#and I know this applies to many jobs and capitalism in general

[h0neyfreak]

***

[inkskinned]

oh you know it's all latestage capitalism but the thing is. how are you supposed to be a person inside of this. a person trying to be a better version of yourself.

oh, you started working young, which was kind of hard, but it's just the way stuff works sometimes. and it was 2008 and your family couldn't afford heat. but it's fine, you grow a spine and get used to the professional world and besides it was the suburbs we're talking about here, like, your life could have been actually hard, so what if your father lost his job and you can't afford to move or turn the lights back on. and once you start making money, it's good. you keep doing that. because now they're relying on you. so you have to do that.

oh you were in thousands of dollars of debt at 17 years old so that you could go to school, because you have to go to school if you want to get a "real" job. you even did it "right", you worked parttime and attended community college before you transferred to a public school. you were under so many merit scholarships.

which is fine. you pick yourself up and you say like, okay. i graduated college. i'm holding down a job. i'm doing the Adult Thing, which looks and acts like this, according to all the books i've read. you start with the shitty job and then you climb that corporate ladder.

but the shitty job doesn't cover rent and you stretch yourself too-thin so you get sick. good luck with that. the shitty job no longer pays for your meals. everyone asks why you don't just move, but there's nowhere to move to. and with what money are you going to be moving? and then the loans come back, because they were never going to forgive them, because you were 17 and trying to do the right thing, which was stupid. people are now saying you shouldn't have even gone to school.

which is fine. but because you have no other option, so you do the shitty job, and you apply every day for like 5 new ones, and despite the fact everyone says "there's no one who wants to work!" it's actually just that nobody is fucking hiring so you can either work for 13 dollars an hour in the shitty place you know (where at least you have a passingly friendly relationship with the manager) or you can start from scratch again with a different 13 dollars an hour without knowing how much abuse from the new job you'll be taking.

and if you quit you lose your insurance. if you quit you lose your housing. if you quit, you'll be another burnout kid. the lazy ones. these assholes, look at them!

and you come home to a family dinner and you hear from your father the same old thing. how he worked hard at his job and yes it sucked for a while but he was able to provide for the family and then the house and the dog and the rest of barbie's dream vacation. how the insurance did cover some of it. how you just really need to start speaking up more in manager conversations so they know you're a go-getter. you want to tell him - did you know we're actually doing more now hourly than any previous generation? - but you can't remember where you heard that statistic, and you're far too tired for the fucking argument. and then he starts in on his usual bit. where's the house? where's your kids? where's your ambition.

the same job the same money the same hours doesn't do it anymore. the same nose-to-the-grindstone now just shreds your face off. there's no such thing as upwards mobility, not really. and as far as you're aware, the money certainly is not trickling. you do the soulless stupid shit you signed up for because you fucking have to or else you literally risk your life (food, the apartment, the insurance), but it's not getting you anything. you download the stupid "save more" app and you budget and you do every right thing and then the price of eggs is 7 dollars and you say - oh great! another thing i have to fucking worry about now!

and you go to your stupid job and everyone in your father's generation just tells you to be better about being an adult. they have their homes and their savings account and their bailout and they say. well have you tried not drinking starbucks. well your generation just spends too much on clothing. well you might just be too addicted to travelling. and you - because you need the job - you bite your tongue and don't say i am being held prisoner and you're suggesting i stop pacing my cell if i don't like the scenery and you don't say what the fuck do you think i've been doing with my money and you don't say i haven't spent a cent on something nice in literally forever much less coffee you arrogant asshole. you open and close your bank app and check your loans and check your credit score and check fucking zillow and ziprecruiter and apartments.com just one time more. and still they give you that demeaning little grin and say - see, what you need is -

what you need is for your meds to stop being so fucking expensive. what you need is for the housing bubble to explode into dust. what you need is for billionaires to choke on their wealth. what you need is actual help. what you will get is more economic advice from people who are older-and-wiser.

and above you, almost in a glimmer, you can see the wedged smile of your debt getting toothier, wider.

[evilwizard]

I do want to say, my views on AI “art” have changed somewhat. It was wrong of me to claim that it’s not wrong to use it in shitposts… there definitely is some degree of something problematic there.

Personally I feel like it’s one of those problems that’s best solved via lawmaking—specifically, AI generations shouldn’t be copywrite-able, and AI companies should be fined for art theft and “plagiarism”… even though it’s not directly plagiarism in the current legal sense. We definitely need ethical philosophers and lawmakers to spend some time defining exactly what is going on here.

But for civilians, using AI art is bad in the same nebulous sense that buying clothes from H&M or ordering stuff on Amazon is bad… it’s a very spread out, far away kind of badness, which makes it hard to quantify. And there’s no denying that in certain contexts, when applied in certain ways (with actual editing and artistic skill), AI can be a really interesting tool for artists and writers. Which again runs into the copywrite-ability thing. How much distance must be placed between the artist and the AI-generated inspiration in order to allow the artist to say “this work is fully mine?”

I can’t claim to know the answers to these issues. But I will say two things:

Ignoring AI shit isn’t going to make it go away. Our tumblr philosophy is wildly unpopular in the real world and most other places on the internet, and those who do start using AI are unfortunately gonna have a big leg up on those who don’t, especially as it gets better and better at avoiding human detection.

Treating AI as a fundamental, ontological evil is going to prevent us from having these deep conversations which are necessary for us—as a part of society—to figure out the ways to censure AI that are actually helpful to artists. We need strong unions making permanent deals now, we need laws in place that regulate AI use and the replacement of humans, and we need to get this technology out of the hands of huge megacorporations who want nothing more than to profit off our suffering.

I’ve seen the research. I knew AI was going to big years ago, and right now I know that it’s just going to get bigger. Nearly every job is in danger. We need to interact with this issue—sooner rather than later—or we risk losing all of our futures. And unfortunately, just as with many other things under capitalism, for the time being I think we have to allow some concessions. The issue is not 100% black or white. Certainly a dark, stormy grey of some sort.

But please don’t attack middle-aged cat-owners playing around with AI filters. Start a dialogue about the spectrum of morality present in every use of AI—from the good (recognizing cancer cells years in advance, finding awesome new metamaterials) to the bad (megacorporations replacing workers and stealing from artists) to the kinda ambiguous (shitposts, app filter that makes your dog look like a 16th century British royal for some reason).

And if you disagree with me, please don’t be hateful about it. I fully recognize that my current views might be wrong. I’m not a paragon of moral philosophy or anything. I’m just doing my best to live my life in a way that improves the world instead of detracting from it. That’s all any of us can do, in my opinion.

[relatableblorbopoll]

Round 1 of preliminaries, group 11

The first two places get a place on the bracket

Little reminder: there will be 2 more rounds of preliminaries, the losing blorbos of this poll still have 2 chances of getting in the official bracket

Propaganda under the cut

Mae Borowski (Night in the Woods)

"Spoilers! She's a college dropout in her early twenties, who suffers from untreated mental illness and dissociation and had a complete breakdown at college, causing her to come home. Now she's living with her parents again, but life in her dingy little hometown went on without her. Her friends are adults now - in a relationship and planning on moving to the big city, or having to waste away in a dead end job instead of following their dreams. Mae is the only one without a new adult role in life. She's not great with people either - she's blunt and often doesn't think things through, and in many ways just doesn't get the world of adults. She's also prone to petty crimes and general anarchy. She's kind of lost and purposeless, and trying to find meaning in life by desperately clinging to the past. Her decision to drop out of college probably saved her life, but it's also put her family in a tough financial situation and is viewed by most people as her just thoughtlessly doing whatever she wants. She's also kind of shamed a lot about not having a job or other productive role in life, despite the fact that her untreated mental issues are actually disabling for her. She also plays the bass real bad. Anyway, i love Mae a lot. Playing this game as a college dropout in my early twenties, sitting in my childhood bedroom in my mom's attic, back in my dingy little hometown, desperately missing my old friends who have all moved on to better, resposible things in life... yeah, it felt like the game was pointing dead at me. Given tumblr's general demographic, i figure i must not be completely alone in this"

Shigeo Kageyama / Mob (Mob Psycho 100)

"autistic. likes milk. if we reach a certain level of emotion we turn into a psychic bomb. cool brothers :)"

Barry the Quokka (The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog)

"Their only skill is working the microwave, they're non-binary, when seeing a trash bin their first instinct is to look through it, they're always the most normal person in the room, they can beatbox, and they were only hired due to being the only one who applied."

