#heres to hoping!

[puppetsoftomorrow]

reform might be the story of the night but the greens - so far - have doubled their vote share (i think thats how it works??) which is pretty good! i think they'll do even better this time - i can see lots of nervous tactical voters making doubly sure reform / tories don't stay in their constituency, but in a labour majority people might vote more with their hearts. or maybe thats my wishful thinking lmao

[isa-ah]

something interesting about becoming a full-time character artist is that by and large your art becomes stunted. like yes I've learned a lot of very quick shortcuts to very clean pieces and I have a very nice style that a lot of people enjoy but my art has only changed insofar as making it easier to produce mid quality at high quantity, and doing it fast.

having taken the last two weeks mostly off from work for my birthday and the holidays, I've gone from maybe a handful of personal sketches a month to full color full background personal pieces that I haven't been inspired to draw in years- the change was like, immediate, and measureable. I'm playing with styles and color and I haven't done that in ages.

I'm really looking forward to cutting work back this year once we have things rolling with the family business. I want to learn new things and I really can't when I'm using every scrap of art spoons I have to pay the bills! plus just messing around on the patreon discord server and making up fun silly art projects is smtn I'd like to put more time into.

[hansoeii]

the honda odyssey, huh?

[factavius]

If you're reading this, you're on Tumblr!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

License to Kitty.

[emjaydoubleyou]

this post is fearmongering. the results of this study are concerning and should definitely be a matter of public discussion, but this is certainly not the conclusion the researchers came to.

the point of the study was to assess the risks of exposure to toxic metals- something one of the co-authors notes are “ubiquitous” fwiw- via menstrual products. Their research confirmed that these metals are indeed present in tampons, but no further conclusions are drawn. it is possible the metal entered into the cotton from the soil, which is a well-known phenomenon; cotton is so good at lifting heavy metals that it has actually been suggested as a part of the solution for revitalizing polluted ground.

the authors conclude with an acknowledgement that the study should be repeated- their sample size was 60 tampons- and a suggestion that further testing ought to be done to indicate whether or not these metals can even leech out of the tampon in the first place, let alone whether or not such leeching could occur at levels deleterious to human health.

there is, in fact, a body of research- too small, for sure, but much larger than this single study- indicating that long-term proper tampon use has no observable negative impact on health. i am grateful and thrilled that more research is being done and i hope that this study is the first of many on this line of questioning, but i am really frustrated at this post and the response it got.

obviously, if this study alters your approach to menstrual health, more power to you. consumers should be informed-risk-takers, and menstrual health is double-obviously a very personal choice. but it definitely wasn't the researchers concluding that you ought to “avoid using tampons at all cost," only this tumblr user did. the lead author of the paper, in fact, specifically says that she hopes people do NOT panic about the results.

(the notes of the post were disappointing. people affirming that they knew they were right to be suspicious of tampons all along, or even recommending alternatives that actually have very little to no research regarding the safety of long-term use, etc. it’s a different conversation, but categorical distrust of tampons is old-school misogyny. you certainly shouldn't wear them if you don’t want to, but there is nothing inherently scary or wrong about them, and people who prefer them are not being reckless or crass.)

((if you're really worried about exposure to heavy metals, you may want to turn a critical eye to fast fashion, as an aside))

[rish-you-were-here]

Happy pride

[onekisstotakewithme]

having online friends who are busy is just like. I LOVE YOU. I miss you. YOU GOT THIS. I'm giving you space to work. I LOVE YOU.

[kiryuing]

[happyheidi]

[krmljam]

more bugs more drinking

[wdapteo]

Since Elon bought twitter I ran away from that shithole, but it's really sad to see many artists that sold commissions there lose their main source of income.

I also want to inform my international mutuals that this is entirely Musk's fault. It is illegal for social platforms to run in Brazil without a representative, and Elon fired all Brazilian representatives after our minister required the app to regulate their users, fake news etc. So instead of deleting nazi accounts, Elon Musk decided it was better to lose their 4th biggest user base lol

I don't know what will happen now, but yeah, the app is down. If you can support Brazilian artists here it would already mean so much.

[otselotus]

о/

[chromegnomes]

the most frustrating thing about AI Art from a Discourse perspective is that the actual violation involved is pretty nebulous

like, the guys "laundering" specific artists' styles through AI models to mimic them for profit know exactly what they're doing, and it's extremely gross

but we cannot establish "my work was scraped from the public internet and used as part of a dataset for teaching a program what a painting of a tree looks like, without anyone asking or paying me" as, legally, Theft with a capital T. not only is this DMCA Logic which would be a nightmare for 99% of artists if enforced to its conclusion, it's not the right word for what's happening

the actual Violation here is that previously, "I can post my artwork to share with others for free, with minimal risk" was a safe assumption, which created a pretty generous culture of sharing artwork online. most (noteworthy) potential abuses of this digital commons were straightforwardly plagiarism in a way anyone could understand

but the way that generative AI uses its training data is significantly more complicated - there is a clear violation of trust involved, and often malicious intent, but most of the common arguments used to describe this fall short and end up in worse territory

by which I mean, it's hard to put forward an actual moral/legal solution unless you're willing to argue:

Potential sales "lost" count as Theft (so you should in fact stop sharing your Netflix password)

No amount of alteration makes it acceptable to use someone else's art in the production of other art without permission and/or compensation (this would kill entire artistic mediums and benefit nobody but Disney)

Art Styles should be considered Intellectual Property in an enforceable way (impossibly bad, are you kidding me)

it's extremely annoying to talk about, because you'll see people straight up gloating about their Intent To Plagiarize, but it's hard to stick them with any specific crime beyond Generally Scummy Behavior unless you want to create some truly horrible precedents and usher in The Thousand Year Reign of Intellectual Property Law

[dotssu3]

tfw when you're not lactose intolerant

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Dog Meshi.