What I'm watching and where I'm at (for personal reference). Supernatural S1 E19 Onepiece 627 Oh dear it seems that I'll be watching onepiece AGAIN Ep 459 -339 13:00 -345 22:45 teen wolf s2e4
I don't think people realize how absolutely wild Linux is.
Here we have an Operating system that now has 100 different varieties, all of them with their own little features and markets that are also so customizable that you can literally choose what desktop environment you want. Alongside that it is the OS of choice for Supercomputers, most Web servers, and even tiny little toy computers that hackers and gadget makers use. It is the Operating System running on most of the world's smartphones. That's right. Android is a version of Linux.
It can run on literally anything up to and including a potato, and as of now desktop Linux Distros like Ubuntu and Mint are so easily to use and user friendly that technological novices can use them. This Operating system has had App stores since the 90s.
Oh, and what's more, this operating system was fuckin' built by volunteers and users alongside businesses and universities because they needed an all purpose operating system so they built one themselves and released it for free. If you know how to, you can add to this.
Oh, and it's founder wasn't some corporate hotshot. It's an introverted Swedish-speaking Finn who, while he was a student, started making his own Operating system after playing around with someone else's OS. He was going to call it Freax but the guy he got server space from named the folder of his project "Linux" (Linus Unix) and the name stuck. He operates this project from his Home office which is painted in a colour used in asylums. Man's so fucking introverted he developed the world's biggest code repo, Git, so he didn't have to deal with drama and email.
Steam adopted it meaning a LOT of games now natively run in Linux and what cannot be run natively can be adapted to run. It's now the OS used on their consoles (Steam Deck) and to this, a lot of people have found games run better on Linux than on Windows. More computers run Steam on Linux than MacOS.
On top of that the Arctic World Archive (basically the Svalbard Seed bank, but for Data) have this OS saved in their databanks so if the world ends the survivors are going to be using it.
On top of this? It's Free! No "Freemium" bullshit, no "pay to unlock" shit, no licenses, no tracking or data harvesting. If you have an old laptop that still works and a 16GB USB drive, you can go get it and install it and have a functioning computer because it uses less fucking resources than Windows. Got a shit PC? Linux Mint XFCE or Xubuntu is lightweight af. This shit is stopping eWaste.
What's more, it doesn't even scrimp on style. KDE, XFCE, Gnome, Cinnamon, all look pretty and are functional and there's even a load of people who try make their installs look pretty AF as a hobby called "ricing" with a subreddit (/r/unixporn) dedicated to it.
Crawling out of my hole to remind people that with this current update to Firefox (version 144) they've gone and dumped in their lot with a buncha lil AI tools, namely Perplexity as a new search engine.
So if the sound of that leaves your mouth tasting of tar, here's what you want to do:
In the url bar, type in about:config
It'll give you a big scary warning page that you might poke holes in your browser. Good. You want to do that. Click continue.
One by one, you're going to need to put each of these into the search bar in the page, not up top:
Each of these are gonna have a lil toggle icon on the right hand side that looks like a funky double-ended arrow. Click that and the value next to it should change to false. It all auto saves as you go. Some of these might already be set to false by default and that's peachy.
The next best thing you can do for yourself is to set your default search engine to udm14 or Qwant, but for now, we're just tidying the garden a lil bit.
Edit: This wildly broke containment for a post that was supposed to be me basically ranting and grumbling like an old man on my porch to my homies. If I’ve inspired you to follow through with this, peachy. That was mildly intended. Better yet, I hope I’ve spurred a buncha you on to do your own bit of digging and research.
If you were one of today’s lucky ten thousand to learn something new, I hope you keep doing it. I won’t be here to hold your hand through it, as I simply don’t have the time nor spoons for it, so I implore you to go down your own rabbit hole and chase knowledge wild wild abandon.
as someone with experience in the discord console, unfortunately they made it a little trickier than just ctrl + shift + i about four years ago, i believe.
specifically what you're going to want to do is find settings.json in %appdata%/discord or the mac equivalent which is found with finder > go > go to folder. there is a setting there titled "DANGEROUS_ENABLE_DEVTOOLS_ONLY_ENABLE_IF_YOU_KNOW_WHAT_YOURE_DOING": and if it is not, copy and paste "DANGEROUS_ENABLE_DEVTOOLS_ONLY_ENABLE_IF_YOU_KNOW_WHAT_YOURE_DOING": true into the .json and then, only then you can do crtl + shift + i or command + option + i on mac.
