After having gone thru acct recovery a couple times early in the days of OneDrive, I got the vibe that saving ANYTHING to a propriatary service was a huge mistake, ESP anything MS. Nice to see that vibe continues to check out.
MS does not care how many years of your life you have backed up to their cloud- they can take it away/delete it for any reason at any time. Keep your stuff local on an external drive.
My name is Tominaga Haruka. I was chosen by a magical talking animal, and for the last 29 years I've been Earth's one and only... Wonder-Sparkle Princess.
she's been fighting the same villains for three decades and they are also tired of it. Most of them aren't giving it their all.
Half of them are in a groupchat they've added her to where they schedule their evil plans to make sure they don't interfere with each other, or more importantly, with *her*
Xalkrax the space demon from outer space decided to attack the city when she was taking her vacation time once, and now he's dead, because even the power of friendship and redemption can't save you if you interrupt her rare vacations
I’m seeing a lot of people saying this post changed their brain chemistry, and as a neuroscientist I wanted to say yes!!! Yes it does!
Wanting something requires dopamine signaling, but liking something doesn’t.
If you have a mental illness/disorder that affects dopamine, you might feel that you don’t want to do the things that you like. You do still like them. You will appreciate having done them.
Let your likes guide you.
(If you want to read more, here’s one experimental paper about it. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5171207/ This theory called the incentive-sensitization theory was originally created to explain behaviors in addiction but can be applied elsewhere as well)
Rewards are both ‘liked’ and ‘wanted’, and those two words seem almost interchangeable. However, the brain circuitry that mediates the psych
I do want to caution that there is a limit to this.
If one’s anhedonia (usually a symptom of depression) is bad enough, you may try this trick and instead of getting to experience that liking, you may feel nothing. Or even something negative.
This is a very bad sign, and means you need to seek care immediately.
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
Reblogging for the tags: #unfortunately no viable alternative to canva for cv/template making#i am NOT installing 150 different fonts to test them out and office is ass when you want to make something at least a little pretty
You only need 1 font for your CV.
OMG, it's soo hard to typeset a resume, which is why I want to use GenAI. Oh please.
You only need 1 font for the entire thing. That should be a serif font and of the serif fonts there are basically 3 that are acceptable: Calbri, Times New Roman, and Garamond.
I will tell you from actually taking typography, that Garamond is a dream to typeset. It makes me exceptionally happy.
And you might be going but 500 fonts~~ why? I mean I know YOUR font collection.
First of all: Know your fonts. If it's going to be printed, then use a serif font.
For digital fonts use sans serif, and the rest... FUCK NO. PLEASE. You're daft if you're effing rolling up with 100% Black letter.
As soon as you have more than 3 colors, it's going to be hard to read. More than 3 fonts and I'll likely want to stab you, I mean 2 is pushing it.
Typography isn't that hard to learn because it's such a minimalist art form (no one appreciates TT)
And you might be thinking BUT THAT'S BORING
And I'm going to tell you, if machines are reading your CV, rather than a human being WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SPENDING ALL YOUR TIME ON FONTS, NOT ON THE CONTENTS OF YOUR CV?
The machine is programmed for certain kinds of fonts because the programmers are lazy, so why make it more difficult than necessary on yourself.
And yeah, making 2 columns in Libre Office isn't that difficult. And yeah, LibreOffice has downloadable templates for it, not that you bothered to look. And no, as a graphic designer I'm going to stab you as soon as you have anything other than Black and white. Get over yourself.
What's the most important thing on a CV? Readbility of your branding, not what it looks like.
I say this over and over again on this blog. Writers shouldn't be preoccupied with how the words look on the page with bolds and italics, etc. Concentrate on the quality of the words.
No human is reading that thing most of the time these days, why do you care to make it 20 different colors and fonts anyway?
FUCK CANVA. You don't need it. I've gotten jobs with 100% Times New Roman. Your employer has no fucking clue about fonts anyway, even if it reaches them.
BTW, if you know it's going to stay digital, then the fonts to choose from are: Verdana, Arial and Helvetica, in that order. Helvetica is risky, BTW, because it's almost everywhere. I dislike Arial because it's so round on most people set it up as first on the internet.
Arial and Times New Roman are rated best for dyslexic users. (Garamond I haven't seen testing for, but it's handling of negative space makes it easier to read).
