i get so emotional thinking about bionicle not even about anything story specific just the empty canister and the sound of waves, the sparse melodies and chatter of po-koro, the silence, the mystery, the dread, the loneliness, the vibes, basically i need to replay MNOG

Streets of Fire (1984)

Streets of Fire (1984) Walter Hill

Gavla and Radiak

Just a dump of recent Bionicle drawings lol

NOTE TO SELF-SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!

Slow the fuck down is also the way to avoid scams, social engineering, phishing, etc.

"Oh, no the CEO of my employer is having an emergency and I need to click this link right now!!!"

Slow down...

"Why would the CEO be emailing ME of all people? Maybe this email is a phishing attack that would get my employer hacked and me fired for allowing it." (It probably is a phishing email.)

In general, "Slow the fuck down" is an extremely powerful information literacy skill.

Going through the 2001-2003 Templar Studios games and animations again because of course, and something hit me

Vakama just uses the Sacred Fire as an excuse to share things he already knows from Metru Nui but make it appear like he's also only just hearing from it, right? Matoran or Tahu come to him with a question, he has the information but if he just gives it to them they'll be pissed at him for not sharing it sooner and also question how he knows in the first place, so he just gazes into this fancy fire and pretend he is also only just finding out, everybody happy

And I suppose the other Turaga do similar things: Nuju uses the stars (which isn't even a complete lie), Nokama probably consults the waves, etc.

And then there's Matau

And I'm sorry but there's only one way I can envision this happening:

For added hilarity he always asks a different Kewa but insists that the one he's asking this time is The Almighty Kewa

And I just got confirmation from a second ex-colleague that a deal with midjourney has been brewing since months ago. Not any extra details, just that's a real thing.

Shit, I don't see any way for this to happen that doesn't make it an apocalyptic event the size of the porn ban. Fuck.

Shit. This may be pure chance and coincidence, and it's not he is in a position to be able to talk about anything, but seeing prominent staff members announcing they are moving their original photography out of tumblr just two weeks ago seems a pretty significant cue of shit to be about to hit the fan.

Just tested. It’s possible to swap out pictures on already-published posts. So in that case, a solution:

Nightshade your photo posts now.

Even if you don’t post your own art anymore, go back to your old stuff and watermark it.

Do it ASAP, before the deal goes through and the scraping begins.

This will not only protect your art, but has the opportunity to fuck over this deal on a pretty large scale. The more of these posts that are glazed or poisoned, the less valuable this deal becomes for tumblr and midjourney.

Share this with everyone. And i do mean everyone.

This was a whole thread, here are some of my favourites:

ARTIST CREDITS:

and adding my personal favorite (created by liminalnua)

Everyone says that the eagles should have just carried the ring to Mordor but people who really know their lore know that they were actually stuck in some sort of hotel

I love that the Toa Metru has so many career nerds in it. like yes sprinkle some dark academia into this fantasy sci fi world with robot cops and elemental magic. just get it all in there. those last Toa we talked about? warriors so connected to their elements their favorite thing to do was, for example, digging or swimming. these new Toa? arguing over the subjective cultural importance of past recollection versus future planning. studying the stars for prophecies while making fun of weirdos who have visions. probably reflecting on how they would get the others in line if they were a particularly unruly group of students expected to pass exams in about three weeks. several PhDs and top-of-the-field craftsmen present in the room and all of them are about to learn they're really good at smashing things

on the other side, Matau knows he's really good at smashing things but will pretend he has a PhD in whatever is most convenient for him as soon as he becomes a Turaga (don't tell anyone his degree is actually in engineering. not just anyone gets to smash-drive new vehicles on Metru Nui). these are the greats

Lhikan: I see so much potential in you

Nokama: Thank you, Toa. I take so much pride in teaching my students

Lhikan, picturing her with two enormous knives that can be swung like grappling hooks: of course, yes! that too

Naho and Lhikan casually discussing how, far in the distant future, they might pick some Matoran as their replacements, and Naho's talking about the sailors who come in to Metru Nui and know martial arts and swordplay, while Lhikan just goes "you know that extremely anti-social Ko-Matoran who spends all day in his study staring at the stars? I think that he's secretly a little feral" and Naho just gives him a Look

set up a basic rig for the lewa model

Please be aware that the "opt-out" choice is just a way to try to appease people. But Tumblr has not been transparent about when has data been sold and shared with AI companies, and there are sources that confirm that data has already been shared before the toggle was even provided to users.

Also, it seems to include data they should not have been able to give under any circumstance, including that of deactivated blogs, private messages and conversations, stuff from private blogs, and so on.

Do not believe that "AI companies will honor the "opt-out request retroactively". Once they've got their hands on your data (and they have), they won't be "honoring" an opt-out option retroactively. There is no way to confirm or deny what data do they have: The fact they are completely opaque on what do they currently "own" and have, means that they can do whatever they want with it. How can you prove they have your data if they don't give everyone free access to see what they've stolen already?

So, yeah, opt out of data sharing, but be aware that this isn't stopping anyone from taking your data. They already have been taking it, before you were given that option. Go and go to Tumblr's Suppport and leave your Feedback on this (politely, but firmly- not everyone in the company is responsible for this.)

Finally: Opt out is not good under any circumstance. Deactivated people can't opt out. People who have lost their passwords can't opt out. People who can't access internet or computers can't opt out. People who had their content reposted can't opt out. Dead people can't opt out. When DeviantArt released their AI image generator, saying that it wasn't trained on people who didn't consent to it, it was proven it could easily replicate the styles of people who had passed away, as seen here. So, yeah. AI companies cannot be trusted to have any sort of respect for people's data and content, because this entire thing is just a data laundering scheme.

Please do reblog for awareness.

