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Artists begin to use a tool called Nightshade to inject “poisoned” data into their art so it absolutely fucks up the AI datasets their stolen art is being trained on.

Very fucking cool.

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Ruby bracelet by Van Cleef & Arpels, 1937.

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Made a set of super long fingerless gloves. It's a good excuse to still wear a tshirt and still keep your arms warm this fall. These are my first set. I may sell the pattern later if i iron it out more. The yarn is stretchy and sort of elastic too, mostly viscose and polyester. These come up well past the elbow.

Listing link

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Yeaa that last one is a constant threat

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The perfect thing thats lasted so long

I think it was put 10 million years ago just for cats

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I've liked making this piece. Its a light soft cotton and the colors blend nicely. Shells and flowers. It should also become more soft as it's washed.

Shop

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All cotton lace trim. Its taken me a long time to finish a trim this fine. I personally like the jewel toned colors. This is produced using a more modern soft cotton i don't often use. The thread is very fine. Most of the threads i use are from vintage spools or i find in places like hospice or other thrift stores. Older thread is manufactured to a different standard. Its not common for me to use more modern threads but some forms of heavier quilting threads have come back in production. They are not the same weight as older threads but makes a soft lace that feels nice

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I think this is a large portion of what created my frustration and ultimate abandonment of my own work for the last 6 years internet wise. That with the cyclical nature of retail business and some other presures it got to be too much. I couldn't keep up with so many new algorithm changes and more. It's not just the censorship of certain risque things but art in general too.

I had to find a job that was bearable instead of supporting myself. I want to create again though. I want this avenue open again but it was hard when i left and i know it will be even harder now. Social media used to be a great tool for driving the livleyhood of some art. Censorship on line has become real and algorithms used now make people invisible. Talent doesn't matter much anymore so much as whatever message you are trying to sell. I want to hope i can make this work again. I want to hope there will be a change but that takes work and standing up for rights that seem currently out of vouge.

I spent ten years building up a following on Tumblr. I had 30k+ followers, great engagement, it helped my career thrive like nothing else. I could quit my day job and live off the fan base I’d accrued.

Then, their policies changed. Half my work was no longer allowed. People left the site in droves. I left too, for awhile. I came back to a ghost town. I still have 25k followers, but I don’t think more than 10% are active anymore. I’m followed by ghosts. Same with DeviantArt, although I was never quite as big there, and I’ve been gone so much longer.

This disallowed half of my work was never allowed on Facebook in the first place, or Instagram, but their algorithms are such that my stuff rarely makes it to anyone’s feeds, and if I post a link to where people could actually pay me for my content, it’s hidden unless I pay for it. Patreon swept my work away to a dark corner where no one could see it unless I personally guided them there. Twitch is so strict you can’t even show bare feet. The death of Google Reader means nobody follows RSS feeds anymore, so I can’t direct people to my own site.

So there’s Twitter I guess, where I can post whatever I want, but again, algorithms. But more than that, I don’t have the energy to build up a following once again on a site I don’t own that can delete my career on a whim. The thought of spending time jumping around through hoops for attention just to have it taken away again has stripped any motivation I had to try.

The internet has been gentrified. All the small cute houses and mom & pop shops have been shut down and replaced by big corporations that control everything. I’ve been making webcomics for twenty years, and at the start, the internet was a beautiful wild place. Everyone had a home page. It was like having a house and people came to visit you and you would visit other people in their houses. Now, we don’t visit each other in personal spaces anymore. It’s like we have to visit each other in the aisles of a megamart. Everything is clean and sanitized and the weirdos who made the internet what it was are no longer welcome. No space for freaks anymore.

People still ask me for advice on how to break into comics, and I don’t have any wisdom because I don’t recognize the internet anymore. I don’t feel comfortable working within its boundaries which seems to be getting smaller and smaller and smaller. None of the tools I used when I started exist anymore. They’ve been replaced by things I don’t know how to use. I don’t think I could break into comics today. 2002 had so few barriers compared to now. You might have started on Keenspace, but you could reach a point where you could break away to your own site and people would go to it. Now, you start on Webtoon or Patreon and I guess you just stay there? It feels so much like owning a hardware store for years and then having to go work as a cashier at the Home Depot that put you out of business. I’m looking at my career trajectory and it all points to being a Wal-Mart greeter with uncontrolled arthritis.

I don’t want to make “content,” I want to make comics, I want to make art, and I want to do it in a space that is mine. I’m not sure there’s a place for that anymore.

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modern Japanese embroidery by Yamazaki Ayako advertised by Rumi Rock (1/2) for this obi depicting a crow in flight

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This seems typical. In america there are labels on chainsaws that tell you not to start the saw with the blade between your legs. This sign is also made for guy who took a dump on the floor in the Louvre 6 feet from a public rest room. I kind of feel like we should just remove signs and see if the human race improves after a generation of letting dumb people kill themselves in special ways.

no swimming sign at 虎跳峡hutiaoxia by 如果我叫桥子

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It's been a few years. I stopped doing jewelry for a while. Some of it was that i felt stuck and had not time for other things. There were a lot of other reasons im not going to go deep into.. I am not a one trick pony. There are lots of things i like doing, jewelry making was one, wood work, growing mushrooms, sewing and crochet. Some of that is collecting and making lace and crochet work. Ive decided to sell some of it finally and get back into the whole making things i actually enjoy doing. I dont want to be pinned down to one thing again with no flexibility or personal time. The hooks i use are all custom hooks ive made myself for me since i have carpel tunnel. I like hand carving tools that fit my own hand but i may consider selling custom hooks too.

Its slow going but I'll have more here soon. https://underelmtree.etsy.com

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For seven decades, “never forget” has been a rallying cry of the Holocaust remembrance movement.

But a survey released Thursday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, found that many adults lack basic knowledge of what happened — and this lack of knowledge is more pronounced among millennials, whom the survey defined as people ages 18 to 34.

Thirty-one percent of Americans, and 41 percent of millenials, believe that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around six million. 41% of Americans, and 66% of millenials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. And 52% of Americans wrongly think that Hitler came to power through force.

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I havent posted anything in a while so here is something i just made :).

it’s a 1:4th scale pedestal table / plant stand. or it could be a 1:3 scale end table. its all made from mahogany and walnut salvaged from construction and flooring scraps. Really nice wood and it came out really pretty. The finish is tung oil instead if urethane. Nice little prop stand for photography, and BJDs. lots of hours that went into cutting all the parts. It took 19 parts total to make this thing. 

The Blue Kraken - Etsy  

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A little honeycreeper bird brooch. i wished i had a lighter blue for him but close enough. his face mask and beak are horn inlay. the flowers are nickel silver with silver settings and rubies. his legs and wings are silver and the rest is made of circuit board

theBlueKraken

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a little batch of earrings with designs mostly inspired by engravers patterns. the metal work is all sterling and the rest is circuit board and resin. 

The Blue Kraken -shop

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NOT accurate actually LOL  “ went into detail over the flaws in Ezeibe’s research, which apparently were abundant.”

http://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/featurenigerias-hiv-breakthrough-separating-truth-from-hope-5743177/

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/02/naca-dismisses-hiv-cure-claim-michael-okpara-university-prof/