'whats your hogborts house?' is played the heck out. what is your TINGLE TYPE? there are four kinds of tinglers and all of them welcome trans, gay, lesbian, asexual, non-binary, bisexual, gender fluid and every other bud because your love is real and valid
Continuing on my quest try more book cover illustration by doing my own take on a cover for Widdershins 🌀
imagine you start watching this new show and it’s a silly little show about space set in the future then they announce the next season so you wait excitedly for five months and finally it’s here… you all sit round the tv and suddenly one of the main characters who is known for being unemotional starts going mad because of “biology…” and you slowly realise that he needs to have sex or he’s going to die so the other main character risks his entire career to help him out then they start ‘wrestling’ on the sand and the one going through the mating fever ends up killing the other guy which ends the fever but now he’s depressed because he just killed his best friend but wait he’s not actually dead the unemotional one is overjoyed everything’s fine and then they go back to work like nothing happened… you look at everyone else sitting in stunned silence thinking “did any one else think that was a little… yknow” then you accidentally start modern fandom and shipping culture
very much enjoying the tags thank you everybody
Wait till they all actually watch it and see the unnecessary titty window situation.
[ID: A collection of tags that read:
Based on some of the first-hand accounts I’ve read, fans already had thoughts in that direction but were very cautious about expressing them, because, you know, it was 1967 and they were nice suburban ladies. They referred to the idea of Spock and Kirk being in love as The Premise. One little housewives’ fan club in California wrote to Leonard Nimoy in the hiatus between seasons one and two, and he was very pleasant and agreed to come and meet their group and tell them about being in the show. They didn’t say anything about The Premise directly, in case it offended him, but of course they expressed their enthusiasm for the rapport between Kirk and Spock and how curious they were about Spock’s background and inner life. And Nimoy, who was working on season two by that time, said that he couldn’t give away any specifics but there was an episode coming up that would focus more on Spock’s personal life and the planet Vulcan, and they were naturally delighted and intrigued.
So when they sat down to watch season two, episode one, “Amok Time,” they were primed for an important Spock episode, and then that played out before their widening eyes and I think it’s safe to say it blew their beehives clean off their heads.
…And this is exactly how some of us got onto the path toward getting into SO MUCH [GOOD] TROUBLE later in our lives. Handwritten fanfic… pages and pages and PAGES of it. Tens and hundreds of thousands of words of fanfic. In looseleaf binders.
Just remember: “The first million words are for practice.” :) After that… all bets are off.
And it’s also worth bearing in mind that Amok Time was written by Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon was a bisexual writer (according to his friend, gay author and academic Samuel R Delany) who wrote “The World Well Lost” (1953) which may have been the first SF story about homosexuality to be published in a mainstream SF magazine, not to mention gay-coded stories like “The Saucer of Loneliness”. Ted Sturgeon was a brilliant writer about love, and he knew exactly what he was doing in Amok Time. Although he might not have known what it would spawn.
And if you are curious to read some of his fiction there’s a Selected Short Stories of Theodore Sturgeon out there, and the novels The Dreaming Jewels and More Than Human appear to be in print.
holy shit neil gaiman is here everyone stay cool
happy international asexuality day buckaroos. your ace and aro trots are VALID and YOU PROVE LOVE JUST BY BEING YOU
You know those aesthetic image posts that float around tumblr? I'm . . . starting to see a lot on my dash that are obviously ai-generated. Are non-artists having trouble telling the difference between AI images and real photos, or are people starting to stop care about the stolen art that gets fed into those programs?
I have no actual art training, so I want it known that if I ever DO reblog some ai stuff please let me know. It was unintentional and I would like to know. Thanks~
Yeah, I figure this is the case for most people. I’m going to put up a guide to spotting AI images after work!
I think people know by now how to tell if an image of a person is AI-generated. Count the fingers, count the knuckles, check the pupils, yadda yadda. I've seen several posts circulating about what to look for. However, I think people are a LOT less educated about backgrounds, and about the specific distinctions between human error and AI error. So that's what I'm going to cover.
Now, don't feel bad if you've reblogged or liked any of the images I'm about to show you guys. This is just what's crossed my blog, so it's what I have to work with. (Actually, thanks for providing the examples!)
