jesus fucking christ

??? this cat is attempting to calm her steed

This looks like a fuckin’ classical painting.

There I painted it.

Dude.

pennant winged nightjar

Oh, that’s an odd name, what’s the bird look li--

...oh.

As someone who took etiquette lessons, politeness is an incredibly effective tool for disarming bigots. You can either force them to reconsider their words/actions by directly and calmly confronting their behavior (by using the rules of society in your favor), or you can dip entirely while they appear to be in the wrong.

Both options are great.

Because the thing is, when bigots pick fights, they are 100% counting on you to get louder than them. Or meaner. They want you to react emotionally and provide fodder for their 'You're Too Emotionally Immature To Understand' cannon.

What they aren't expecting you to do is say one of the following phrases in a polite, concerned tone:

For those of you who'd are spiteful and/or dealing with Fundamentalists/Evangelicals/generally shitty Christians:

And my all time favorite:

"It sounds to me like there are some seriously dark and angry forces at work in your heart."

(Nothing stops a Christian bigot in their tracks faster than implying the Devil is causing their bigotry. But you MUST be calm, polite, and gentle with your tone and wording. It is absolutely fair to twist the rules and play them at their own game, but you gotta play hard.)

TLDR: It's much faster to use etiquette, politeness, and rhetoric reversal when eviscerating idiots online and in person, because they aren't expecting you to weaponize their behaviors back in their direction. Don't get angry, get spitefully polite! :)

[Image ID: Tweet from verified user CNBC International (@/CNBCi) on 4/29/23 reading: Use this 3-word response when someone is rude to you, says Harvard-trained etiquette expert cnb.cx/3AAj2Vq. Quote retweet from Berry! (@/ bloodBerry_tart) reading: i was gonna make a joke about "Harvard-trained etiquette expert" but the phrase they are advocating for here is "are you okay?" which is honestly an ice cold response to receiving disrespect and i support it /End ID]

And nothing of value was lost.

That’s out of 15 total deaths, by the way. That’s what they’re fearmongering about

The 15th also died in a car crash, by the way. Literally 0 killed by migrant terrorists or whatever image they hope the headline will evoke in your head

I'm gonna watch Nimona with my friends tonight and i will NOT shut up about it, this is all you're gonna hear for the rest of the week, i need you all to watch this movie

This is a movie adaptation of gingerhaze's original full-length sci-fi fantasy webcomic from 2012. That's gingerhaze aka ND Stevenson aka the trans badass of Lumberjanes and She-Ra fame.

This movie has been in and out of development for 8 years -- it's been picked up and cancelled over and over because "it's too gay :(" and now it is finally RELEASED. (Even though Netflix is trying to bury it because they are cowards.)

You should watch it by any means necessary, because the characters are delightful, the story slaps, and the deconstruction of what it means to be a "villain" or a "hero" is delicious. But you should especially watch it by means of Netflix if you have it, because I need the ratings to soar -- this is original queer content by a queer author that has been gorgeously animated.

(EDIT: As a forewarning, the movie does contain flashing lights as well as a suicide attempt.)

I found photos of those Pallas Cat kittens born this year and bye I'm deceased

Fellas

LMFAO thank god

If your satire is so on point you get seen as the bigots you mocked, is it incredible satire or bad satire? 🤔😅

I saw an opportunity and I took it

NOPE (Jordan Peele) / Regarding the Pain of Others (Susan Sontag)

People knew the hostages were being held to help Reagan get elected. I was 15, so too young to vote but this was the first election that I paid attention to because of everything else happening then . . . and there was a lot happening. The adults around me, a lot of the teachers, were all convinced that something dirty was happening. Maybe they couldn't prove it, but they knew. Oh, the hostages were released just as Ronnie was swearing in? Yeah, that was one last fuck you to Carter.

They knew it. And now we *know* it.

Fuck Republicans, man. Fuck 'em.

Another article that's not behind a paywall–

HI LET’S SHARE NICOLE’S WORDS ON THE SUBJECT! 

