emeraldastral

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This scientist crafts stunning visual art through chemistry.

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Just realized I never posted my Doppler Miku here, my bad.

She's a storm chaser and a meteorologist!!

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Unmute !

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Just because I was curious about the math, that means 1 out of every (roughly) 30 people in the United States* was out protesting. That number includes everyone, from the infants to the elderly.

*based on population data from 2023

Just a reminder that 11 million people protested today across the US. You are not alone in your anger, sadness and anxiety and each protest is getting bigger and bigger. We will get through this no matter what and we will do it ourselves.

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Pride month means Pride Flags! I created five different cross stitch patterns of watercolor art versions of my favorite flag of inclusivity. What a wonderful gift to make for someone to show your support as an ally or a proud member of the LGBTQ community! LOVE IS LOVE.

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forever grateful i was simply too lazy to let the makeup industrial complex get its hooks in me. I was just like im not doing all of that. in fact. im doing none of that

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That's a cool trick. Wonder what he's saying though 😔

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Y’all I want to throw massive kudos out to the Roger Williams Park Zoo for a choice they made today: rather than joining in on a GenAI trend all the zoos are doing right now, they chose to support and spotlight an artist on their staff!

The big thing right now is these GenAI “figurine toys” of zookeepers or zoo management. And instead they shared a version drawn by one of their staff!

Go give them some love, if you’re on FB. Too many zoos are really getting into GenAI and just whitewashing the climate change / copyright issues that come with it, so I want this zoo to get as much positive feedback as we can muster for making a better choice.

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What a cool and fun timeline that we're in. So awesome. 🙃

“Slopsquatting” in a nutshell:

1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal, that’s how you get math packages and stuff but

2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but

3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So

4. Now the LLM code points to malware.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/12/ai_code_suggestions_sabotage_supply_chain/

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I've finally figured out an argument that convinces coding tech-bros that AI art is bad.

Got into a discussion today (actually a discussion, we were both very reasonable and calm even through I felt like committing violence) with a tech-bro-coded lady who claimed that people use AI in coding all the time so she didn't see why it mattered if people used AI in art.

Obviously I repressed the surge of violence because that would accomplish nothing. Plus, this lady is very articulate, the type who makes claims and you sit there thinking no that's wrong it must be but she said it so well you're kind of just waffling going but, no, wait-- so I knew I had to get this right if I was gonna come out of this unscathed.

The usual arguments about it being about the soul of it and creation fell flat, in fact she was adamant that anyone who believed that was in fact looking down at coding as an art form as she insisted it is. Which, sure, you can totally express yourself through coding. There's a lot more nuance as to the differences but clearly I was not going to win this one.

The other people I was with (literally 8 people anti-ai against her, but you can't change the mind of someone who doesn't want to listen and she just kept accusing us of devaluing coding as an art) took over for I kid you not 15 minutes while I tried desperately to come up with a clear and articulate way to explain the difference to her. They tried so many reasonable arguments, coding being for a function ("what, art doesn't serve a function?") coding being many discrete building blocks that you put together differently, and the AI simply provides the blocks and you put it together yourself ("isn't that what prompt building is") that it's bad for the environment ("but not if it's used for capitalism, hm?" "Yeah literally that's how capitalism works it doesn't care about the environment" she didn't like that response)

But I finally got it.

And the answer is: It's not about what you do, it's about what you claim to be.

Imagine that someone asks an AI to write a code and, by some miracle, it works perfectly without them having to tweak it---which is great because they couldn't tell you what a single solitary thing in that code means.

Now imagine this person, with their code that they don't know how it works, goes and applies to be a coder somewhere, presenting this AI code as proof that they're qualified.

Should they be hired?

She was horrified, of course. Of course they shouldn't be. They're not qualified. They can't actually code, and even if by some miracle they did have an AI successfully write a flawless code for every issue they came across that wouldn't be their code, you could hire any shmuck on the street to do that, no reason to pay someone like they're creating something.

When actual engineers use AI what they do is get some kind of base, which they then go though and check for problems and then if they find any they fix them, and add on to the base code with their own knowledge instead of just trying different prompt after prompt until they randomly come across one that works.

People who generate code like this don't usually call themselves engineers. They're people who needed a bit of code and didn't have the knowledge to generate it, and so used a resource.

And there you go. There are people who have none of the skills of artists, they don't practice, they don't create for themselves. When they feed the prompt to the AI they then don't just use the resulting image as a reference point for their own personal masterpiece, and if they don't like it they don't have the skills to change it---they simply try another prompt, and do that until they get something they like.

These people are calling themselves artists.

Not only that, these people are bringing the AI generated thing to interviews, and they are getting hired, leaving people who slave over their craft out of the job.

And that is the difference, for the tech bros who think AI art isn't a big deal.