I also generated a few images from crAIyon purely for demonstrational purposes, because I didn't have anything on-hand to show my thoughts.
Firstly — Keep in mind that AI has a difficult time replicating "simple" styles. Think colorless line-drawings, cartoony pieces with thick lines, and pixel art.
Looks unsettling, right?
Why is this? Well, when a human makes art, we're more prone to under-detailing by mistake than over-detailing, because adding detail in the first place place is more effort. A skilled artist should be good able to capture an idea with minimal, evocative shape language.
But when an AI makes art, it is the opposite. An AI doesn't understand what it's looking at, not in the way that you or I do. All it can do is search for and replicate patterns in the noise of pixels. As a result, it is prone to mushing together features in ways that a human artist . . . wouldn't intentionally think to do.
It also over-details, replicating what it knows over and over again because it doesn't know when it's supposed to stop. Blank spaces can confuse it! It likes having detail to work with! Detail Is Data!
Again, this is why we count fingers.
These general principles still apply when we're looking at styles that an AI is better equipped to imitate. So . . .
Secondly — AI's tendency to over-render details makes it easier for it to pick up heavily detailed styles, especially if the style will still hold up when certain details are indistinct or merge together unexpectedly.
Scrutinize images that utilize a painterly, heavily-rendered, or photo-realistic style. Such as this one.
Thirdly — An AI piece that looks pretty good from a distance falls apart up close.
The above image looks almost like a photograph, but there is architecture here that you wouldn't find in a real room, and mistakes that you wouldn't find in the work of an artist that is THIS good at rendering. Or most beginner artists, even.
Can you see what falls apart here? Hint; we're counting fingers again.
Check the window panes. Isn't the angle that they all meet up at a little off? Why are the panes sized so inconsistently? Why doesn't the view outside of them all line up into a cohesive background?
Count the furniture legs. Why does the farther-back case have a third leg? Why does the leg on the closer case vanish so strangely behind the flowery details?
Examine the curtain(?) fabric at the top of the window. What on earth IS that frilly stuff?
Another mistake that AI will make is drawing lines and merging details that a human artist would never think of as connected. See the lines crawling up the walls? See how some of the flower petals glop together at hard angles in some places? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
You can see more strange architecture in the outdoor setting of this image.
A lot of the AI's mistakes are almost art nouveau! We recognize that buildings are consistently angular, for stability reasons. An AI does not. (Also look at the trees in the background, and how they tend to warp and distort around the outline of the treehouse. They kinda melt into each other at some points. It's wild.)
Fourthly — An AI will replicate any carelessness that was introduced into its original data set.
Obviously, this means that AIs will make fake watermarks, but everybody already knows that. What I need you guys to look out for is something else. It's called artifacting.
Artifacting is defined as "the introduction of a visible or audible anomaly during the processing or transmission of digital data." To put it in layman's terms, you know how an image gets crunchy and pixelated if you save it as a jpg? Yeah. That. An AI with lots of crusty, crunchy jpgs fed into it will produce crunchy images.
Look at the floor at the bottom of our original example image;
See the speckles all along the glass panels, table legs, and flowers in shadow? Artifacted to hell and back! This shit is crunchier than my spine after spending half a day hunched over my laptop.
Again, legitimate art and photography may have artifacting too just because of file formatting reasons. But most artists don't intentionally artifact their own images, and furthermore, the artifacting will not be baked into the very composition of the image itself. The speckles will instead gather most notably on flat colors at the border of different color patches and/or outlines.
Cronchy memes; funny. Cronchy AI art; shitty jpg art theft caught red-handed.
That's probably all the lessons I can impart in one post. Class dismissed! As homework a bonus, consider these two sister images to our original flower room. Can you spot any signs of AI generation?