Kaveh (Genshin Impact)

"In a fantasy world, be a guy with a regular profession losing his goddamn mind. Poor guy has a guilt complex, (so true) and a lot of deep embarrassment regarding his life.(ehe) He just wants to do what he's passionate about but capitalism is evil and also he keeps getting scammed. Claims to not want anyone to know Things, goes into depth about these Things anyway. Is probably most definitely gay. Can be found face down on a table lamenting his fate. Terrible sleep schedule. (HA) He is such a guy. Wants to believe the world is a good place and people are inherently good. And wants to help people and do good himself. It's just hard. [And he has a roommate. Oh my god he has a roommate]"

"He was, and still is, regarded a genius. He aced his Akademiya days, he has the admiration and appreciation of so many people because he is oh-so remarkable. But what for, when reality is that he sits at home depressed and with guilt consuming him, faking the image people have of him, not only broke as fuck but actually in debt, drowning his sorrows in wine."

Yusuke Kitagawa (Persona 5)

"highschooler who wants to spend the rest of his life doing what he loves. is obsessed with art and beauty and it's on his mind 24/7 received help from his now friendgroup to break from his abusive foster father who he still have complicated feelings with had to move into school dorms and am struggling to live independantly since he'd rather spend money and time on his art but he's still surviving and enjoying the good times id say also ends up saying whatever is on his mind and is pretty eccentric. very passionate about what he loves. doesn't want to do anything else."

Nanami Kento (Jujutsu Kaisen)

"Ex-salaryman, now jujutsu sorcerer. During one life-and-death fight, kept talking about how it was almost six pm with is when he is getting off work at 6pm no matter what because he hates overtime. While his opponent repeatedly almost kills him. Normalest adult in this shonen anime. Teen MC: "Let's go all out!" Nanami: "No. Where moderate effort will suffice, use moderate effort." Some of his quotes from the anime: "I studied at Jujutsu Tech and one thing I learned is that Jujutsu Sorcerers are shit! Then I worked at your typical company and one thing I learned is that work is shit! If both are equally shit I'll take the one I'm more suited to." "You've faced several life-or-death situations, but that does not make you an adult. Finding more fallen-out hairs on your pillow, watching your favourite stuffed bread disappear from the convenience store... The accunulation of these little despairs is what makes a person an adult." "I don't praise or disparage anyone. I adhere to facts and judge on that basis. That's who I am. There was a time when I mistakenly believed society operated the same way." "

[tarysande]

Hi! I’m considering becoming an editor but I’m not sure if it’s the right fit for me. If you don’t mind answering, what was your path like for becoming an editor, and what does the job mostly consist of for you?

Additionally, while I really do like helping other people’s work become better, I get too in my head to release a lot of my own work. Does editing require you to also be a writer most of the time, or could I get by mostly just editing?

Thanks!

Hi, anonymous friend!

These are really good questions for a potential editor to ask.

To (sort-of) answer your question, the amount of writing involved depends on the type of editing, honestly. So, first you have to decide what kind of editor you want to be.

Roughly, editing breaks down into three-to-four types: developmental/substantive, line/stylistic, copy editing, and proofreading. These terms are mixed up and interchanged ... often. Increasingly, line editing includes or incorporates copy editing, which is why I say "three-to-four."

Developmental is the big picture stuff, including manuscript critiques. Books of all kinds usually undergo some kind of developmental editing--by editorial agents, acquisitions editors, freelance developmental editors, etc. In my experience, this is also the kind of editing that requires the most writing and/or the most author/editor interaction.

Stylistic/line editing tends to be editing at the sentence level, looking at diction, structure, clarity, consistency, etc. Copy editing, on the other hand, is what many people think of when they think of editing--it's the mechanics of writing, like spelling, grammar, punctuation.

Proofreading is the rather specialized skill of editing proofs. They're the final eyes on a pre-published piece; they're looking for typos and errors rather than anything that will involve significant authorial changes because a proof page has already been "set" (as it were).

All of these kinds of editing can be applied to many different areas of communication, and the editors who perform them can be self-employed (like me) or work for an employer (i.e., as a more traditional employee). Employee editors might work in-house at a publisher (of books, magazines, academic journals, etc.), or they might have any number of editing-focused roles in business, government, education, etc. Self-employed editors may also end up working as contractors for other companies; this is pretty normal.

Many book publishers, including the Big Five, farm out a lot of their editing these days, by the way. Especially the copy editing and proofreading. So, those particular jobs are dwindling as in-house options. Publishers can pay freelancers less ... and avoid paying benefits. (#capitalism)

I will also say that, especially in jobs with anything to do with marketing or advertising, there's a lot of annoying scope creep where "copy editor" is often expected to be a copy writer, too. Again, it's a symptom of employers wanting to pay fewer people to do more jobs (and it's really annoying).

My path has mostly involved trying as many things as possible and slowly weeding out the ones I don't like. I've pretty much always been self-employed because the personal benefits (setting my own schedule, rates, deadlines) works better for me. That said, I'm Canadian (so I don't have to worry about employer-covered healthcare), and I have a partner whose salary is regular and whose benefits cover me, so I don't have some of the worries a freelancer in the US or a single-income household might have. I'm increasingly working on the development side of things because big-picture storytelling, including writing and editor/author interaction, is my jam. But I have also done a ton of line/copy editing on fiction, non-fiction, academic work, etc.

Without knowing what kind of editing you're looking to get into, it's harder for me to offer suggestions for next steps, but generally, I'd say it's important to get SOME training--whether through a school, a certificate program, or the various workshops and professional development offered by editing associations (Editors Canada, the CIEP, ACES, the EFA, ...there's an Australian one whose acronym has slipped my mind). Researching the flavor of editing you're interested in will probably offer up avenues for study, too. For example, most US publishers/authors use iterations of the Chicago Manual of Style. Most UK publishers/authors use Hart's Rules/Oxford. Academic journals/schools/students have different style guides (APA, AMA, MLA, Harvard, Vancouver). Law uses the Blue Book. It's good to have working knowledge of a few style guides--and then you have to keep up with the changes (Chicago's 18th edition is coming out this year, and I hear some significant changes are afoot--such as fully embracing the singular they!).

The tl;dr here is that yes, there are a lot of writer-editors. But there are also a lot of editors who aren't writers at all, or who have no interest in becoming writers, or who don't want their writing and editing to overlap, or who edit because they like helping people and they value clarity. At the end of the day, editing and writing are two very different hats, and you don't necessarily need to wear both.

...this is already a bit long, but if you have other questions or want me to get more specific about something, please ask!

[lesbian-disaster-academic]

Since there's been some discussion of this on a prior post I made, let's address

Neurodivergent Skill-Regression: What is it & Why Does it Happen?

