seaweedborneilluminations

[seaweedborneilluminations]

"Primitive Dwellings in the High Mountains, Cleverly Disguised as Banana and Caramel Dessert" original digital artwork by Turkeymilk "Kip" Borne find it and more at www.kip-borne.pixels.com

[seaweedborneilluminations]

Fantastic

Beyond the Beacon - Nick Sheehy

[seaweedborneilluminations]

[seaweedborneilluminations]

Do not forget the Ukraine just because it’s no longer “trending”. Look up what’s going on, find a way to help. They need money and resources, but they also need voices and your time. Let them know they’re not forgotten!

Don’t know how you can help?

Do a fundraiser.

Organize an event

Have a garage sale

If you don’t have things to sell, ask your community to donate things to sell in a massive yard sale.

Take pictures of your community trying to help.

Post the pictures up and hopefully they will be seen by those that need to know they’re not alone and forgotten.

Gather supplies they need and find a way to get them there.

Go to supportukrainenow.org to see charities actively helping

Donate

Send Humanitarian Supplies

Join a protest or organize a protest in your city

Host Ukrainians in your home that have been displaced

Hire Ukrainians or buy things online from ukranian businesses.

Volunteer or help professionally

Post in social media

Influence Authorities Directly by writing

Sign a petition that is helpful to the cause

Go to the Ukraine and help.

Write your government officials to see what they are doing to help.

Remind people it’s still happening.

Be nice to Russian people you meet.

Also don’t hate the Russian people. Most of them do not agree and are just as devastated about this war. These are their family members and their friends. They have been cut off from the world and are at the mercy of a man that no one can make sense of.

How terrifying to be at that mans mercy.

A lot of people say to help and be careful or this could be your country next…. I think that’s not the way to think.

Don’t help people in an effort to save yourself in the future…. Help because it’s the right thing to do.

[seaweedborneilluminations]

In a world increasingly powered by our robot counterparts, asking anyone to trust what you say is asking them to believe that your blood is hot and wet when it spills on the ground (mine is), or that your genitalia have been crucial to some of the sweetest moments of your life (mine have). I spend a great deal of time being perplexed (more than usual) by things which others, particularly those folks younger than I, take as a matter of course.

I sell my original digital artwork online, which requires me to spend a good deal of time, you guessed it, online. I am asked all the time by a computer program whether I'm a robot or not. I'm beginning to wonder: Am I a robot? Are robots the new monkeys? If so, have the monkey monkeys been promoted or outsourced or put on hold? I told my neighbor that I was beginning to suspect that I might be a robot. "I've seen the people who come to visit you. Robots would be a step up," he said.

The emergence of artificial intelligence in the form of Dall-E2 and other similar programs has caused an uproar in the art world. Some embrace it enthusiastically, claiming that true creativity has little to do with, say, the mechanical act of applying paint to canvas, but is mostly having an idea about what to put on the canvas. They say that typing some descriptive phrases for a robot to interpret and produce is art in and of itself. I call bullshit on that. To that person I say you are neither writer nor artist. "Lazy Hack" is what comes to mind.

On the other end of the spectrum are the purists, the oil-or-whatever on canvas-or-whatever applied with a brush-or-whatever who say that using a computer at all for your creation precludes it from being true art. Though I can sympathize with this point of view, I still have to call bullshit. It's a grumpyoldmanism. The same thing was said about photography. Pete Seeger went bonkers when Bob Dylan plugged in at the Newport Folk Festival. They claim that computer assistance like Adobe's Photoshop means that it isn't "real art", that the artist didn't create the piece entirely with his own two hands (or say, his own Left Foot). The vast majority of these grumpy old folks can be silenced with one question: "Do you make your own paints or do you buy them?" If their paints are purchased simply turn their own argument against them. If they do make their own paint, then I say Gad Bless and be as grumpy as you like.

My artwork is mine. I use available tools to create images that speak to me, that tell me a story. Very often the images find me, not the other way around. I don't seem to create them as much I just sort of chaperone them. Or the pictures manipulate me, the glorious state "When the music plays the band" said the good old Grateful Dead. How others view it or whether it is "real art" or not...I don't give a two penny fuck what the answer is.

However, being asked to prove to a computer that I am not a robot? It's too much for my mind to grapple with. So my trusty old mind came to the rescue. Recently while I was tooling about online, feeling keen and serene from a sample of an ample 'shroom harvest I was asked to prove: "I'm not a robot". "Siri! Siri!" I shouted, "Inform this confounded apparatus that I am no robot. Tell it, Siri, tell it that I AM A SAMMICH!!!" You too can be a sammich if you just believe it.