#2024 floods

[seimsisk]

Donate to victims of Brazil floods from abroad

if you're not Brazilian and want to help with this unprecedented crisis, here are some options of ngos to help. I personally always recommend the workers movement MST

[texasflycaster]

Monday Morning Washing

Floods Continue on Local Lakes Welcome to North Texas in Summer! In case you were wondering where I disappeared to, it was back home again to South Texas and the still normal, level tidal Lower Laguna Madre that only closes for hurricanes and even then, barely at all. I’m starting to have a chip on my bony shoulders. Whether you know it or not, Lake Ray Roberts is shut DOWN. I was driving…

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Donate to victims of Brazil floods from abroad

Brazil’s southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, a state the size of Ecuador, has been devastated by historic floods, with most of its 497 municipalities in a state of public calamity. Authorities have described the crisis as “war-like” and consider it the state’s worst crisis caused by natural disasters ever.

Roughly 200,000 people were forced out of their homes, according to state officials. The death toll, which has been growing fast, is inching closer to the mark of 100 — and there are still more than 130 people missing.

A series of public and private initiatives are collecting donations in order to mitigate the devastating effects of the crisis. Post offices in the states of São Paulo and Paraná, as well as some in Rio Grande do Sul, for example, offered to collect and transport donations free of charge.

Continue reading.

[stevetwisp]

TRANS RIGHTS ASUKA PRIDE 2024!!

(an updated version of trans rights asuka 2021) (found here)

[temeyes]

redrew an [old Ghost sketch] (cuz im wearing the same sweater rn lol!!)

[acekindaneat]

Day 2: Animals/Field trip!

Bro used his flip phone to take that picture.

clearer version:

[emotional-mess-in-distress]

Xanvid week day 6 : Promise

Cute wedding moment

[takaraphoenix]

So it turns out that Steter, beyond being an excellent ship with a delightful fandom, is also a gateway drug into Stetopher and I just feel like someone should have given me a heads up before I decend into another ship :/

Guess who's writing her first Stetopher fic :D

[iamonlyhereforthefood]

Tak už fakt ide do tuhého:

[genericpuff]

Webtoons Is Making Moves - So Should You.

We all saw it coming ages ago and now it's finally here. There's no more beating around the bush or doubting if anyone is "reading into it too much", Webtoons' use of AI in its more recent webtoons is not an accident, not an oversight, but by design, it always has been. And I guaran-fucking-tee you that the work that already exists on the platform won't be safe from Webtoons' upcoming AI integration through scraping and data mining. Sure, they can say they're not gonna replace human creators, but that doesn't change the fact that AI tools, in their current form, can't feasibly exist without stealing from pre-existing content.

Plus, as someone who's tested their AI coloring tools specifically... they're a long, LONG way away from actually being useful. Like, good luck using them for any comic style that isn't Korean manwha featuring predominantly white characters with small heads and comically long legs. And if they do manage to get their AI tools to incorporate more art styles and wider ranges of character identities... again, what do you think it's been trained on?

Also, as an added bit that I found very funny:

Um, I'm sorry, what fucking year is it? Because platforms like WT and Tapas have both been saying this for years but we're obviously seeing them backpedal on that now with the implementation of in-house publishing programs like Unscrolled which have reinvented the wheel of taking digital webtoons and going gasp physical! It's almost like the platform has learned that there's no sustainable profit to be had in digital comics alone without the help of supplementary streams of income and is now trying to act like they've invented physical book publishing!

"The future of comic publishing, including manga, will be digital"??? My brother in christ, Shonen Jump has been exclusively digital since 2012! What rock have the WT's staff been living under that they're trying to sell digital comics as the "future" to North Americans as if we haven't already been living in that future for over ten years now?? We've had an entire generation of children raised on that same digital media since then! This isn't the selling point you think it is LMAO If anything, the digital media market here in NA is dying thanks to the enshittification of digital content platorms like Netflix, Disney+, and mainstream social media platforms! That "future" is not only already both the past and present, but is swiftly on its way out! Pack it up and go home, you missed the bus!

Literally so much of WT's IPO pitch is just a deadass grift full of corporate buzzwords and empty promises. They're trying so hard to convince people that their business model is infinitely profitable... but if it were, why do they need the public's money? And where are all those profits for the creators who are being exploited day after day to fill their platform with content? Why are so many creators still struggling to pay their bills if the company has this much potential for profit?

Ultimately even their promised AI tools don't ensure profit, they ensure cutting expenses. The extra money they hope to make isn't gonna come from their content generating income, it's gonna come from normal people forking over their money in the hopes that it'll be turned around, and from Webtoons cheapening the medium even further until it's nothing but conveyer belt gruel. Sure, "making more than you spend" is the base definition of "profit", but can we really call it that when it's through the means of gutting features, retiring support programs, letting go editing staff, and limiting resources for their own hired freelancers who are the only reason they even have content to begin with? That's not sustainable profit or growth, that's fighting the tide which can and will carry them away at any moment.

I'm low key calling it now, a year or two from today we're gonna be seeing massive lawsuits and calls to action from the people who invested their money into WT and subsequently lost it into the black hole that is WT's "business model". This is a company that's been operating in the red for years, what about becoming an IPO is gonna make them "profitable"? Let alone profitable enough to pay back their investors in the spades they're expecting? The platform and its app are already shit and they're about to become even worse, we are literally watching this company circle the drain in the modern day's ever-ongoing race to the bottom, enshittification in motion, but they're trying to convince us all the same that they're "innovating".

Webtoons doesn't want to invest in its creators. We as creators need to stop investing in them.

[wisteriagoesvroom]

i'll take "things an ao3 writer could say that an f1 commentator also could" for $2

[narrie]

so glad german summer is finally getting some international coverage 😄

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

How you can help victims of the Rio Grande do Sul floods

Rescue efforts are ongoing in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, after floods and landslides left at least 100 people dead and displaced more than 200,000. As well as local residents, rescue groups have also dedicated themselves to saving pets stranded on rooftops and in flooded homes.

For those who live abroad and want to help, well-known NGOs are making their channels available for donations in foreign currency.

That is the case of the Brazil Foundation’s Luz Alliance Fund, created by fashion model Gisele Bündchen, and the Homeless Workers’ Movement’s (MTST) PayPal through its “Solidarity Kitchen” project. The MTST’s goal is to deliver 2,400 meals daily.

Another crowdfunding project is supported by companies and influencers from all over Brazil, and donations can be made in U.S. dollars, euros, and British pounds.

Continue reading.

[ilottthepilot]

[marblerose-rue]

attack for @/pi_peeppeep_pi (art fight) !!!

[simply-ivanka]