Cosimo Galluzzi
EXPECTATIONS
trying on a metaphor
sheepfilms
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
gracie abrams
Origami Around
★
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
𓃗
The Stonewall Inn
untitled
Monterey Bay Aquarium
bliss lane
we're not kids anymore.
noise dept.
🪼
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Show & Tell
Game of Thrones Daily
seen from Russia
seen from Malaysia
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seen from United Kingdom
seen from Germany
seen from Philippines
seen from Argentina
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Argentina
seen from Australia
seen from Germany
seen from Türkiye
seen from Philippines
seen from Malaysia
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@ashes2skies
[two tumblr soldiers bleeding out on the internet frontlines]
“heh… remember strawbebby…. And ranibow spramkle… always made me laugh”
“Don’t talk like that man. We’re gonna get out of here i prommy.” [mortar fire sails overhead and land nearby] “christ its like a childrens hospital out there”
[through shallow breaths] “I always loved…… the color of the sky…………”
End scene
LET! HIM! DANCE!
>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.
>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.
>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.
>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.
>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.
>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.
>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.
>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!
>Lemmings problem now solved.
>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.
>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.
>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.
>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.
>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.
>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.
fastest reblog in the west
Yeppers. :)
reblogging for study later AND to spread the info.
Seriously, get and run PiHole if you can. It changes your internet experience so much for the better. I get shocked when I visit a website when I'm someone else's network, by just how many ads the internet is flooded with now. Take back control.
Looking at some of your work, it is stunning but it is very similar in style to AI artwork, do you have any recommendations for how to tell apart photography like yours from AI.
I've been thinking about this. And this may sound controversial at first, but I'm hoping people will hear me out.
We should stop trying so hard to detect AI art.
I think we should all lift that burden from our brains.
I have often talked about "woke goggles." Where conservatives have lost the ability to enjoy anything because they are hypervigilant about detecting anything woke. They've cursed themselves into just hating everything. All they have left is the "God's Not Dead" Cinematic Universe.
And I worry people are getting AI goggles now. They are so concerned about accidentally enjoying robot art and hurting artists that they have overcorrected to the point where they are hurting artists.
One cannot say "AI is all soulless slop that always looks bad" and then accuse a real artist of making something that looks like AI and not hurt them. By doing so, it includes the baggage of all of the "slop" comments along with it. This crusade is having collateral damage to the very artists we are trying to protect.
Yes, we need to be cautious about malicious AI images. Misinformation and deepfakes are going to be a big problem. People using AI imagery for profit is already a mess. But if you are cruising your feed and like a cool sci-fi robot gal or a photo of a waterfall and it turns out to be AI... that's fine.
It was trained by real artists and AI is going to create some cool shit because of that.
Honestly, I think a lot of the worst slop is because the dipshits creating the prompts have no artistic taste. People keep blaming the AI for how bad it looks and often don't consider it is a product of the loser who published it.
There is plenty of non-slop out there that has fooled me. And, like it or not, it is going to get harder and harder to tell what is AI. Until there are better tools or better regulations, I don't think there is much we can do to avoid enjoying AI art every once in a while. If only by accident.
Current "AI detectors" are mostly a scam. Even the best forensic-level AI image detectors struggle to stay above 70–80% accuracy across a wide range of models and image types. And that's in controlled lab conditions.
Free online tools often drop to near coin-flip accuracy (50–60%), especially with newer image generators and post-processing applied.
The best way to avoid AI imagery is to look at an artist's body of work. It's much harder to create consistent, non-obvious fake images in a large sample size. That is usually enough to have confidence in authenticity. Plus, if they have posted similar art before 2022, you can pretty much rule out any shenanigans.
Otis literally died before genAI was available.
But images you see in the wild, just let yourself enjoy them if that is what your brain wants to do. It'll be okay.
I just think we are attacking this backwards. If we want to protect artists, we need to support them.
Calling out random AI art does not support them.
It does not put money in their pockets.
It does not grow their audience.
Over a decade ago I tried to lead a fight to create better systems of attribution on websites like Reddit and Imgur. I even spoke to the Imgur team after an article was written about me.
I asked them to allow sources on their posts and to develop tech that would help people find where an image came from. They said they were "working on it" and it never manifested.