Content Warning! This post will make brief mention of various topics, including: childhood abuse (not explicit), depression, suicidal ideation, car accidents, the COVID-19 pandemic, and throwing up.

Okay, let's begin with a quick preface. I'm writing from the Global North, in a capitalist economy, and in a country founded on (ongoing!) systems of colonialism. Therefore, that's how I'll be situating this discussion (just because it's what I know best). Neurodivergence and Capitalist Exploitation Under capitalism, productivity and extraction in the name of profit become of the utmost importance. Extraction can take place in the form of extracting physical resources (think fracking on Turtle Island), extracting labour, etc. Ultimately, neurodivergence itself is not an ill-formed or "bad" mind. It is only conceptualized and coded as such because capitalism and various other interlocking systems of oppression are actively hostile to minds that, in some way, subvert capitalist and colonial ideals. (however, this is not to negate, invalidate, or trivialize the fact that adhd/asd/ocd/bpd/etc. are disabilities. by their very nature, they impede and disrupt functioning. what is considered "functional", however, is determined by this capitalist/colonialist state and the things it values. this is all simply to say that we would be able to more easily exist and thrive within a society that doesn't reward self-destruction in the name of accumulating capital for the upper class) Of course, living in a system that is not built for you is going to be exhausting—it takes a toll on you, both physically and mentally. This can be further compounded if you are marginalized in other ways; for instance, if you're a person of colour, working class, a woman, 2SLGBTQ+, an immigrant, or a combination of these.

Masking and Burnout Many neurodivergent folx are forced into positions in which they have to mask. For the sake of clarity, "masking", in this case, involves concealing one's neurodivergent traits. For me, that might look like suppressing compulsions, consciously regulating my facial expressions, working longer and harder to accomplish tasks because I can't focus, or scripting conversations before I have them. These manifestations are often invisible to outsiders, but they take a heavy toll on us, and can often result in neurodivergent burnout. This is where the skill-regression comes in. An Example... Let me give you a personal example of what neurodivergent skill-regression can look like! Prior to the pandemic, I was a highly productive person. I was designated "gifted" (whatever that means) and was top of my class in every single class. I was participating in (and running) multiple clubs, working a steady job, volunteering within the community, and learning new instruments and languages. I was a skilled pianist and painter, and also very athletic. From the outside looking in, I appeared successful: I had a massive scholarship lined up at the most prestigious university in the country. I was generally well-liked. I was creative and skilled in both the humanities and STEM (mostly humanities lol), etcetera etcetera. But I was in no way okay. I was incredibly depressed and suicidal. I had multiple undiagnosed anxiety disorders and neurodivergencies. I was experiencing relentless abuse at home. I was throwing up every few days out of pure fear and stress. I was constantly sick, crying (in secret, and then later too numb to cry), overwhelmed, exhausted, and apathetic. And yet I refused to stop pushing my body and mind to their limit because I had this ingrained belief surrounding my productivity—if I slowed down, would I be worth anything? At the time, to my mind, the answer was a staunch no (even though I didn't apply this thinking to anyone but myself lol). So I repressed everything. I pushed it all to the side and kept moving forward. To put it in perspective, I got hit by a truck at one point, but I was so scared of being late to a thing and disappointing my parents that I just apologized and kept going. This kind of behaviour went on for close to a decade. And then the pandemic hit. And I was forced to stop. I was made to (by virtue of my relative privilege) take a moment to sit down, look around, and actually feel things. And it hit me like a ton of bricks: All the weight of the anger and fear and everything that I had been repressing for the sake of survival came RUSHING in. Now? You want to know what I'm like now? I am very burnt out and incredibly unproductive. I have the attention span of a gnat. Where I used to be able push through exhaustion or else tamp it down with consistently high levels of adrenaline, I now almost ALWAYS feel tired, to the point where I have to lay down. I used to be able to toss together an essay in the span of a couple hours. And, yes, while I can still put an essay together quickly, it’s not going to necessarily be good. Likewise, where I used to be able to mask my neurodivergent traits, I'm now hyperaware of how exhausting it all is, which makes it more difficult to appear neurotypical in public.

The thing is, when you have something like adhd as well as an anxiety disorder, the anxiety can pretty effectively mask the adhd. But once I started medication and more intense therapy, I got a hold on my anxiety and alllll of my coping mechanisms fell away. I no longer had that constant, vibrating fear to force me to maintain attention, and push myself to the breaking point.

It’s like not aging for 80 years and then suddenly having decades collapse into you in the span of moments. So Where Does This Leave Us? Okay, that was a loooong tangent, sorry. Returning to the original point. As the infinitely cool and talented @revenantscholar mentioned in a previous post of mine, when you exist in an unsafe environment (or one which is generally not built with you in mind), it's difficult to hold onto the skills you once had. Your body goes into survival mode and prioritizes keeping you alive. Once you have returned to a space where you can unmask and be physically/emotionally/mentally SAFE, you have the capacity to relearn some of those skills. Not all of them, necessarily, and not all at once. But these things do return—and even if they don't (listen to me, this is important), that doesn't make you stupid/bad/worthless. You are living in a world that is not built for people like you and I, and it sucks, and it's painful and scary, and we will continue to fight for a better future. In the meantime, it's important to remember that you are worthy of care, compassion, empathy, and support regardless of what you can contribute/do. You are incredibly important and I'm so glad you're here. (Thank you for listening. I'm drawing on my human rights knowledge from my degree, and also my own personal experience. However, feel free to correct me or ask any questions you might have! I'm also happy to provide resources/citations if needed. Now go drink water and rest if you need to! Ily!)

[delyth-thomas-art]

Tired Webcomic Creator Noises

Gags … ah yes lets make art into mindless content spat out by Ai cos we've been literally killing creators with inhumane workloads to spit out as many episodes as possible for mindless consumption.

I make my comics with passion and love of the craft! I have a degree in Comics, I spent years...years learning, practising, experimenting, adapting. I recall the days where you may get a page a week, or a few at the start of the month back in the 2000s era of self hosted webcomics and smackjeeves. (Rant below)

I've had to learn how the whole scrolling format worked to adapt to where all the readers had gone to, having been taught the traditional print page formats. And now cos its suddenly a massive money maker for these few hosts and they've pushed creators to the brink with the sheer volume they want pumped out that of course they want to use AI.

But it will speed up colouring! I have multiple tools available by the software I use and made by the wonderful people who love creating that colouring isn't that much of a chore, Its my fav part honestly. And its also a job sector within comics, colourists are skilled artists and this is another way to trim the fat, to pocket more money and keep churning out the 5th millionth villainess story.

Yes I am in most views a tiny creator, I haven't even broken their 1000 sub goal to even try applying for ad rev in the near 5 ish years on webtoon. But what I make I love, I spend hours researching folklore, scripting, drafting the whole kabudle like many other creators. And other than the kind supporters on my Patreon and Ko-fi I don't make much from the hours, days, weeks I pour into what I make. But at least I know its made with my own hands. That its made with love as corny as that sounds.

Ai is creeping its tentacles into everything, now ethically trained ai tools to help smaller creators would be fine. Most creators already rely on 3d tools to speed up things like backgrounds for webcomics. But when we don't know what its trained on, and is marketed wholesale as something anyone can use to make "content" is where it gets insidious. I am all for anyone with the desire to create and tell a story to go out there and do so, whether a beginner or a master. Part of the joy of a long running webcomic is seeing the artist grow both artistically and literary. But with ai it will be all one homogenous style, a copy of what ever is the hot thing. We already have amazon stuffed to the teeth with ai generated books, videos, merch and more all to be sold in some get rich quick manner. (need I point at the Willy's Wonderland incident). Youtube videos being spat out by faceless accounts stealing and regurgitating content at the speed no human video making team can easily match without cutting out quality or fact checking.

