselves say and do whatever you want. Children are using AI to make revenge porn of their classmates as a new form of bullying. Politicians are saying things they never said in their lives. Google searches are being poisoned by people who use AI to data scrape news sites to generate nonsensical articles and clickbait. Soon video evidence will no longer be used in court because we won't be able to tell real footage from deep fakes.

50% of the Internet's traffic is now bots. In some cases, websites and forums have been reduced to nothing more than different chatbots talking to each other, with no humans in sight.

I don't think we have to count on government intervention to solve this problem. The Western world could ban all AI tomorrow and other countries that are under no obligation to follow our laws or just don't care would continue to use it to poison the Internet. Pandora's box is open, and there's no closing it now.

Yet I cannot stand an Internet where I post a drawing or comic and the only interactions I get are from bots that are so convincing that I won't be able to tell the difference between them and real people anymore. When all that remains of art platforms are waterfalls of AI sludge where my work is drowned out by a virtually infinite amount of pictures that are generated in a fraction of a second. While I had to spend +40 hours for a visually inferior result.

If that is what I can expect to look forward to, I might as well delete what remains of my Internet presence today. I don't know what to do and I don't know where to go. This is a depressing post. I wish, after the countless hours I spent looking into this problem, I would be able to offer a solution.

All I know for sure is that artists should not remain on "Art/Creative" platforms that deliberately steal their work to feed it to their own AI or sell their data to companies that will. I left Artstation and DeviantArt for those reasons and I want to do the same with Tumblr. It's one thing when social media like Xitter, Tik Tok or Instagram do it, because I expect nothing less from the filth that runs those. But creative platforms have the obligation to, if not protect, at least not sell out their users.

But good luck convincing the entire collective of Tumblr, Artstation, and DeviantArt to leave. Especially when there is no good alternative. The Internet has never been more centralized into a handful of platforms, yet also never been more lonely and scattered. I miss the sense of community we artists used to have.

The truth is that there is nowhere left to run. Because everywhere is the same. You can try using Glaze or Nightshade to protect your work. But I don't know if I trust either of them. I don't trust anything that offers solutions that are 'too good to be true'. And even if take those preemptive measures, what is to stop the tech bros from updating their scrapers to work around Glaze and steal your work anyway? I will admit I don't entirely understand how the technology works so I don't know if this is a legitimate concern. But I'm just wondering if this is going to become some kind of digital arms race between tech bros and artists? Because that is a battle where the artists lose.

#AI #anti ai

29 notes · View notes

sntechsupport · 1 year ago

Note

H3ll0! I hav3 a qu3sti0n r3v0lving ar0und strif3 sp3cibus! If y0u cant answ3r that is c0mpl3tl3y fin3!

(Translation: hello! I have a question revolving around strife specibus! If you cant answer that is completely fine!)

Im having a hard tim3 figuring 0ut a strif3 sp3cibus typ3 f0r mys3lf (m3 as my Tr0lls0na) im a sylph 0f Rag3 purpl3 bl00d, w0uld y0u Happ3n t0 hav3 any sugg3sti0ns f0r a strif3 sp3cibus?

(Translation: im having a hard time figuring out a strife specibus for myself (me as my trollsona) im a sylph of rage purple blood, would you happen to have any suggestions for a strife specibus?)

(Again if this ask isnt answerable it is completely fine! Please do have a nice day and if you do answer my ask thank you and i appreciate your time! :o3 )

Okay, you know what? I am going to get off the clock and answer this one. This is not a tech support problem and SkaiaNet is not responsible for strife secibi in any matter, but I like weapozination.

There really isn’t a best strife specibus, and they are more or less equally distributed among the Classpects. Relatively speaking, I mean. Not many people use, say, syringekind, but those who do are quite equally assigned to all Classpects.

We don’t really collect ethnical data (we don’t actually care), so I can’t say anything about castes.

However. A good strife specibus should be something you have readily avaiable in a variety and are comfortable handling. It does help if it is practical as a weapon, but some people prefer having fun with the concept over the actual usability. What is a thiny you have often in your hand, you know how to use it, and it could cause bodily injury to your opponent? Do you juggle? Clubskind? Ballkind? Confetti grenades are bombkind.

There are two types of strife specibi classification, you will have to stick to one: form and concept.

Form classification describes weapon by their physical form. Bladekind, hammerkind, bowkind, riflekind, fankind, bookkind, you get the idea.

Concept classification describes weapons by their usage, their purpose. Executionerkind, guardkind, stationerykind, lightlind et cetera.

If you find yourself preferring concept classification, your strife specibus will be more versatile as to its content, but you will be more limited in how you can use it, and vice versa. A bladekind will be excellent at cutting anything, but you’ll never get to blunt weapons. Executioner kind gives you some big swords, guillotine and even poisons, but nothing that would help you peel vegetables.

I can hardly pick a specibus for you, I am highly biased towards mine, but hopefully you will find these pointers helpful while you ponder your choice.

Also don’t overthink it. You can have up to 4 strife specibi, and while they are locked to the concept/form side, 4 is enough to cover anything you might need. Hell, most people do just fine with 2.

Gear out.

#sn tech support #strife specibus #homestuck

13 notes · View notes

crazy-pages · 10 months ago

Text

I've been blogging a bunch about AI and copyright today, and it comes down to this:

I think that if an artist says "I would like to be compensated fairly for a big billion dollar company using my art", that's reasonable. Any legal framework where that isn't the case isn't fair. I think that's especially reasonable when the big billion dollar companies in question claim their product will end all demand for the artist's work. And fair negotiations require the right of refusal, which means artists also need the ability to reject use of their work (yes even if you think what it's used for will be important).

I think that claiming big generative machine learning companies aren't really using artist's work is silly on its face. But it could hypothetically be equated to human inspiration, where we recognise that the vast majority of the creative work is happening within the human mind as opposed to the work used for inspiration, and be given an appropriate legal carveout ... if the artificial intelligence gets the profits. If something is the creative work of an intelligent agent, that intelligent agent has the right to benefit from its work. And if we are not at the point where machine learning algorithms can be said to have that kind of agency, then it doesn't get a special carve out for the act of expressing creative agency.

