Dolls Ahoy!

@dollsahoy

My life with dolls and other things. Thanks to everyone who likes my sewing! She/her, but there're no problems with they/them, either. Your gender is up to you. Black Lives Matter. Stop Asian Hate.

113.2K posts

I don't want to be a popular blog, so if you're here because you clicked on something that I deleted or turned off reblogs, know that I did it for the sake of my notifications

And, if I haven't deleted it or disabled reblogs, please remember that it's not worth your time to argue with strangers on the internet. Blocking me will make us all feel better.

And! If you're new to Tumblr, please do something with your blog as soon as possible to show that you're a real person. Even if you never intend to do anything but look at what other people have posted, you should know that Tumblr has a big problem with bots using blank blogs to boost their SEO by following a lot of people, so a lot of people on Tumblr will automatically block blank blogs.

Blocking is a big part of Tumblr culture, for a lot of reasons.

also

This website: "It says a lot about a person if they write or make art about dark, horrific things. It says what they're like in real life. Hiding in plain sight."

Junji Ito:

#one of the few things social media ever convinced me to buy was junji ito's cat diary

I know I do tend to repeat myself, and I'm actually very aware of doing so

because I assume no-one paid attention to or remembered when I said it before 👍

#in fact i think i've made a post like this before #but if i have i couldn't find it to reblog

wonderful-emoji

can I please get a board with 🪨🐍 as the centerpiece? however you want to explore that V^⩊^V

why are the most powerful people in the world all such whiny fucking babies now

derinthescarletpescatarian

They always were, but now they have twitter. Also the standards of their dignity have fallen enough that reporters are more candid about what they say to them.

Nvidia isn't even an AI company. Nvidia is a "we make the hardware that runs AI" company

which is pretty much the same hardware they were selling to consumers (especially video cards), but they can make more money from selling the hardware to AI companies than to consumers, so that's what they do, and that's why consumer-level hardware is so expensive now

Nvidia's circular investments in AI companies is also causing concerns. As in, they're funding their own customers.

Get ready to hear the phrase "circular dealmaking" a lot more, again.

#oh yeah that's a big problem with ai and ai adjacent companies #company a gives company b a contract worth $$$$$$$$ and then company b gives company a a contract worth $$$$$$$$#and then they each say they earned $$$$$$$$ and that's so much success don't you want to invest in such success too?????#and and and anything so successful is too big to fail so government bailouts are vital!!!#also pictured: another one of jensen's infuriating black leather jackets

why are the most powerful people in the world all such whiny fucking babies now

derinthescarletpescatarian

They always were, but now they have twitter. Also the standards of their dignity have fallen enough that reporters are more candid about what they say to them.

Nvidia isn't even an AI company. Nvidia is a "we make the hardware that runs AI" company

which is pretty much the same hardware they were selling to consumers (especially video cards), but they can make more money from selling the hardware to AI companies than to consumers, so that's what they do, and that's why consumer-level hardware is so expensive now

#jensen huang is also one of those big tech ceos who tries to dress ~cool~ instead of Corporate™#it is rare to see him without one of those black leather jackets #sir you are one of the ten wealthiest people in the world. you are not a rebel.

EN : New product on my shop, The Longest Cat. This is a set of four stamps to create cute mutant cats. FR : Nouveau produit en boutique, "Le Chat le plus long" est un ensemble de quatre tampons pour créer des chats mutants sur mesure.

@pangur-and-grim

Day 6 - Purple Glossy Starling

Remember: I'm not trying to be right!

I'm trying to keep you from being wrong!

One of the big ways people get misled by AI is because they ask it about things they don't know, so they have no idea if the information returned is correct or accurate

However, I, as a Know-It-All...

this is a joke. even when I think I know something, I'll open up half a dozen tabs to double check before posting.

#for example: i looked up know-it-all to check if it was hyphenated or not and also what exactly it means #even though i was right about both

Remember: I'm not trying to be right!

I'm trying to keep you from being wrong!

today i took the worst photo of a loon one can possibly take while remaining identifiably a loon

loon :)

i painted my loon :)

joy-and-whimsy-official

Joy and whimsy detected! This loon :) is joyful and whimsical!

houseof1000pumpkins

Sorry to say this is AI--for one thing, it says Kmairt, which is either an "AI can't spell" mistake, or something done on purpose--since it contains the letters AI next to each other--to see if people notice

The logo is also wrong--according to Logopedia, the Kmart logo from 1969-1990 looked like this (this is what I mostly grew up with)

and, from 1990-2004, it looked like this (from my late teens until it started getting hard to find Kmarts)

But, mostly, I'm old enough to have fairly solid memories of both Kmart and the 1980s/90s, which the OP image appears to be emulating. The Blue Light Special was not their name for weekly sales that would be marked by signs. It was literally a little cart with a blue light on a pole on it, that they'd wheel around the store to the thing that would be on sale, and the sale would only be effective while the light was on. The person tending the cart would use a price gun to put a new price tag on it so you could continue to shop before you paid that special sale price.