It has been literal years but every time I see Martin’s tweets posted somewhere and his word is shared as truth while her post is not shared it sort of reiterates the fact that we trust men to speak about feminism more than we believe women who experience it. 

Interesting, innit? https://medium.com/@nickyknacks/working-while-female-59a5de3ad266

Reading her account of how their boss treated her blows me away. Men are so emboldened that they will literally admit to illegal discrimination casually and face no consequences.

In all the years of seeing this post I’ve never seen a link to her side. Didn’t even know she’d written one.

Adding screenshots of her post. His whole post is there without needing a link. Hers should be, too.

Also, she posted this is 2017! It’s fucking 2020 and I’ve seen his side of this for years, but it took 3 years for her side to make its way to my dash…

I’ve reblogged his story at least twice; it’s time for Nicole’s.

It’s 2023 and i just now learned that Nicole’s response was also out there

Not a single monkey survived the Neuralink experiment. I’ll bet Elmo can’t wait to start torturing and murdering human beings with this.

full story here: https://www.reuters.com/science/elon-musks-neuralink-gets-us-fda-approval-human-clinical-study-brain-implants-2023-05-25/

Implant it in yourself if you’re so sure it’ll work rat

OH OK THE ABLEISM (and fatphobia) HERE! OF COURSE HE’S A cUrE aUtiSm FUCKER!

You ever invite your coworker to watch you give birth just to spite a racist

Okay howmst the fuck has a ship doctor in the far future never handled a birth without the father present? Are sperm donors and gay couples and trans women no longer a thing in the bajillionth century CE?? :/

I while understand the frustration with erasure sometimes it helps to look at things through the cultural context of when something was made. Star Trek the Next Generation was made in 1987, this particular episode I believe aired in 1988 a time when a future where the husband was always present for the birth would have been amazing to many of the people watching the show as men had only been allowed to be present for the birth of their children for 10/15ish years at that point in the US.

Women (and many men) fought for decades with hospitals to even have men allowed in the delivery room during the early stages of labor, which can last for several hours, and hospitals only began to give in to their requests in the 1960s but even then they would be kicked out of the room by hospital staff before the actual birth took place. So many of the couples watching the show would have had to go through labor without having/being allowed to support their spouse regardless of their wishes. Having the child’s father present for the birth only began to happen in the 1970s and 1980s. Which means most people watching this show either went through birth without the support of their spouse, were not allowed to support their spouse during the birth of their child, or their own mother’s went through that during their birth.

A future where the husbands were always present for the birth was still a little crazy to consider in the late 1980s. A good kind of crazy for the people living in that time, it showed a future where the wishes of the couple were finally consistently listened to by medical professionals as a result of the actions of people during their or their parent’s lifetimes. And it does that by also subverting it in allowing Data to step into the role of the father when the father was unknown and/or unwilling/unable to fill that role (I’ll be honest my knowledge of Next Gen is a bit spotty and I have not seen this whole episode, just a piece of it at family Thanksgiving). The woman’s desires as to how she would give birth are listened to and respected, something that still doesn’t happen in many hospitals now and would have been seen as even more revolutionary then. So while it isn’t perfect I think this scene was actually fairly impressive for its time and cultural context and shows a future that many people of that time would have seen as ideal.

I think this kind of contextual understanding and analysis is really important because things that look antiquated now were revolutionary then. I remember reading that the mini skirts in Star Trek TOS were legot just in fashion (about 64’ ish), one of the actresses (the one that played Rand) requested they be in the show and both her and Nichelle Nichols said they didn’t see them as demeaning but liberating in that time and context. Where as NOW it looks like ‘sexy male gaze’ but then it wasn’t.

Miniskirts are comfortable and easy to move in - unlike longer bulkier skirts, which had previously been required for “modesty.” And unlike the approach of “we’ll just put them in pants,” miniskirts made a statement that women crew-members weren’t being treated like men. Miniskirts were a way to say “I can be an attractive woman, wear comfortable clothes, and still look professional and do a serious job.” 