Does this bring up complex and novel questions about how to address the legality of non-human agents? Absolutely! Of course it does! But anybody in the machine learning space who genuinely thinks they are creating novel creative intelligence with its own agency, who complains that the resulting legalities are complex, does not get to be taken seriously. Anyone claiming that this is a justification for it taking the money derived from its work doubly does not get to be taken seriously, and anybody arguing that the creative labor invested in creating artificial life gives them a right to the profits of its labor ... but somehow not the creatives whose work it is comprised of ... is so far from the realm of serious debate it can only be darkly funny.

If you want to claim machine learning algorithms are so intelligent they can only be legally treated as human equivalent creative processes, but you don't want to deal with the legal complexities of them as human equivalents, I'm just gonna call that slavery and be done with it.

Now I'm not a legal expert. My limited understanding of copyright law is that generally you don't get to do things with copyrighted material that the copyright owner doesn't want you to do, except where it satisfies certain exemption criteria which are in the public artistic interest or general good, and that this should apply to scraping data for machine learning training purposes. But ultimately my expertise is kind of a moot point because the European Union clearly does think this falls under copyright law and is enforceable, and that generative machine learning companies need to get permission from copyright holders. And they do get to decide what their own copyright law is.

I also don't think enforcement of this needs to be particularly draconian or should be. For example, it would be draconian to say that accidental hosting of a bit of pirated media posted to a public forum in a training data set is legal grounds to shut down a company. However I think it is very reasonable to say that companies should be subject to reasonable regulations about trying to prevent that, and that intellectual property owners like artists should get to insist companies remove their works from datasets and apply machine learning methods to minimize their impact on generative outputs (a thing machine learning companies already do to deal with poisoned or improperly tagged data).

And because this is a case of a few billion dollar companies versus the copyright protections of millions artists, I think it's reasonable to have the onus be upon machine learning companies to double check the copyrights of the material they are using and to have it be illegal with very significant penalties to knowingly use copyrighted material. Which could be determined by either the difficult legal process of demonstrating deliberate action and intent and also through simple escalating penalty frameworks where the more people who point out you're using their copyrighted material, the more the penalties escalate.

Oh hey, that's what the EU is doing! Neat.

#machine learning #copyright

13 notes · View notes

danganronpasurvivoraskblog · 7 months ago

Note

You mentioned yesterday when answering my 1-3 review-ish that all the Chapter 5s bar one would be quite low down the list so seeing 3-5 here, doesn't really surprise me all that much because this has a LOT of flaws with it.

And given the history behind this chapter its little surprise as out of all the V3 Chapters, 3-5 suffered the most development hell of them all as Kodaka and everyone at Spike Chunsoft struggled really hard to come up with a good Chapter 5, and there were lots of drafts and revisions each with wildly different outcomes. The only recurring theme between each version was that the victim and culprit worked together. So if you are wondering why Kaito and Kokichi feel out of place as a victim/culprit pair, that's why because there was a good chance neither of them were meant to die this chapter but after slamming their heads against the wall enough times, this is what we got. I am curious what the other alternatives we could have gotten were but short out of a data breach I don't encourage under any circumstances, I doubt we would ever find out.

As you mentioned a big issue is this is a reskin of 2-5 but its a way inferior version since Kokichi is not Nagito. Nagito is a creditable threat because we've seen many examples on how willing he was gonna go for his ideals, and he also makes it very clear if he likes you or not. Plus Nagito had just found out the truth about Class 77-B being the Remnants of Despair so there was a motive for his anger. With Kokichi it felt like since everyone hated him after what he did last Chapter he decided to go "fuck it" and go completely crazy.

Another major difference between Nagito's and Kokichi's plan was Nagito had thought out his plan well and made it so it became almost impossible to solve since anyone could have thrown the poisoned fire grenade. The only way there were gonna win is to weed out the traitor which only works because Nagito would view the traitor as the only innocent, and this meant Chiaki had to expose herself to ensure Nagito's plans failed. But all of this can be saved for 2-5. Kokichi's plan though had nurmous holes in it since yes he drove everyone to despair but all the Mastermind had to do was use a Flashback Light to give them hope and that brought everyone's spirits up. Plus kidnapping Kaito was always gonna be a poor move since we all know someone who is very attached to Kaito and who would not hesitate to delete Kokichi from existence if given the chance, so does it really come as a surprise when Maki decides to try and rescue Kaito on her own, and kill Kokichi in the crossfires?

And while Kokichi making a unsolvable crime is a good idea on paper, in reality seeing as Team Danganronpa would do anything to keep the show running, plus there was already a case of the culprit being the wrong person with 3-1, so they would just execute whoever was in the exicel regardless of if its true or false because the producers don't care, they just want a good show. And even if everyone was killed in Chapter 5, there's a good chance it would have made the show even more popular, because there was evidence that Danganronpa was getting stale in the V3 universe as you would expect from such a long running show. So having it so everyone died in one chapter in a unsolvable case, that would have brought a lot of in-universe discussion and it might lead to Team Danganronpa changing the format slightly so that more scenarios like what Kokichi's plan was would come out like making more disruptive characters like him. Far from stopping the Killing Game, Kokichi's plan would have benefitted it more then anything.

I think there should have been more emphasis on Kaito's illness rather then it be a throwaway but once again since 3-5 has been muddled around so much, it could have been that some scenarios would have had the illness be more of a factor and Kaito dropping dead during the trial or something. What's worse is that Shuichi and Kaito have a bit of a fallout in 3-5 due to the previous class trial and while Maki tries to help patch things up, I'm not really sure if this conflict was ulitmately resolved satisfyingly, I know Kaito does apologise to Shuichi when he secretly visits him while being held captive, but given Kaito was under watch from Kokichi at the time, its not sure if its sincere though the fact he gives Shuichi words of encouragement before he dies means I do think the bridges have been mended but I dunno I wish it was done better.

Another thing is due to how confusing 3-5 is, a lot of people have ran conspiracy theories that Kokichi didn't even die, since due to how the whole trial was run and how compliant Kaito seemed to be, it could be Kokichi was just hiding afterwards and him being alive explains the plothole of how the auidence seemed to comply at the end because Kokichi hacked into the broadcast signal and turned it off so nobody could vote. And while people give all kinds of evidence and its a interesting theory, its one I don't buy because I just believe its wishful thinking from Kokichi fans that he is still alive.

