i decided to recompile all my creative endeavors for ease of reference and as a quick presentation card to anyone who discovers me and might want to know more of the bullshit i get up to.
in here you’ll find DRAWINGS, VIDEOS, WRITING and even MUSIC!
the story of tatsuya ishida is truly tragic because i can believe the guy startd from a genuine place of wanting to engage with feminism
the problem is that the framing of it was inherently conspiratorial and tinged with a heavy dose of guilt and self loathing
and that is just not a good foundation upon which to build a sane ideology and understanding of the world and so inevitably went from that, though this
and it ended up leading to this:
he is like the textbook case of the radfem to fascist pipeline. because the guy has been making comics every day for decades in here we have a perfect, methodical and granular dissection of how the process happens.
it truly is a tragedy
so, little vent under the cut
Mike Hawk, huh
this life aint good enough i it's been MY world to live to hope i it's been MY LIFE to better suit your moooood
'cause you're so smooooo-IT'S BEEN JUST LIKE THE OCEAN UNDER THE MOON IT'S BEEN SAME AS THE EMOTIONS THAT I GET FROM
Nobody hates winning more than Democrats.
Actually, that's not entirely fair to Democrats, because a lot of this comes from disaffected leftists and center-left-ish, barely-engaged members of the public, both groups of which take pride in not calling themselves Democrats. But genuine, out and proud uppercase "D" Democrats are getting in on the fun this week, too. It's not new to this moment; it has dominated my entire adult life, and was probably true long before then. Democrats hate to win.
Okay, gamer! Here's the scenario: You have a kindly and likable president whose administration not only has restored governing normality after four years of a criminal lunatic whose pathological need for validation is wedging open the doors for American fascists to overthrow our constitutional system of liberty and the rule of law. Above and beyond defeating that monster, this also delivered a sprawling and effective constellation of policies and laws that meaningfully improved life in America and bolstered the international liberal democratic order. But, this president is beset by questions about his cognitive health due to his advanced age, and his performance in a recent debate with his opponent in the upcoming election—who happens to be the same criminal lunatic from before—has, rightly or wrongly, caused the dam of worries and reservations to burst. Now it's July, which in any other country would be plenty of time to run an election campaign, but in American elections is basically 11:58 pm ahead of an election that occurs at midnight, and Democrats are losing their shit and increasingly calling for the president to stand down from his reelection bid. Citizens have already voted months prior for whom they want the Democratic candidate to be—and they picked the president, because they always pick the incumbent—and all that remains now is the formality of nominating the incumbent in the big party convention that's coming up in just a few weeks. It's too late to replace the president at the top of the ticket except by party fiat at the convention, and there is no consensus on whether or not he actually should be replaced, but the calls for him to step aside are too numerous and urgent to be dismissed. There is real panic among activists and the party establishment.
What do you do?
What do you do? There's no obvious good answer to this. You can't replace a presidential candidate this late in an American election; you just can't. It's electoral suicide. This has been a natural law in American politics since the mid-century, when presidential nominations started becoming more (lowercase "d") democratic. Unless American society has sufficiently transformed for this law to no longer apply, replacing Joe Biden on the top of the ticket will lead to a decisive Democratic loss in November, including in the congressional elections.
But if you keep Joe Biden on the ballot, what are the odds that this panic will blow over? Almost every "disaster" in American politics turns out to be nothing of the sort; most such "disasters" are swallowed whole by the 24-hour news cycle within just a few days. This, however, seems like it might be one of the rare exceptions, and I say that because it isn't coming out of nowhere like most of these "disasters" do. This has been brewing for a while.
Much like cognitive decline itself, all this noise about President Biden's age didn't seem that serious to me until suddenly, virtually out of nowhere, it appeared to become existentially bad. What once seemed like a mixture of isolated cynics on the left, right-wing opportunists and their international allies orchestrating smear campaigns, and misinterpretation of the president's behavior by the uninformed lay public, news media, and political class, now seems to be in the past week a near-universal panic on the left. Even MSNBC, the closest thing we have to a left-wing propaganda network, is making this their top story. And the people defending President Biden seem like the exceptions.