It is tiring. Creatives as a whole are treated poorly for decades, and now with the rapid late stage capitalism, website /social media enshitification and the blind headlong rush into the next big money making thing (watches the nft crash). I can't deny Covid sped this up, as everyone was locked inside and turned to what we creators made for comfort. But that content eating boom, lead to more demand, faster output and tighter budgets. We are seeing journalists being cut, game designers in their thousands and recently Dreamworks cutting a bunch and pushing to make their Robot film come out sooner due to public demands.

Skilled creatives are being treated like disposable fast food restaurant employees. Used til they burn out, get injured and even die! And then are simply replaced.

I've never been a creator with huge ambitions to work at places like DC, Marvel or Top Cow. I simply wished to create and share stories with the world, to bring smiles, to create art that evokes emotions, inspires others to look around themselves and create too.

Art is for everyone. You just need to take that scary jump, there is a whole array of welcoming communities willing to teach and share. I wouldn't have improved so much without the kindness of the webcomic groups I've discovered and learnt from. Everyone is always learning, and there no shame in not knowing how to do a thing. Even I started with the cheesy how to draw books as a kid and made my own pokemon and digimon.

Don't let the world treat your art as content. It is "ART" as much as what's kept in the louvre is seen as art, so is that little stick man doodle on a postit.

So Try something new, try a new material, a new style.

And support the artists you enjoy, tip their Ko-Fi, pledge to their Patreon, buy a sticker or print. Share their posts and tell them what you love about what they make.

Don't let machines steal away the art in HEART.

[kervl-klear]

🦊 for Seoltang

🦊 - Would people be rooting for or wishing death for your OC online because of the war?

…………………………………………………

Noeu is looking at Seoltang who is making Coffee. As Seoltang’s Aide, he has something to report but for now….Why is Seoltang suddenly decided to make over 20 cup of coffees in the span of 50 minutes in the middle of a war???

Noeu tightly hug Seoltang, then kneel down in front of him.

Noeu: “Sir, I can have surgeon colonel verify for you that it’s impossible to die from coffee overdose. Do rethink your decision and stay with me”

Seoltang: “Aide what- That’s not what I’m trying to-“

Noeu: “I know people say weird things about you ever since you forgot to zip your pants on national television but you have to brave through it”

Seoltang’s smile crooked a bit, he almost managed to forget about that event. He makes a square shape hand signal with his thumbs and his index fingers then draw a smile on the air with his left index finger, this had Noeu immediately stood up in response.

Seoltang: “Thank you for your kind concern but I would prefer if you addressed your report to me first”

Noeu is still worry but decided to go along.

Noeu: “Very well sir, my report today concern the minute of Area 21 meeting with the intelligence bareau”

Noeu tapped on his laptop to deactivated the power saving mode, showing a presentation slide.

Noeu: “Since you have no social media account, which is a very wise choice considering your work practice. Everyone will definitely wait to celebrate your death. Regardless, allow me to fill you in”

Noeu: “This morning the other generals received an overwhelming amount of online death threats due to the fake leak of North Capital’s documents relating to the recently emerged war between nation A and nation B”

Noeu changed the slide.

Noeu: “The publisher of these fake documents claimed that Northland had been stealing ship from nation A to pirated the cargo ships from nation B, oddly alighted with a statement from one of nation A navy who claim to be a survivor from the piracy before he’s found death in his residence”

Noeu: “The online account that published these fake documents had completely vanished, we concluded that these documents are very specific kind only 3 stars generals and up would knows how to utilized as it is a document designed specifically to be submitted through enclaves in Northland-Bay Hill CENTRIX but none of these documents are found in our or Bay Hill’s system”

Noeu: “Nation B is one of our important imports and exports business partners for many type of essential goods when it’s come to waterway shipments. Our main export is aircraft part which we produce by importing titanium alloyed from nation B. So the defense forces, specifically North Capital are blamed by the civilian for the current Northland’s economic failure”

Noeu: “The other generals had sent their troops to gather more information from the war-side which should rendered the actual instigator motionless for the time being but it does not change the fact that both nation are wary of us and will not cooperate with any troops let alone allow any Northland soldiers on their land��

Noeu: “Clearly this is an attempt to stir riot by an espionage agent who are already deep inside the defense service of our country. The intelligence bureau also report that the results from OSINT and DIGINT alluded to the same directions and so they seek insight from you concerning-”

Noeu stop once he heard a clicked sound, Seoltang is taking photo of the 25 cup of coffees he made.

Noeu: “Sir, are you listening?”

Seoltang: “My apologies Aide, I have to get my profile up in timely fashion so I can put this in the resume I will use to apply for a job at Starducks. I have a good reason to personally investigate there”

Noeu went quiet for moments.

Seoltang is the designer of Northland espionage network and CENTRIX shared between Northland and the other nations, of course his lead is ahead of every other generals when it’s come to intelligence and information. Starducks must have something to do with the-

Seoltang: “You see Aide, last time I attended the conference at North capital. The executives asked me the numeric difference between the IBU of the coffee served in the meeting room and each type of coffee served in Starducks. But I don’t even know what IBU stand for so they tickled me with duck feathers as a warning. They said if I don’t have everything figured next time they will tickle me with heated needles and filmed the entire process”

What in the horizon are they doing at North Capital?? Do they have that much free time??? Noeu thought to himself, now he feels bad for the civilians knowing how their taxes are spent.

Suddenly, Seoltang phone’s buzzed.

Seoltang: “Perfect, I just got a like from an online coffee reviewer”

Noeu: “Hold on sir….you HAVE a social media account? Your existence is supposed to be SECRET! There’s a file about your identity in the B3 here in THIS BASE!“

Seoltang’s ears goes down a little after being scolded.

Seoltang: “I have multiple accounts depending on the industry but I’ve never disclosed anything about myself-”

Noeu: “You literally just published a photo taken inside a highly classified remotely detached facility!!”

Noeu took the phone from Seoltang and started reading some of his posts. It appeared that he did do some activities that supported the hate toward the North Capital officers, a very odd move especially for an account that is supposed to be for things like applying a job.

Then it all clicked.

Noeu: “Wait-did you conjured these online hate because you are bitter that the other generals tickled you with duck feathers over a stupid coffee question?”

Seoltang let out a soft laugh.

Seoltang: “Not quite, I personally don’t care about taking petty revenge on these generals but I care about your safety”

Seoltang: “Conflict can be use in many way from weakening people for threat migration to separating the human resources into group for more manageable organizational systems but surely you are a lot more well versed in this topic than me”

Seoltang approached Noeu and adjust Noeu’s hat.

Seoltang: “Since instigating conflicts is your specialty not mine, right Aide? May be you should rest more, it was careless of you to leave a survivor”

Noeu’s eyes twitched, now finally pieced together what had actually been going on. It’s the reason Seoltang didn’t attend the meeting between Area 21 and the intelligence bureau.

Seoltang: “You’re welcome Noeu”

In response Noeu laugh out loud.

…………………………………………………

Thank you for tuning into my frequency. CVL1, RWY CLR. 🛫✨

[rf-times]

Hello. I saw your post on tradwives and I wanted to ask a question. I am an aspiring tradwife and an ex-feminist. And I'm genuinely curious about what you said. I respect your opinions and understand you want the best for women and yourself too.

Do you believe that what you said applies to most tradwives or just white tradwives in first world countries? Additionally, in my personal experience, I did not have a working mother but I was pushed into university even when I knew I couldn't handle it. Isn't it better for women who cannot handle the competitive job world to become a tradwife? Particularly if they're naturally submissive, like housework and submitting to someone who can make their decisions for them? I have talked to really good traditional men who are good people and their masculinity consists of being strong and protective men instead of the abusive ones feminists think they generally are.