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhh

so here's the deal re: this fucking horseshit.

i, personally, have mostly given up on trying to dodge inclusion in AI datasets. the stuff i make generally isn't what they're looking for anyway and there's no real way to 100% avoid being scraped short of becoming entirely invisible online, which would um, lead to me having no money and dying. that's part of the cruelty of all this, but also, in a way, it's the same risk artists online have always taken; if you want people to see your work, you have to post it knowing that some of those people are fucking lowlife piece of shit scumbags who will try to resell it on redbubble or something for a quick buck. AI is just a new and exhausting way for garbagey people to stink worse. i am not in any way excusing that behavior or trying to imply people should not be mad about it or that we shouldn't condemn this move and fight back. "if you don't want your work stolen, don't put it online" is the kind of shitty Internet Tough Guy talk i've always hated since my dA days. it's as useless and heartless as telling people that if they don't want their bikes stolen, they shouldn't leave them at the bike rack. i'm saying that i, personally, will not let a bunch of soulless thieving shitheads drive me offline. i belong here. they belong in a wifi-proof dumpster.

nightshade and glaze eat my artwork alive. they make it look terrible. when you have to sell things on the basis that they look nice, it's a big problem when protective measures make them look like dogshit. my work is not a good candidate for these processes. even if that weren't the case, i don't have the stamina, especially right now while my chronic pain is flaring for the third month in a row and my adhd meds are scarce, to go back and shade/glaze everything, and it wouldn't work on reblogs anyway. given the way midjourney and its equally stinky siblings have already scraped years and terabytes' worth of image data from popular websites, it doesn't seem worth my time.

i think some of the doomsaying about AI and what it will do to us has been overblown-- they need you, for marketing purposes, to believe that someday their shitty robot will be as good at "drawing" and as practical to work with as a human-- but the consequences of "AI" (which is not even actually AI) are already real and visible and obvious to anyone paying attention. i unfortunately am not infinitely wise and powerful and therefore do not have an ideal all-encompassing solution to this deeply stupid problem that the Most Unlikeable Manbabies On Earth have imposed on us after NFTs fizzled out.

what i do have is a very large repository of nice anime and game screenshots i've taken, knowledge of many archives of nice public domain images, a computer that can run nightshade overnight or while i'm off doing other things, and, most importantly, near-infinite capacity for pettiness. i do kinda feel like the jury is still out on how well nightshade/glaze will work in the long run, but in the meantime, i suppose it wouldn't cost me a lot to... perhaps... every time i get Mad About AI™, channel that anger into dumping some thoroughly-but-not-spammily-tagged, high-quality, inconspicuous poison onto this godforsaken hellsite via a secret side blog. i could make a batch of poison ahead of time, keep it on my phone, use my Toilet Scrolling Time or my Public Transit Time to post and tag up an image here and there. it could be a fun challenge to try to make some pretty robot poison that some humans will still enjoy.

the other thing we need to poison at this point, IMO, is the word "AI" itself, by being loudly and mercilessly critical of any company that dabbles in it, the same way we all clowned on any company that pushed their luck with NFT/crypto shit a couple of years ago. we need to have every corporation terrified that association with AI will tank their sales and hurt their brand. AI must = number go down and lots of people screaming at you. companies will fuck around. we must provide the finding-out. we shouldn't have to. but we can!

so make sure to let tumblr know you hate this. maybe you could include this interesting link (tw child abuse) about how Stable Diffusion was trained on some extremely serious crime. or these screenshots of Midjourney devs just sort of admitting what their whole thing is, which i got here but which have kinda been spread all over since January.

spite and anger can be forms of hope. that's all i have to say, or at least all i'm willing to type with my left hand tonight.

They are already selling data to midjourney, and it's very likely your work is already being used to train their models because you have to OPT OUT of this, not opt in. Very scummy of them to roll this out unannounced.

Enough random notes that have a written story on them as environmental storytelling, explore the space, get crazier with it.

You move into a house and aw cute, it has the kids height on the walls but you notice there's a three foot difference in height between measurements, you check the date, they're a month apart. The final measurement is on the ceiling. It's dated two days ago.

You're part of a recovery team that have finally found a stranded ship, they were found too late and have all passed a long time ago. They all died of starvation. You enter their storeroom, it's filled with food. In the dining hall you find the tables laden with perfectly fine looking breads, cakes, cured meats, jams, candies. Your medic says all the people sitting at the table didn't eat a Thing.

You wake up in an apocalypse. You can't find anyone at all as you wander the streets but you do hear faint music playing from somewhere. You stumble into a supermarket, to see all the aisles still full, except for the shelf that was full of ear plugs, which look to be the only thing that was looted.

Like there's light, sound, props. Having a street where every house is decimated except for One. Landing on a planet known for having No Water and a plant is growing and you don't know where it could have possibly gotten moisture from but you can't find the citizens Anywhere.

I'm sorry, I'm just kinda over the "graffiti on the wall to show the bad guy is around". That's not environmental storytelling that's just normal story. Show me I'm in the villains territory by the rain suddenly cutting out above me as I'm driving, even though it's meant to be raining all night. I park the car and step out, and realise the constellations are Wrong, until I see they're Not constellations, they're the blinking lights of a massive ship-

I Will stop now because everytime I go to write a sentence it devolves into another prompt but I'm just saying we have a Lot of senses, engage them, show me the Environment in environmental storytelling.

"Having a street where every house is decimated except for One" is the premise of a Star Trek: TNG episode and a really good one - "The Survivors." =)

one thing i love about Gali’s MoL design: Her mask seems pretty different from the set until she goes underwater. Then, her cheek vent thingies pop out, and suddenly whoa its more set accurate and also a freakin cool concept

holy shit

HOLY SHIT

You can actually see them fold down in the second gif. Kinda hard to see in the 3rd one but meh