Also, back then, Halloween just wasn't this big.

...while the shopping carts were bigger. and just as likely to be plastic

source one source two

As usual, I'm not in any way judging anyone who thought the OP photo was real. I'm simply old enough to know it's not 😅

#i also can't convey that in my experience even the worst kmarts would never have been that messy #because they just wouldn't have stocked that much stuff #if anything the worse kmarts tended to seem empty #in my experience

I feel like I need to share this because idk if Europeans are familiar with the presence of Aldi in the US, but at least especially in my area they’ve been growing a lot recently. Like Aldi bought out some local failing grocery chains where I live (Louisiana) and have opened Aldis in all these somewhat rural communities and small towns, which for the record I’m fine with

But as a result of this they are advertising a lot more in my area and also in many cases, the people in these areas have never been confronted with Aldi or any European grocery store. So the ads that Aldi is pushing out to its new US customer base feature a cowboy shopping at Aldi who is explaining to new Aldi customers how Aldi works. Like this cowboy is explaining you gotta put a quarter in the shopping cart and why there are very little name brands. A cowboy is how they want to reach their American customer base. They gave us a cowboy

Here he is, the Aldi Cowboy

The whole thing was created in the US, by Aldi US's marketing director (Aldi US corporate headquarters is in Batavia, IL) and by an advertising agency based in Chicago

Leo Chicago and ALDI are heading out West for the latest chapter of the retailer’s ongoing “It’s an ALDI Thing” platform.

It was designed to be intentionally different from typical grocery store ad campaigns. The cowboy is meant to be incongruous, based on the average modern American experience.

The fast-growing company has turned away from posts that just highlight its low prices and toward more playful, culturally relevant content,

I was thinking about this again, but in context of Aldi Belgium's Willie Witloof/Gaston le Chicon

because I was chopping an extremely pale head of romaine and thought, oh, that looks like Willie Witloof

So, even though the advertising branches of Aldi US and the two Aldi Europes are separate, the idea of "something extremely cliché about your country" remains

#the uk got a carrot #long post #Youtube

Because I'm still seeing it on my dash from people who don't like AI: the "old people with pun costumes" video is AI

you-are-a-fishmonger

I'm curious how you know this. How can I tell in the future?

It's, unfortunately, a lot to do with my particular experiences, like knowing how masking tape does not stick to fabric well and would not have been able to hold those wine bottles, and that made me check the notes and see people saying the video was originally posted by an account that does nothing but post AI videos, and that the care facility in the caption does not seem to exist

A lot of AI videos get past people because there are things outside of their regular experiences, so, if they even notice them at all, they figure it's just something they don't know enough about to question.

The "possum eating Halloween candy gets startled and jumps really high" video fits this as well, because most people have not actually had the experience of startling an opossum in their life. I have, and I know that a startled possum holds as still as possible and hopes the scary thing doesn't see it, and, if it does, the possum might start hissing, or it might play dead.

The tells in uncredited AI videos and images are now having less to do with badly-rendered images and more to do with showing things that just don't make sense if you understand how the things shown should work.

This is something, in terms of disinformation, that has been around a lot longer than generative images and videos. I don't know how many times I've seen someone confidently present a "fact," to have so many people respond with things like "Wow, I never knew that before, I'm going to have to remember that!" when the reason they hadn't known it before is because it wasn't something to know, because it was made up. Learning new thing is good, so people will often accept new information without question, especially when a lot of skeptical people just come across as tedious and no fun, and who wants to be so closed-minded?

And, honestly, I'm also using Tumblr on a desktop computer with a large monitor, and I imagine a lot of the visual tells that do remain in generated images are more obvious at this size than on a phone screen

Anyway. Stay curious, and never hesitate to learn about random things. That will help with identifying a lot more misinformation than just generated videos.

And I do want to emphasize that I suspect a lot of people don't question things because they are open to learning new information! They don't want to be close-minded! Plus, approaching every bit of novelty with suspicion is extremely tedious.

