I think the first chapter of my fic will be finished verrrry soon, maybe even tomorrow :^) Iām so excited. Thereās so much I want to explore and I canāt wait to share it with people, aaaaaa!
Hereās the tiniest sneak peak in the world, donāt breathe at it too hard lest itāll fly away
Laura Aguilar is a Los Angeles-based photographer whose work mines the intersection between feminism, body image, queer politics, and latinx identity. Her earliest works depicted latina lesbians in intimate portraits, calling to mind the frankness of Catherine Opie, while her best known series features self-portraits of Aguilar posed nude in the California desert landscape. These photographs are instantly striking, finding in the artistās body formal elements that echo the landscape itself, as in its doubling here with the giant rock that eludes the frame. Aguilar also forces our gaze onto a body that does not conform to stereotypical images of latinx or feminine identityāa body type that is not so much othered as invisible, despite its ubiquity. The artist originally began to produce these photos as a means of grappling with her own issues with weight and self-acceptance, but quickly came to see them as something more. They offer a profound, ambivalent vision of woman and nature. We see Aguilar dissolve into the landscape in search of anonymity, at the same time that she reclaims the pride and beauty in her body far removed from the society that rejects it.
Text of tweet under the cut because it is loooong.
But... Stochastic Parrots.
Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 for refusing to retract a research paper, and every single warning that paper made about large language models has now happened at a scale the industry spent 4 years trying to make people forget about.
Her name is Timnit Gebru.
She co-led the Ethical AI team at Google. She co-wrote a paper called "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" with Emily Bender at the University of Washington and two other researchers. The paper was 14 pages long. It was submitted to a top AI ethics conference. And it was the reason Google decided that one of the most senior Black women in AI research could no longer work there.
The story Google told publicly was that she resigned. The story she told, confirmed by 2,695 of her colleagues in an open letter, was that she was fired by email while on vacation because she refused to either retract the paper or remove her name from it.
The paper had not even been published yet.
Here is what she actually wrote, and why every prediction inside it has now come true.
The first warning was about scale itself. Bender and Gebru argued that training ever-larger models on ever-larger scrapes of the internet would produce systems that appeared fluent but had no actual understanding of language. They called these systems stochastic parrots because they would repeat patterns from training data with statistical confidence and zero comprehension. The paper predicted that this apparent intelligence would fool both users and developers into trusting outputs that were structurally incapable of being reliable.
This was 2020. GPT-3 had just come out. The paper predicted the hallucination problem before anyone had a word for it.
The second warning was about bias amplification. The paper documented in detail that internet-scale training data contains systematic overrepresentation of dominant viewpoints and underrepresentation of marginalized ones. The models would not just absorb this bias. They would amplify it, because the optimization process rewards confident outputs, and confidence in language patterns tracks frequency in the training set.
The prediction was that hiring tools built on these models would discriminate against women. That healthcare triage tools would underperform on Black patients. That loan approval systems would entrench inequality while presenting their decisions as neutral algorithmic judgment.
Every one of those things has now been documented in deployment.
Amazon's hiring algorithm penalized resumes that contained the word "women" in any context. Healthcare risk scoring algorithms used by major US hospitals were found to systematically underestimate the medical needs of Black patients. Apple Card's credit algorithm gave wives credit lines 10x lower than their husbands for the same financial profile.
The third warning was about environmental cost. The paper calculated that training a single large language model produced emissions equivalent to the lifetime output of 5 cars. The prediction was that the race to scale would create an environmental footprint that would eventually rival entire industries.
In 2024, Google's emissions were up 48% from 2019, and the company explicitly blamed AI infrastructure. Microsoft's were up 29%, same reason. Both companies have now quietly abandoned the climate commitments they were publicly celebrating the year Gebru was fired.
The fourth warning was about documentation. The paper argued that the training datasets being assembled were too large for anyone to actually audit. Nobody at Google, OpenAI, Meta, or any other lab could tell you with confidence what was in the data their models were trained on. This was not a temporary problem to be solved later. It was a permanent feature of the approach.
In 2023, researchers discovered that the LAION-5B dataset, used to train Stable Diffusion and other major image models, contained thousands of images of child sexual abuse material. The companies that had trained on the dataset had no way of knowing. The paper predicted that category of failure 3 years before it was found.
