#ethics and issues

[normal-thoughts-official]

Please stop seeing politics as an identity and start seeing it as a collective means for change

[aiweirdness]

Among the many downsides of AI-generated art: it's bad at revising. You know, the biggest part of the process when working on commissioned art.

Original "deer in a grocery store" request from chatgpt (which calls on dalle3 for image generation):

revision 5 (trying to give the fawn spots, trying to fix the shadows that were making it appear to hover):

I had it restore its own Jesus fresco.

Original:

Erased the face, asked it to restore the image to as good as when it was first painted:

Wait tumblr makes the image really low-res, let me zoom in on Jesus's face.

Original:

Restored:

One revision later:

Here's the full "restored" face in context:

Every time AI is asked to revise an image, it either wipes it and starts over or makes it more and more of a disaster. People who work with AI-generated imagery have to adapt their creative vision to what comes out of the system - or go in with a mentality that anything that fits the brief is good enough.

I'm not surprised that there are some places looking for cheap filler images that don't mind the problems with AI-generated imagery. But for everyone else I think it's quickly becoming clear that you need a real artist, not a knockoff.

more

[valtsv]

i think that one of the most obvious things wrong with me is that every time i get a visible injury i get the urge to post it online for people to look at. like a selfie.

[pratchettquotes]

Holiday Theme: Happy Hogswatch

IT IS HOGSWATCH, said Death, AND PEOPLE DIE ON THE STREETS. PEOPLE FEAST BEHIND LIGHTED WINDOWS AND OTHER PEOPLE HAVE NO HOMES. IS THIS FAIR?

"Well, of course, that's the big issue--" Albert began.

THE PEASANT HAD A HANDFUL OF BEANS AND THE KING HAD SO MUCH HE WOULD NOT EVEN NOTICE THAT WHICH HE GAVE AWAY. IS THIS FAIR?

"Yeah, but if you gave it all to the peasant then in a year or two he'd be just as snooty as the king--" began Albert, jaundiced observer of human nature.

Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

[icebluecyanide]

I saw people talking about that scene where Yassen shot Max as a huge betrayal of Alex and it's kinda funny to me like yeah he involved Alex in a murder but also I cannot emphasise enough that Alex decided to join a criminal organisation. People have been telling him he'll need to kill for days now, Alex has watched them kill multiple people already, I get that it sucks for him but you cannot team up with a known killer and be that shocked when actually his secret extra mission was to kill

[doublxpresso]

「Your absence」

page 11 - 12

beginning << page 9 - 10 < . > page 13 - 14

Updates on sundays and wednesdays + early updates on my kofi :3

[princess-from-another-galaxy]

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Frankenstein shows us that STEM and humanities can't be kept separate because look what happened the moment Victor and Henry were apart

[kp777]

Ohio Supreme Court approves “fraud upon the voters” to benefit GOP.

Excerpt:

In November, Ohio residents will have an opportunity to vote on Issue 1, a constitutional amendment that would finally abolish the state’s extreme partisan gerrymandering. Voters will not, however, be informed of this fact on the ballot. Instead, the Ohio Supreme Court’s Republican majority ruled Monday that the amendment will be described in egregiously misleading terms on the ballot itself, with ultra-biased language designed to turn citizens against it. Incredibly, a proposal that would end gerrymandering will be framed as a proposal to require gerrymandering, a patently false representation of its intent and effect.

Read more.

