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Neron

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Shoutout to what is maybe the funniest game balance mod I’ve ever seen

(Context: In MMBN, all chips have a letter code, and you’re able to use chips that have the same letter code together in the same turn, so it’s an effective strategy to load up your folder with as many matching letters as possible. In Battle Network 2, the “G” code just happened to be filled with a lot of strong, easily obtained chips, making it disproportionately powerful. This mod balances the game by removing the “G” code, changing all chips that used to be “G” to different letters, and for good measure, removing all other instances of the letter G from the entire rest of the game)

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Midcentury Carnival 

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Midcentury Commerce

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felt like drawing them again

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if youre not in school anymore and are looking for ways to get out of the house more go to the nearest "hip" coffee shop you can that has a bulletin board with flyers on it for local events and attend any and all the ones youre able to ESPECIALLY if they're free. this is the only actionable advice that has worked for me

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i have seen barely anyone talk about the parallels in these conversations. its so fucking neat and we need to discuss this more

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Red

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static miku fanart. Initially wanted to draw her with tenna, buuut yeah

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This was mainly to experiment with using pure black to color, also learning dynamic poses, colors didnt turn as well as expected, maybe should've used more black Also, it was right after i finished this piece that i remembered that jesters dont use harps, they're for BARDS

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Civi the security android

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fly

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Quick drawings

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cmyk angel

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Help I can't stop thinking about the use of Latin and Christian cultural references in K-Pop Demon Hunters.

The first one is the name. HUNTR/X is pronounced "huntrix", and -trix comes from ancient Latin, where it's the feminine form of nouns that end in -or for the masculine, like victor, victrix. It's certainly rarer in English than endings like -ess (think shepherd, shepherdess) and mostly used in legal or religious contexts. So a "huntrix" is the same as a "huntress", but it sounds more like the language western Christianity used for centuries.

And then... there's Your Idol.

Which literally begins with a medieval Christian song, the hauntingly ominous Gregorian chant version of Dies Irae. Which is Latin for "Day of Wrath", the beginning of a vivid description of the day at the end of the world where all souls will be called to answer to God for their sins. Over the centuries, Western composers have been integrating bits of its melody into anything they want to sound even a little spooky. Jaws cello? Dies Irae.

And then the title itself... when people first called pop stars "idols", they were not approving of it. "Idolatry" means to worship something that isn't God the way you would worship God himself, and for Christians (as in other Abrahamic religions) this is a huuuge no-no. The Ten Commandments literally START by saying, "You shall have no other God before me. You shall not make for yourself any graven image or idol [...] You shall not bow down to them or serve them." (Exodus 20:3-5) Christian religious leaders frequently instruct their followers to think about whether they have created any false idols in their lives, putting something above God, whether that's loving money more than doing what's morally right, or caring about looking attractive and fashionable more than caring about being principled and Godly.

So the song is literally playing up all the Christian perceptions of what idols and demons are. They're attractive but evil! They're here to steal your soul! Bowing down to them gives them power! They demand human sacrifices!

To explain demons: In Christianity, the only legitimate supernatural power is God, THEE god, God of the Bible, and His only begotten son, and/or, anything sent, blessed, or okayed by Him. Angels, saints, churches, etc. In that worldview, anything else that claims to be a supernatural entity, anything that is not God (THEE God) is fundamentally evil. Coming from Satan, Hell, demons, devils. The only correct response to them is to beat the crap out of them and send them back to where they came from. The power of Christ compels you, yadda yadda.

WHY THIS MATTERS: This is basically the attitude HUNTR/X started the movie off with. This is Takedown in a nutshell.

And it's totally wrong.

When Christian missionaries came to Korea, they found a rich interwoven tradition of Korean shamanism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. People understood the spiritual world as having a vast number of spirits and gods, who each had different personalities, tendencies, and relationships with humans.

And the missionaries said, "YOU'RE WORSHIPING DEVILS. YOU'RE WORSHIPING DEMONS. THESE ARE ALL FALSE IDOLS. THEY'RE EVIL."

They didn't care about the stories behind each god. They didn't care if a ceremony was meant to worship a spirit or persuade it to be less of an asshole. Frankly, they thought even believing in these spirits and gods at all was problematic, but if you have to grant that they're real supernatural forces... they're not from God, so they're all Satanic.

So Rumi is left trying to understand why she can be part good and part evil, but has no idea what being a demon actually means. She doesn't know their stories, how they behave, or how to live or fight with them. Literally ten minutes talking to one hits everything she's ever known like a wrecking ball. Because you cannot actually write off vast swathes of people, or centuries of religious and spiritual thought and experience, as "demonic" and leave it at that.

And I think that's beautiful.

(Author's note: This post is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC. Like everything else on this blog, I'm okay if you translate, quote or perform this post elsewhere, but you have to credit me and you cannot make money off it.)