The whole Gopher Project fake storyline was also kinda meh as while its revealed to be completely fake, its like how do people not notice a swarm of meteorites heading towards Earth with space COVID in them? I know Bubbles played with this in Starship of Hope by explaining its caused by a rogue planet going through the Kulper Belt which made the astariods go crazy, but still we have eyes on space all the damn time, sure we sometimes miss a asteroid or two but not an entire swarm of them. That's kinda hard to NOT notice and also how come Jupiter doesn't do its job and mess with the flight path of a lot of them? Really you could tell the plan is bogus and fake and really the only logical conclusion I can see is that its terrorism and a group similar to Ultimate Despair hijacked the meteorites and just yeeted them at Earth. Kinda glad it wasn't real in all fairness.

Another issue here is the Maki-Kaito relationship. This is one of the few "canonical" pairings as Maki more or less admits in this chapter she has developed feelings for Kaito and its what drives a lot of her actions since she just wants Kaito to be okay. And that's fine because love can make people do stupid and crazy things, but it wouldn't be what Kaito wanted from Maki. As the entire character arc between Kaito and Maki is the former wanting to show the latter there is more to life then being a merciless monster, and that she is a person with thoughts and feelings. So if the entire character arc is for Maki to learn to be her own person, then why does she decided to go and try to do a dramatic rescue to save Kaito and kill Kokichi in the process? Especially since Shuichi and co already made plans to rescue Kaito and confront Kokichi the following day so why does Maki decide to go rogue when there was already a plan in the works?

And I know the easy way is that Tsumugi made Maki do it, but since we have never seen Tsumugi do something like that in V3 and if anything she was panicking big time during the entire chapter which makes it seem she's lost control and recieving hell from her superiors. Her statement in Chapter 6 it was part of the plan I suspect was an lie to save face because looking how she reacts in Chapter 5, its very telling that she's lost control of the situation.

I am reminded of the fake spoilers of Chapter 5 which gave some interesting alternatives that we could have gotten. One of these fake spoilers is the reveal that Kokichi was born into a cult of Despair and was groomed to be its leader...and all the horrific implications that follows. The characters find out about this in Chapter 5 and they confront Kokichi who goes completely crazy as a result due to the trauma involved as it turns out the reason he lies all the time is as a defensive measure for what he had to endure. So Kaito decides to kill Kokichi because everyone assumes he's the mastermind, but midway through Kaito killing Kokichi, he realises that Kokichi isn't the mastermind but its too late as a fatal blow was dealt. Kokichi though is happy since it means at long last, someone believed him and he dies condent. Kaito then takes Kokichi's body and crushes it under the hyderelic press so in the fake spoiler, he was already dead when the press went down, and then he had to rush to the trial to stop Monokuma from trying to frame Maki as the blackened and then he implores everyone to vote him.

The trial itself is fun because you don't know who the victim and culprit is but the problem and its another plot hole, is that Kokichi apparantely wrote an entire script for Kaito to act like him. Thing is he wasn't able to gloat Kaito into helping him until after Kokichi got fatally poisoned by Maki who if he did, would mean Maki gets killed, and when you are slowly dying from poison you don't have enough time to write 5,000 words on how to speak Kokichi. I mean I probably could do it in about 5 hours, but I use a computer, Kokichi would have had to write this all out which takes longer. You could argue that maybe Kokichi had this written in advance but how was he gonna convince Kaito, who btw hates his absolute guts and was only helping him because if he didn't one of the people he cares about the most would die. And it also implies Kokichi has Ultimate Analyst like abilities which again is something we haven't seen from the character.

Long story short, while the trial had good emotions and it led to a interesting case, the fact that this was apparently a pig for Spike Chunsoft to figure out how to write it shows, because they wound up doing a rehash of 2-5 but missing a lot of its good marks and leaving behind a lot of plotholes and stuff that doesn't make sense. Maybe if Chapter 5 wasn't so much of a brain fart for Kodaka, maybe the case could have had more consistancy and be stronger overall. But as it stands, we are left with a chapter which has a lot of flaws and plotholes and a scheme that was doomed to fail due to the nature of the Killing Game.

Sadly, this won't be the only time a chapter gets slaughtered by edits and changes which wrecks the entire narrative, but I see that one being way more severe as it happened literally at the last minute. But you see which one I'm referring to when we get there.

//First of all, I'm really sorry I didn't answer this yesterday. I always look forward to your reviews, but yesterday I was preoccupied with personal matters.

//I had some friends over for the week to celebrate my birthday that happened at the beginning of the month. And I create all of these posts in advance, so it just uploaded on its own without me needing to do anything.

//But I'll talk my way through this now. To start with, I'm gonna be real, if I ever had the chance to talk with Kodaka and his team, and we got to talking about Case 5, now that I know what was going on at the time, I think I'd have nothing but kind words for the man.

//Yeah, okay, I don't think I would try to hide all the issues that I talked about with V3-5, but if this really was under the constraints as you've described them, I think what we actually got is pretty freaking fantastic.

//Again, I LIKE this case. I just have very prevelant cons with it that kind of balance out the pros. While I do really like the alternate scenarios that you talked about here, if I'm being real, I still think I prefer what we actually got as opposed to them.

//In terms of comparison to 2-5 though, it's very easy to pinpoint exactly why it falls so flat. And the main reasons all have to do with the masterminds behind the plan.

//Let's just say that there's a reason why there are so many videos and posts out there trying to pschoanalyse Komaeda. Because not only is it a fun and interesting thing to do to try and explain the actions of this madman, and debate whether or not it's justifiable to do so, but it's rewarding to as well, regardless of what conclusion you reach.

//Nagito's motivations are flawed and nonsensical, but they are also logical. He's had such a rough life that constantly teeters on and off collapse due to his batshit luck that he cannot control, so the reason why he's crazy is because he tries to ground himself with whatever he can. It's like a coping mechanism, and it makes him do insane things.

//He loves hope because he fears despair, and as stated here, the simple reason why he did what he did in Case 5 is because he had a reason to want to go after everyone else. He found out that the Future Foundation were the good guys, and the students were the bad guys, which is why a switch was flipped that made him set up the trap as intended, and it's genius.

//But Kokichi isn't the case. Psychoanalysing him is almost impossible, because he's both too simple AND too complicated.