IMAGE SHARING SITES STEAL MORE FROM ARTISTS THAN AI.
But we just kind of accepted it. No one really joined me in my fight. The prevailing defeatist attitude was, "That's just the way it is."
I think now is the time to demand better attribution systems. We need to be vigilant about making sure as many posts as possible have good sourcing. If an image on Reddit goes viral, the top comment should be the source. And if it isn't, you should try to find it and add it.
Just to be clear, "credit to the original artist" is NOT proper attribution.
And perhaps we can lobby these image sharing sites to create better sourcing systems and tools. They could even use fucking AI to find the earliest posted version of an image.
And it would be nice if it didn't require people to go into the comments to find the source. It could just be in the headline. They could even create little badges "made by a human" for verified artists.
Good attribution helps artists grow their audience. It is one of the single most effective things you can do to help them.
I literally just got this message...
There are maybe 10 popular artists who I helped grow their audience early on. Just because I reblogged their work and added links to all of their social media. I even hired my best friend to add sourcing information to every post because I believed so much in good attribution.
Calling out AI art may feel good in the moment. You caught someone trying to trick people and it feels like justice. But, in most cases, the tangible benefits to real artists seem small. It impedes your ability to enjoy art without always being suspicious. And the risk of telling someone you think they make soulless slop doesn't seem worth it.
But putting that time and effort into attribution *would* be worth it. I have proven it time and time again.
I also think people should consider having a monthly art budget. I don't care if it is $5. But if we all commit to seeking out cool artists and being their collective patrons, we could really make a difference and keep real art alive. Just commit to finding a cool new artist every month and financially contributing to them in some way.
On a bigger scale I think advocating for universal basic income, art grants for education and creation, and government regulation of AI would all be helpful long term goals. Though I think our friends in Europe may have to take the lead on regulation at the moment.
So...
Stop worrying about enjoying or calling out AI art.
Demand better attribution from image sharing sites.
Make sure all art has a source listed.
Start an art budget.
Advocate for better regulations.
the fact that FEMALE FRIENDSHIP is what loosened Mel up...Mel's braid came undone at the hands of a friend, she let loose thanks to the invitation of a friend, she was able to be free in the company of a friend--
The fact that FEMALE FRIENDSHIP kept Santos from relapsing. From hurting herself. From going home to an empty apartment. The kindness of and friend vulnerability of a friend throughout a bad day helped give Santos the push to reach out, to give that invitation. To ask for support in the only way she knows how: by offering support to other people. By building a community --
Something that really impresses me with Travis's characters is that he really just...grasps the structure of D&D. Grog notwithstanding (Grog is great but he was created for a one-shot and ended up being his character for 5 years, and I think his limitations as a character either led Travis to figure out what D&D is about, or merely gave him time to analyze it while the other characters were talking strategy and Grog was off eating mayonnaise) his longform characters and many of his miniseries characters have all recently had something significantly shake up their routines and lives. They enter into the game as people who have a good reason to be adventuring - they don't have a place to go back to and that includes their past self - and they have a new problem to discover. Fjord believes himself to be the sole survivor of a shipwreck and has unexplained new powers; Chetney was kicked out of Uthodurn and recently became a werewolf; and Teor's mercenary group is disbanding and his brother is missing.
The key to making a pretty good D&D character is having someone who not only has a reason to leave whatever their life was behind, but also has something they are working towards. However, there are a couple of nuances that bring this from good to great:
understanding the follow-through of what made you leave. It should be something that you are prepared to deal with in the story - eg, if you were kicked out of town, you are going to have to deal with that should you need to go back to your hometown.
if you get what you were working towards, why do you stay? like yeah, found family, but that's not actually that interesting on its own and really runs a risk of making your D&D character feel like an appendage to someone else's character. You need to be prepared to find new purposes. Travis is an incredible generator of plot; he tends to make characters for whom the journey itself is very important anyway (ie, even after Fjord gets a new patron the idea of self-worth and identity is an ongoing process) but he also focuses on other things that would interest this character, rather than being single-minded. (This incidentally is why he gets dinged by the unenlightened for having too many hanging plot threads; it's because he makes sure to have more plot potential than the campaign requires, as it is an improvised work.)