The fifth warning was the one Google cared about most.
Bender and Gebru argued that the deployment of these systems would centralize linguistic and cultural power in the hands of the small number of companies that could afford to train them. The internet would become a place where the dominant voice was a statistical average of dominant voices, presented as a neutral assistant. Languages underrepresented in the training data would degrade over time as more web content was generated by these systems and fed back into the next training run.
This is now happening in real time. A 2024 study found that 57% of new web content in English is AI-generated or AI-assisted. Researchers studying low-resource languages have documented active degradation in translation quality, because the synthetic content fed back into training is itself worse in those languages.
The paper Google fired her for predicted the model collapse problem before model collapse had a name.
The mechanism behind why this all happened is the part of her work that nobody quotes.
Gebru's argument was not that AI is dangerous in some abstract sci-fi sense. Her argument was that AI is dangerous in a very specific structural sense. The technology was being built by a small group of researchers who shared similar backgrounds, worked at similar companies, and were rewarded for shipping products faster than competitors. The incentive structure made it impossible for safety, ethics, and bias concerns to slow anything down. Anyone inside the system who raised those concerns was either ignored, sidelined, or removed.
She was making that argument from inside Google.
Then Google proved her right by removing her.
The team Google had built to make sure their AI was safe was dismantled in 90 days because they did the job they had been hired to do. Margaret Mitchell, the other co-lead of the Ethical AI team, was fired two months after Gebru for searching through her own emails for evidence of how Gebru had been treated.
Gebru did not stop. She founded DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute, in 2021. The mission is to do AI research outside the control of the companies that have a financial interest in not hearing the answers.
Every prediction in the Stochastic Parrots paper has now been validated by deployment. Hallucinations are an industry-wide problem the largest labs cannot solve. Bias amplification has been documented in hiring, healthcare, lending, and criminal justice. Environmental costs are larger than entire small countries. Training data audits remain impossible. Model collapse is an active research crisis at every major lab.
The question worth sitting with is the one almost no one in the industry will say out loud.
Every researcher with the technical credibility to call out these problems watched what happened to her in December 2020 and made a calculation about their own career. The number of people willing to speak publicly about safety and ethics issues inside the major AI labs collapsed after that firing and has not recovered.
The researcher Google fired for warning about exactly what is now happening was right.
The company that fired her is now the second-largest deployer of the technology she warned about.
And the people inside that company who agree with her are not allowed to say so.
I remember watching an interview with Timnit and Emily about their paper back then. They seemed to be in the minority of experts that spoke about how the narrative for stochastic parrots is dictated by the people supposedly concerned about everyoneās future. But this future is millions of years away and what actually happens to real humans doesnāt matter to them in the slightest. Timnit even suggested a neologism for bastards like that:
Happy pride! In the name of mlm and wlw solidarity here's my humble gift for thee. Wreg and Dame pieces are both for free on my patreon. They are around a4 size if printed, 300dpi, and perfect for your wall or screen.
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If you wish to support my work during this pride, consider joining my patreon for both free and exclusive print drops. Or if you wish to have any of my art pieces as high quality ready-made prints, check out my inprnt!
I havenāt written a thing in my life but for the past couple of months Iāve been throwing so much effort to outline a whole-ass multi-chapter story about the crusty man Victor Gideon.
It was genuinely so hard for me to empathise with him in any way when I just saw him in the game, so I had to deconstruct the hell out of his characterisation just for shits and giggles. And I want to share my thoughts and findings in an engaging way that would do them justice.
Over time, as I was sketching out scenes and timelines, I realised that I needed a well-rounded original character to put in opposition to Victor. Not a friend, not a subordinate, not a perfect victim. A character of her own who suffers the consequences of power imbalance but keeps challenging the man. Sheās fat, sheās loud and morally grey. Sheās neither me or you. However, as I write, Iām starting to like her complex autonomy.
I donāt know if the story ever comes to fruition. Or even a single chapter of it that Iād like to put out without doubting that itās in the right order and of enough importance. I keep rewriting things, cannibalising paragraphs to feed them into ever-changing descriptions of events and conversations. I pester my wife to read them all despite her lack of knowledge of anything related to Resident Evil. She graciously provides notes and critique.
