#Generational Values

[wickedzeevyln]

✮ Father's Day ✮

At one point, a man abandons a life of restless liberty to groom himself for a higher purpose; one that leads him to grow beyond his years and take the definitive role as a father. A role that calls for noble actions to inspire and instill examples in his children, in hopes that one day when frailty subdues his physical form all that he is would translate into unparalleled values that his…

[marzipanandminutiae]

accused 17th-century English or English colonial witches in a certain subset of modern pseudo-feminist fiction: I'm a girlboss who can read, unlike other women! I live apart from the community and use herbs to basically invent modern medicine! my views align perfectly with many modern progressive talking points! also I wear my hair down because I'm a ~free spirit~

actual accused 17th-century English or English colonial witches: I'm homeless and mentally ill and my community just kind of wants me gone. or I'm Jewish or Romani. or maybe I have property that someone else wants. I could have strong opinions but that's usually not enough to attract witchcraft charges on its own unless the community is REALLY in a mess. I might even be an unpopular MAN who someone has an interpersonal squabble with, although statistically I am more likely to be a woman (unlike in Scandinavia, where the reverse is true)

[ionomycin]

Welcome home

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

REAL AND ROTATABLE!

Thank you so much to my wonderful and talented friend Coy, who made this! This is now my most treasured belonging!

[claraoswalds]

I'm just... post-bi-generation. Ah, it's more than that.

DOCTOR WHO The Giggle

[hyephyep]

small moment i liked in murderbot ep 5. when leebeebee says she was brought along to do laundy. the presaux team all reacts in loud disdain at the idea of a survey group bringing someone along to do laundry, and leebeebee snaps at them that she can't study anything like they have while she's on indenture contract; of course she's doing laundry. the group is quick to clarify that they think she's fine, that there's nothing wrong with doing laundry, that it's the company and the system they're disgusted with.

i believe them about not having meant any ill will towards leebeebee. but that moment does remind me a lot of conversations ive seen a few times here on tumblr. where people look at underpaid, underrespected jobs, accurately see that there's a problem, but misunderstand where the problem is. they imagine a world where no one has to do "demeaning" jobs instead of a world where every job is respected and enough to live off of. not every housekeeper or sanitation worker dislikes their career. plenty of people are genuinely passionate about work in those fields; they need rights and wages, not to be pushed out into something else.

the problem with bringing an indentured worker along to do your laundry is that you have an indentured worker. while the presaux crew is able and happy to do their own laundry and cleaning, wanting to hire someone else to do it instead doesn't automatically make you cruel or exploitative. the indenture is what makes leebeebee's treatment wrong.

presaux accidentally making leebeebee feel looked down on for not having a more impressive job, when they were trying to do the opposite and be upset on her behalf, feels like a very real kind of clumsiness. they have their convictions and their broad beliefs. they're just stumbling over the reality of putting those ideals into practice. aside from gurathin, i assume they've only had to face these injustices in abstract, removed forms until now.

[20dollarlolita]

Everyone talks about inclusive sizing being more available, or a decrease in fatphobia, or more acceptance of genders, or easier access to less expensive items like they're the biggest improvement the lolita community has made in the time since 2008.

And I don't want to discredit how important all of that is.

But I would like to suggest that the biggest improvement is actually everyone agreeing that we neeD TO wAsH OuR FuCkInG ClOtHeS!!

[the-muppet-joker]

What do you think about tumblr deleting the accounts of trans women? i know you hate women but...

If I ever catch Matt Mullenweg, I will destroy him with my Joker Sword.

Why is it that when I see the cisgender naked female porn bots cluttering my dashboard, their accounts are intact and their posts have not been censored for having mature content? But a fully clothed trans women is nuked off of this platform, harassed by the CEO on another platform, and then Tumblr tucks its tail between its legs and acts as if we are too stupid to know what transphobia looks like.

How can it be an innocent moderation issue if only trans women are targeted? At least own your bigotry, Matthew. Banning everyone who calls you out makes you look like the sniveling wet rat I am certain you smell like.

[slugbeaker]

I can't find the exact quote but the one where Robb says something along the lines of "If half the things Theon told me about his Uncle Euron are true then he'd be a terrible king." is very fun for a few reasons.