This incidentally is why I tend to be less enamored with higher concept characters, and why I think they often fail: yes, you're ~weird~, but do you have a worldview? Do you have a mission? Are you flexible enough to keep going if that mission changes? A lot of high concept D&D characters ultimately would make for a great character in a book, but not a very good D&D character for this very reason; they need to have a delicate balance of internal motivations and external flexibility and typically they lack the latter, whereas Travis nails it every time.
Taking the "like a vampire but toned down for game balance purposes" implementation of dhampir and doing it with succubi instead would be such an evil thing to put on a character like hey. you've got some weak Seduction Powers whether you're into that or not. do people actually like you or are you using the evil powers on them without knowing it? are your feelings genuine or do you want to feed on the people you think you care about? haha people think you're an evil sex demon and every interaction you have with others is going to have that lingering in the background
Not full shapeshifting but a body that subtly contorts itself according to local beauty standards. Noticing yourself looking up at a friend who's normally the same height as you like okay guess we're heading into "women need to be small and dainty" country. Sigh. It's never a place where the mainstream idea of an ideal woman is tall and muscular.
Having to get really good at bullshitting about makeup and perfume because you have No Fucking Idea, it's succubus bullshit altering your actual skin to make it look like you've absolutely mastered a skill you don't have, your scent is some subtle magic nonsense and actually differs from person to person, you don't know what smells they like, how the fuck are you supposed to know what it it's they're asking questions about? You roll out of bed like this in the morning and if you're too honest about that people get aggravatingly jealous about it.
All your adventurer friends have cool scars with stories behind them except you. Your body isn't allowed to have a history like that.
Fuck Meyer-Briggs whatever typology. This INTFP shit is only for redditors up their own asses to substitute for a personality. Use my new typology instead!
Your ideal environment is:
Hot/Cold
Wet/Dry
Bright/Dark
Loud/Quiet
HWBL - beach boy
HWBQ - tropical fish
HWDL - dingy club bathroom hookup
HWDQ - the swamp woman
HDBL - CoachellaBurningmanSouthbysouthwestACL attendee
HDBQ - Lizard
HDDL - Vegas babeyyyy
HDDQ - Trapped in a slot canyon
CWBL - Rowdy Lobsterman Crew
CWBQ - penguin living
CWDL - port angeles basement show
CWDQ - bruminating amphibian/hypothermic mammal
CDBL - ski resort
CDBQ - Christmas in Nebraska
CDDL - mcmurdo station rave
CDDQ - corpse
I sense a new genre of fanfic that is the AU where Hal goes towards that applause and Bolaire wakes up wearing Hals body and maybe I have to write it but it's GOING TO EXIST AND BE SO ANGSTY
Pick a human trait you can receive
Can see without corrective lenses
Can hear without hearing aid & actually understand conversation even
Can walk for like 4-8 hours without having to spend the next day lying down
Can enter a social situation without feeling like you're being hunted by dogs
Socks cease to feel evil / Shoes don't hurt
The Itching Finally Stops
Can eat all human foods without dietary repercussions
No longer allergic to it
Can sleep, for 8 uninterrupted hours, and feel refreshed, on command
Ability to focus on task, until task is complete, at the time of your choosing
genuinely was just meant for anyone who had dietary restrictions they didn't want, for whatever reason!
Do like actual plays? What about mysteries? Lesbians maybe? Check out the first episode of this new Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actual play show, "Muted Swallow!"
Muted Swallow Episode 1 - Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy Gameplay
When Emily and Madison’s best friend, Sally Jeong, is found dead, the police declare her death to be suicide and swiftly close the case. Emily and Madison think they know better, but with a potential killer at large and the authorities turning a blind eye, they are forced to enlist the aid of a mysterious woman who arrives in the middle of the night.
Will the mysterious “Comtesse” be the key to solving the mystery and bringing them closure, or have Emily and Madison only invited more danger into their home than they could have ever imagined?
This is Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.
my post about helping kids unlearn sexism blew up so I'm coming back to say the way I work with kids all goes back to my fundamental belief that hate is learned, people are good, and we can always get better.