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Looking at some of your work, it is stunning but it is very similar in style to AI artwork, do you have any recommendations for how to tell apart photography like yours from AI.

I've been thinking about this. And this may sound controversial at first, but I'm hoping people will hear me out.

We should stop trying so hard to detect AI art.

I think we should all lift that burden from our brains.

I have often talked about "woke goggles." Where conservatives have lost the ability to enjoy anything because they are hypervigilant about detecting anything woke. They've cursed themselves into just hating everything. All they have left is the "God's Not Dead" Cinematic Universe.

And I worry people are getting AI goggles now. They are so concerned about accidentally enjoying robot art and hurting artists that they have overcorrected to the point where they are hurting artists.

One cannot say "AI is all soulless slop that always looks bad" and then accuse a real artist of making something that looks like AI and not hurt them. By doing so, it includes the baggage of all of the "slop" comments along with it. This crusade is having collateral damage to the very artists we are trying to protect.

Yes, we need to be cautious about malicious AI images. Misinformation and deepfakes are going to be a big problem. People using AI imagery for profit is already a mess. But if you are cruising your feed and like a cool sci-fi robot gal or a photo of a waterfall and it turns out to be AI... that's fine.

It was trained by real artists and AI is going to create some cool shit because of that.

Honestly, I think a lot of the worst slop is because the dipshits creating the prompts have no artistic taste. People keep blaming the AI for how bad it looks and often don't consider it is a product of the loser who published it.

There is plenty of non-slop out there that has fooled me. And, like it or not, it is going to get harder and harder to tell what is AI. Until there are better tools or better regulations, I don't think there is much we can do to avoid enjoying AI art every once in a while. If only by accident.

Current "AI detectors" are mostly a scam. Even the best forensic-level AI image detectors struggle to stay above 70–80% accuracy across a wide range of models and image types. And that's in controlled lab conditions.

Free online tools often drop to near coin-flip accuracy (50–60%), especially with newer image generators and post-processing applied.

The best way to avoid AI imagery is to look at an artist's body of work. It's much harder to create consistent, non-obvious fake images in a large sample size. That is usually enough to have confidence in authenticity. Plus, if they have posted similar art before 2022, you can pretty much rule out any shenanigans.

Otis literally died before genAI was available.

But images you see in the wild, just let yourself enjoy them if that is what your brain wants to do. It'll be okay.

I just think we are attacking this backwards. If we want to protect artists, we need to support them.

Calling out random AI art does not support them.

It does not put money in their pockets.

It does not grow their audience.

Over a decade ago I tried to lead a fight to create better systems of attribution on websites like Reddit and Imgur. I even spoke to the Imgur team after an article was written about me.

I asked them to allow sources on their posts and to develop tech that would help people find where an image came from. They said they were "working on it" and it never manifested.

IMAGE SHARING SITES STEAL MORE FROM ARTISTS THAN AI.

But we just kind of accepted it. No one really joined me in my fight. The prevailing defeatist attitude was, "That's just the way it is."

I think now is the time to demand better attribution systems. We need to be vigilant about making sure as many posts as possible have good sourcing. If an image on Reddit goes viral, the top comment should be the source. And if it isn't, you should try to find it and add it.

Just to be clear, "credit to the original artist" is NOT proper attribution.

And perhaps we can lobby these image sharing sites to create better sourcing systems and tools. They could even use fucking AI to find the earliest posted version of an image.

And it would be nice if it didn't require people to go into the comments to find the source. It could just be in the headline. They could even create little badges "made by a human" for verified artists.

Good attribution helps artists grow their audience. It is one of the single most effective things you can do to help them.

I literally just got this message...

There are maybe 10 popular artists who I helped grow their audience early on. Just because I reblogged their work and added links to all of their social media. I even hired my best friend to add sourcing information to every post because I believed so much in good attribution.

Calling out AI art may feel good in the moment. You caught someone trying to trick people and it feels like justice. But, in most cases, the tangible benefits to real artists seem small. It impedes your ability to enjoy art without always being suspicious. And the risk of telling someone you think they make soulless slop doesn't seem worth it.

But putting that time and effort into attribution *would* be worth it. I have proven it time and time again.

I also think people should consider having a monthly art budget. I don't care if it is $5. But if we all commit to seeking out cool artists and being their collective patrons, we could really make a difference and keep real art alive. Just commit to finding a cool new artist every month and financially contributing to them in some way.

On a bigger scale I think advocating for universal basic income, art grants for education and creation, and government regulation of AI would all be helpful long term goals. Though I think our friends in Europe may have to take the lead on regulation at the moment.

So...

Stop worrying about enjoying or calling out AI art.

Demand better attribution from image sharing sites.

Make sure all art has a source listed.

Start an art budget.

Advocate for better regulations.