there's a scary message in the console about how if someone told you to paste something in, you are 100% getting hacked. and like. that might be true sometimes? but this is pretty simple code and you can just read it yourself and have some clue of what it's doing and whether or not it's likely to be dangerous, and... i mean, i'm not a super expert in javascript, but. this sure looks like it does exactly what it says it does, and there's not a lot of obfuscation here other than being javascript.
oopsie i tripped and spilled my link to archive dot org's downloadable copy of Microsoft office suite for 2007, which features no AI tools and is a powerful word processor that still holds up just fine on windows 10!
shot deck is a massive database of film shots searchable by grading, tod, shot type, characters and content! Studying from films really helps improve your values and composition as the shots are usually very carefully constructed! It helps you find ways to maintain realism while still packing mood and narrative into your work!
master paintings! I recommend the orientalists like Jean Leon Gerome in particular their environments had great compositions and throw around a ton of colour and light! I like the modern artists Craig Mullins and Richard Schmid also, as there is so much impressionist lost detail and simplicity yet the environments feel so real.
The 1960s era disney background artists like eyvind earle are a masterclass in stylisation and simplification and make a wonderful choice for studies. (That being said modern disney visdev artists like Nathan Fowkes are just as fantastic to study for the same reason)
architectural photography can be a great resource too- I love to look for work by urbEX people!
thumbnailing and comp studies- trying to break down a photo into as few values as possible and still have it be readable- this really helps train your brain in the relationship between light exposure and local value.
Im begging you if doing it in colour is too hard to start with just do it in black and white!!!!! Greyscale painting is an essential step in learning to paint and understand lighting scenarios!! Colour is hard!!!
there is no substitute for going outside and doing some plein air painting- really looking first hand at how the light effects different materials and objects, how it bounces around, what edges your eye naturally loses in certain lighting scenarios. Just go outside and draw and try to notice stuff.
for characters:
figure studies!!!! from life if you can but if you cant there are a ton of great resources out there- personally I love croquis cafe and posespace, but if you can afford it (and are interested in intense anatomy study) then scott eaton has a site called bodies in motion which is fantaaaastic. I think by now everyone knows nyx and senshistock, I also use a lot of grafit studio photorefs to study more complicated poses!!
Master studies (again). I particularly like to study the work of John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla, Edwin Austin Abbey, Alphonse Mucha (his le pater compositions are out of this world), any of the New Rochelle artists (e.g rockwell, tom lovell, those 1950s illustrators REALLY knew their shit).
I literally have a resin skull on my desk that I've used to do quick studies with different lighting, just 10 mins a day back when I was doing it and it levelled up my skill a lot!.
Material studies are essential to leveling up your character painting!!! Look at fur, look at metal, look at the way something embroidered reflects light vs tooled leather!!
gesture studies! Look at a dynamic pose and see how you can exaggerate the motion in away that captures the sense of movement. This is tricky to start with but its really worthwhile especially when you combine it with other exercises. Mixamo is a cool library to look into for this kind of thing as you can pause and rotate the models in the middle of their actions!
breakdown the work of artists you admire- it's ok to study other living artists (and try to reverse engineer how they are making their decisions) it's a very effective learning tool! Really figure out what it is about that persons workflow you like, and how you might incorporate that element into your own. Obviously, dont post studies of living artists work!
The most important thing is that when you do a study you go into it knowing what you want to learn. Dont try to do everything at once! It's ok to focus on the muscle structure and not give a damn about the gesture. It's ok to focus on the texture of the fur and completely ignore the characters face.
The best way to keep doing studies is to find refs you like- things you are interested in and that capture your imagination! Follow your curiosity and remember that just a tiny little bit a day makes a huge difference.
Gunna take a sec to recommend the tutorials of Devin Korwin. He talks about how to study and how to breakdown art fundamentals in a way that is at once both very advanced but also digestible. I highly recommend his pdfs!
