@sharkie335 / sharkie335.tumblr.com
DELETE THIS POST
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME
*clicks play in morbid curiosity*
*hammers reblog button*
I think I find this post every April Fools Day and I am so happy that I do
WHAT THE FUCK
i missed it last year so i’ve had this scheduled for an entire damn year
It’s the no-internet dinosaur’s birthday!!
Turn off your internet! He has a hat!!
SOMEONE PLEASE PUT A DATE ON THIS POST! I HAVE TO KNOW WHEN!
Its Sept 24
Thank
The US is deeply segregated not only along racial lines, but along class lines as well: from housing to schools to healthcare, many of our major institutions are designed to allow rich people to keep poor people as far away from them as possible.
Where do rich and poor people interact with one another? If I'm reading this study right, it's restaurants. Which restaurants? They find that some of the most cross-class locations in the country are cheap full-service restaurants: "Olive Garden, Applebee’s, Chili’s and IHOP."
The more I think about this finding the more it makes sense. Places like Olive Garden are some of the only locations in US society which are simultaneously "nice" enough to draw in high-income diners and cheap enough to attract low-income diners. Rich people go to, say, Outback Steakhouse because they see it as a cheap and easy meal that's better than fast food, poor people go because it's one of the closest things to a nice steakhouse you can eat at without dropping $100+ per person.
Other cross-class locations: churches, libraries, credit unions, alcohol stores, the DMV. Locations which worsen class segregation: golf courses and country clubs, bars, museums.
This reminds me of the most fantastic book liveblogs I've ever read (by ozy thingofthings). It's Times Square Red Times Square Blue by Afrofuturist scifi author Samuel Delany.
(full but paywalled review by that liveblogger here, although the visible portion of the text should give you an idea of what a weird and fantastic book this is)
A lot of it is about The Venus Theater, which showed adult films until a push to close all the porn theaters also shut it down in 1970. It was pretty normal to jerk off in the theater and cruise for (mostly m/m?) sex – both of the sex worker and non sex worker variety (although the line was very blurry). It was normal to e.g. jerk off your neighbor.
Delany was a college professor at Amherst the time he was a Venus regular. He had social and sexual relationships with a large number of people he met at the Venus Theater, including homeless people – he kept up correspondence with many of them, including at least one who went to prison. When establishments like the Venus shut down, one reason he didn't like this was that he thought it was unhealthy for society to get rid of spaces with high levels of inter-class contact.
Delany draws a distinction contact and networking. The Venus was contact, and more formal "people of various backgrounds who are interested in X, come mingle" events are networking. And if you get rid of interclass contact spaces, interclass networking spaces have to 'take up the slack' of facilitating connections, and they... can't do it. Example about parenting from the linked blog post:
In a city, contact requires certain specific characteristics to thrive. You need socioeconomically diverse spaces with mixed commercial and residential uses, and which provide basic services like restaurants, public bathrooms, and small shops. Without that setup, you don’t get contact. (...) [If you're at a park close to your house and] there aren’t any public bathrooms, it’s a jerk move to not let a mom at the park your kids are playing at use the bathroom in your house, but you don’t want to just let any rando into your house. So you’re reluctant to talk to moms you don’t know. (Real thing!)
And here's Delany on the value of public spaces that facilitate sexual contact:
Similarly, if every sexual encounter involves bringing someone back to your house, the general sexual activity in a city becomes anxiety-filled, class-bound, and choosy. This is precisely why public rest rooms, peep shows, sex movies, bars with grope rooms, and parks with enough greenery are necessary for a relaxed and friendly sexual atmosphere in a democratic metropolis
After reading the above Delany quote I sat back in my chair, grinning wildly at the ceiling. You may not like it but this is what the optimal take looks like
BARBIE (2023) dir. Greta Gerwig
TO WONG FOO, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING! JULIE NEWMAR (1995) dir. Beeban Kidron
Seriously? Dude, that's something you'd seen in the basement. But not made of chocolate
HE MADE A FUCKING CHOCOLATE BAR
Oh, I love this an inordinate amount.
This guy covers children's songs in the style of various artists, and he's incredible.
I'm weirdly emotional about it?
This is amazing!
