the existence of tumblr tags as the sotto voce of internet communication is one of the most brilliant website features ever. and it’s funny because it’s accidental
the ability to comment and yet add nothing to the body of the post. the implication that whatever you’re saying is secondary to the post itself yet something visible and tangible in your particular reblog of it. like a commentary but not as self important. it’s literally like an introvert’s alternative to commenting on things. you are but you’re not. you won’t annoy op. it’s so lowkey no one even has to read it even if they follow u. perfection
Every January I’m like why do i own 15 pairs of shoes when i wear the same waterproof combat boots every single day…. I gotta hold on and remember it get warm 😭😭
Evaporation ponds are seen at the Intrepid Potash Mines near Carlsbad, New Mexico, USA. These mines produce muriate of potash and sulfate of potash magnesium, two mineral salts used in fertilizer. Salt is dried in these massive solar ponds after being pumped to the surface from underground brines. Water in the ponds is dyed with vibrant colors to reduce the time it takes for potash to crystallize ā darker water absorbs more sunlight, causing it to evaporate more quickly.
i care immensely about insects and bugs, ive been caring for them for a long time but i have a problem. i cant help but see my little guys as beings with rich inner lives that may not reflect their actual needs or realities. i recognize that my tendency to anthropomorphize the bugs i keep is bad, and its something i want to get over. i dont handle or touch my bugs ever unless its absolutely necessary, but i cant help but feel that this habit is bad, or wrong, or makes me a worse keeper
I’d rather you care so much about bugs that you can’t help but think of them as people than care so little that you’d just treat them like objects! as long as the personification is harmless and suitable for the animal, not something like thinking a solitary, cannibalistic animal is lonely by itself so you get it a friend=lunch, I don’t see that much of an issue. you don’t seem like someone who’d make that mistake either since you seem pretty conscious of bugs’ needs versus human needs, which tells me that isn’t exactly “anthropomorphism.”
I care a lot about my bugs too, and while I don’t think I treat them like humans, I definitely try to treat each individual like conscious, unique beings—because they are. I recognize the habits of my creatures and try to work to their personalities. Mercédès is a very reactive, defensive centipede, so I let her hunt on her own terms. Agatha is much less likely to get defensive and doesn’t mind being woken up and offered a meal to her face.
isopods have personalities. bumblebees might like to play. inverts are conscious, complex animals, much more so than most people believe. as long as you aren’t actively harming the animals by trying to meet all of their needs, I don’t think that being a considerate bug keeper makes you a bad owner at all.
in the grim cyberpunk future digidykes and robofags are engaged in a constant arms race to come up with new and nastier slurs faster thtan the meghacorps can put them in commercials for neuroyogurt
You know those aesthetic image posts that float around tumblr? Iām ā¦ 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. Iām 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. Iāve 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 thatās what Iām going to cover.
Now, donāt feel bad if youāve reblogged or liked any of the images Iām about to show you guys. This is just whatās crossed my blog, so itās 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 didnāt have anything on-hand to show my thoughts.
Firstly ā Keep in mind that AI has a difficult time replicating āsimpleā 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, weāre 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 doesnāt understand what itās 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 ā¦ wouldnāt intentionally think to do.
It also over-details, replicating what it knows over and over again because it doesnāt know when itās 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 weāre looking at styles that an AI is better equipped to imitate. So ā¦
Secondly ā AIās 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 ā 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 wouldnāt find in a real room, and mistakes that you wouldnāt 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; weāre counting fingers again.
Check the window panes. Isnāt the angle that they all meet up at a little off? Why are the panes sized so inconsistently? Why doesnāt 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, thatās what Iām talking about.
You can see more strange architecture in the outdoor setting of this image.
A lot of the AIās 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. Itās wild.)
Fourthly ā 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. Itās called artifacting.
Artifacting is defined as āthe introduction of a visible or audible anomaly during the processing or transmission of digital data.ā To put it in laymanās 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 donāt 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.
Thatās 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?
My biggest tip is to also look at decorative patterns. Since AIās donāt know what theyāre actually making, things like a relief pattern on a throne or etchings on a piece of weapon will just be messy noise with no rhyme or reason to it.
Even though portraits often result in less artefacts since thereās less variables for the AI to try and process, the overly crisp, highly rendered style can be easy to pick out after a while.
a lot of ppl in the notes of the previous post are mentioning museums hoarding stolen cultural objects which is important beyond measure but museums shutting down due to lack of funding will not result in repatriation of cultural materials, they would most likely be auctioned off to private ultra-wealthy collectors to recoup some of their debt and we’d never find these objects again let alone be able to repatriate them. i understand the desire to say ‘fuck museums let them die’ for this reason but it won’t have the result you think it will, and it will also mean that all of their ethically sourced and donated materials (which for most museums are the vast majority of their collections) will no longer be cared for by experts but again, sold off to private collectors who can do whatever they want with them or deteriorate in storehouses indefinitely. this would be catastrophic for public history and collective knowledge-sharing across the globe across cultures, and museums in post-colonial and run by/for racialized or otherwise oppressed ethnic groups will fall first because they receive FAR less funding than the large western institutions. just repeating phrases and sentiments you’ve seen online as a form of performative activism without knowing anything about what you’re talking about does more harm than good and doesn’t make you look smart or clever just foolish it’s so deeply annoying and frustrating
i don’t know why all of you seem to think the only museums that exist are the massive western imperial institutions that have historically dealt with stolen artefacts, the majority of museums are Not these large institutions and there are museums across the globe in every country that require funding to preserve That Country’s Own Material History. stop acting like you know everything because you read a twitter thread about it oh my fucking god
Another aspect for people to be aware of is that there are regulations and laws that museums must adhere to concerning cultural property. If you want to ensure that museum collections are being looked over and objects being returned, advocate for more funding and job positions. I work for a pretty large museum, but we struggle to keep up with NAGPRA and Provenance research because we need money. Museums (even places like Met and Getty who are very problematic) have employees with good intentions and WANT to follow regulations. Protests in the halls of Museums won’t do much except annoy and harrass low wage part timers. Join Advocacy Days, volunteer, contact politicians if you really want to make a change.