The reason Biden's mental fitness didn't seem that serious to me is because I hadn't seen, and still haven't seen, any clear evidence that he is suffering from dementia. And I have had enough experiencing interacting with dementia sufferers to recognize it fairly well. One of the things I hate about American politics is that the core facts of a story always seem to be regarded as irrelevant by everyone. No one cares if President Biden is actually mentally fit or not—which someone like me would say is a critical detail that would significantly impact what I think our strategy should be going forward. For for almost everyone else, it's all about appearances. The media and the political class are absolutely convinced that Biden is senile, and so is a meaningful percentage of the American public.
Having a competent president obviously matters. Trump's incompetence for the job was a major plank (and validly so) of the case against him. If Biden is actually mentally deteriorating in a serious and significant way beyond the natural and manageable slowing that comes with aging, that's not trivial. That's very serious. And any strategy of "Circle the wagons and pretend that up is down!" is derelict in its responsibility to consider that.
But one might also say, equally validly, that a vote for president is really a vote for a presidential administration, and the Biden Administration has been exemplary: effective both executively and legislatively, cooperative and reliable in international politics, low in scandal, and genuinely aligned toward the interests of Americans who actually need the attention. President Biden forgave my student loans, gave me aid during the pandemic, and passed legislation to improve transit systems and roads that I use, just to name a few things that personally benefitted me directly. President Obama didn't do that. President Clinton didn't do that. And the thing is, it wasn't actually President Biden himself: It was Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and his department are the ones who forgave my student loans, for example, merely at the instruction of President Biden. A vote for a president is a vote for the kind of people that that president would surround himself with. And I have no doubt, none at all, that a second Biden Administration would be nearly if not completely as competent and effective as the first one. And if President Biden should become senile, or otherwise unwell, he would be relieved under the 25th Amendment, or would stand aside voluntarily after a private threat of the same, and would be ably and competently succeeded by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Compared to a hypothetical second Trump Administration, there is no comparison at all. This is one of those night-and-day choices between good and evil that you usually only find in fables. In the real world, choosing who to vote for doesn't get much cleaner or clearer than Biden vs. Trump.
But of course all of this reason operates on the literal level. On the meta level, the expectations game rules everything, aided by the phenomenon of political momentum. If the media frenzy actually is representative of public opinion, or is shaping public opinion in this direction, such that the American public genuinely has lost confidence in Joe Biden, that's it. That's game over. If Biden is on the ballot we'll lose the election and there's no stopping it at all. The fact that this could happen when America stands on the cusp of openly embracing fascism via the Republican Party is horrifying and bewildering and alienating, but America as a whole will always choose right-wing extremism over "weakness." Every Republican presidential nominee since Reagan has tried to argue, in one way or another, that their Democratic opponent is a weakling.
It's quite revealing, and troubling, that the Republican campaign, and even Donald Trump himself, have hung back and said very little in the past week. Trump is even delaying his vice presidential announcement, and will likely do so just long enough to let Biden stew as long as possible in the news cycle before Trump steals back the spotlight for himself just as Biden hypothetically but presumably starts to move on from the worst of this crisis.
Taking the meta into consideration, I think there are two key things to consider:
The first is that we should revisit the idea that replacing a presidential candidate so late in the process is actually political suicide. It was, for many decades. but now? Part of me wonders if the American public isn't sufficiently transformed from its past self that it might actually be a political boon to replace Biden: Doing so would completely quell the unease about his age while leaving the Republicans with limited time to construct a smear campaign against his replacement. Yesterday's "Replacing their guy after the primaries are over is weak!" might just be replaced with "Phew! Thank goodness. I don't want Trump but I was really worried about Biden."