@wolven-writer I hope this helps!
mr. dr. chuck, i'm a few months ago i told a doc of mine that i believe i'm on the spectrum (after yeeeears of considering all the reasons why i thought so) and she agreed with me. then i came to some conclusions about members of my family. then i started melting down and haven't really recovered.
i'm in my 30's, but my life feels like it's been the mistake-addled 24th year for over a decade. people, choices, wants, they feel like things that were silly blips and not of much substance. i'm tired and my body hurts, so it feels harder to get to things i need. doctors don't seem like they can be trusted because of all the other ways i show up in the world.
i'm worried about my life and my future, and it feels like my magic is gone (or that i can't touch it right now). do you have any words of wisdom for someone who found out this really big thing about themselves kind of late?
thank you.
hello buckaroo thank you for writing. first of all i will say MOST IMPORTANT thing to remember is that it is okay and valid to FEEL the way that you feel. your reaction to this news or any news really is not wrong. that does not mean you cant wish for another reaction or WORK TOWARDS another reaction, but in grand cosmic sense this is just your way. YOUR TROT IS VALID and we all have our own unique way. sometimes that path is an easy path with sunny days and smiles and a glorious view, and sometimes it is through the darkness of shadows or crawling through the old bog. we can PREFER one path over the other, but neither is WRONG.
when giving advice old chuck tries to not PROJECT what i think YOU should do because that is not really the point. this is your trot to trot and i do not think it is my place to act like some authority of your way. what chuck can do is tell you MY story of diagnosis and how it made ME feel and maybe you can take little pieces of that for yourself.
chuck learned of way on autism spectrum when i was in early twenties by doctor who said 'yes this is your way'. when i learned of my spectrum way my reaction was: wow this is very very cool i am so lucky because all of my heroes are autistic and now i am in this RADICAL CLUB. we are special and unique and DANG what a treat wish i could have a membership card in my wallet to show all my buds.
now obviously this is not everyones reaction, but as starting off point i wonder what it would have meant to my future if the news would have HIT ME IN A BAD WAY. if i would have felt let a dang robot alien who didnt belong. maybe id be swimmin through the bog ever since.
thing is I LIKE ROBOT ALIENS they are very cool. doctor did not MAKE me different, i was different already, our talks just popped a nice little name on it for me to take or leave. i took the name proudly because DATA from stars trek (certified robot alien) is exactly how i already felt and dang what a cool character and dang what a great life. so was DAVID BYRNE. so was every cool buckaroo artist that i liked. cowboys are OUTSIDER HEROES and that is how my autism makes me feel.
so like i said, i do not know about YOUR way, but MY WAY of hearing this news was heaps of joy and excitement. i will also say that it is very DIFFICULT to find this reaction later if your first leap is feeling in a sad way about it. so maybe if you want to trot back in your mind to those first few steps it would be helpful. maybe mentally trot to where you were pushed off a dang cliff and think "well was i pushed off a cliff or was i just told 'hey bud youve been floating this whole time?"'
because if youve been floating then DANG thats a lot of power. thats not falling. you can float up, you can float down, you can float side to side.
the next thing i will say AS AND ARTIST is that years of toiling and feeling aimless are NEVER actually aimless when it comes to creation. and to LIVE in a human body is to be an artist, because you are CONSTANTLY CREATING the future. when i am writing and i dont have an idea for my next book that can be frustrating, but it is also PART of the process. if i walk to the store to rustle up my mind, or wander around the park, or spend a whole WEEK feeling weird because of writers block THAT IS ALL PART OF MAKING GREAT ART. that is not wasted time. in other words, your years of toiling are not wasted time, that is just the process we all have when we are creating a future masterpiece.
sports classification
i should marry a mutual. thats how mabelpodcast was written
SEE THIS.