//The short version is that he's just a pathological liar, but Kokichi throughout all of his spiels about how lies and truths can change, he never actually gives a reason why he lies; at least not an honest one. And when he dies, even Shuichi says that they will never find out what's really going on through his head.

//And neither do we. And we likely never will.

//On the one hand, Kokichi being left as such an open book for people to make their own interpretations is cool, but at the same time, it just stirs conflict, because everyone can kind of agree that Nagito's psychology comes from a singular place, largely because of how straightforward he is as a character.

//Kokichi is complex for the sake of being complex, and it doesn't really work in his favor for this case.

//But yeah, Kokichi's plan to create an unsolvable crime in Chapter 5 could have made the show more popular, completely going against what he tried to do to end the game. What's worse, as I mentioned, it is really taken away what Kokichi tries to do when Tsumugi stands on ceremony and tells everyone she predicted he would attempt this, because she wrote his character.

//Assuming that's true, which lets be real, it probably isn't, but assuming it is, that really means that this whole trial was just overall worth absolutely nothing. Despite how much they try to play up Kaito's sacrifices as noble, Kokichi was trying to destroy a power that he didn't fully understand.

//Nagito knew, when he was dying, what was really going on in the virtual world, and formed his plan surrounding that. Kokichi had no idea what he was up against, tried it anyway, and played with fire. While that's not out of character to him, Kokichi is more methodical than he lets on. Everything he does means something in the grand scheme of things, as Chapters 4-6 really try to show.

//So it just kind of sucks that it turned out this way.

//What I will say though is that in regards to Shuichi and Kaito's falling out, it does make sense how that one quick conversation was enough to fix it.

//Not only was the situation desperate at the time, but I don't think Kaito was ever THAT mad at Shuichi.

//Kaito, contrary to what people might think, ISN'T an idiot. He KNOWS that if Shuichi hadn't exposed Gonta, they would have all died. But it ties in with his belief that no matter what, he could not believe that Gonta would be cruel enough to commit a murder on his own. And he was kind of right, considering Kokichi masterminded most of Case 4.

//Shuichi is not to blame for what happened to Miu and why Gonta turned out the killer. But that doesn't stop him being angry about it, and just taking it out on Shuichi because he's basically the only one that he can anymore.

//That doesn't make it right, let me just quickly add. It's still stupid of Kaito to do that. I just think it would be in-character for him to realize such himself, but unable to prevent himself from lashing out about it because it upset him that much.

//In his defence, V3-4 was VERY upsetting.

//Next, the Kokichi conspiracy theory, while cool, probably isn't accurate either. Because there would be no reason for him to hide away like he did, because again, he would not have known about V3 being a TV show.

//Also, in regards to Maki, I'm not going to defend her actions, because they were still stupid, but you have to remember that Maki, while agreeing to the rescue, had a few reasons why she went on her own. The most likely circumstance is that everyone agreed to go save Kaito in the hangar, but Maki probably realized that while everyone was willing to fight Kokichi and the Exisals, none of them were probably willing to kill him.

//She on the other hand, for lack of better words, needed that twink OBLITERATED.

//Also, what the hell was she going to do? Go back and admit that she might have killed both Kokichi and Kaito? So yeah, it was stupid, but the reason why Maki went off on her own is because she probably felt she couldn't trust the others, and at this point in time, she didn't care anymore. Kokichi had crossed every line and she wanted him DEAD.

//Also, I really don't think that Tsumugi had anything to do with Maki's actions, because Maki would have SAID so in Chapters 5 or 6. She could have gone "Wait, but that reminds me...Back when I was trying to rescue Kaito in the hangar, it was Tsumugi who said blah blah blah..." you get the idea.

//But we never got that, and come on. Tsumugi doesn't do a single damn thing that's remotely mastermind-like for the entire Killing Game, besides killing Rantaro and framing Kaede, which we don't even discover until Chapter 6. It's pretty unlikely of her to do it now of all times.

//I think there were also other ways that Kokichi could have convinced Kaito of what was going on. All he had to do was show him the proof that he WASN'T the mastermind, and that his tools were created by Miu, and explain that his plan is to end the Killing Game.

//In fact, Kaito even ADMITS at the end of the trial "I was on board the moment he told me he wanted to end the killing game."

//Like, Kaito SAYS this EXACTLY!

//The fact that Kokichi was able to goad him into it with the poison cure was pure luck more than anything. Despite how much Kaito hated Kokichi, and does so until his own death, I doubt it would have taken that much to convince him to help end the game, even if it meant making a sacrifice.

//But yeah, like I said already, it is honestly kind of surprising looking back how people remember Case 2-5 so fondly that they fail to realize just how much greater it is than 1-5, V3-5, and I would argue A-5 and A2-5 didn't really hit that mark either.

//Unlike Case 3, none of them are BAD. Not even this one. It's still very good and very fun. They just aren't universally fantastic. But we have a whole rest of a list for that to get to soon enough.

-Mod

#mod

3 notes · View notes

mimicschest · 5 months ago

Text

I want an old school web search engine, one that uses the web crawler/spider method. No algorithms, not selling ads (or at least limiting ads to like a small side thing).

I also want it to have some extended functionality; Like, favoriting a website so that it could later be prioritized in terms of search. That was originally what cookies were used for (that and shopping carts).

When you make a search, it will automatically push any sites you have personally marked as favorited to the top of the list, when it contains relevant results. I want to be able to turn this functionality on or off, and possibly have my own categories of favorites that I can select or deselect when searching.

You could clear those cookies at any time or switch to private browsing.

This is what google could have been.

Hell, they could have made a lot of money on advertisements by just applying the same search functionality to a separate advertisement bar. They would need no data from me; just a database of dedicated advertisements and maintaining the same basic search functionality.

No need for massive accounts or selling of personalized data. Hell, search trends and site statistics alone are more than valuable from an advertisement standpoint. If they had cut costs and kept to the basics, google would have still made a killing and still be reliable.

Google ads are no longer reliable, and SEO is trash now. The value per ad is going down due to them poisoning their platform with bloat and algorithms. They went the big tech company route, and now we are all paying the price of letting them monopolize the search engine.