If this were attempted, then win or lose it would be a major experiment in the American project, and would set a new benchmark of political reality in this country for decades to come. If replacing a candidate late in the race is actually viable, that would absolutely change partisan political campaign strategy going forward. And if the Democrats ended up losing as decisively as they would have in the past, we'll know with some confidence that the old law still stands. (This potentially conflates the act of replacing a candidate with the fact of the strengths and weaknesses of the replacement candidate, but even if the data were noisy they would still be illuminating.)
The other thing we need to consider is the same question that has been on my mind all year: I have been saying for a while now that, whichever way America votes in November, we are going to get what we deserve. If Biden stays on the ballot and we reelect him, that's going to mean a continuation of normalcy and democracy, and we'll have earned it by powering through our worries about Joe Biden specifically and still voting for the only legitimate candidate. And if Biden stays on the ballot and loses to Trump, we will no longer as a nation deserve this free land we have built and kept for ourselves. We will deserve the descent into fascism which has long been menacing us and which will inevitably accelerate in the years to come.
America's soul, and future, are on the line this year. And if not enough Americans think America's soul and future are worth saving because they're upset that Joe Biden is old, then damn them. Damn them all to Trump. And for the rest of my life, whether it be long or short, I will hold in contempt all Americans who were eligible to cast a vote for Joe Biden this year but did not. And in all my thinking going forward, they will be damned to second-class citizens, whether they be left or right or center, because they will be idiots and fools of the most glaring quality, short-sighted to the point of self-destruction, and they will not be trustworthy ever again in any matter requiring judgment beyond the scope of a thimble.
Old-timers of mine may know that I am not actually a lowercase "d" democrat. I don't believe in democracy. I have embraced it, especially in recent years, as "the best system we've got," and I think it still is that, whether or not Americans reject their own freedom and interests this November. But the horrifying "Amtrak Joe" (😢) train wreck that's playing out in slow motion in American society right now with regard to this election is a living case study in why and how otherwise-powerful democracies fail. If, in the 21st century, too many Americans are too dumb to see our situation for what it is, then there is probably no saving the idea that people are the best arbiters of their own interests.
As for what I would do: I would have a hard time withdrawing my support for someone who forgave the student loans that I thought I was going to die with. I've had those debts for over twenty years. The interest outpaces my ability to pay. I'd put in thousands of dollars of payments but hadn't moved the needle at all; in fact I was gradually losing ground. I have every confidence in Joe Biden's administration, regardless of his personal health, which I can't be sure of one way or the other.
I would keep Biden on the ballot, and make the argument that his administration has been professional and effective and that Biden himself could be ably succeeded as president by Harris if need be. That's good enough for me, even if I might wish I had greater confidence in Biden specifically.
But if Biden is going to be replaced, it has to happen now. This month, in the first half of this month if at all possible—two or three weeks at the absolute most. It should be Kamala Harris, because even though she was never my preference for president in 2020 and I would be very unlikely to pick her over the alternatives in the next open Democratic primary season, she is the current vice president and is the only one who could replace Biden at the top of the ticket without it feeling like a violation of the public trust by the Democratic Party establishment. Anyone else would be a bait-and-switch, but the vice president's literal job is to replace the president when needed. There could be no direr formulation of that supposition than this.
Regardless, I end where I began: This past week has changed my impression of the presidential race. Before, I thought both sides had a fair chance of winning. Incumbents usually lose some ground in their reelection, but Trump lost some ground by staging January 6, becoming a convicted felon, and by the Supreme Court's overturning of abortion rights. Now, however, I feel like we are seriously behind no matter whether Biden stays or goes. And that's because, at the end of the day, Democrats hate winning. No one is going to embrace my "The Biden Administration is up to the task whether or not Biden himself is" argument. There are no thinkers in this country.
This panel holds a special place in my heart.