I know it's just kind of a figure of speech but Robb saying 'if even half is true' makes me laugh a little because while Theon is def a bit of a braggart and exaggerator (usually about his own accomplishments) I feel like there's no need to do that with EURON. The guy is actually terrifying and needs no embellishment lol. Especially when he seems pretty infamous outside of the islands anyways.

I'd assume (based on how sparing Balon's letters were) maybe Euron came up in convo when Theon got word that his uncle had been banished for assaulting Victarion's wife and he decided Robb needed the details. Which probably would be one of the more easily believable things that make Euron horrible for Robb to learn. Maybe the ships crew run by tongues cut out mutes and eyepatch hiding a 'black eye shining with malice' seemed too cartoonishly evil to take at face value. Winterfell can obviously be brutal in it's own way but compared to Pyke, Robb grew up pretty sheltered, the scariest guy HE probably knows is Roose Bolton who does not need that kind of loud, in your face evil, to be terrifying lol.

I just wish Robb had lived longer. I enjoy the thought of him meeting Euron/hearing of his fuckery in the later books and being floored that oh! OH! He's actually way WORSE than Theon said he was! This explains a lot! 🥲

Honestly, Robb getting to meet ANY Greyjoys other than Theon probably would have been a big, "Well. THAT explains a lot 😐" moment lol

And then I also just love that this means Theon used to yap about what he remembers of Pyke to Robb. Total bestie vibes to dump all your family's fucked up lore on each other 🤣

"Haha, did I ever tell you of the time my father accidentally spooked a horse and it bucked my Uncle Benjen? Thank the Old Gods he was ok! 😂"

"LOL, no! Did I ever tell you about the time my Nuncle Aeron and Nuncle Urrigon played the finger dance? Nuncle Urri's WHOLE HAND got lopped off!"

"....Was...was he ok? 😐"

"Nope! ��"

"Oh. 😐"

[whumpacabra]

I don’t have a posted DNI for a few reasons but in this case I’ll be crystal clear:

I do not want people who use AI in their whump writing (generating scenarios, generating story text, etc.) to follow me or interact with my posts. I also do not consent to any of my writing, posts, or reblogs being used as inputs or data for AI.

[felassan]

What kind of spirit do you think Felassan waz?

Swag

[fawn-tongues]

Loop and Mirabelle hours (3am)

[roguelioness]

lost in the solas and mythal and lavellan dynamics, thoughts percolating

mythal prodding wisdom towards pride; lavellan coaxing wisdom from pride

mythal, all-knowing, but blind to solas; lavellan, painfully ignorant, but sees solas

mythal in a position of power treating her best and closest friend as an inferior; lavellan, in a position of power, treats him as an equal

mythal valuing solas' knowledge; lavellan valuing the man

[tangibletechnomancy]

The reason I took interest in AI as an art medium is that I've always been interested in experimenting with novel and unconventional art media - I started incorporating power tools into a lot of my physical processes younger than most people were even allowed to breathe near them, and I took to digital art like a duck to water when it was the big, relatively new, controversial thing too, so really this just seems like the logical next step. More than that, it's exciting - it's not every day that we just invent an entirely new never-before-seen art medium! I have always been one to go fucking wild for that shit.

Which is, ironically, a huge part of why I almost reflexively recoil at how it's used in the corporate world: because the world of business, particularly the entertainment industry, has what often seems like less than zero interest in appreciating it as a novel medium.

And I often wonder how much less that would be the case - and, by extension, how much less vitriolic the discussion around it would be, and how many fewer well-meaning people would be falling for reactionary mythologies about where exactly the problems lie - if it hadn't reached the point of...at least an illusion of commercial viability, at exactly the moment it did.

See, the groundwork was laid in 2020, back during covid lockdowns, when we saw a massive spike in people relying on TV, games, books, movies, etc. to compensate for the lack of outdoor, physical, social entertainment. This was, seemingly, wonderful for the whole industry - but under late-stage capitalism, it was as much of a curse as it was a gift. When industries are run by people whose sole brain process is "line-go-up", tiny factors like "we're not going to be in lockdown forever" don't matter. CEOs got dollar signs in their eyes. Shareholders demanded not only perpetual growth, but perpetual growth at this rate or better. Even though everyone with an ounce of common sense was screaming "this is an aberration, this is not sustainable" - it didn't matter. The business bros refused to believe it. This was their new normal, they were determined to prove -

And they, predictably, failed to prove it.