That's not exactly one question so apologies for that. I mean this all in good spirit and I genuinely want to know. Have a good day!

On the contrary, women who feel overwhelmed and scared by the world, who just want a nice protective man to look after them, and who have people pleasing tendencies and feel incapable to handle independence, are the women who are most vulnerable and susceptible to abuse. If your motivation for becoming a tradwife is that are scared of independence then what leverage do you have if the men you rely on to look after you fail you in some way? If you cannot handle independence you will find it so much harder to be able to leave.

What exactly do you think abusive men look like? Do you think they announce themselves to everyone in any given circumstance? You say you've spoken to really good traditional men, how well do you know them really? How well do the women who get abused by their partners know their men? Abusiveness is virtually never obvious and manifests in many ways across a relationship, as does negligence which is how so many women who are supposedly being 'provided for' end up bearing the full brunt of managing a household and finding that if they are ever sick or need anything, their husbands leave them.

I don't believe in 'natural submissiveness', especially in women. I myself am soft-spoken, have trouble asserting myself and often fall into people-pleasing patterns including a lifelong struggle with subconsciously and consciously pleasing and coddling the men around me. Many women are the same, is this a natural fixture of our personalities that we should just fall into and let men decide things for us? Or is it a response to social conditioning and a brutal world designed to undermine women's confidence in ourselves and our ability to participate in society as equals so that we rely on men? I encourage you to look beyond your fears and insecurities to see what you're really capable of.

What I've said about tradwives applies to places where women have more choices and expectations to participate in the external economy/workforce and are told they could potentially succeed in capitalism in their own right. Because it is a different thought process for women who are given no opportunity or expectation to be defined beyond wifehood and motherhood. The very notion of 'tradwife' is western centric, as its all about returning to so called 'traditional' roots.

[anarkittyuwuuniverse]

I think there's a certain type of person - I guess the ones who get all their information about "neurodivergence" through social media - who just kind of need to be told: Hey, the reason why people express doubt about you claiming to be autistic is not because autism has been "stereotyped" as this screaming non-verbal head-banging nursery rhyme and train obsessed young boy archetype (whom I'm sure you are probably very passionate about advocating for), it's because the diagnostic category of autism has widened and broadened so much in the latest years both within psychiatry but especially within pop psychology social media spaces that the image of autism you have been presented with is completely unrecognizable from the image of autism a lot of people have grown up with. This cannot be explained away with vague gestures towards "stereotyping" or "it's a spectrum", it's only a spectrum because some psychiatrists decided to pair a bunch of traits they saw occurring together under the same label but then sometimes they would occur with other traits and the chain just gets so long and the edges so far from each other, no single core to consistently unite all of it. And that's one thing but a lot of the things held up as "autism traits" on TikTok or Instagram infographics are just completely ordinary and trivial things. I've seen posts saying that being sensitive to conflict, scared of horror movies, having hobbies and interests, having strong moral beliefs, fidgeting (no reference to extent of fidgeting) and enjoying saying funny noises are all signs of autism and I just. A lot of the stuff I see is also just responding with stress to stressful situations, getting overwhelmed from socializing for a long time, struggling to balance home and work-life balance (this one was presented as a trait in autistic women hmm, I wonder why women specifically would struggle more to hold both a job and keep a household in order) and I think a problem is that a lot of people genuinely don't know that other people are also really fucking struggling because it's not visible most of the time, just as your suffering is not visible to others because you are "masking". I get that it feels good to get a label that kind of acknowledges and validates your suffering but there are other ways to do that, ways that don't make your suffering an essential part about who you are and encourages identity formation around it, it is also very likely that the people pushing for this broadening of the term are looking for customers to sell self-help to. It's a bit of a cliché to say that a lot of these problems are caused by capitalism but there is some truth to it, though it is reductive. A lot of people also just feel alienated because the way social dynamics are in many societies just are highly alienating, people interrogate and scrutinize each other's behavior all the time and everyone's hiding and performing so much and in a globalized ever accelerating neoliberal society, there are so many different kinds of constantly disrupting social spaces people find themselves in all the time, so many new forms of labor that require high degrees of emotional regulation and intuitiveness, and constant new norms being generated, no wonder more and more people feel like they "don't understand social norms". (This post is not an attack on any person who identifies as autistic or has low support needs though I am highly critical of the ontology of the diagnosis, it can be relevant to some people. You decide whether or not this post applies to you.)

[captainclickycat]

I think I've hit upon one of the reasons I hate the "eldest daughter syndrome" thing so much is because so many of the characteristics people talk about apply to my own mother (who was the youngest girl in her family) so much more than they do to me.

For various reasons my mum grew up feeling like it was her job to take care of other people and was pressured to overachieve and put everyone before herself, her parents played favourites in a weird way, and then had a kid relatively young and wound up spending almost her entire adult life raising children almost singlehandedly which by the sound of it exacerbated that whole thing.

She talks a lot now about growing up feeling like a people-pleaser and having trouble setting boundaries, which definitely comes across and which honestly has caused a lot of strain and frustration when you're on the other side feeling like "it's fine if you can't do the thing but just tell me, stop being all vague and delicate about it and making me feel like I have to psychically divine what's going on" and "I'm not trying to force you into a corner by asking directly for something, you can say no and it's not fair to act like I'm pressuring you just by asking" and blah blah blah. Teach your kids that they can have boundaries, folks. Otherwise it's a whole thing.

Anyway, as a result of that she wound up pretty determined not to put the same kind of pressure or pigeonholing on her own kids. Whilst that kind of terminology might not have factored in, looking back there were a lot of measures put into place to ensure that I was at minimal risk of developing "eldest daughter syndrome". Which I'm inclined to say largely worked.

I don't feel like it's my job to look after other people. I tend to assume other people can look after themselves and they'll ask for my help if they need it. I have an instinctive "lol not my job" response to the idea of impromptu-babysitting other people's kids without being asked. I never felt under any particular pressure to overachieve that my siblings weren't (and the general vibe was "we'd like you to do your best but if you're happy that's the main thing"). I wasn't pressured to put other people before myself any more than the standard "everyone has to do that sometimes".

I won't say I've never struggled to uphold boundaries or felt bad about disappointing people, but it's not a major issue for me in the way it is for some people. If I know I don't have the capacity to do someone a favour I'm pretty comfortable saying "won't be able to fit that in, sorry!" and I don't mind people sometimes finding me a bit rude or standoffish because I don't let them touch me or go along with everything they want. Generally speaking, any personal insecurities and struggles I have tend to come down to some other factor (capitalism, being neurodivergent, not wanting to do things the traditional socially-accepted way, and what have you) than to having grown up as the eldest girl.

But the people who get prescriptive about "eldest daughter syndrome" would basically project my mum's characteristics onto me and then act like it was some indelible rule of nature because I was the eldest and she wasn't. And I feel like it's sort of... failing to give her credit, honestly. Parentifying their kids (eldest daughters or otherwise) is something parents do, not something that "just happens" as a natural occurrence, any more than enforced traditional gender roles "just happen".

I used to feel weird about complaining, because if the bad thing didn't apply to me shouldn't I just count myself lucky and go on my merry way? But idk I think I'm onto something here. The way this gets framed often ends up projecting baggage and personality traits onto people who don't have them, and ignoring those same traits in people who do have them just because they don't fit the template people have in their heads. You have to ask yourself sometimes when you're talking about wider social trends, are you actually critiquing them in a meaningful way, or are you crossing over into reinforcing them?