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.
big fan of upcycling in general but one thing I don’t think a lot of the leather repurposing ppl starting up these days realize is that modern day leather goods sold in stores (belts, dog collars, wallets, what have you) are made of a bunch of little remnant scraps of leather compressed under high pressure with a whole bunch of glue (think particle board). that’s why a leather belt from target falls apart so fast despite being allegedly “real leather.” so it’s not gonna last regardless and it’s chemically treated garbage all the same
Working with fashion industry data has made me insane, so... Rough breakdown of the often deliberately misleading/marketing-guff terms:
Leather - Ostensibly something containing tanned animal hide but in practice also applies to faux and pleathers.
Bonded Leather - What OP is talking about specifically. Like with pleathers and plant based leathers, this is primarily made of polymer glue, with scrap leather fibers used as 'structural filler' in the same way gravel is used to make concrete or grasses are used to make mud bricks. The fill material basically just exists to give the plastic something to stick to for strength. This is what plant based leathers are actually claiming to be "more environmentally friendly/ethical" than and are usually correct! Otherwise, frequently by omission, they're doing a spot of greenwashing.
Plant Leather - Replace the animal bits with plant bits. May or may not still undergo chemical treatments to "look like" high-grade leather (this is worse, see below), but it's still ultimately bonded.
Pleather - Deliberately sounds a bit like it's plant leather doesn't it? This is often just plastics held together with plastics.
Real Leather - Technically made "from" actual tanned animal hide, but still encompasses bonded.
Genuine leather - Exact meaning depends on how old the leather is, long ago it was a mark of quality but since it has no set meaning was adopted by the cheapest possible cuts of leather and become synonymous with that. Now also technically includes bonded sorry.
100% Leather - Not bonded! May still be low-grade 'genuine leather'. Any % less than 100% means its bonded.
[X]% recycled leather - not 100%? Greenwashing bonded, the polymer glue is still new. Probably still better than "new" bonded? The state of recycling is another can of worms.
Bycast Leather - Basically bonded. Plastic.
Reclaimed Leather - Basically bonded. Plastic.
Reconstituted Leather - Literally just bonded. Plastic.
Patent leather - usually low-grade leather covered in polymers with artificial dying or high-intensity chemical+heat treatments to give it the "skin" appearance of high-grade leather - this process is usually called Corrected Grain. Plastic. So much.
Full-grain leather - actual high grade cuts of leather. No artifical coatings or dyes. Frequently more expensive than god, whether used or new. Very resource intensive. You can only get so much of this out of each entire adult cow and even then not even every adult cow, that's years of resources and why the other 80% of the animal's skin is used in all the other categories to make it worthwhile (as well as the rest of the body going towards meat etc. typically).
Top-grain leather - similar to full-grain, actually leather, but slightly less fancy often coated in polymer for a cleaner look and with Corrected Grain treatments... Less plastic than bonded, still a lot of plastic.
Basically all of these are chasing the percieved prestige of full-grain leather with almost never actually achieving the characteristics of full-grain leather (durability, breathability etc.). That pursuit is absolutely sodden with polluting chemicals, and dipped in plastic.
At least in the EU some of this is required to be specified on product labeling thanks to some relatively recent legislation (for all clothing compositions, not just leather), and in some countries also the origin of that leather. Often international brands will include it elsewhere anyway.
In short, unless you're paying out of your arse (...not that price is even an indicator by itself) you're probably buying something which is no less plastic than elastine or polyester blended fibers (don't get me started). It's still an improvement over pure-plastic pleather garbage, but acting like it's Actually Really Environmentally Friendly is a bit disingenuous.
I know leather is seen as Cool As Fuck but honestly most of this hardly seems worth it yknow?
this is honestly SUPER useful but I do have something to add in terms of leather being “worth it” or environmentally friendly!
One thing people aren’t familiar with is “veg tan” vs “chrome tan.” chrome tan is the majority of leather you’ll find out there, which uses chromium salts, which creates horrendous toxic runoff. it’s used bc, of course, it’s cheaper. veg tan uses natural tannins derived from bark, which is fully biodegradable all the way through. Industries have normalized cutting corners and deceiving consumers through greenwashing and misleading branding, but genuine veg tan leather is legitimately eco friendly and, while certainly more expensive than plastic, not always priced at super high grade fashion prices!
favorite thing ever is leaving this gif in Ao3 comment sections
because A: a shocking amount of people don't know abt the 'img src=' trick to add images into comment sections, and B: well over half of the authors seem to really enjoy the sentiment
I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!