It's also entirely likely that people reposting AI have no idea they're doing that--they saw something interesting somewhere else, and that was likely also reposted without a source, and, besides, it's ~just~ something silly/funny/pretty, so it doesn't occur to them that it even has a source.

And then, on top of that, using an app on a phone makes it a lot harder to look stuff up than when using a desktop browser.

wizardarchetypes

if you want to avoid AI, stop engaging with uncredited art!

so I've been running my blog @creditednature for years and this isn't a self promotion, stay with me here

the reason I initially started it is because as an artist I was simply sick and tired of seeing beautiful photos, paintings, makeup looks, etc. divorced of their context and the artists robbed of recognition and potential opportunities when their works went viral without credit.

now crediting works is crucial in the battle against generative AI. I have seen so many people reblog that possum eating Halloween candy video this week because the AI giveaways were subtle. Now that there's a post going around that it's AI, people are remarking in fear that soon even the most subtle AI tells will be perfected until AI is virtually indistinguishable from reality. I agree that very soon it will be nigh impossible to always recognize AI.

Wildlife is an especially popular AI subject, because videos of animals doing unusual, funny, cute, or even scary things are universally popular—receiving major engagement across platforms and diverse audiences.

It's why nature & wildlife photography is so often reposted uncredited already—even before AI. It's why I started a blog dedicated to credited nature works in the first place.

If you start refusing to engage with photography, videos, and art in general that's been reposted without credit to the original creators, you'll be far more successful avoiding gen AI than you will be relying on examining videos by the second for out of place blades of grass.

You should already refuse to engage with uncredited works, but this is one more reason to stop now and set a strict boundary.

No matter how beautiful the painting, no matter how funny the video, no matter how incredible the shot—if there's no credit, don't reblog! Don't share or like or comment. Reserve your engagement. Use reverse image search to find the credit and add it.

For all the harm to artists I see people decrying in the context of gen AI, so many people are still willing to share photography (especially genres like nature and fashion and makeup) with no credit whatsoever. That harms artists too. Take a stand.

wizardarchetypes

This is a good question! Yes, if I see art on Tumblr that appears to be uncredited, I do check OP's blog to see whether they're the artist. I'm not Sherlock Holmes about it. I generally open their blog and see if they mention being an artist in their bio or pinned post. If not, I scroll a few posts and see if they've posted any other work. I usually spend 60 seconds tops "vetting" a blog before reblogging art that appears uncredited.

It's not perfect, and I've been fooled before, but it is better than nothing and I think 60 seconds is a reasonable ask of everyone's participation considering what artists stand to lose if we don't try at all.

Summarizing: Even if generated image tech didn't exist, artists should be credited

and "artist" isn't just someone who drew or painted something. photographers are artists. clothing makers are artists. jewelry makers. make up artists. interior decorators. sculptors. bakers. anyone who makes anything.

#forgot about that when i reblogged a few minutes ago #eyestrain

I also almost never reblog anything without checking the notes first, just to see if I'm missing any context, or if there's been additional commentary or jokes that make the post better (or worse), from my point of view

and I'll often check notes on posts I have no intention of reblogging, for the same reasons

just because I'm always curious

and I don't know how often I'll check the notes and see the replies are entirely "That's AI" while the reblogs are entirely expressing absolute delight

and I know that a lot of this is because people hate AI so much that they don't want it on their blog in any form, not even to let other people know it's AI, or, because it's Tumblr, to avoid getting piled on by people who want to vehemently deny that it's AI

theofficialastronomy101

This is one of the strongest solar storms in ages. View from ISS is incredible.

Here's how we know that at least the first and last images are fake, or at least not as described: the ISS is not in high enough orbit to be able to see all of the US at once, let alone the entirety of North America as shown

Space Station Science Officer Ed Lu describes what it is like to look at the Earth over the course of an orbit. His descriptions are accompa

To get larger amounts of the planet into one image, it has to be made of composites, which are often additionally filtered to emphasize or remove certain aspects

This image of North and South America at night is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2

Also, while there were auroras visible as far south as Mexico and Florida the day the original post was made, reverse image searches do not lead to official NASA sites (and a quick look did not find any definitive sources.) Here's a post with an official NASA time lapse video taken from the ISS of aurora activity at about that time, though! (the 2026 in the preview caption is a typo)

This timelapse series of photos were taken from the ISS on November 12, 2026

#no offense to op (who may be tired of people doing this too) this information is for my mutual who reblogged it #i know that questioning everything is tedious and risks becoming narrow minded #and that nature can be very impressive so impressive pictures *can* be natural #and also you probably don't want to spend as much time checking as i just did XD

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