You know, I love me a crack theory with minimal proof and entirely silly but fun to consider, and so hereās one to hang my hat on and see how wide a shot in the dark it is:
I think āNurseā Violet is actually the Queen of Eternal Summer.
She supposedly reported about the illness to the Queen, yet said report was never shared with the professor or guards. Sheās run rituals to (seemingly) investigate the illness and make attempts at cures. She does not defer to anyone else in the Academy, save the Queen. She apparently isnāt even employed here?? I need to fact check that last one mind, but.
I dunno. Sheās incredibly suspect, at a time even the Queen is apparently absent from the Academy. Tf!Sausage isnāt the only on keeping an eye on yooooouā¦
really kinda shit news for me that i truly never thought i'd have to give, but i've been thinking about tf!water these past couple days and what to do with his story. the truth is that all this news has been HORRIFIC on my irl health, mentally and physically. i'm really grieving and as much as I would love to do justice to this character, he really wouldn't have any compelling narrative arc without his sister.
i've tried to figure out really ANY way i can bring him to a place of peace through this, and all of them seem really incomplete. obviously a grief story would make the most sense, but the idea of performing grief while actively grieving irl fills me with nothing less than dread.
i was truly incredible friends with these people, and knowing that tf!water started out so entwined with them just makes me so uncomfortable to continue. i want to grieve this in solitude, and not have to roleplay it in front of an audience.
i will miss the gender euphoria, and i will miss being cranky and mean. i know you guys will miss him too, but i think this is the best solution to an unwinnable situation.
SPOILERS FOR TF!WATER'S CANON END
||tf!water canonically carried tf!avid and tf!marm to a far away part of the realm. never to be seen again. he believed the academy was an unsafe place to be for his family after the rot hit, and he wanted no part in it.||
In light of what happened recently with the afforementioned content creators, Water has made this announcement. Please be respectful of his wishes and look out for the new character!
Thank you to the folks who replied to my previous post!
Since Legs has an upcoming meeting with Mr Professor, I am left wondering if Legs will specifically ask how the dragon 1) recognised there were multiple types of mana in Graecie, 2) knew this specifically from the ingredients used for the awakening potion 3) knew what type of mana Graecie has vs what was imbued into the iron dust and 4) knew Claraās name.
There is SO much that dragon isnāt telling or teaching their students, and thereās an almost negligent aspect there that feels deliberate - though is that on his part, or the Queenās? Since Violet informed the Queen of the students getting sick but Mr. Professor had no idea until the students went to them for aid.
(The faculty and royalty at the Academy feel like antagonists slowly peeling back the jovial mask of enlightened friendship to reveal their true colours, nglā¦)
Soooooo do we know what book Sun Guard was referring to when he briefly blocked Legs from entering the castle, asking him if he got it, during the latter end of todayās stream? Have we seen the contents on stream yet..?
My connect was acting up for much of today so I know I missed a few details.
Peak MCYT content was Pixlriffs entering the Hermitcraft server with āThis week on Hermitcraftā¦ me!ā and leaving with āMy name has been Pixlriffs, my writer has been Zloyxp, captions on this video were provided by Lyarrah. Thanks for watching Iāll see you next week.ā
Automattic will sign a contract with OpenAI for Midjourney to learn off of Tumblr and Wordpress
Hello! Automattic, Tumblr's parent company, will sign a contract with OpenAI and Midjourney so Midjourney can learn off of Tumblr's and WordPress' art and other user data. :) (The full text of this article is copy/pasted in the cut below). You can opt out! but I truly cannot imagine a more idiotic or out of touch decision on the part of Tumblr's CEO.
First thing's first: When/if this goes live, opt out of this immediately. Do this even if you're not an artist. The more people opt out, the less valuable this contract is to Midjourney. in an ideal world, literally all of the active users would opt out, but if we can even get to 50% that's pretty delicious.
Second: Contact Tumblr Support. It's vital that you do this politely. Tumblr staff is not responsible for this decision and the point of doing this is to show the userbase's unwillingness to be involved in this, not harangue Tumblr staff. (Seriously, stop haranguing Tumblr staff). Here's a script:
Hi, I'm writing in to express my disappointment in Automattic's pending contract with OpenAI to sell user data. Midjourney is already embroiled in copyright lawsuits, and it is not possible to train it without compromising copyright, including violating the IP of artists on this site. I strongly protest this contract and will opt out if it goes live. Depending on the privacy terms around what user data is sold to OpenAI and why, it is possible I will leave the platform entirely. Thank you for your time.
Third: Download Glaze and start poisoning them prompts, my friends
Fourth: Stare into the middle distance for a second with me because holy fucking shit? How stupid can one decision be?
Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals.Ā
The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation weāve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platformsā parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.
The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasnāt supposed to. It is not clear from Gageās post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent.Ā
Gage wrote:
āthe way the data was queried for the initial data dump to Midjourney/OpenAI means we compiled a list of all tumblrās public post content between 2014 and 2023, but also unfortunately it included, and should not have included:
private posts on public blogs
posts on deleted or suspended blogs
unanswered asks (normally these are not public until theyāre answered)
private answers (these only show up to the receiver and are not public)
posts that are marked āexplicitā / NSFW / āmatureā by our more modern standards (this may not be a big deal, I donāt know)
content from premium partner blogs (special brand blogs like Appleās former music blog, for example, who spent money with us on an ad campaign) that may have creative that doesnāt belong to us, and we donāt have the rights to share with this-parties; this one is kinda unknown to me, what deals are in place historically and what they should prevent us from doing.ā
Gageās post makes clear that engineers are working on compiling a list of post IDs that should not have been included, and that password-protected posts, DMs, and media flagged as CSAM and other community guidelines violations were not included.
Automattic plans to launch a new setting on Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and internal documents. A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled āWhat happens when you opt out?ā states that āIf you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.āĀ
404 Media has asked Automattic how it accidentally compiled data that it shouldnāt share, and whether any of that content was shared with OpenAI, but did not immediately hear back from the company. 404 Media asked Automattic about an imminent deal with Midjourney last week but did not hear back then, either.
Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, āDo we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?ā
Andrew Spittle, Automatticās head of AI replied: āWe will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.ā Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.
News about a deal between Tumblr and Midjourney has been rumored and speculated about on Tumblr for the last week. Someone claiming to be a former Tumblr employee announced in a Tumblr blog post that the platform was working on a deal with Midjourney, and the rumor made it onto Blind, an app for verified employees of companies to anonymously discuss their jobs. 404 Media has seen the Blind posts, in which what seems like an Automattic employee says, āI'm not sure why some of you are getting worked up or worried about this. It's totally legal, and sharing it publicly is perfectly fine since it's right there in the terms & conditions. So, go ahead and spread the word as much as you can with your friends and tech journalists, it's totally fine.ā
Separately, 404 Media viewed a public, now-deleted post by Gage, the product manager, where he said that he was deleting all of his images off of Tumblr, and would be putting them on his personal website. A still-live post says, āi've deleted my photography from tumblr and will be moving it slowly but surely over to cylegage.com, which i'm building into a photography portfolio that i can control end-to-end.ā At one point last week, his personal website had a specific note stating that he did not consent to AI scraping of his images. Gageās original post has been deleted, and his website is now a blank page that just reads āCyle.ā Gage did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media.Ā
Several online platforms have made similar deals with AI companies recently, including Reddit, which entered into an AI content licensing deal with Google and said in its SEC filing last week that itās āin the early stages of monetizing [its] user baseā by training AI on usersā posts. Last year, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI to provide training data.
OpenAI and Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment.Ā
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