wasianexpress

[wasianexpress]

You should get an AO3 account

With the rise of AI and the well known epidemic of AI companies scraping Ao3 for training data most authors on Ao3 have locked down their fics to logged in users only. This is unfortunate for authors and readers. As an author I've noticed a steep drop in readership on fics restricted to logged in users and when recommending fics to my friends I've noticed that the folks without an account can't find the fics. The logged in users only toggle, not only keeps people without an account from reading a fic, but also from seeing its listing at all. More than 50% of fics I come across have this setting turned on. So, you should get an AO3 account. I know this seems daunting and unfair because it's an invite only system but, you can invite yourself through the homepage if you don't already have one, and in the past few years I've never heard of someone who requested an invitation through this method, not getting one. And for those of you who are hesitant because you don't write, that's okay. It's not weird at all to click on a commenter username and find that they have 0 works and 10,000 bookmarks. It might take a week for the invitation to actually show up, but I can almost guarantee you will get one, just keep an eye on your email. It's free to join and donations are optional. You'll have more to read if you have an account and maybe give your favorite author the chance to protect their work from AI without a loss of readership and feedback.

[wasianexpress]

I did an exercise where I tried to put one shape subtlely(ish) throughout the piece

sorry for the bad quality I drew this on an already low resolution

[wasianexpress]

my favorite sport is stretching a one-off line into a bajillion headcannons

[wasianexpress]

thinking back to two years ago when my school outwoked Urinetown (barrel got sick so we had a woman sub in making toxic yaoi straight)

[wasianexpress]

anyone have alternatives to YouTube?

I like having something in the background but I don’t agree with their age verification policy

[wasianexpress]

Hearing what Tammy Wynette sounds like and learning she was from Mississippi explains why people sometimes find Dinah’s accent weird. UNCOUPLED is also musically VERY close to Stand By Your Man. Yeah that is definitely not the Dolly Parton kind of southern accent, she sounds like a lot of older ladies I grew up around in backwater Florida.

[wasianexpress]

The YouTube Blockout is still happening

Even if this is your first time hearing about it, you can still show your disapproval of the new policy by joining the blockout/boycott.

How?

Stop using YouTube. The best way to show our disapproval is by completely ignoring YouTube until they roll back this decision. There are lots of alternatives, and we are working on a masterlist. If you absolutely have to use YouTube in some capacity, I highly recommend using a front-end client like FreeTube. It gives you more privacy and doesn't have ads, but the best option is still to boycott YT entirely.

Use Google products as little as possible. I have switched over to Firefox, and there are lots of alternatives for lots of Google products. If anyone's interested in a specific list, I'll share what I find.

Sign this petition:

If you're interested, there's a Discord server for this, too, started by @gentleman-velvet. Look at their blog for more info about that.

But why are we doing this? Why should you care?

I'll let YouTube themselves explain it for me.

[Alt: A screenshot of the YouTube policies page that reads: "For all U.S. accounts, YouTube employs a dual approach by using self-declared age as well as the application of an age estimation model that uses machine learning to determine whether a user is over or under 18. Regardless of the birthday in the account, this technology enables us to deliver age-appropriate product experiences and protections, treating teens as teens and adults as adults. How it works: We use AI to interpret a variety of existing signals that help us to determine whether a user is over or under 18. These signals include the types of videos a user is searching for, the categories of videos they have watched, or the longevity of the account. When we identify a teen user, we’ll automatically apply our safeguards, including: -Disabling personalized advertising and restricting age-sensitive ad categories -Turning on digital wellbeing tools -Adding safeguards to recommendations, including limiting repetitive views of some kinds of content. Users have the option to verify that they are 18 or over by using a credit card or a government ID. We only allow users who have been inferred or verified as over 18 to view age-restricted content that may be inappropriate for younger users.]

Read that all the way through. According to YouTube, if their AI thinks you watch childish content, regardless of the birthdate you associated with your account, your account could be restricted until you provide either a government-issued photo ID or a credit card to verify your age. This is what they themselves are saying.

Personally, I don't want a private company to have images of my ID or my credit card. I feel that that is an invasion of my privacy. I fear what might happen in the case of a data breach. And Google has fairly frequent data breaches. Just search (with any other search engine) "google data breach recent" and see for yourself.

And consider adults who don't have either a government-issued photo ID or a credit card. What then? It would appear from the policies described on YouTube's website that they are just out of luck in that instance.

This could very well affect animation on YouTube. It could affect gameplay videos. It could affect anything and everything that their AI might deem "childish."

YOU SHOULD CARE

[wasianexpress]

where on coaches bodies do they…store their actual passengers?

[wasianexpress]

is…this starlight express?

[wasianexpress]

muahaha

[wasianexpress]

Footage of a real live quick change I did during a Shakespearean play

[wasianexpress]

Urinetown CANNOT take itself seriously

me: do you wanna watch a comedic yet deep musical about the flaws of capitalism and also the overly optimistic liberals while being a love letter to so many musicals of days past, wrapping up in a poetic, philosophical, tragic but fitting ending?

my friend: what’s the antagonist called?

me: there’s several actually! Ms. Miserly is sort of leans towards neutral territory, but Mr. Rich/Mr. Water^2 hoards water and Officer Gun enforces the systematic killing of the poor for unregulated pissing

my friend: …

me: …

me: I’ll mark you down as maybe

[wasianexpress]

I love how current Stex fans follow the tradition of shipping characters who never interacted/are in different shows

[wasianexpress]

Rusty: my name’s Richard but the kids in the freight yard call me Rusty! :D

Poppa: well children can be cruel

[wasianexpress]

wall-e and EVE are nonbinary T4T

[wasianexpress]

ok but the Tumblr activity tab is so much fun

so fun fact about the activity tab, it graphs the total activity one’s blog receives

there are seven snapshots you can see, four periods of time and the choice of seeing the data daily or hourly

I unironically enjoy stats so this is a fun way to show some quirks of graphing data

I will be using my notes graphs, as they are the most fun to read

so first is the past day, the only graph that doesn’t have a day by day data option (go figure)

this shows more when my posts tend to reach several people at once, or in this case, when a single person just goes down the line interacting with a bunch of my posts at once

then there’s the past three days data

I guess that means my posts have been gaining more traction over time right? Wrong! this is still too small of a section of data to tell

I didn’t include the daily graph because it’s identical to the back of the weekly graph measured daily, speaking of

the graphs over the past week!

look how the note counts are different! I don’t know why this is the case, as I did not gain any notes between taking the two photos

and last but not least the data over the last month

the note counts are still different between what should be identical totals?

notice how, although I had a huge spike later in the week, overall my posts are recently rebounding from a recent drop in attention, likely from people leaving the fandom I primarily post about (as this sideblog is lowkey a starlight express sideblog), likely due to some people in the fandom getting driven out between cast changes and certain fandom behaviors

[wasianexpress]

“How much vogueing do you want?”

“all of it”

-alw about stex probably