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No Art, Only Anarchy

@savvytwinkle

SavvyTwinkle|22 years|She/Her/They/Them|Artist|Loves story-telling|And cats

(May 12, 2023) We are raising money for a crowd funded research project investigating the cause of blueberry hermit crabs in Okinawa, Japan using trash found on the beach as “homes” instead of natural shells. These hermit crabs are endemic to the southern islands of Japan, and they act as coastal environmental engineers. They are endangered on several islands, and we want to try and understand why they are resorting to beach trash for shells. Please consider sharing this post and donating to the project. The fundraising will be active for the next 45 days (until June 26). 

We suspect that areas with high rates of tourism lead to beach combers collecting natural shells leaving nothing for the hermit crabs to use. It’s possible that overfishing of turbo snails which would naturally provide shells for the crabs may also be a factor. We will survey many sites across several islands in Okinawa to try and determine a cause of this behavior. 

We will be working closely with national geographic photographer Shawn Miller (photo credits above) and several researchers in Japan. Additionally, we will complete extensive beach clean ups in the areas we study. Thank you so much for reading! 

🏳️‍⚧️ What happens if your state won't allow you to access gender-affirming care, like HRT?

Some states are stepping up where others are stepping back. Connecticut is the first state to pass a "safe state" law that will protect people who are seeking gender-affirming care or abortion care if it becomes illegal in their home state. Connecticut's law also means criminalizing states can't use out-of-state warrants to arrest parents or guardians for helping their child get care there, and would restrict other states from subpoenaing the medical records of families who sought gender-affirming care outside of their home states.

Some other states are on track to pass laws like this, too. While not everyone has the resources to be able to pack up and move, states passing "sanctuary" laws like this want to make it clear that we are welcome. 🏳️‍⚧️

being a woman is fucking exhausting. everything is created to disgrace our lives. this is horrifying.

The website promises to make “men’s dreams come true.” Users upload a photo of a fully clothed woman of their choice, and in seconds, the site undresses them for free. With that one feature, it has exploded into one of the most popular “deepfake” tools ever created.

Far more advanced than the now-defunct “DeepNude” app that went viral in 2019, this new site has amassed more than 38 million hits since the start of this year, and has become an open secret in misogynist corners of the web. (HuffPost is not naming the site in order to avoid directing further traffic to it.) It went offline briefly Monday after HuffPost reached out to its original web host provider, IP Volume Inc., which quickly terminated its hosting services. But the site was back up less than a day later with a new host — as is often the case with abusive websites.

"Hany Farid, a computer scientist at UC-Berkeley who specializes in digital-image forensics and was not involved in the original pix2pix research, said the fake-nude system also highlights how the male homogeneity of AI research has often left women to deal with its darker side.

AI researchers, he said, have long embraced a naive techno-utopian worldview that is hard to justify anymore, by openly publishing unregulated tools without considering how they could be misused in the real world.

“It’s just another way people have found to weaponize technology against women. Once this stuff gets online, that’s it. Every potential boyfriend or girlfriend, your employer, your family, may end up seeing it,” Farid said. “It’s awful, and women are getting the brunt of it.

“Would a lab not dominated by men have been so cavalier and so careless about the risks?” he added. “Would [AI researchers] be so cavalier if that bad [stuff] was happening to them, as opposed to some woman down the street?”"

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This is a Moving Forward PSA for everyone using AO3. I am witnessing the results of a culture clash and communication failure. Not a lack of communication, but a misunderstanding caused by changes in fandom culture.

Before fic tagging was common, fics weren’t tagged. You had a pairing, if applicable, an author’s note about genre or general content, and if they were feeling charitable, a vague content warning. There are even a few genres of fic where even vaguely tagging literally spoils the plot and impact (such as horror, psyche thriller, in which the likely content is implicit to the genre). As a result, there is a basic category tag that permits this, as a courtesy to “old-fashioned” writers.

“No Archive Warnings Apply” means the fic is PG13 at worst, probably fluff, totally safe.

“Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings” is the polar opposite. It’s a glaring Enter at Your Own Risk billboard. It means: a shitload of warnings apply but I ain’t telling because this story requires shock value. It’s very important to read the author’s notes for those fics because they might be using that older format from above.

But without the context of fandom culture that generated AO3, it’s understandably easy to conflate the two categories, given their similar wording.

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“No Archive Warnings Apply” means there’s no

  • graphic depictions of violence
  • major character death
  • underage
  • rape/non-con

“Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” =  HERE BE DRAGONS. (implies that one or more of the above exists, but the author doesn’t want to give anything away by tagging)

Just so we're all on the same page with the writer's strike.

If during the strike, it's announced about AI generated shows. We are not watching them. Not even out of curiosity. Let them fail every AI generated show they try make.

The human voice can not be replaced by AI. Don't let them try.