(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* Rice #3 worked! Sort of. I went and bought rice specifically grown in Louisiana instead of California. It's got some bran on it and it's got a little of the 'overcooked outside and crunchy inside' problem, but only a tiny bit. It's within tolerate limits.



* So Elon nuked the accounts of journalists who covered him and is putting a QAnon person in charge of safety and also some other stuff. I am the last person to defend Facebook. I've been going on about the same things for like 15 years now, but acting like the twitter stuff is no big deal because facebook is bad annoys me and downplays serious issues. I don't care if people stay on twitter. I went off facebook for 7 years and it cost me social connections and work opportunities. It hurt me not Zuck. I am assume anyone reading this can make their own decisions about what to do. But I am just annoyed by people acting like this is just typical modern social media problems.

Oh and he nuked accounts promoting Mastodon and I saw something about him accusing a former exec of... what he accused a certain rescue diver of years ago and sent his fan base after him but I haven't read details.

* People are dumb about AI. One reason why so many companies and contests are suddenly stating that they disallow AI submissions is because AI images are not currently subject to copyright per US case law. You cannot sell or hand over a copyright that you do not have. That may change, but right now the people screaming about luddites and the train having left the station are, once again, saying things not consistent with how our digital age has worked thus far or with the current realities of US copyright law.

Also, AI art should have a digital watermark on it, it turns out. I am not sure how to check for it, but that could be useful for people running spaces that way to disallow AI art. Based on a sample size of 'spaces I am in' it's pretty much all of them. I really need to look into this watermark thing more but also am just tired. Half the problem is that the pro-AI people are gross and part of the problem is that articles from what should be good sources are so filled with obvious crap or have a complete and utter failure to understand that fake images undermining trust online is the farthest thing from a new problem ever.

I am not an expert on AI by a long shot. But I do know some of the photography tech they are using as a comparison and it's like that's not how this works, that's not how any of this works, they clearly don't know what they are talking about. My iPhone doesn't have a tiny AI in it I promise you. Also I cannot take one more 'what if we cannot trust images online! ooh scary' paragraph.

* I went and tagged my stuff on ArtStation NoAI. My portfolio is small, so it wasn't hard but holy hell that should be an opt-out thing not opt-in. ArtStation users are very upset over AI, which is nice to see. ArtStation is talking about having the option to not see AI on your dash which I like.

I am glad that people are being upset at ArtStation and want them to handle things even better, but at least they are handling it better than other sites.

Comments

[muccamukk]

I know the internet is wild, but it's wild to me that people think ANY of what's happening to twitter right now is par for the course. It's not awful, it's extraordinarily awful!

But I also left Facebook when the Cambridge stuff came out, so now I'm on basically no social media.

[olivermoss]

People trying to act like this is business as usual in our modern age baffle me. I don't judge people for staying, I don't know their lives, but don't normalize this stuff or only suddenly now care about facebook's BS.

[mistressofmuses]

Yay, more tolerable rice!

Ugh, the current round of Musk garbage is just... an extra level of bullshit. How is there so constantly MORE?

I'm glad that at least a few sites are taking even baby steps to try and mitigate the onslaught of AI. I do, however, remain frustrated by almost all of the discussion about it.

[olivermoss]

It's a lot! Someone having the money to punish the whole world because his wife left him for a trans woman should not be a thing that happens, and yet...

I want to sit people down and explain that the whole thing where super rich people help build our country was because we used to tax them 90%.

[mistressofmuses]

Fucking right. Having the kind of money that buys that kind of power - power to be used in such petty fashion almost especially - is just utterly batshit.

AND FOR DAMN REAL. TAX THIS SHIT AND FIX OTHER SHIT.

[olivermoss]

Tax him, tax big companies and put a hard cap on how much money can be passed via inheritance.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>But I am just annoyed by people acting like this is just typical modern social media problems.<<

I would say, it's a more extreme version of typical modern problems in general. The root is that people just don't feel compelled to be decent; they think they can get away with being assholes and hurting others. The more money someone has, the less accountable they are held for their choices. Elon is just an especially big symptom of very widespread problems.

>> People are dumb about AI. <<

Well yes.

As far as I'm concerned, it's just another way to make art. Somebody has to write the program; somebody else has to manipulate that program to create art. It's like a really long paintbrush.

... and this squawkfest is nearly identical to that created by the spread of the camera. Oh and the printing press. "It's not real art! It will destroy everything!" For fucksake, you can still make your own paint with a chunk of red ochre, some linseed oil, and a rock if you've got half an hour. New art things don't make old art things impossible, what people use is up to them.

Just wait a few years, it'll die down.

>>Also I cannot take one more 'what if we cannot trust images online! ooh scary' paragraph.<<

Honestly, I'm about to where I consider anything possible to be "potentially true," and only if I can triangulate through multiple reliable sources will I consider something "probably true." Used to be, if something sounded too crazy to be real, it probably wasn't real. But now people do batshit stuff all the time. I think doing batshit things for real is a bigger problem than people tampering with journalism, because it makes the common-sense filter not useful.

[mistressofmuses]

It's kind of astounding how many problems that could so completely solve.