The clothing for that message today would be different. 

This is also why the bridge crew of TOS may seem “tokenistic” today. When it came out, the Cold War was in full swing and “Soviets” were maligned and hated, Black people could not count on their right to vote being honored, and mixed-race people (like Spock) were called horrible things like “half-breed” and “zebra.” A white man was in charge of the ship, but Gene Roddenberry was fully aware that a chunk of the viewership read him as queer, and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DISCOURAGE THAT READING, at a time when “homosexual activity” was illegal in the United States!

By today’s standards, “one of everything? How tokenistic.” In 1966? “A Black woman, a Russian, a man from multiple cultures, and a man who loves differently, all top of their fields, all working together and finding common ground to learn, grow, and help where they can? What a wonderful future!”

Also I’m sorry but like. A show also featuring a Japanese man who isn’t a stereotype but part of the crew, having a Scottish character be a part of the central cast (idk if I need to get into why this is important, but considering how England has continuously tried to erase Scottish culture and identity, and the stereotype of Scots as bumbling bumpkins, etc, its kind of nice to see a Scotsman who’s the best of the best at his job).

Moreover, a lot of kids watched this show. MLK himself contacted Nichelle Nichols and asked her to stay on the show when she was considering leaving, because “you don’t have a Black role, you have an equal role,” and there wasnt many Black role models on tv. I can only imagine how Black kids, Asian kids, and mixed race or mixed culture kids felt seeing people like them on tv. Hell, seeing Uhura on screen is what inspired Whoopi Goldberg as a little girl.

Also, yeah, its easy to look back and say ‘damn, fathers weren’t there in the delivery room? What assholes’ but no like they legitimately were not allowed in there.

Tiny correction: while George Takei is Japanese, and while Sulu thus looks like what we in the 20th-21st century consider to be an ethnically Japanese man, Hikaru Sulu was Pan-Asian by design. His last name is not Japanese. And Roddenberry designed him like that intentionally, because while there was a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment in the US at the time (I mean, hell… George Takei himself spent years in Japanese internment camps during WW2), there was also a lot of other anti-Asian sentiments, and Roddenberry intentionally put ALL of it on the character of Sulu.

Like, all the years of anti-Chinese racism in the US? Sulu. Anti-Japanese sentiments left over after WW2? Sulu. Korean War in 1950-52? Sulu. The Vietnam War, with Johnson in 1965 (a year before TOS started airing) choosing to start sending American troops into the conflict? Sulu.

Sulu was Roddenberry’s desperate attempt to show all Asian people as inherently worthy, inherently human, and yeah, he probably put kind of too much on Sulu’s shoulders, but it was the 1960s and Roddenberry fucking cared about representation, so he did what he could.

Just, you know… a little bit more historical Star Trek context

Also to hammer this home?

Scotty was third in line for the captain’s chair. The only non-Kirk who had the con more then him was Spock.

He was smart, he was a *ranked* crewmen, he was a gentleman, he wasn’t a skirt chaser, and he was capitol L loyal. The only time he got into a fight was when someone both went after his Captain, AND his Ship.

And he was Scottish. 

That’s so above and beyond the typical Scottish stereotype even TO THIS DAY.

Dr Polaski was coded as something of an arse just so they could make their valid points about equality and bigotry using her as a foil. Yes it was kind of clumsy from a modern perspective, but it was also kind of groundbreaking (not least because you didn’t usually get arses being played by women)

I am hard-coded to put this on any post that mentions MLK and Nichelle Nichols.

Also, it’s very worth noting that the “token minority character” label doesn’t apply in any way to these characters.

Tokens are there to present the appearance of diversity. Whereas Roddenberry created a diverse cast in an era where there wasn’t even a need for the appearance of diversity. Roddenberry didn’t put these characters in because he wanted to look diverse– he put them in to BE DIVERSE.

Guy certainly knows about it

Glaze is out!

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:

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

&

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/

So Critical Role had a Meme Thread and I may have gone a little overboard.