malevolent 🤝 tma
*highly intelligent protagonists that are also dumbass wet paper bag men with supernatural traits connected to eye symbolism that are inflicted with copious amounts of torture and can’t make a correct decision to save their life or anyone else’s for that matter*
The union busting firms are scared
As a fine dining cook, I found work in a union workplace around a year ago. My 40 hours a week are guaranteed except for Jan/feb/mar when there’s not enough customers, I get paid almost twice what I did at any other restaurant, if I work overtime, (more than 8 hours in one day, or more than 40 in a week), I actually get overtime pay, (and it’s 1.5x my normal rate!). I get holiday pay, and in addition I get to either bank or pay out my holidays if I work those days, (either a paid day off when I want it, in addition to the holiday pay, or I get paid an add’l 8 hours at 1.5x that week). I also get two floating holidays, 4 paid random sick days, 2 paid family sick days, and 4 paid “doctor’s note” sick days, (paid out by our health insurance), as well as general allowance to take as many unpaid sick days as I want without worrying for my job security. (I’ve been told that taking multiple months off is where we start to be concerned about abuse, so if I want to do that, I can go through our leave of absence procedures instead, where I’m allowed three 2-week periods a year generally for whatever reason I want, (If my manager wants to disagree, he has to get the union president’s approval), and after that it’s up to my manager to decide if he’ll accept them). I get two weeks of paid vacation time a year, and an add’l week per year for every 5 years I work there. We get our legally mandated breaks, which, I know that sounds like a low bar, but taking anything other than a smoke break in a kitchen?!?! Unheard of! I get two 15′s and a lunch every shift! I get to sitdown and rest my legs and not get flak for it! I get a bonus at the end of the year, there’s official procedures for if my manager isn’t happy with me or wants to get rid of me, (three meetings, during which my union representative has to be present), (and getting rid of my classification doesn’t work, there’s rules for how someone ‘bumps’ other people if classifications are gotten rid of), and severance pay for when full-time employees that are downsized out of the company, there’s a pension plan, like . . . Guys, I have a 40-page handbook which details all of the rights my union has won me, and believe me, I’ve never had any of these at any prior workplace. And you know what my union dues are? $4 a paycheck. Of course I’m going to pay my union dues for all of those benefits.
Reblogging for this incredibly thorough explanation of what it's like to actually have a contract in place at a union workplace. I reblog a fair number of posts about how people should organize, but if you're like me, you might not know exactly what that can get you until you've actually gone through the process. Every contract is different because you bargain for what makes sense for your particular workplace, and every few years you re-negotiate with the employer to improve things in the next contract, but some things (like the right to have union representation when you talk to your boss about leave or discipline) are universal.
It's worth every penny of your dues, I promise.
I used to be one of those ppl who was really dismissive of modern & abstract art but one time an art guy told me "It's making you ask big questions about your own aesthetic preferences and the definition of 'art' so it must be pretty evocative after all" and I tell you it broke me. Nothing has been the same since.
I lovehate that stupid fucking urinal so much because it encapsulates this entire deal in a way that's actually very clever and insightful and it makes me angry
[ID: the “heartbreaking: the worst person you know just made a great point” meme edited to read, “Heartbreaking: The Way That You Hate This Piece Of Art Validates Its Existence As Good Art”. /end ID]
I'm planning on delving deeper into the mines of moria, good idea y/y?
Hello, Anon! I recently came from inspecting the Mines of Moria and can tell you that the mine is closed due to significant safety violations and will not be able to reopen until those issues are addressed. I have included a brief overview of some of the more significant violations that have caused us to come to this conclusion:
I hope this helps you understand the severe safety violations that were present while the Mines of Moria were in operation.
I would strongly urge you to not enter the abandoned mine workings. Remember: Stay Out, Stay Alive. Exploring or playing at active and abandoned mine sites is dangerous, and potentially fatal.
1910s guy who calls including left-handed characters in stories forced diversity
actually i wasn't sure what he meant by /southern/ pansy specifically. he's an angel wouldt he have said northern pansy?
HA, that would have been a good twist actually, but it’s specifically an English expression, southern pansy meaning “posh English homosexual” because the English southern accent is stereotyped as being the posh accent, which Aziraphale definitely talks that way.
I’m sorry southern pansy means what?? Omg
….okay people really don’t know this! Yes, calling someone a pansy is calling them gay, and a southern pansy is a posh gay, so when Aziraphale says he’s not just a southern pansy he’s THE southern pansy, he is literally saying he is the gayest of all the posh gays XD
Reblogging for all the non-British (and British not-in-the-know!) fans who didn’t realise that “Southern Pansy” means Posh English Homosexual.
I feel that this is important information.
I internal joy screeched at that scene b/c he was reclaiming a derogatory term & it was so empowering to see! By reclaiming it he was saying to Shadwell (& Heaven too), “You don’t get to degrade me. I’m embracing that word as mine, not yours. I know who I am now.” AND THAT IS GLORIOUS & POWERFUL
… it never occurred to me that people didn’t realise what “southern pansy” meant, so I’m reblogging this for everyone who didn’t know.
I was the author and I thought everyone knew.