I'm not judging anyone for thinking so. The reality is difficult to explain and requires a cursory understanding of complex mathematical concepts - but there's still no plagiarism involved. Find the original thread on twitter here; https://x.com/reachartwork/status/1809333885056217532
This is a reimagining of the legendary "Please Just Let Me Explain Pt 1" - much like Marvel, I can do nothing but regurgitate my own ideas.
You can read that thread, which covers slightly different ground and is much wordier, here; https://x.com/reachartwork/status/1564878372185989120
This longpost will; Give you an approximately ELI13 level understanding of how it works Provide mostly appropriate side reading for people who want to learn Look like a corporate presentation
This longpost won't; Debate the ethics of image scraping Valorize NFTs or Cryptocurrency, which are the devil Suck your dick
The very short, very pithy version of *modern multimodal AI* (that means AI that can turn text into images - multimodal means basically "it can operate on more than one -type- of information") is that we ran an image captioner in reverse.
The process of creating a "model" (the term for the AI's ""brain"", the mathematical representation where the information lives, it's not sentient though!) is necessarily destructive - information about original pictures is not preserved through the training process.
The following is a more in-depth explanation of how exactly the training process works. The entire thing operates off of turning all the images put in it into mush! There's nothing left for it to "memorize". Even if you started with the exact same noise pattern you'd get different results.
Great question! It's constructing something called "latent space", which is an internal representation of every concept you can think of and many you can't, and how they all connect to each other both conceptually and visually.
Actually, only being able to make things it's seen is sign of a really bad AI! The desired end-goal is a model capable of producing "novel information" (novel meaning "new").
Let's talk about monkey butts and cigarettes again.
This is called overfitting, and like I said in the last slide, this is a sign of a bad, poorly trained AI, or one with *too little* data. You especially don't want overfitting in a production model!
To quote myself - "basically there are so so so many versions of the mona lisa/starry night/girl with the pearl earring in the dataset that they didn't deduplicate (intentionally or not) that it goes "too far" in that direction when you try to "drive there" in the latent vector and gets stranded."
Anyway, like I said, this is not a technical overview but a primer for people who are concerned about the AI "cutting and pasting bits of other people's artworks". All the information about how it trains is public knowledge, and it definitely Doesn't Do That.
There are probably some minor inaccuracies and oversimplifications in this thread for the purpose of explaining to people with no background in math, coding, or machine learning. But, generally, I've tried to keep it digestible. I'm now going to eat lunch.
Post Script: This is not a discussion about capitalists using AI to steal your job. You won't find me disagreeing that doing so is evil and to be avoided. I think corporate HQs worldwide should spontaneously be filled with dangerous animals.
Cheers!
another witch-knight
version with leg armor to demonstrate inpainting
It's striking just how much the nature of the piece is changed by adding clothing around the thighs.
I vastly prefer the original: not because it is racy (if anything, in principle I prefer the more-clothed version) but because the entire piece is working together to "say something." The contrast between yellow and black in the face, on the shawl fringe, around the sword, and of course on the thighs, is striking and powerful. It tells a story. The bare thighs are almost too much; they're like beacons; they are the first place you look because they're so dang bright (and they're thighs). Then you see the brightness in the face. And from there the rest of the piece begins to reveal itself.
In the second image, the whole lower left quarter of the art doesn't seem to be saying anything at all. It's just simply present out of the demands of realism. The first image has balance; the second is dark and muddled (at least in the bottom-left); that part of the piece isn't adding anything to the whole.
This is understandable, since the OP mentions that the latter image is an example of inpainting, so the subject matter was already fixed. But if it were me I would have put in vertical stripes or something; there needs to be more yellow in there, or rather there needs to be more form in there.
Anyway! A great piece of art; I really like it. And I especially appreciate the opportunity to learn how changing it after the fact can do more than change the appearance of the character: It can change the fundamental nature of what the piece is.
i agree, for the record, someone asked very politely to cover her legs up with armor so i figured i would use it to demonstrate what inpainting can do. i love when people analyze my pieces
yeah okay ill reblog that
how to get the perfect beach body: go to a beach. cover yourself in sand. allow your body to merge with the beach. become one with the sand. become the sand guardian. guardian of the sand. poseidon will quiver before you
“Is Poseidon quivering yet, Jeeves?”