[awetistic-things]

awetistic things {1071}

being so obsessed with abiding by your morals that you would genuinely rather die than do or say anything that moral opposes ( and being horrified when an allistic jokingly accuses you of doing so, even knowing it’s a joke )

[themostdearofspaghettis]

When will ethics town start answering the REAL questions

[narwhalandchill]

while i wouldnt necessarily disagree that childe seems to be on edge more so than usual (and he himself mentions being in a poor mood in act I) in the fontaine archon quest i do have to say i find it a little funny that theres people who think hes behaving, like, completely out of character in the court scene when he decides to go apeshit after being judged guilty by the justice.exe AI bot like.

did it somehow escape peoples memories that this man when presented with the idea that we as the traveler mightve tricked and gotten ahead of him with the geo gnosis just. entered a state of complete murderous rage leading to him activating foul legacy in the golden house. which actually ends up self-sabotaging his current objective more than anything bc unlike the clear way they struggled against childe before now the traveler just won by default by outlasting him

he mightve gotten over it fairly easily afterwards (in no small part bc traveler actually fought him which automatically translates to equal=respect=friend in his fucked up head) but childes been shown to be a highly dangerous individual with a massive ego prone to outburst in the heat of the moment when outplayed or his pride wounded before even when it isnt the smartest course of action like. this isnt new lmao.

getting accused of a crime he had never even heard of in a foreign nation he only recently arrived in and then sitting through all that court drama and being assured afterwards that he only needs to partake as a mere formality for declaring his innocence only to be somehow declared guilty by a machine is very much realistic grounds for childes patience to reach its breaking point if you ask me lol

[kedreeva]

Sorry about the color mix up. I appreciate the reply and additional info! I guess bc I know nothing about peafowl (and the fact i dont breed any type of animal), I'm having a hard time understanding how being sterile would be unethical. I do somewhat get the shortened life span. I really would like to understand this, I just sometimes need stuff explained like I'm 5.

Up front, there's no "somewhat get" to a shortened lifespan being caused by a mutation in captive populations. If an animal is capable of living 20+ years (and some live 30+ or even 40+!) and some non-essential mutation is causing them to live 7-9 years, it's flat out absolutely unethical to breed that mutation, full stop, regardless of anything else going on. That's indicative of a MAJOR problem in their genetics. There's NO ethical reason to breed that because humans like how it looks. So, even without the sterility, these birds would 100% be unethical to produce.

The short answer on sterility is this: we don't know WHY they are sterile, but they shouldn't be, and that means something has gone wrong. When something goes wrong with an animal, and it's something genetic that can be passed on, the ONLY responsible and ethical thing for a breeder to do is to stop using that animal for breeding and closely monitor any already-produced offspring for signs of the problem, and likely not breed them, either.

The longer more complicated answer is this: sometimes it's possible to separate the problem from the aesthetic when it comes to morphs, like it was for cameo + blindness, but sometimes it's NOT, like it wasn't for spider + head wobble for ball pythons. In those instances, it's... difficult. Because you're LIKELY going to produce animals that suffer the same problem as their parent(s), in the attempt to separate the problem from the aesthetic, and sometimes that's ALL you're going to produce. As a breeder, it's your absolute responsibility to NOT release the offspring into the general population, where the problem may be replicated without control, and to keep or cull the affected individuals if the problem cannot be separated from the aesthetic, or AT BEST find them guaranteed pet-only homes that will NEVER breed them.

Sometimes the problem IS purely aesthetic or harmless, like it was for pied in peafowl, and sometimes it's not, like it was for vitiligo in peafowl. The problem comes when you ASSUME a mutation is the first, and treat it like the first when it's really the second. This has caused FAR reaching consequences in the peafowl community, and I'm sure in others, where now the autoimmune disease that first bronze had has been passed into genpop by folks who thought they were breeding a harmless new variation of pied. Hybrid animals are often sterile (not in peafowl though, hybrid cristatus-muticus birds are fertile) because of a mismatch in chromosome pairing numbers, and often that's harmless. So, in some cases sterility is not an issue because it's the expected result or is otherwise harmless... but in the case of peafowl, it's NOT an expected result and we don't know if it's caused by something harmless or not.

Some species, like mice and horses and cattle and dogs, genetic testing and DNA mapping done with millions of dollars has proven that while some stuff isn't purely aesthetic, it also doesn't cause harm to the animal in a way that affects quality of life or that can be adapted for in captive care. For example, in chickens, the frizzle gene causes curled feathers in single copy and an absence of feathers in double copy. This gene is considered ethical to produce IF the breeding is done responsibly by putting a single copy bird over a zero copy bird, which produces smooth coats and frizzle coats, but it is unethical to produce double frizzles (called "frazzles") because frazzles cannot thermoregulate, can easily sunburn, and easily suffer skin injury during normal chicken activity.