[its-not-a-pen]

Victor Hugo + Romance of the Three Kingdoms crossover!

[I read a post somewhere talking about how cool it would be if 3k was written in the style of victor hugo. Here’s a missing scene about Dong Zhuo and young Cao Cao fighting the Yellow Turbans.]

There is a great machine crawling across the land, it is long and thin, having just a single head, but many thousand hooves, feet and wheels. It is tremendously expensive to operate, moves at a tortoise's pace and its job is to stir up a great deal of dust. This machine is known as an “army.” 

On a clear day, a man standing on a hillock can see the tell-tale plume long before he sees the marchers and with all the men and horses traveling non-stop for weeks on end, chances are he can smell the army before he sees the dust. This phenomenon is most pronounced when the land is dry, and the land has been usually dry for many, many seasons. ‘The gods are displeased,’ the villagers and townsfolk mutter, although they are always careful to omit what exactly the gods are displeased about. Now is not the time for careless talk. Now is not the time to travel after dark. Now is the time to pull your hat brim low and bite your tongue when soldiers cut through your wheat fields—it’s not like there’s much left to trample, anyway. Every year the harvests grow slimmer, and the war machine grows fatter.

Riding at the head of this column is Commandant Dong Zhuo, styled Zhongying. He is a large man in body and status, buoyed by a righteous purpose that makes every room he steps into feel crowded. The Emperor has issued a royal decree ceding power to the local lords in order to stomp out the Yellow Turbans, a series of peasant rebellions which had sprung up all across the nation. Little does His Royal Highness know, he's sowing the seeds for the Han Dynasty’s downfall. In time, these lords would become a greater threat then the rebellions they were tasked to quell, having developed powerful militias and a newfound distain for servitude. The resulting chaos would rend the kingdom asunder and be immortalised in folklore for centuries to come. A historical epic is in the making, and every great story needs heroes and villains. 

But that is for another time, today Dong Zhuo is only the Magistrate of Yanmen and a loyal subject of Han. Today he is going to bring the full extent of his military might down on the unruly peasant-warriors who dare take up arms instead of starving peacefully in their fields. Attending to him are a row of junior officers, gentlemen and the sons of gentlemen, bright eyed and fresh-faced because they have yet to taste war. 

[insert 50-page-digression about some Random Background Character Who Only Appears Once, weirdly personal opinions on stone masonry and a wikihow on horse husbandry that's like 80% conjecture]

----Extract #2----

Great men are known to have great tempers. Dong Zhuo gives a gruff reprimand, half question, half accusation, for a moment there’s silence and then as if drawn by a lodestone, the officers subtly turn their eyes towards calvary commander Cao Cao, styled Mengde. He is 24 years old, of a slight build and middling height. Not the leader of the pack by any means—lacking both the raw charisma and esteemed family name to be truly popular—but he has a sharp wit and plenty of nerve, all the markings of a man who is generally respected but rarely well-liked. At age 20 he had been appointed district captain of Luoyang and caused a scandal for daring to apply the law equally to anyone who transgressed, going so far as to flog noblemen in public. Complains were made by higher-ups and he was “promoted” to governor of Dunqiu County, ostensive to remove him from the capital. In peaceful times he might have served out the rest of his term competently, sired unremarkable sons and eventually fade into obscurity as the bookish, pedantic type who cared about things like crop rotation. But that is not our story either. 

Cao Cao steps forward and takes a knee, eyes downcast. When he speaks his voice is unexpectedly strong and authoritative—almost amusingly incongruous with his appearance; he’s not much to look at and the goatee on his chin needs another decade of work at least, but when he talks people stop and listen. 

Cao Cao says a few words and the thunderous look on Dong Zhuo’s face abates. A few more, and Dong Zhuo nods. Then, right before scores of disbelieving ears, Cao Mengde tells a bawdy joke right to His Lordship’s face; a double-entendre alluding to the shape of their vanguard. It’s filthy, low-brow and Cao Cao says it as drily as a monk reciting his mantras. Lord Dong Zhou howls with laugher. The other officers chuckle too—mostly out of relief. Letting Cao Mengde speak is always a gamble, sometimes it pays off, sometimes you get latrine duty for a month. The damage he does with his mouth takes most men to do with a hatchet. The meeting adjourns with no corporal punishments. Later that day, orders are passed up the line for adjustments to be made to the vanguard's formation.  

notes under the cut:

“Dust to dust,” somehow I always end up making a reference to the 2nd century warlord, which in turn was inspired by 3k where Zhang Fei successfully uses the “horses and branches” technique against Cao Cao. Call that circular plagiarism <3. 

Hugo was a big supporter of failed rebellions and was very sympathetic to the miserable and downtrodden. I think he’d really care about the plight of the peasants and jump at the chance to tear down the bickering nobles.

“The gods are displeased” the Han dynasty was in decline due to a combination of corruption and natural disasters. Many people, especially those in the Yellow Turban Rebellion believed the Emperor had lost his divine right to rule. (shhh that’s sedition) 

Wheatfields: this takes place somewhere in Northeastern China where it’s too damn cold to grow rice. IRL Cao Cao organized a lot of agricultural reforms which kept his people fed. Later in the book he forbids his soldiers from trampling fields on pain of death, and when his own horse does it, he cuts off his hair to avoid being hypocritical (very big deal, hair is sacred).

“A bookish, capable governor.” According to legend a character-describer told Cao Cao he’d be “a capable administrator in peaceful times and an unscrupulous hero in chaotic times.” To which Cao Cao laughed. Oh and he was a poet. A really good one.

Just some guy: "raw charisma" describes Liu Bei and the "esteemed family name" describes Yuan Shao, two of his biggest rivals.

My Pen Is Big: Luo Guanzhong’s novels have a ton of dirty jokes. Water Margin in particular has this passage about a guy’s colossal donkey schlong. 

[coveredinmetaldust]

I am fully willing to admit that there are some legitimate uses for LLMs, (henceforth refereed to as "AI" to avoid confusion) but there is a certain kind of cognitive dissonance, naked hypocrisy, and performative hand-wringing that seems to be part and parcel for the vocal group of core believers of this technology on places like Reddit and Twitter.

For whatever reason, there seems to be a rather large overlap between the crowd that evangelizes "AI", and the crowd of corporate bootlickers who will wag their finger at you and go "a company has to protect its IP!" whenever a multi-billion dollar corporation responds to a perceived copyright infringement with a grossly disproportionate level of duress.

These people will shout "It's the law! Don't do the crime if you can't do the time!" but then immediately turn around and berate any artist who makes the mistake of suggesting that these laws should apply to everyone.

This particular phylum of AI cheerleader loves to tell artists to "get a real job", while at the same time shaming them for having the audacity to charge money for their labor. Because in their mind, everything artists create and post on the internet should be free and is "fair game", but anything corporations post is protected within our current legal framework.

They see no problem with the fact that corporations are using petabytes of artwork for profit with impunity, but the moment you use even 1 microsecond of a piece of media these same corporations own in a video that you post online, their copyright bots will hunt it down and expunge it--or a legal team will send you a DMCA takedown and potentially nuke your account.

They will be more than happy to lecture you about how capitalism is the best system ever, and explain in great detail all of its benefits and how it works--but the moment an artist finds monetary success by engaging with that system, suddenly that's not ok. No, when artists engage in capitalism they aren't "contributing" anything to society based on an arbitrary framework that only applies to artists.