This is the exact opposite energy of the "what happens after the camera cuts and you've destroyed you labtop for 5 seconds of entertainment"
This guy not only wrote a whole song but dressed up and FILMED it! For what! For 1 and a half seconds of MY entertainment! That must have been HOURS of shooting and editing! I'm touched, this is art
I feel it’s important you all know this is actually a group of five dads, and they started this as a way to entertain their kids. The bands on the band wheel are their favorite bands, while the songs on the songs wheel are their kids’ favorite songs.
IT’S MARCH
Uh… It’s still May…
It’s august
It’s September
My friend takes this one step further and refers completely accurately to his girlfriend Danielle as "My partner, Dan"
Also i hate to say it but for some people, boyfriend/girlfriend feels a bit juvenile, say, if youre over 30, or perhaps youve been with someone for a very long time and are committed life partners but not married for whatever reason. Maybe husband/wife feels a little watered down to you and you want to establish the equal nature of your relationship.
Partner is a wonderful word and it should be normalized.
We actively asked people to use "partner" because then using partner doesn't out someone as queer, you absolute fucking cabbages.
It isn't appropriation when people ask you to fucking do it.
My partner refers to me as his "spouse-y" because I'm genderqueer and it's a play off wifey and hubby. LOL. A lot of people equate that to him being gay, but that's fine with him.
Hey shout out to every custodial/sanitation worker taking out and cleaning up literal hot garbage so that the rest of us can go about our summer days like it doesn’t exist
Glad to see this resonated with someone, respect custodial staff or die<3
Biden still isn't my first choice but he's actually doing stuff. It's kinda nice.
This congress is also doing stuff. Y'all who are US citizens better vote next year because I want congress to keep doing stuff.
Gay marriage is law now. The federal definition of marriage is formally changed, protecting us from any potential decisions from the supreme court. Infrastructure around the country is finally getting the repairs and upgrades that it needs. They're fighting for student loan forgiveness even if the first attempt didn't work. They're actually investing in green energy and creating jobs. We've still got a very very long way to go. But for the first time in a very long time I've got some gentle hope. A general expectation that things could get a bit better. Not the fighting for my life crawling through the mud clawing at the cliff kind of hope. I'm just kinda curious about the future. And I haven't felt like this in so long. Change is slow, folks. But it's happening.
Especially the climate investment. Like seriously, as someone in the industry it's hard to overstate the effect the Inflation Reduction Act had on the industry. My workload increased overnight. Tons of projects got the go-ahead and funding allocated the week after. Recruiters started absolutely blowing up my phone because everyone was trying to bring on more people. It's not a perfect bill, but it had an extraordinary tangible impact.
I feel like it should be a big deal that I didn't realize the Respect for Marriage Act got passed, but it looks like it happened last Christmas so I might have just not been following the news at all at that time.
But this is... amazing. Holy fuck.
Congress finds the following: (1) No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. (2) Diverse beliefs about the role of gender in marriage are held by reasonable and sincere people based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises. Therefore, Congress affirms that such people and their diverse beliefs are due proper respect. (3) Millions of people, including interracial and same-sex couples, have entered into marriages and have enjoyed the rights and privileges associated with marriage. Couples joining in marriage deserve to have the dignity, stability, and ongoing protection that marriage affords to families and children.
What a fuck you to DOMA and Thomas' bit of Dobbs v. Jackson. Jesus Christ.
i second <3
Tired of having your artwork used for AI training but find watermarks dismaying and ineffective?
Well check this out! Software that makes your Art look messed up to training AIs and unusable in a data set but nearly unchanged to human eyes.
I just learned about this. It's in Beta. Please read all the information before using.
Art thieves already hate it:
Dude, if you're stealing, you deserve to have the data poisoned. Because you could have asked and you didn't.
The link is only in the original post inside an image, not as text, so here it is as plain text: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/ and the paper about how it works: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04222
As links (because some of us are on mobile and can't easily copy and paste to our browser), those are:
&
A bit of a TLDR for some questions I saw in the notes:
The team that created Glaze is from the University of Chicago. Their names are each listed in full on the Glaze download website. (This group of students/professors did this for their SPRING BREAK 😱 so go give them some love lol)
It is free to download. No, they won’t ask for or raise money from/for this project.(stated by one of the lead professors of the project).
Glaze is designed to protect artists’ STYLE--which a bunch of ai people have been deliberately fine-tuning their models to mimic (and specifically of current living artists--small or big).