“Indubitably, sir.”
we need the jeeves and wooster fandom to hijack more posts tbqh
TRANSFEM!SCOUT!!!!!!! I'm still thinking on what to name her, but for now she'll just be Scout. Any suggestions? Ask box is always open!!
a harley i can vibe with
unironically this harley might be the first adaptation of the character ive seen in years that i actually feel really excited about because they fixed two mayor issues i always had with her. they turned her back into a villain instead of an "anti-hero", which i always thought was a boring idea, and they got rid of the joker which gives her a lot more independence to grow on her own as a character without having to adress the fact the was a brainwashed abuse victim
a harley i can vibe with
your sona is adorable! was your old avatar also the same sona or was it a different thing?
that is a bit more complicated to explain.
i like to write on ocassion. one of my writing excercises was a story called "introduction to magic", wich you can read right here:
in it one of the characters is explaining to another character about familiars, an animal companion avatar that you acquire if you do the ritual to become a druid.
in the explination the teacher was making a joke about how the student's familiar would be a mouse probably and the student thought that was very cure and she drew herself as a mouse. and so i made that drawing.
years later as i was going over that story i thought the drawing was very cute and on brand for myself so i used it as an avatar for a while.
i change my avatar periodically, i like trying on new faces all the time
wait, years later? did that story originate earlier then this year?
i first came up with the very rough concepts for these characters somewhere in 2017-2018 and i wrote the entire first arc in 2020-2021. i ruminate on my stories and characters for years and years and years before i ever actually execute them. crack in the world i came up with somewhere in 2012-2013 and i only wrote it in 2017. i have ideas in my pocket that i came up with back in 2011 that i havent executd yet
i have unfortunately had an AI-created song stuck in my head for several days
Someone else said it best in that this is the ideal use case of AI generation, and I agree. No one with the talent to record this song properly should be wasting their time and skills on this.
i'd argue that someone should've actually recorded this one but it's still pretty goddamn catchy
white boy SHOCKS friend group by growing perfect c cup breasts
There be devils at work here
That happens in every American city, it's called an American downtown
Why is everything else squares?
That's a good old fashioned American Grid System
Let's give credit where credit is due: the Romans popularized the grid system during the empire. America didn't invent that nonsense.
I don't actually feel that grids are that bad, with 4 way stop signs and narrow streets they can maintain slow car speeds, are easy to make for expansion of cities when needed and are great for navigation. The winding unconnected roads of suburbs are much worse and create bottlenecks which grids mostly lack
Also grids are so much more walkable and navigable. Curved or rectangular blocks with no intersections make it hard to get anywhere.
i saw a review of glass onion that inadvertently made my opinion of it go lower.
apparently that scene where benoit blanc comes to the realization that the millionaire guy is actually an idiot was supposed to feel like a genuine reveal? like some kind of big revelation that was supposed to recontextualize the film up to that point?
at first i thought that scene was meant to be merely benoit stalling for time to let the other lady get her bearings and gather the evidence but the way they cut back to all those scenes of him using words wrong to sound smart was supposed to make you jump at the realization you didnt catch that clue and now you have to re-examine everything you thought about the movie, plus the way benoit makes a huge deal out of it, it all tells me that we were supposed to be impressed by this.
and im like, seriously? the movie is not particularly subtle about it, the guy is obviously a phony. he is clearly meant to be an idiot, like yeah, of course. not even in a "the clues were all there and i picked up on the subtext", i mean in a "this is the blatant text of the story". why is the movie patting its back as if its revealing something surprising at all?
am i supposed to be like "oh my gosh! if this billionaire is revealed to be a dumbass when i assumed he had earned his billions... who other billionaires might this apply to in real life??????"
such a stupid stupid movie