Yet, many of these same people will worship the ground that businessmen like Jack Welsh and billionaires like Elon Musk walk on, because they figured out how to make an ungodly amount of money by exploiting this system--even though they did this in ways that make everyone's lives objectively worse. No, for some reason it's immoral to charge money for your art, but it's both morally sound and smart to leverage our legal system to shake people down, parasitically suck the life out of small and large businesses alike, treat wall street like a casino, tank the economy, and then cry to your government sugardaddy to bail you out when your gambling debts come due. (All so you can do it again.)

Ok, so maybe artists just need to be more proactive and protect their work so this doesn't happen. Well, apparently that's not ok either! Because when artists tried fighting fire with fire by employing Nightshade, the conversation suddenly shifted to how artists are immoral for "creating malware."

I'm sure most of you probably know about Nightshade at this point--but for those unaware, you can kinda think of it as a filter that artists can apply to images before they post them online. To vastly oversimplify what this accomplishes: when an image that has the Nightshade "filter" is scraped by someone and fed into their generative AI program, this image will ruin the dataset that the program spits out.

What's important to know is that this does not affect the host computer in any way, shape, or form beyond a non-essential, third-party program, that the user willingly installed on their system and fed data they gathered from the internet into, outputting a file that the user finds sub-optimal compared to what is normally generated. If the nightshaded image is omitted from the training data, there is no ill effect on the model or host computer--regardless of whether or not the nightshade affected image exists on the internet or somewhere in their hard drive.

How effective this process actually is in the real world has been debated, with many in the AI scene boasting that it's completely ineffectual--but that doesn't matter as far as the narrative is concerned. Many have chosen to interpret this act as artists "creating malware", because the Nightshade'd image that the AI practitioner willingly scraped and fed into a program negatively affected a function on their computer--which is about the same logic as robbing a bank, then getting mad that the bank ruined your clothing because a dye-pack hidden within the bundle of cash you stole exploded and got blue dye everywhere. (Or maybe a more accurate analogy would be posting an AMV you spent a long time editing together to YouTube only to have it immediately deleted by a copyright bot because it's sadly not 2006 anymore. idk.)

Regardless, I find this hilarious coming from a crowd that usually has such a massive hard-on for "personal responsibility." I mean, these are the kinds of people who would see a topic on Reddit where someone is complaining that got injured because a burrito they bought was filled with caltrops, and their immediate reaction would be to reply with something like "this is your own fault, everyone knows you're supposed to eat around the jagged shards of metal."

But no. Instead the lengths some of these people have gone to twist themselves into knots to demonize nightshade could only be viewed as satire in a sane world. But we live in the hell world, so I cannot tell you how many of these losers I've seen unironically clutch at pearls while wailing "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?" because there is a chance their AI model could get corrupted after they scraped 1tb of porn from Deviantart without checking what they actually fed into their system.

Or worse: they will turn the onus back on the artist and say they are the one causing environmental damage--because the person stealing their art now has to remake their model and expend electricity.

Well, more electricity than they are already consuming on AI models. Which, by their own admission, is enough to make their energy bills skyrocket.

This is is like Dupont saying "All of you people protesting in front of our factory ruined productivity for today. You actually caused more environmental damage than us, because we had our machines running all day but no one was able to work. The world is more polluted now because you don't want us to further damage the environment. We may dump literal tons of chemicals into the water supply on an hourly basis, but the markers you used to make those signs you're holding were created using technology that pollutes as well--so I guess that makes you all huge hypocrites hmmmmm?."

But wait, it gets worse! If you read the two screenshot directly above carefully, you may have noticed that some of these people go so far as to believe that they are entitled to everything you create, and anything short of your full consent is tantamount to stealing THEIR property.

Because that's really what this is all about: when you strip away all their moralizing and semantics, you're left with people who view artists as nothing more than an annoying barrier between what they think should rightfully belong to them.

I'm just going to say the quiet part out loud:

These people absolutely fucking hate that there are people out there who are good at art. They are mad that there are people who put the time and effort into improving a skill-set, and got good at it as a result. That's not me putting words in their mouths, they have explicitly said as much time and time again--to the point where it has become a core part of their belief system and mythology.

(This wasn't directed at me, but I know their theory is bullshit because I do know how to weld, and I can't draw for shit. Also, knowing how to weld has never stopped me from being insufferable on the internet.)

They try to make themselves the victims by setting up this narrative that artists have a "monopoly on creativity." They make a big deal about how unfair it is that someone can be technically competent at formal compositions through years of hard work. (Which, is funny, because some of these same people were railing against Le SJWs for being so-called "Professional Victims" in the mid to late 2010s.)

It's not hard to understand why they need to dress this up like it is some kind of righteous crusade that flattens an oppressive hierarchy, because their objective reality is a lot more pathetic.

They know this, so they will gleefully tell artists they can't wait for AI-art to "replace" them in however many years. They will smugly tell artists, right to their face, that nothing they have ever created has any value--all while feeding that artist's work into an engine so they can copy their style.

They will spew all kinds of inflammatory, hateful bile like this at creatives, spit in their face by scraping their work after explicitly being asked not to, and then have the fucking nerve to act like they have the moral high-ground when there is any pushback from artists.

Because to them, creatives are just malcontents who don't know their place.

Many of these people like to present themselves as an austere nonpartisan with a rigid code of ethics; someone who will solve problems through objective logic and rational debate. But when you look past their attempts at self-mythologizing it becomes very clear that these people don't want to have a "civil debate"--they want to maintain a farcical moral high-ground while they stab you in the throat and then twist the knife. (Then complain about how you got blood all over their nice shirt.)

Now, I'm fluent in both "pretentious art-speak" as well as "toxic terminally online forum user", so let me speak to these AI art bros directly in a language they will understand:

This is copium so potent that it's considered a controlled substance in most states. How about you fucking casuals try getting gud instead of getting buttmad and running to social media so you can bawww about needing an easy-mode?

FFS this isn't complicated, but you drooling idiots will just sit there and stare at your monitors with the wide-eyed bewilderment of a dog that just saw a magic trick any time someone suggests you pick up a pencil.

Don't worry though, I hear Kotaku is hiring. You should ask ChatGPT to write you a resume and email it to them, because you suck at art just about as much as their writers suck at video games.

Now go back to your subreddit hugbox and circlejerk about how logical and civil you are compared to those mean artists who hurt your feelings. I'm sure all those heckin updooterinos and wholesome affirmations will make you feel like you didn't just waste thousands of dollars on a new computer for the express purpose of generating anime waifus who look like they tried to high-five a disc sander.

tl;dr:

[eusuchia]

sorry to the anon but I couldn't figure out how to edit my answer once it was in my drafts (great website).

the question was (badly paraphrasing) shouldn't we try to preserve the livelihoods of ceramicists and weavers too? and instead of saying 'mass production already killed this industry, and it will happen to others,' try to save more art from it?

basically yes! deskilling due to industrial capitalism sucks and mass production makes commodity fetishism infinitely worse. I think it's important to preserve craft knowledge and don't think we should just cede everything to industrialization, but that feeling isn't going to shift industrial trends -- only industrial action will do that. for what it's worth, it's really annoying to hear 'just unionize!' as an artist, when many, like me, are self-employed/freelance, and without sudden mass interest in some kind of low-entry-requirement sectoral guild, are not very unionizable because we don't have workplaces in the traditional sense. but by sheer numbers a lot of the job loss to AI would be corporate-level, I think, and there's more potential for people employed by like, marvel, to actually do something significant about the use of AI, than for individual customers trying to throw their weight around by buying or boycotting. I'm happy to get proved wrong here by some targeted mass boycott campaign, but I'm not holding my breath.

