A Human Observer's Field Notes @frances-kafka - Tumblr Blog

Even Large Language Models tend to default to assuming I'm male. It's so weird.

I keep thinking this! very frustrating

fuck!

My therapist is terminating next week and I'm okay with it, I think of it as graduation not termination. I've come a really long way and also meds help.

frances-kafka

Sooooooo I just got what amounts to my first meaningful brand partnership (and it's a major visible semi household name corporation). All I'm really going to say here.

I'm beyond excited. I've worked hard on getting to this point, even as I've been grinding at survival work.

frances-kafka

Oh and on top of this, one of my AI images on X has blown up (900+ likes, pushing 90 shares, 60+ bookmarks, etc). That actually makes me nervous. Because it's getting shared/liked by some anti's without comment... have they looked at the rest of the account? Do they know?

Sooooooo I just got what amounts to my first meaningful brand partnership (and it's a major visible semi household name corporation). All I'm really going to say here.

I'm beyond excited. I've worked hard on getting to this point, even as I've been grinding at survival work.

Designer trend I am not enjoying:

Perhaps you don’t see this if you’re not on X or in any designer spaces but I am really not enjoying the slop-ification of 70s/80s industrial markings and institutional design. You know, the cargo cult trend people are making out of 70s-80s institutional design and out of micrographics. Except that this stuff looks that way FOR A REASON!!! And if you lived away from your computer screen and phone, you'd KNOW that.

It is really showing me that graphic designers who actually work in the "real world" (environmental graphic design, wayfinding, safety, signage, institutional, the large scale and infrastructural print world) live in a completely different world from the one occupied by most people calling themselves graphic designers on Dribbble and Behance.

The current trends are the “add a gear to it and make it steampunk” school of thought and trying to cargo cult functional design.

I feel like actual industrial graphic designers (man that’s a whole rabbit hole) and social media designfluencers live in two different worlds here, and the latter thinks the former is just aesthetic.

It's made me realize that what I actually want to do is design in the Real World and something broke in my brain where I really don't care about "aesthetic" anymore.

Also: Frutiger Aero is not real, it cannot hurt you.

stackslip

we're moving to an internet where children would be banned from reaching out for help and friendship online but abusive parents can post their children's every second online to humiliate and expose them for money with no pushback

dynamicity-keysmash

Being Jewish has really saved me from unhealthy radicalization because most extremist factions in western politics have been entirely unsubtle about there being no place for me in the world remade by their eventual revolution

ftmtftm

Anyone who tells you you are only safe among people exactly like you is a fascistic liar.

My rapist was nonbinary and bi. My deeply Lutheran grandma was the first person to fully accept me as trans in my primarily liberal athiestic/agnostic family. Years ago my social life was ruined by another trans masculine person who intentionally destroyed all of my close friendships. One of my current closest friends is a cishet guy who has a friend group that is almost entirely populated of queer people because a bunch of his friends have come out around him since high school.

Fascists want you scared and isolated and alone. The way to combat that is to trust other people. And yeah. Trusting other people is vulnerable and can lead to hurt, but sometimes the people you trust blindly based on identity will be the ones who hurt you the most and the ones you dismiss blindly based on identity will be the ones who can keep you the safest.

anarchistmemedistro

socialistmodernism

Restaurant and pastry shop (Ресторанти и Сладкарница)

Dimitrovgrad, Bulgaria.

Built and left in uncompleted state since 1989.

Demolished.

deadgenerations

I really hate that for some reason the narrative became that women fought to join the workforce rather than women fought to have the same jobs for the same pay as men instead of being relegated to labour considered to be lesser and explicitly disallowed from many roles and professions. fuck off and die.

frances-kafka

Related: people generally thinking that 1950s TV represents the 1950s.

my partner won’t let go of the idea that Project Hail Mary needs a porn parody called Project Nail Mary (or Project Nail Larry for the gay version) and the alien should be called Cocky

frances-kafka

hot tip, if you're going to accuse people of feeding your work to AI and ripping you off, then create something original to begin with. You don't have a leg to stand on if your work wasn't original to begin with. Your case isn't really helped if I can't tell your work apart from the fifty other people on X who themselves copied the same source material. This is coming up because of how much of a trend we're seeing with some bullshit, un-researched take on micrographics, IBM/Brutalist/NASAPunk graphics, or what I call Institutional Futurism. And how much these trend followers get mad that ChatGPT can spit the same thing out from the same references (and often do better at it, because of getting better at referencing the source material and its context.)