#indie web

3 notes · View notes

sonicasura · 4 months ago

Note

“We’re digimon medics, not half-human half-cyber medics!” Hissed out the Tanemon who was once a Floramon, Pathfinder found himself disdaining the fact he and Botanic had the same in-training forms. No one could tell them apart at first because both plant digimon looked nearly identical to one another. “And even that’s just base coding our respective digivolutions granted us!” He hated hated feeling so useless after taking down the t-cog of an antigod. Some Mega level he was now.

Botanic narrowed his eyes at his counterpart already knowing what he was thinking. The Autobot generated Tanemon kept firing off Anti-Poisons in an attempt to purge Pen of the Dark Energon’s residual influence. Granted, he was unsure of the effectiveness of the move spamming… Still better than the depressive slump Liberty was experiencing. Her lack of win has as a Yokomon really dampened her spirit.

Every single one of them had been pushed beyond their limits by Cybertronian programming and had hardly spent any time in their in-training stages. An issue that, of course, was only coming to bite them in the rear when Pen was most vulnerable. This confounded luck!

The sole thing they could count on was her cyber body’s simulation of an immune system. So long as Pen’s body thought she was still a normal human, she had natural defenses.

————————

Orion Pax shielded his helm and the small reptilian creature which had been his consistent companion throughout this all. The Decepticon troops seemed to take sick enjoyment from his defenselessness. He had refused Megatron’s orders and was unfortunately paying the price.

The little creature whimpered as a pede struck particularly close to where he was shielding it.

————————

Arcee could decisively say she was grateful Null was on her side even if the arrangement was mostly temporary. The insecticon caught them all off guard, prompting the dinosaur dragon into action in a surprising burst of flight. Once it was finished—he had transformed(?) into a triceratops looking form. He was mostly green.

The insecticon shifted into its own alt mode and took off upward to get the jump on them. Except Null seemed to anticipated that as his two horns now shot out artillery shells clipping the sentry’s wings. A fight ensued as Arcee backed up Null, ordering Jack to venture into Vector Sigma. Two against one, a big one…

“Scraplets!” Jack’s voice called over the comms spelling the cybertronian’s dismay in the most horrible way possible. If the Scraplets chew through Vector Sigma, they would lose their only chance at restoring Optimus fully!

——————————

“Jack!” Arcee.

‘Those damned pests. I’m gonna dump them all down to Primus core when I get there!’ Null.

“I shall never underestimate you again.” Megatron.

“We hold the spacebridge at all costs.” Ratchet.

‘Crap, crap, crap! I’m majored in biology, not martial arts!’ Doof.

“No. Nononono! Don’t quit now.” Jack.

…

‘Even if I cannot protect myself, I will not allow the little one to be harmed. It’s all I can do…’ Orion Pax.

Optimus Prime.

In the quiet of the abandoned building, a half digital human shakily pushed herself to be sitting up. She faintly registered the gasps of her digimon yet could pay them barely any mind. The—cyber sleuth looked in Knell’s direction and the DemiDevimon prepared themself for whatever their human needed.

“…[Paste], move routine.” Her voice distorted around the edges, but the vampire bat digimon knew what she intended to do. “Digivolution path Kuramon-Tsumemon-DemiDevimon—“ Knell allowed the hacker skill to dig into their body to retrieve the relative data of one of their champion forms. “IceDevimon special move program… Frozen Claw sequence.”

——————————

On Cybertron.

On the Nemesis.

Null felt an Xros Chain sequence as powerful as the one he had sent over to the assist the others, but in reverse this time.

The baby dragon… felt a connection to someone beyond its caretaker lending the power needed to make them stop hurting him!

“Xros Chain, Skill Share!”

{Matrix Evolution: Babydmon to Dragomon!}

————————

The transparent visage of some type of white winged humanoid with raggedy wings slashed at the Scraplets with ice infused claws. Vector Sigma’s machinery groaned, but held as it continued the download. The phantom flickered out leaving Jack staring at the Scraplets frozen in place in a few seconds.

(Two Vehicons were torched by a very incensed digital baby dragon creature.)

(Simultaneously, Pen slumped to the makeshift medical bed with the purple cracking further.)

Pen definitely needs help with that Dark Energon spreading even further. The Cybertron best hurry up before things get more dangerous. Considering this isn't a normal Dracomon, Megatron better hope that little guy can't become Examon.

#sonicasura #sonicasura answers #asks #hisuianhistorymaker #diginon #digimon series #digimon digital monsters #digimon story #digimon cyber sleuth #digimon story cyber sleuth #digimon story hacker's memory #maccadam #transformers #transformers series #transformers prime #tf #tf series #tfp

1 note · View note

scruffyplayssonic · 2 years ago

Text

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 58: We have to save the environment, and so do you!

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! Hey kids, did you know that saving the environment is a totally radical thing to do?

Episode 58: We have to save the environment, and so do you!

Environmentalism was a big part of cartoons in the 80’s and 90’s, which often would have episodes dedicated to telling kids about the dangers of pollution or the importance of recycling. There were some cartoons whose entire premise even revolved around this, such as Captain Planet and the Planeteers, and Widget the World Watcher.

Many ArchieSonic stories used environmentalism as a plot device, especially in the early issues. But that’s to be expected when the main villain of the series likes polluting just for the sake of polluting. Honestly, Dr. Robotnik would have fit in quite well with the Captain Planet villains.

Let’s start by looking at issue #3’s story, “The Bomb Bugs Me!” where Sonic overheard Robotnik planning to wipe out his enemies with a bomb. The Freedom Fighters decided to set up a fake protest to keep Robotnik and his forces occupied while they stole the bomb.

This led to a pretty funny sequence where Rotor attempted to sneak into Robotnik’s office in disguise.

But when they got the bomb back to Knothole and attempted to disarm it, it turned out to be not what they were expecting:

Whoopsie doopsie.

Then there was issue #7’s story, “Uncle Chuck’s Treasure.” After coming across a treasure map belonging to Sonic’s Uncle Chuck, the Freedom Fighters headed out to the Natural Park to track the treasure down. Things didn’t exactly go to plan though.

To make matters worse, a pair of patrolling Swatbots overheard the Freedom Fighters were on a treasure hunt and informed Dr Robotnik, who came roaring in with a bunch of badniks to ruin the day.

Sonic cleverly turned the toxic environment against the robots, but Robotnik managed to get away with the treasure.