For peafowl, we have NO genetic testing. We do not have the genome mapped. As far as I know there's a research group working on it (mostly for green peafowl though, in conservation efforts), but that's not remotely finished or available to the public to test anything. We don't know where any of the morph mutations sit, or what is causing them or if they do anything beyond just change the color. Sometimes color mutations are the result of malfunctions in enzymes. For charcoal specifically, we don't know what the mutation does, besides what we can observe on the outside- the birds have half or less the lifespan of normal birds, poor feather quality, and the hens are sterile. Is the sterility harmless like it is in some hybrid animals, or is it actually a major organ failing? Is it the only major organ that fails due to this mutation, or is it just the first sign of their shortened lives? Is it some deficiency in something the birds need to be healthy? Does it hurt the bird? We don't know, but we do know the mutation and the problems (multiple, please do NOT forget that this is one OF MORE THAN ONE problems) can't be separated, and so until we do know why and whether it's harmless or not, the ONLY ethical response to seeing a problem in a major organ's function linked inextricably to a mutation in color is to not propagate that mutation. If someone wanted to fork over the millions it takes to sequence and map genomes and then determine exactly what is going on with peafowl, that would be nice and good, but I don't see that happening. When I win the lottery big, I'll be doing it, but til then we can only follow normal breeding guidelines

Also, to put this into perspective... peafowl mature sexually around 3 years old. They are chicks until the turn of the new year following their hatch. They are yearlings that year, and immature 2yo next year. They aren't actually considered fully grown until 6 years old, and should live another 14+ years. Charcoal birds die a 1-3 years after full maturity. Is it a coincidence that they fail to thrive shortly after full sexual maturity, or is it linked? Again, we don't know. We don't know if the sterility is fine or if it's just a symptom of something worse.

Even without the sterility, though, charcoal has enough issues it would be unethical. If it was JUST sterility, with no other deleterious effects, then maybe it would be different. But it's not.

[sqbr]

The other side of "arguing about whether AI art is Real Art is missing the point". It's not about the technology itself being inherently Evil and Soulless and maybe Taking Over Like Skynet, what matters is the specifics of how it's made and used and what effects this has.

[mythalism]

.

[brucewaynehater101]

Rät by Penelope Scott is truly the song for the Bat kids towards bad Bruce Wayne. It fits perfectly.

I could go so in-depth on that song and how it applies to Bruce, his kids, and their mission.

Some of the lines are just the POV of a batkid being pissed at Bruce for how he treated them, raised them in his mission, and how they loved him.

"Why would you lie? And then I realized, you're just as naive as I am. Oh, you're so traumatized, it makes me want to cry. You dumb bitch I loved you. I loved you. I loved you, it's true. I wanted to be you and do what you do. I lived here. I loved here. I bought it. I feel so embarrassed. I feel abused."

Then there's the part where it condemns the mission as a whole. This is where I often struggle with the Bats. I love them, but gods do I hate the US justice system, cops, and government. I'm not going to get into a debate on why, but it's also important to note that the Bats actively work with these systems. They are practically enforcers without any oversight.

Anyways, I could see some of the batkids despairing and raging at the fact that they kind of act like cops. Just them wanting to do good and not knowing how to do that outside what they've been taught to do. Jim Gordon is great and all, but he's the outlier, not the standard.

"Let me level with you, man, as someone guilty of the game. I took the help. I took the cash. I would've taken your last name."

This is the batkids despairing that maybe they aren't helping. Maybe they are another cog in a broken system. They are trying their best, but are they doing worse? They wanted to be like Bruce, but was that childhood naivety or was that the correct path?

Anyways, this song can show them becoming disillusioned with the world, the mission, and Bruce.