So now the business bros are in a pickle. They're beholden to the shareholders to do everything within their power to maintain the infinite growth they promised, in a world with finite resources. In fact, by precedent, they're beholden to this by law. Fiduciary duty has been interpreted in court to mean that, given the choice between offering a better product and ensuring maximum returns for shareholders, the latter MUST be a higher priority; reinvesting too much in the business instead of trying to make the share value increase as much as possible, as fast as possible, can result in a lawsuit - that a board member or CEO can lose, and have lost before - because it's not acting in the best interest of shareholders. If that unsustainable explosive growth was promised forever, all the more so.

And now, 2-3-4 years on, that impossibility hangs like a sword of Damocles over the heads of these media company CEOs. The market is fully saturated; the number of new potential customers left to onboard is negligible. Some companies began trying to "solve" this "problem" by violating consumer privacy and charging per household member, which (also predictably) backfired because those of us who live in reality and not statsland were not exactly thrilled about the concept of being told we couldn't watch TV with our own families. Shareholders are getting antsy, because their (however predictably impossible) infinite lockdown-level profits...aren't coming, and someone's gotta make up for that, right? So they had already started enshittifying, making excuses for layoffs, for cutting employee pay, for duty creep, for increasing crunch, for lean-staffing, for tightening turnarounds-

And that was when we got the first iterations of AI image generation that were actually somewhat useful for things like rapid first drafts, moodboards, and conceptualizing.

Lo! A savior! It might as well have been the digital messiah to the business bros, and their eyes turned back into dollar signs. More than that, they were being promised that this...both was, and wasn't art at the same time. It was good enough for their final product, or if not it would be within a year or two, but it required no skill whatsoever to make! Soon, you could fire ALL your creatives and just have Susan from accounting write your scripts and make your concept art with all the effort that it takes to get lunch from a Star Trek replicator!

This is every bit as much bullshit as the promise of infinite lockdown-level growth, of course, but with shareholders clamoring for the money they were recklessly promised, executives are looking for anything, even the slightest glimmer of a new possibility, that just might work as a life raft from this sinking ship.

So where are we now? Well, we're exiting the "fucking around" phase and entering "finding out". According to anecdotes I've read, companies are, allegedly, already hiring prompt engineers (or "prompters" - can't give them a job title that implies there's skill or thought involved, now can we, that just might imply they deserve enough money to survive!)...and most of them not only lack the skill to manually post-process their works, but don't even know how (or perhaps aren't given access) to fully use the software they specialize in, being blissfully unaware of (or perhaps not able/allowed to use) features such as inpainting or img2img. It has been observed many times that LLMs are being used to flood once-reputable information outlets with hallucinated garbage. I can verify - as can nearly everyone who was online in the aftermath of the Glasgow Willy Wonka Dashcon Experience - that the results are often outright comically bad.

To anyone who was paying attention to anything other than please-line-go-up-faster-please-line-go-please (or buying so heavily into reactionary mythologies about why AI can be dangerous in industry that they bought the tech companies' false promises too and just thought it was a bad thing), this was entirely predictable. Unfortunately for everyone in the blast radius, common sense has never been an executive's strong suit when so much money is on the line.

Much like CGI before it, what we have here is a whole new medium that is seldom being treated as a new medium with its own unique strengths, but more often being used as a replacement for more expensive labor, no matter how bad the result may be - nor, for that matter, how unjust it may be that the labor is so much cheaper.

And it's all because of timing. It's all because it came about in the perfect moment to look like a life raft in a moment of late-stage capitalist panic. Any port in a storm, after all - even if that port is a non-Euclidean labyrinth of soggy, rotten botshit garbage.

Any port in a storm, right? ...right?

All images generated using Simple Stable, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

[lotus-pear]

rewatched madoka magica again today bc i fucking hate myself and to absolutely no one’s surprise i went through all five stages of grief in a single evening

[jadedazemations]

I know she said she wouldn’t steal anything,

But this is Rouge.