You got 6 to choose from. That's it. Do not deviate, do not pass go. It's not that hard. If Canva gave you the impression you needed all those fonts and colors, that's a problem. They are misguiding you. A typographer would reach for 1 of 6 for a CV.
BTW, as I said before, this isn't the space to make excuses about how you can't or won't learn new programs, or make excuses about how you can't quit GenAI. You can by doing things like learning Graphic design, etc. Besides, I think writers and artists should learn at least a little bit of both because then a writer will know when their cover doesn't look like shit, and an artist will know how to handle contracts better.
Reblogging for tags: #using the basic editing tools isn't really like generating a whole doc but i see your point#also i'm not pro gen ai so you can fuck right off with that condescending tone#you fixated on the cv part when i was talking about fandom things when i mentioned templates and fonts but ok#otherwise good point#moving a square png on a text document without layers to make a pretty cv (which is for my own sake) in office is still ass though.#and the lack of good visual help for perfect spacing between elements is devastating when you post something and realise it's crooked#which are my main reasons for using (again the basic editing tools in) canva#but yeah good post#if you're talking to people who are genuinely trying to not use anything that has gen ai#otherwise i don't think being insulting like you were here would go well with someone who doesn't give a shit#that's what i get for trying to be funny on the lowkey on the funny website i guess?
Stolen data is stolen data. I don't know how you sleep at night, but I feel better if I'm not piggybacking off of people who have been pillaged. I mean imperialism and all of that.
ProWritingAid uses GenAI. Also Grammarly. Grammarly announced they were happy to be stealing user's data and I was like !@#$ you. So yes, it can be, but doesn't have to. (Most use Noam Chomsky)
Literally graphic designer here. So when I say one of six fonts, I mean one of six fonts. I've done MULTIPLE (and perhaps the only??) posts on typography and how it works. I even did a short version for Indie Authors, since the longer post on how to do covers seemed to lose people. (More than half of this blog is resources).
You shouldn't be using images in a CV... maybe simple borders, but seriously, there are free templates out there made by the user base. The only case of using a PNG into a CV is in Asia, usually when you need to add a photo, but it's illegal in Britain, US, Australia, NZ and Canada. The only place I've encountered where photos are required as part of the CV is in East Asia. Obviously race reasons drive the other countries. Pretty CVs don't get you jobs.
Libre Office's forums are great to help get past the technical difficulties. People post templates, etc. (I made a template for Scrivener and gave people the novel and Short story template formats for manuscripts.)
There are people who have reblogged in tags to boast about genAI as bad actors. OMG, I can't switch~ OMG, why can't you just excuse GenAI. But LibreOffice is too hard though I didn't look at the forums and I keep crying about how Microsoft Word keeps crashing and losing my docs.
I understand there might be personal reasons, but laziness and not being willing to learn is not a good reason. The awesome thing about the writing and art communities is that we're primed to help others. Most creative communities are like this—the we're in it together. I'm LOUSY at making music. lol. But even the music community is super friendly.
I have a BA in Anthropology, with a minor in Comp Lit and (most of) an AA in art (Two classes to go. I was thrown back after the DEI crash out.). I've worked for a manga company (editing) and professionally done websites (front end), and professionally done graphic design. Generally a nerd who does programming badly. And super dabbles in other things. (Like reading through the Monkeypox study and linking then President Biden to my analysis because I was quite disturbed at blaming only gay men, when the study didn't say that.)
Basics:
KIS- Keep it simple. (Simple doesn't mean minimalism)
2. Know your audience.
If more employers could do the second they might have done better.
I worked for a t-shirt company and I told the head of the company the second and they were shocked when someone got first results. I told him why and he wouldn't shift strategies.
3. Concentrate on your negative space and arranging it well.
Even my favorite collages and some of the most busy artworks manage the negative space super well.
Escher... excellent management of negative space.
4. Other websites will do color theory for you. (Color picker websites with Analogous, etc) I also posted basic color theory...
5. And meh, if you need something specific beyond that, usually there is a tutorial somewhere. How to draw buildings. How to draw off of a pose so it doesn't look traced. How to do structure, gesture, and contour drawing and why you would do that. How to do reflections quickly. Which color pencils are the most color fast and which color.
You do not need templates. You only need to know some basic principles of design.
Links to my free sewing patterns!