For all the good it did him. 😛

Issue #11’s story, “The Good, the Bad and the Hedgehog,” started out with Robotnik trashing the environment again, but took an unexpected turn when Sonic tried to take a shortcut to get there quicker and accidentally wound up on Anti-Mobius, encountering his evil twin for the first time.

But of course Sonic managed to defeat him and get home in time to save the day.

Issue #12’s story switched gears a little bit with Robotnik being savvy enough to use his anti-environmentalism to lure Sonic into a trap. When Robotnik started cutting down the Great Forest with his new mobile monster chainsaw, Sonic of course raced to stop him.

But the chainsaw secretly housed a time teleporter that was able to zap Sonic when he got close enough and send him back to dinosaur times. …and then this happened.

Bleh.

There are probably other issues from those early days that I could cite, but you get the idea. After the comics had been around a couple of years there was less focus on stories about pollution, but they still popped up every now and then. One of the most significant stories to focus on saving the environment was in issue #110. In a prior issue, Princess Sally had turned over all intelligence they had on Dr. Eggman to their allies in Station Square. Unfortunately Station Square’s defense systems were run by an AI, and after that AI had analysed all the data it had decided that Dr. Eggman was a threat that had to be taken care of immediately. Thus it decided to go full Skynet and launch nuclear missiles at Robotropolis. That was great news in that Eggman would be wiped out, but not so great news for the residents of Knothole, who would get poisoned by the nuclear radiation.

Sonic and Tails raced to Robotropolis to warn Eggman of the incoming peril so that he would shoot down the missiles before they got too close, but Eggman smugly reminded them that he didn’t need to do that - his impenetrable forcefield would keep his city safe while the surrounding environment got wasted. Luckily Sonic and Tails were able to interfere and made sure that Eggman only activated the forcefield after the missiles were already within its radius.

Eggman and Snively were robots and so they were eventually able to download themselves into new bodies, but they had to set up a new base of operations because from this moment onwards Robotropolis was a nuclear wasteland contained within a radiation-proof bubble.

You would think that after getting nuked that that would be the last we’d hear of Robotropolis, right? Well actually no - that radioactive wasteland actually came back as an ongoing plot point. When Sonic returned home from space in issue #130, Eggman decided to give him a homecoming present. And what does one get the hedgehog who has everything?

Why, more nuclear missiles of course! One was aimed at Knothole, and the other at Station Square. And deciding that overkill was just enough kill, Eggman decided to throw in a bonus gift by sending his robotic armies to destroy the forcefield keeping Robotropolis’ nuclear radiation safely contained. While Sonic and Tails led a team to Old Megapolis Harbour to stop the missile launch, King Acorn’s forces, led by Antoine’s father General D’Coolette, defended Robotropolis from the incoming horde of Swatbots.

Knuckles, Julie-Su and Mighty came to lend a hand too, and they were also joined by Rouge and the forces of GUN. But play of the day goes to Vector and Amy Rose, who single-handedly took down the first waves of invaders.

The ruins of Robotropolis wouldn’t come up again for awhile, until after the AI ADAM attempted to take over the planet with self-replicating nanites. After that plot was thwarted Nicole took control of the nanites and used them to create the city of New Mobotropolis, which was incredibly convenient when Eggman bombed Knothole and everyone needed a new place to live.

New Mobotropolis got its energy from a power plant that siphoned radiation from the ruins of Robotropolis and converted it into safe, clean energy. So in issue #207 the Iron King attacked Robotropolis with the intention of taking away the Freedom Fighters’ power source.

King Acorn’s armies tried to fight him off unsuccessfully, and Sonic and Monkey Khan also struggled to slow him down when they showed up to join the fight. Sonic managed to outsmart the Iron King though, talking him into sparing the shield protecting the environment if Sonic and Monkey Khan allowed him to smash the power siphon that powered New Mobotropolis.

The forces of evil were not happy when they later found out they’d been played.

After Eggman returned to power he also tried to strike at New Mobotropolis’ power source, this time by sending in an undercover agent to strike from within: Operation: Deadly Cuddles.

I will never for the life of me be able to figure out why Evan Stanley decided to design the Tails Doll’s monster form to look like a… that, but I guess I get the genital… er, general idea of what she was going for. 😛

In the post-reboot era of the comic, one could argue that the entire series became about saving the environment. With the entire planet shattered in the Sonic Unleashed adaptation, the main goal of the heroes became to save the planet and put the pieces back together. But there are two environmentally-focused stories that immediately spring to my mind, both of them taking place from issues in issues #260 - 263: Waves of Change and Light in the Dark (and its immediate follow up, Consequences).

Sonic, Rotor and Amy were sent on a mission to locate a possible Gaia Temple on the coast, presumably somewhere in Soumerica. What they found instead was an underwater shrine that was being used as a chao garden, under the care of the priestess Coral, along with her apprentice Pearly and friend Razor.

Coral’s job was to care for the chao, in particular Aquarius, who helped to maintain the shield that protected the nearby city of Meropis. Coral was still somewhat new to her position and under a lot of pressure, facing prejudice from the royal family and armies of Meropis who were blaming her for everything that was going wrong and thought that Princess Udina should have gotten the job instead. One of the problems Coral was being blamed for was pollution being washed into the city that was only being kept at bay by the shield. When Aquarius the Chao failed to be reborn from her cocoon on schedule, the King and Queen threw a temper-tantrum and stripped Coral of her title as priestess. Things got pretty bad as the devastated Coral was unable to keep the shield up, letting the dark gaia monsters into the city.

It took the intervention of the Freedom Fighters, Chaos, Tikal, and the newly reborn and now-immortal Aquarius to save the day.

Thankfully with the God of Destruction Water vouching for Coral, the King and Queen saw reason and restored her title. The cause of the pollution plaguing their city was also discovered:

While Sonic, Amy and Rotor were busy in Meropis, Sally was leading Tails, Bunnie and Antoine on a mission to recover a Chaos Emerald. Sally had managed to hack Dr. Eggman’s files, and she and Nicole discovered a mine where Eggman had his forces digging for one of the mystical gems. The plan was to disable the security sensors, get in, find the emerald, and get back out without Eggman ever knowing they were there, so that he would waste his time and resources drilling for something that wasn’t even there any more. However that plan changed when they got inside the mine and saw it for themselves.