You just copied something without understanding the underlying logic of it, to follow the trend, to get that sweet sweet algorithmic attention, and now you're complaining that people are AI'ing a look that wasn't original to begin with.

(I say this as someone who LOVES industrial graphics and Institutional Futurism and is working hard to semi-codify the aesthetic. But most of the designers on X just copy the aesthetic and basically don't have any underlying logic as to why anything looks as it does.)

Getting really annoyed with the self-righteousness of what amount to basically Pinterest trend followers and fan artists.

If you're going to complain about getting ripped off, then do something original to begin with and don't be a rip-off artist yourself.

frances-kafka

Also, as someone who is doing a multi-years-long project that heavily leans into Institutional Futurism and industrial graphics:

Stop cargo culting design aesthetics that look that way for a reason.

hot tip, if you're going to accuse people of feeding your work to AI and ripping you off, then create something original to begin with. You don't have a leg to stand on if your work wasn't original to begin with. Your case isn't really helped if I can't tell your work apart from the fifty other people on X who themselves copied the same source material. This is coming up because of how much of a trend we're seeing with some bullshit, un-researched take on micrographics, IBM/Brutalist/NASAPunk graphics, or what I call Institutional Futurism. And how much these trend followers get mad that ChatGPT can spit the same thing out from the same references (and often do better at it, because of getting better at referencing the source material and its context.)

You just copied something without understanding the underlying logic of it, to follow the trend, to get that sweet sweet algorithmic attention, and now you're complaining that people are AI'ing a look that wasn't original to begin with.

(I say this as someone who LOVES industrial graphics and Institutional Futurism and is working hard to semi-codify the aesthetic. But most of the designers on X just copy the aesthetic and basically don't have any underlying logic as to why anything looks as it does.)

Getting really annoyed with the self-righteousness of what amount to basically Pinterest trend followers and fan artists.

If you're going to complain about getting ripped off, then do something original to begin with and don't be a rip-off artist yourself.

lumsel

we're going to get a bunch of sci-fi about LLMs written by people whose entire understanding of LLMs comes from clapbacks on bluesky. and it will be: quite bad

My opinion about Nolan's The Odyssey is the only media commentary I'm going to make

This is a silly thing to get bent out of shape over. The Odyssey is public domain. Nobody is taking Homer away from anyone. And now that we have AI video, we can have a million different versions of it and you can make it however you like. I am fully anticipating the public domain/folklore film renaissance we're about to have.

This is not like an IP where changing anything in a new version threatens how the original is viewed, or changes social dynamics in the fandom. Or where a bad adaptation means that nobody will ever make the film the way you want within your own lifetime.

Literally nobody is taking The Odyssey from anyone.

It can and should be made as experimentally as possible, as often as possible! Also, it looks like it sucks, and is shot in the depressing gray filter everything else (except for Project Hail Mary) is shot in these days.

ketubahring

Jewish Vampire Folklore 🐈‍⬛🩶

While most people think of Dracula when they hear the word vampire, Jewish mythology tells a much older and more mystical story about a creature called the estrie in English or striyas in Hebrew. These beings are fascinating because they occupy a strange space in Jewish mysticism as they were said to be created during the twilight hours just before the very first Shabbat. Because they were made in that liminal space between the mundane week and the holy day, their bodies were never fully finished and left them with the ability to shapeshift and change their form.

An estrie is described as a female spirit who looks like a human woman and lives among people in towns or villages to satisfy her need for blood. But unlike the vampires we see in movies, her power is deeply connected to her hair. Folklore says she can only fly when her hair is completely unbound and loose. If she wants to take flight to hunt or escape, she must let her hair down, but this also becomes her vulnerability. If you can manage to bind her hair or cover it, she is instantly grounded and can no longer use her powers of flight.

These shapeshifters are masters of disguise and often take the form of night creatures to move around unnoticed. It is common in these legends for an estrie to transform into an owl so she can watch from the trees or swoop down in the night. Other stories describe her taking the form of a cat to walk silently through a home or village without drawing any attention to herself.

There is a very specific way to heal or disarm them that speaks to the ancient Jewish value of hospitality. If an estrie is injured by a human, she can only be healed if that same person gives her bread and salt. This creates a powerful spiritual bond between the injurer and the vampire because offering bread and salt is a sign of sustaining life and welcoming a guest. By accepting this food, she is bound to the person and her injury is repaired.

It’s a beautiful and eerie reminder that Jewish folklore is full of mysterious creatures that walk the line between the physical and spiritual worlds. Shabbat Shalom 🧿✨

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