- big manta ray
- smaller manta ray
- monster friend (those monsters with horns I’ve been making lately, but without horns)
- pie slice
- Fred, the Fish of Minimal Effort
- tiny cat (aka Jiji)
- mini mothman
- whale shark/donut whale shark
- juggling frog/toad (aka my smallest, simplest frog pattern of the three I’ve made)
- large frog
- tiny hedgehog
- minecraft bee
- minecraft zombie
- blorbo
- Strawberry Hearts quilt pattern
- starfish
- little octopus
- canvas tote (wider than it is tall)
- canvas tote (taller than it is wide, more of a grocery bag)
- basic bat and ghost
- mini mushroom friends
- whale
- hammerhead shark
Tutorials:
- flannel baby blanket tutorial
- onigiri bag tutorial
- tomato pattern design walkthrough (how I design the pattern, not a link to the pattern itself)
Happy holidays! Have a bunch of free sewing patterns!
I update the original post any time I share a new pattern, so if you’re seeing thing and it’s been a while since this addition, you might want to click through to the original post to see if I added anything
I usually try to be tolerant of anachronisms in books, particularly ye olde medieval generic swords and sorcery type books, but I think I broke the sound barrier with how quickly I just shot out of my immersion in this book when ye olde ancient archivist in the ye olde fantasy-england castle's library tells the protag where to find a certain book by giving him its dewey decimal number.
Today in an arthurian retelling set in pre-saxon britain I encountered a character who said he was going to quit drinking "cold turkey," which I think puts him roughly a thousand years prior to European awareness of the existence of turkeys, and the dissonance had barely registered in my mind before I remembered the medieval lending library run on the dewey decimal system and decided a chronologically misplaced poultry idiom wasn't worth noticing in comparison.
This website is still here and some of the asks are heartbreaking. Like “Jamie wants a new pair of jeans because he’s never had new clothes before”. Or “Kayla wants a bag with her name on it for when she moves foster homes again.”
A lot of these kids ask for brand name clothing and it sounds pretentious but having one nice new fashionable piece of clothing means a lot when all your previous clothes have come out of black trash bags from charities.
Btw, you can filter wishes based on gender, age, price, etc to help you find the perfect wish for you. This charity is LGBTQ-affirming (unlike a lot of religion-based charities that are unfortunately homophobic), so you can even look for nonbinary kids to donate to.
Also, I would really encourage people to be open to granting wishes made by older foster kids (14+) or young adults who aged out of the system and still lack family support. They’re so often forgotten.
If you don’t have a lot of money but still want to help give a kid a nice Christmas, there are lots of wishes that are $24 for stocking stuffers as well, or $15 for a sqishmallow!
I just want to add that right now, there are so many pending wishes for food. Kids are asking for food from the universe (and yeah, “kids” includes young adults just entering the work force–eighteen and hungry is just as morally wrong as eight and hungry).
I was all ready to “um, actually” this, but, um, actually there’s about 3-4 grams of iron in a person, which x400 is 1.2-1.6kg, which is a smallish but not unreasonable sword. So. Math checks out.
How would you extract the iron, though? The more practical solution would be to kill a mere hundred men, then mix 1 part blood with 3 parts standard molten iron, imo. Cheaper and faster, while still retaining the edge that only evil magic can give you.
1.2 to 1.6 kilograms is a perfectly reasonable large sword. Your average longsword was 1.1–1.8 kg and I don’t even remember if that’s including the weight of the hilt, guard, and pommel or just the blade. Your more classic “knight sword” was a mere 1.1 kilograms on average; the blood of 400 men is more than enough.
This is using the comparatively crappy metallurgy of medieval Europe and their meh iron swords. Move east to, say, contemporary Iran and make a scimitar using high carbon steel (~2%) for a .75 kilogram blade and you only need the blood of about 225 men.
So putting my thoughts in on this… because how could I not.
So you’ve exsanguinated your 400 guys to get the iron for your sword. Cool. But now you have 400 bodies lying around.
Why not put those to good use and cremate them. Use the carbon from those 400 bodies (you won’t need all of them) and now you can make a nice mid-high carbon steel sword.
Now you have a sword forged with the blood of your enemies AND strengthened with their bones.
The setting that prevents your work being used to train AI models is turned off by default! I had no idea about this until now! Artists, go to your settings, click “visibility”, and turn on this setting! Protect your work!