I do not accept doomerism about the fundamental nature of humans. we are social creatures and we want human connection. we can and will form bonds with anyone and anything. kids want to be kind and happy. we all want to be kind and happy. hate is taught. it can be untaught.
kids are very smart and perceptive. they know what kind of behavior makes them feel good and what doesn't. they know who is safe and who isn't. they want to emulate the behavior they like. all the hype about role models isn't made up for college essays. even if you're not actively going out of your way to deprogram kids, being an example of a good person can do so much.
be kind. be gentle. treat children with respect. they will notice.
Julien turns to look at his shadow. it is:
doing normal shadow things idk what you are talking about
flipping him off
kissing another shadow
drinking wine
flighting something
doing a sensual dance like an inflatable tube man at the car dealership
taking a nap since he won't do it
using its hand to mimic Julien talking in a mocking way
frozen like Kronk doing its own theme music
other (tell me in the comments/tags)
its possible to grow in your knowledge in a way that is very destructive to what you thought you knew as a writer.
plant blindness is very useful for writers because it allows them to give their settings placelessness. write stories that "could be set anywhere." I used to imagine placeless places. post-apocalyptic wastelands without trees, towns amidst long roads and cornfields.
Now I know that along the paths or in the cracks in the concrete, the weeds are growing. And a weed is an ecosystem, and an ecosystem is a Somewhere, a network of tethers to a land that is rooted in deep time. Plants are a clarification of where and when we are, and what happened, and what people did to the land, and how long ago that was, and whether they are still doing it. Everywhere is land, everywhere has ecology and geology. The omission of the plants in any setting feels like intrusive clouds of amnesia or jarring black bars censoring part of the reality.
I am conscious of the presence of land in my stories. I am conscious that the land is the ultimate progenitor of the characters, plot, and setting. I am aware that there are plants, which make the setting into a Place with a history and ongoing present.
the way I used to write is irretrievable. places are not just scenery, they are narratives of history, destruction, renewal, energy flow and cultural values. The plants are a driving force with their own agency. I can't not write about the plants!
like every story takes place Somewhere. In fact everywhere is Somewhere. I've changed.
I started walking along the roadside and crossing the fields and vacant lots, exploring what I could reach by walking. That isn't culturally normal. It is unthinkable or illegal to wander freely across the land, to experience it as creeks, ridges, bedrock, and soil instead of the fences and roads that interrupt them, to walk instead of drive, to inhabit the world. Prior to last year, my world was a small enclosure, which was fenced in by images viewed from a car. But now, some of that montage of images viewed from the car has become a Place that can be walked on with feet contacting the ground, and I realize that I know basically nothing about the world. Now, not understanding the land feels like not understanding my own body.
something from a powerpoint night i had with friends that captures both my cat breed knowledge and my current obsession
Thaisha, all this tells me is that you're somewhere at the top of said heirarchy.
This, more than anything that Thaisha has said before, speaks of Thaisha's relative prestige and the privilege that prestige has afforded her
She has never felt the need to yield to anyone, and has never suffered the unjust consequence for raising her head in doing so
When you compare this to how that one orc kid, who got spooked when he went to Palazzo Davinos and terrified of unseen retribution, when you compare that to how the servants quake in service to a Sundered House and get silenced when they express that fear...
Thaisha wasn't raised in an environment where she was taught to fear anyone, rightly so as a child of a family who built the first weapons to kill a god. But it's one thing to be the "Little Guy", bucking the "betters" above you. It's a whole other thing to be the victor, who perceives themselves outside of that heirarchy.
All that tells me is that the victory of Thaisha's predecessors have rendered her untouchable. When her grandfather bucked the heirarchy, he did so with full acknowledgement that his life was forfeit, that his family's life was forfeit. When Thaisha bucks the heirarchy, people defer, people respect her, people yield and applaud and call her holy. She felt safe to pursue her druidic calling because she had no fear her children would be stabbed at home. To walk forward with the knowledge that she has a home that is safe, that is a privilege. And in this world, that's a privilege very few truly enjoy.
So when Thaisha says, "extend grace to your fucked heirarchy" as if she exists outside of the powers and influence that a Sundered House can extend (and they can extend it pretty far, beyond their vassal houses and all their servants), all that tells me is that Thaisha isn't exempt from the heirarchy. She's just at the top.
To quote Brennan, "You're not the little guy anymore, you're the big guy."