on a personal level I regularly spend money on handmade ceramics, fiber arts, and original art commissions both physical and digital because I find them valuable and beautiful. but I also use my IKEA plates and print-on-demand t-shirts, functionally devaluing those crafts. no amount of hypothetical discourse shaming me for 'stealing from working craftsmen' would really change that due to the economic realities. (tangentially, I don't use AI as a stand-in for commissioned art because they are not at all interchangeable to me.)

broadly though, isn't every kind of automation 'taking a livelihood' from someone in theory? my original reply to metamatar's post was basically asking where you draw the line. digital printing is taking the work of typesetters and sign painters, canva presets are taking the work of graphic designers, slip casting is taking the work of ceramicists. yet those trades still exist, and if anything I think their creative horizons are a little wider when the drudgery of the industry is taken up by machines. I know that's paltry compensation for a vanishing job market under capitalism, but isn't it a good thing when ceramicists and weavers are free to explore their ideas and not confined to backbreaking work of making the same bowls or yards of tweed for years on end? (especially in The Good Society with robust social protection that we should all be fighting for anyway)

there can be different use cases for these things (artisanal vs mass produced) and one use doesn't mean 1:1 something is being stolen from the other. personally I'm never going to pay someone to render my likeness instead of taking a photo; the money that's being 'lost' by a realism portrait artist there is purely hypothetical. same for when people get mad about others generating AI art for fun. 'you could have paid an artist for this [generated meme in the style of hr giger]' ok but they weren't going to and you can't make them.

I think people are unthinkingly flattening all kinds of creative labour when they talk about what might happen with AI. to start with, people are often talking about the job market of the first world/imperial core/etc despite the huge amounts of creative labour in/outsourced to other countries. but wherever you want to apply AI -- I don't think boutique client-based work is ever going to vanish, because the stuff that AI can do well is limited to certain types of digital illustration and animation, and you need human, creative problem-solving for new creative work, even on industrial levels with lots of automating tools in the workflow. art directors with good sense can see that. big name editorial illustrators are going to remain big name editorial illustrators. etc. (tbh, I think even the stuff AI is 'good at' looks dogshit a lot of the time, hence my disinterest in it, but that's a personal valuation and has no economic bearing.)

I'm not saying there's nothing to worry about, especially because managers and execs are often stupid and have bad taste and want to 'incorporate AI' when it makes no fucking sense, and would gladly thin out their staff for any reason. but that is ultimately a labour problem and not an artistic one.

[exeggcute]

Read your post on Reddit. What's your opnion on federated app/sites like Mastodon or Lemmy? Right now they are kind of slow because there aren't many users and there's also the problem of them going down without notice. But could this be an alternative even if it has less benefits as current VC funded sites/apps?

oh yeah those! honestly I haven't spent much time poking around the fediverse yet because (1) the internet eats enough of my time/sanity as it is and so I really need less of it, not more, and (2) frankly the whole signup process/general UX for mastodon and now lemmy sounds like a pain in the ass and I'm super lazy lol. but they do sound really interesting and I'm curious to see how they unfold. to my earlier point about "a radically different internet" or whatever, I feel like this could be a contender for a new model of social networking, or at least the foundation of whatever the next big idea is, with all the benefits and trade-offs that brings (because, you know... radically different).

the crowdfunding situation seems a little precarious, but then again so is the entire venture capital model, so maybe not a dealbreaker lol. I've also heard some stuff about mastodon servers having radically different rules and being prone to intra- and inter-server drama, and then there's the whole matter of being self-moderated, but both of those things basically describe what it's like to be in a big discord server or almost any subreddit. plus the "going down without notice" thing you mentioned, but even that applies to discord servers, subreddits, or any social media site in sufficiently bad shape so idk. I guess what I'm trying to say is that none of these feel like a perfect solution (yet), but the red flags we're seeing aren't an unfamiliar shade of red, at least?

the self-moderation bit in particular is interesting because I wonder if it'll change the way regular non-mod users view moderation and other forms of labor/upkeep? to some extent I think people have more empathy (relatively speaking lol) for moderators in a discord server or a hobby subreddit than they do for the paid employees of big social media sites, even though the latter do the same job (if not at a much larger and more gruesome scale) and rarely get paid enough to do it. but when the moderator is someone you know and can talk to versus a faceless contractor for a big tech corporation it definitely changes the whole dynamic. I really do like the idea of a more transparent and user-managed platform forcing the rest of us to be more mindful about what we're using, how it works, who's running it, etc. versus falling into the habit of treating these platforms as natural entities that sprang into existence fully-formed.

[vmures]

Learning to live with uncertainty is important

I've been thinking about "discourse" lately. I use quotes because often what I see online isn't an actual conversation, which is what the word discourse implies, but people shouting at each other. Arguments on one side or another are often in bad faith and there is no openness to other points of view. And I've been thinking about why that is. I think the biggest part of the problem is the allure of bright-line rules.

Bright-line rules is a term used in the legal world and can be defined as follows: "A bright-line rule is an objective rule that resolves legal questions in a straightforward, predictable manner." These are rules where a thing is always right or a thing is always wrong. There is no room for interpretation or nuance. And they are alluring because they are easy and uncomplicated.

However, the world is very, very complicated, and using bright-line rules for everything means that sometimes the wrong party faces punishment. The example given in the link above is of a bright-line rule used in auto insurance. The car with the front damage is the one responsible for the accident. But using that rule and having no room for nuance means that if Driver A backs into Driver B, Driver B will be the one considered at fault despite not actually being at fault.

There are times where as a culture we decide that such bright-line rules are worth it, even if occasionally someone will be punished who might not deserve to be. But a huge problem arises when we decide that all things should be treated as bright-line rules. Because we stop thinking--we don't consider all the facts in a situation or all the consequences of the rule/law. One example of not considering the consequences of a broadly written bright-line anti-abortion rule is that many doctors in states that have enacted such rules are worried that providing IVF treatment because the unused fertilized eggs are often destroyed and that would be considered abortion under the law.

And when you apply this sort of thinking to cultural discourse, you get situations where someone hears "rainbow capitalism is evil" and decides that they should then inform a queer person selling their own art/merch during Pride that they shouldn't do that. That person isn't a horrible person, but they are misunderstanding "rainbow capitalism" as a concept. It isn't a bright-line rule that all sales of Pride merchandise are evil. But if you don't know the history of how corporations have generally treated the LGBTQUIA+ community, and how frustrating it is to see them add surface-level support of us now that they know they can make money off of us, then you might interpret the concept as a bright-line rule. It is even more likely you will interpret it as such if you already have a habit of thinking in very black-and-white terms.

It's so very tempting to want easy answers and clear "this is always right" and "this is always wrong" ideologies. But it's dangerous. You can end up harming the communities you want to support. One of the hardest parts of law school is learning to live with a certain level of uncertainty. If you ask any lawyer, or even former law student, if something is legal chances are high that the response you get will be "it depends." Because ultimately whether something is legal or not depends on the facts of the case. A litigator's job is to show that the facts of the case support their stance and not the other side's stance. But they also have to understand what facts support the other side's arguments. You then leave it to the judge and/or jury to decide who has the stronger case. It's rarely cut and dry.

Uncertainty isn't comfortable. Struggling with complex issues isn't comfortable. But you connect far better with your fellow humans and are more likely to be a fair and kind person if you are open to uncertainty. If you are willing to listen to all the facts and opinions and actually consider them.

When it comes to discourse online...well, that openness only helps if it goes both ways. If one side is engaging in good faith and open to considering the other's point of view and the other side is just looking to call them names and tell them they should die...well, that's not true discourse or helpful discussion. It's bullying hidden behind ideology. And ultimately, that is where insisting on nothing but bright-line rules leads.