Deciding to do their bit to save this environmental wonder, the heroes let the security sensors detect them and fought off badniks and an E-1000 robot to escape the mine with their prize, giving Eggman no more reasons to continue drilling there.

The Freedom Fighters knew that there would be consequences for letting Eggman know that they'd stolen something he'd already called dibs on, but they decided they could live with that.

Are there any other environmentally-focused stories in ArchieSonic that I missed? Let me know in the comments! Next week I’ll be covering episode 59: “stranded in the ocean.” Sonic’s favourite episode, clearly. :P

#archiesonic syndicated

10 notes · View notes

blazehedgehog · 1 year ago

Note

Given they’re soft rebooting again… what’s your Jurassic world 4/jurassic park 7/ Jurassic animals and also Triassic and Cretaceous animals make life difficult: the movie pitch? I feel like, as fun as the sequels can be, they’ve lost the science parable and horror/thriller elements of the classic - for all its faults; at least lost world has that.

Hmm... I'm gonna think like a movie executive. What's hot right now? AI's hot, right? It's the buzz. I propose a hard reboot.

Crichton's original novel opens with this big screed about a near future where we have "designer genetics." Genetic manipulation gets easier and easier and I think it's said Jurassic Park takes place in a world where it's getting to the point that parents can custom-order what kind of kids they'll have by selecting specific genetic traits. (It's been a while since I've read it)

Jurassic Park the movie shows human beings physically modifying genetic code by hand using VR displays, but Mr. DNA also admits that "a full DNA sequence contains 3 billion genetic codes." So it's ridiculous to assume that a human being could edit the genetic code by hand. One sequence would take years to get right, maybe even a lifetime.

So our story is that we have some 20 something silicon valley tech bro. He got outrageously rich off of crypto and NFTs and was smart enough to cash out early. We frame him as altruistic but around the edges we can see maybe he's not the greatest person. It's suggested he knew crypto was kind of a scam, which is why he got out early, but obviously he was in crypto at all to begin with, which does not bode well. But he's supposedly "one of the smart ones." Now he's rich! And cool! And using his powers for "good." He's beloved in pop culture.

The next wave is here. Neural network LLM Artificial Intelligence. He's all in. It's the next crypto. And he starts a company that uses LLM AI to "solve the genetic algorithm." He spins this out into a financial empire where people can custom-order pets with specific traits. But obviously people with a lot of money start wondering if maybe they can get more... exotic products.

With the realm of cats, dogs and parrots conquered, our techbro begins phase 2: recreating extinct animals. This is a guy who thinks he's going to save the world by restoring lost links in the food chain (without doing enough research to see how that would change our existing ecosystem, since he could be resurrecting an invasive species).

He's going to debut the first of his phase 2 work at an event he's calling Jurassic Park, because he's going to demonstrate the first living dinosaurs in 65 million years. Jurassic Park will continue to operate as a massive nature reserve; a symbol of his control of life itself.

Obviously: everything goes wrong. The AI has never had to change this much genetic code before. It has to make up whole entire sections of DNA. The end result is unpredictable, but techbro is confident that if the AI sequenced things well enough that something could actually hatch from the egg, then it's safe.

It is not safe.

Not only do we not understand anything about dinosaur behavior, these technically aren't even dinosaurs. They're genetic mutants. The on-site dinosaur expert brought in with the press to verify Jurassic Park's claims quickly realizes that while some of these dinosaurs are accurate in some ways, a lot of them have hard deviations away from known science. Muscles that aren't quite right, appendages that aren't the right size, things like that. Maybe their brains and brain chemistry are slightly different.

The question remains whether known science was wrong or whether the AI made something up that was never true.

The question is brought up again when we learn a technician within Jurassic Park sabotaged everything intending to steal the genetic learning data from techbro's servers. Techbro says the thief poisoned the data and that's gotta be why there's mutations.

The security systems fail. The thief has left them to their creations. Jurassic Park as we know it happens.

Since a lot of movies have to deal with this, all throughout this, nobody has phones. To prevent leaks, all of their phones were confiscated before they entered Jurassic Park and locked in a security checkpoint. Our techbro, maybe as a sign of solidarity, even gives his phone to the security guy. We could even say maybe they've been having security issues beforehand, to set up the thief hacking everything before he actually does it.

Anyway, since our thief sabotaged the park's own communication channels, a lot of the movie is about getting back to that security checkpoint, breaking in, and getting their phones so they can call for help.

Oh, and also: all of Jurassic Park's vehicles are electric, too, and tied into the security mainframe. Since the park's whole security system was hacked and disabled, none of the vehicles can be operated. The only thing that works are these little golf carts, but they're small, can't go very fast, and offer little protection. Maybe our survivors try one, it gets smashed by a triceratops, and they're too far away from the depot to go back for a new one. So a lot of the movie is them traversing the park on foot.

As they're being chased by dinosaurs through the park itself, they end up deep in the core of a genetics lab. And it's here we learn the dark truth: there is a wide margin of failure. The recently deceased specimens are all kept for study and learning and there's a lot because the AI fails often, and it has to be taught not to do that. We see dozens of disfigured animals. Bits and pieces of dinosaurs, pets, and even, in one tank... human parts. These tanks are labeled "phase 3."

Not only are the mutated dinosaurs not the work of sabotage, this guy's been trying to create genetically modified people. We have our big "what have you done?" moment of horror. One of the last surviving members of the press is going to blow the whistle on this place. It's over. Maybe it's someone we build up as the techbro's new friend discovering that their hero wasn't who he said he was.

Just then, a dinosaur bursts in and kills that person. Drama! Tragedy!

Obviously, the survivors find a way out. Techbro has to live with his own conscious. Multiple people died at his hands on this day and he had a hand in creating some of the worst sins against nature mankind has ever seen.

(Or maybe we stick to the original Jurassic Park book and he dies just before getting on the escape chopper.)

#questions #Anonymous #jurassic park #reboot #this is almost fanfiction #llm #ai #nft

6 notes · View notes

epyros-sacel-vanid · 1 year ago

Text

The two sides of the scrapping data for AI situation in Tumblr

Ok so, I've been seeing and noticing that apparently people have been having two archetypes of reactions to the news about tumblr selling their data to an AI company yaddah yaddah, you've seen it around so I don't have to explain what that is about, or at least I hope so xD

The two types of responses I've been seeing can be divided into what I call "The artist response" and "The gremlin response", although sometimes there are a mix of the two and I find those hilarious. The artist response is usually often remarked by worry, normally they come from artist and it can be because of the decrease of safe places to post art or about art theft, which all in all it's perfectly logical and normal to worry about such things. They often discuss other sites that could be used or ways to prevent the theft and so on, but the sharing characteristic among those is always that they try to solve a problem they are worried about.