It currently does not protect against composition/trace-like theft (as seen when run through img-to-img) but that would be protected by copyright anyway while STYLE is not.
The University Team has stated that they are dedicated to continuing to improve the tool, like fixing bugs (like overheating older computers by taking up lots of energy when Glazing--it currently runs on CPU so they’re trying to change that to GPU, I believe) and expanding the type of protection given to artists (like working against img-to-img theft).
It currently only works directly on your computer (phones not advised due to current overheating issue, no tablets, or iPads, and no website runthrough since that would be insecure to breaches/scraping/hacks)
It currently works best on painterly artwork, but can still be used on other forms (team is working on improving this)
IT WORKS BY calculating the changes each image needs for the best protection against style theft by AI, and adds tiny changes throughout the piece, so that your style will, for example, confuse the ai into seeing van gogh. But the ai thieves will see a regular image in your style, feeding it into their model labeled as your work (thus starting the “data poisoning”).
Do not post the original unGlazed piece of your artwork after posting your Glazed version (obviously)
The Team worked directly with over 1,000 artists that were being impacted by the ai theft. Because the team listened to those artists, Glaze accounts for regular art thieves too (i.e. Glaze can’t be removed/cropped etc. like signatures or watermarks when reposted. It’s just part of the image, so even if it ends up on another site and scraped, the Glazing is still in effect)
When you run your artwork through Glaze, no information is sent back to the Team. (Aka, no scraping on their part. The app receives information from the Team (like updates) but no information from you is given to them through the app. Basically Team servers ---> You and NOT Team servers <--->You) One-way data street.
Brief misunderstanding happened over an open-source license for the front-end part of the app. (Used open-source coding for front-end, not knowing that code’s use-license states it is only for other open-source uses, not closed-source (the back-end code of the app is private to prevent counter-counter measure developments)). The Team took down the app until they replaced the front-end code with code written from scratch by the team. They are now not in violation of that open-source license since they are no longer using it. (you have 30 days to remedy a license breach once informed; they did so in 2)
The Team is currently in touch with Japanese artists to better expand the tool for use to protect their art styles
From what I understand of it, Glaze is an AI tool designed to be anti-AI (Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: one Terminator robot vs. all the other Terminators 😂)
You can download it from their website and also contact them through email there with any questions, problems, or bugs. The website: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/
reblogging this every fucking time it comes across my dash
They recently updated it btw. They're also expanding its capabilities, if you go on their site's page. Hell ye
In the early 70s Sesame Street was created with an eye towards educating poor, inner-city children for free, and became a massive hit with all children. In 2016, faced with going off the air forever after facing conservative efforts to destroy public broadcasting since basically its beginning, new episodes became a timed exclusive for premium cable network HBO. In 2022 HBO Max, newly merged with and taken over by reality TV channel Discovery, removed Sesame Street episodes and spin-offs from streaming as a tax write-off and scheme to avoid paying residuals.
Sesame Street's official YouTube channel is uploading the episodes for free, btw. A lot of creators are rebelling against this bullshit.
As always, America, PBS has you and your kids' backs.
I also want to put in a plug for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, spearheaded by GBH in Boston to preserve and make available public funded programming from around the country. More than 7000 public television and radio programs are available to stream through the website, with more than 40000 hours of programming archived and available to researchers and educators through the Library of Congress and GBH itself.
Insane the almost unhuman expectations on trans people.
When receiving gender affirming care its expected from society at large (and to an extent from doctors) that you have no doubt about your choice at all. In what major choice in your life have you had absolutely no doubt? Did you have no doubt about your degree? Your mortgage? Did you never worry that your second hand car might not be a good purchase? Hell, did you never worry that your wisdom teeth removal might not go 100% smoothly? Any doubt you express is immediately jumped apon by transphobes to say you're not really trans, meaning it feels like its one of those things you just can't openly say and were for the worse for it . (Queer people on the other hand are far more accepting and open to this doubt, despite what transphobes say about queer people "pressuring" us or whatever)
Furthermore, there's no treatment or medication that has the expectations that society puts on gender affirming care. Human beings have multifaceted problems, that don't go away with one treatment. Despite the fact that gender affirming care has proven to have greater mental health outcomes, there's an expectation that once you receive care you should be 100% issue free otherwise your treatment was a failure. And even before receiving care you must somehow have crippling depression as a result of dysphoria but no other issues otherwise you're "not really trans".