But then we have the gremlins response and I am so sorry artists but this is the one I love, because they tend to go like: "Yeah, this whole thing sucks, but if they think they can use tumblr like that, they are in for a surprise, tons of chaos and all of their computers burning as they try to process the madness of this site. Anyway, here are ten ways to make it worse for them". And I absolutely love that. I may have been a bit disconnected from tumblr this past year and I may only have joined in 2016, but something everyone should agree is that this lovely foolish hellsite of ours has aways been poison to those who tried to profit from it, because the raw unhinged chaos that the users create in here is enough to make cry a big number of influencers if they ever were to try to become a big thing in here.

Stay chaotic and toxic my friends, and let's slay another corporation for the laughs and the memes

#epyros going nuts

2 notes · View notes

mantisgodsdomain · 2 years ago

Note

Asks for the Random Character Asks

Marigold: 12, 13, 15

(for this ask game)

12. Crack headcanon

The reason she has so many flowers in her mane is because she fucked up with a transmutation early on and rooted them in there and her mentor Didn't Help At All so now they're just stuck in there as a permanent part of her body.

15. Worst thing they've ever done

As previously mentioned, "worst thing they've ever done" is ridiculously hard to define and extremely subjective at best. For Marigold specifically, it's even harder to define than most. She... doesn't do really things directly, after all.

She's a catalyst, and though she acts to make the situation immediately worse, she generally has little interference beyond that. She's an observer, not a direct actor, she's an alchemist, not a poison-brewer - part of what makes her so difficult to pin down and immune to consequence is that unless it's to gather test subjects for raw field data, she's almost certainly just... not acting directly. There's a medium. An in-between. A client, somewhere along the line, asking for her charms.

Though the "what they would think of when asked the question" question might work under normal circumstances, Marigold is an exception to the rule - as previously mentioned, she would not personally consider any of her actions to be immoral. She's done things that weren't amazing, of course, but it's not like she'd consider herself a bad person - just someone with professional pride. You wouldn't expect her to offer a subpar product to a customer, would you?

Beyond that, there's the issue of pinning down a single individual case. Marigold isn't a... "one and done" kind of villain, she gains the sort of status she has from low-profile but consistent evils. She doesn't do anything obvious, she doesn't do anything that can be pinned on her - people disappear, and monsters turn up after, and if they're especially valuable or they survive the period it takes for the transmutation to settle in their bones, she'll trap them somewhere to harvest for more transmutation-fuelling parts later.

That, of course, could be considered a "worst" - but it's still not one single thing you can point to. It's dozens and dozens of things, spread out over years of activity, people who mysteriously vanish off the streets and never turn up again. There is no single monolith of evil that can be pointed to, because Marigold isn't the kind of evil that does big gestures like that. Just... a slow, steady flow of charms into hands that do harm with them, combined with a slow, steady flow of people who leave their homes and don't come back.

...if we had to choose it would probably be something along the lines of experimenting on prisoners provided via negotiations with criminal factions and then bargaining with the factions those prisoners were taken from to sell them back already transmuted into monstrous forms and entirely incapable of resuming their previous lives. She got paid by both sides for it, both for developing specified new strains of transmutative on the prisoners and for returning them to their original faction. The client didn't specify what to do with them after they'd served their purpose, after all.

13. Dumbest thing they’ve ever done

Well! This one's very nearly a Story.

A fun fact about charms: they're not always perfectly consistent, especially if you're making new ones. That's why you test them before applying them to paying customers. That's why you take a constant flow of people unlikely to be missed for experiments. That's why you do experiments in the first place. If something goes wrong, then you need to know what to fix it, and if an unexpected variable throws the experiment-

Well. It could go very, very wrong, or very, very right. But you never turn your back on the experiment. You never assume you know what will happen next until it's good and tested, you never assume things will work out until you're 100% sure, you never assume that nothing can possible go wrong - Marigold knows this, of course, and she acts accordingly. Lab safety is a priority, not an afterthought. When the things you're working with might kill you if it breaks containment, you never leave things up to chance. It's simple safety precautions. Nothing ever up to chance. Nothing ever allowed to fail. And if anything were to fail - well, you being on-hand gives the best possible chance of getting things back under control.

And then, of course, someone comes calling at the door. You're too early into the experiment to excuse watching it as a delay, of course, and you know they know you're home - you mentioned you'd be home just the other day, after all. Reputation is valuable, and the monitoring built into the cage will work just as well, won't it? It might need a few more trials, but you can't really afford to be rude, and you especially can't afford them coming to find you - these parts of your lab are blocked off to guests for a reason, and you can't simply disappear a guest to your house.

Surely, it won't do any harm to leave it for just a few minutes. Surely, it'll mean nothing to leave the transmutation to finish unattended. You return back downstairs not more than five minutes after you left, ready to finish what you started.

The cage is open.

#asks #ask games #ocs #marigold #we speak #she survived ofc but it was very dumb and she nearly died doing it #debatably you could also say “dealing with known moth traffickers” was her dumbest move #or “dealing with people known to stab people in the back”#or a great deal of her criminal dealings actually #but like. this works better because the rarity of her craft means she actually has a decent protective buffer #simply in the fact that she's the only person who can do the job she's doing and it's impossible to Just Replace Her #and has enough connections that she can afford to be dealing-to-all-parties neutral because killing her would piss off Everyone Else #it pays to be the only supplier of a limited resource and it Especially pays when its an artisan thing and can't be competently reproduced #it takes years of apprenticeship to make a charmsmith and even that won't guarantee the same specialty #marigold herself couldn't make her old mentor's works if she tried simply because inanimate transmutation doesn't click with her #and her former apprentice's area of specialty with medical charmcraft doesn't overlap much with either of them #anyways. very normal moth. she is morally grounded and normal.#every time we say anything about marigold assume it can be summed up with “yea its fucked up”#shes very. fine

4 notes · View notes