Iād like to share a sketch in progress here, no matter the future of the story. Iād be happy to hear your thoughts if the writing touches you enough to have any. Please be kind
An offer she canāt refuse
***
A glint of crimson on his gum. A delicate thread turned into a rivulet turned into a smear. He would be able to taste it by now but his demeanour betrayed no concern. She swallowed, licked her teeth.
Remaining professional seemed like an impossibly tall order when her emotional truth was that of unbridled animalistic disgust. She couldnāt even muster the effort to feel guilty. After all, her entire ancestral lineage took the direction of evolving aversion towards exactly what she was seeing in the dim office in front of her.
Cadaverous, his skin was. Grey and bruised. Intricate dry tendrils of erosion signified every point of stress on its surface. Death teemed and crawled underneath, seeking new contact, osmosis. She read it it the glistening moisture of fresh scar tissue.
What died? Was it tortured? Pitiful? Tender? Beautiful? Whatever the answer, it had been metabolised long ago. Long enough for the new microbiome to establish its dreadful complexity, writhing and grasping for continuation.
ā Victor?
ā Simone, you look fresh as ever.
ā Howā¦ ā Her lips moved, trying out a word after a word only to discard each one before they metamorphose into sound. She hadnāt seen him in years. His looks deteriorated beyond sane imagination but being under his gaze still felt the same ā as if there was a Petri dish underneath her. She couldnāt bear it, never got used to it. Sheād better make this conversation as quick as it could get.
ā What is it that you want?
ā You have been busy, never lost your devotion to research. I admire that, you know.
ā Victor. ā She urged firmly.
ā Things have changed for you since you left. I think the time has come when we can help each other again. Youāre not a lab rat, Simone.
In the indifferent vastness of his office, her insides turned into lead. She took a slow, discreet breath to will tension away from her brow, jaw, lips.
Victorās jaw worried along a crooked axis, as if he was about to unhinge it and swallow her whole. As if it was a possibility that existed in that moment.
He gave her a lopsided smile instead, showing off uneven brass of his crowded teeth.
ā The place you work forā¦ It is run by prudes. Ignorant fools who twiddle their thumbs instead of doing what needs to be done. You see, they know youāre too valuable to put yourself on the line like you did. But they wouldnāt give you any real opportunities.
ā I donāt want your āopportunitiesā, Victor.
There was a glint of malice in his eye. His mouth pressed tightly before he opened it with a wet smack. She felt as if she was already inside of it.
ā You donāt have to insist on being a disappointment. ā In the ringing velvet abyss of his voice, something dangerous stirred.
ā Everything you need youāll find here. ā His hulking figure moved slowly to circle her with uncanny grace.
ā I cannot make you take itā¦ ā Mock pity slid right past her prefrontal cortex, lulling her reptile brain.
ā But your poor sister has even less time for your nonsense. ā Victorās last word came out in a gritty hiss, his breath feather-light on her temple. She didnāt know when he got so close. Here came the venom, delivered precisely to her vitals. She felt her heart seize, her fingertips go cold.
Found a really cool channel that uploads timed live videos of models for gesture drawing. Theyāve even got some variability in terms of modelsā ages, body types and gender presentation.
They donāt organise those things where I live (and gender non-conforming people have to be really sneaky here), so itās a banger of a find.
I hope whoever stumbles onto this post finds it helpful:
"Prairie Keeper" 11"x14"
Acrylic, wax pastel, and paint pen on canvas
Horses and other heavy hoofed animals (bison, elk, deer, cattle) not only depend on the grasslands to support them but they in turn support the grassland. Their hooves break up the soil, giving seeds better purchase and moisture more opportunities to penetrate the soil. Their nibbling the grass encourages the grass to grow, and their droppings fertilize the soil and bring habitat for insects, which in turn feeds birds. In the winter, big animals can plow the snow aside to get to the ground, which frees up feeding grounds for small predators and other small grazers. The constant trimming, walking, and defecating, when multiplied across hundreds of thousands of individuals across thousands of acres creates prairies and grasslands and savannas that host tons of wildlife and plant biodiversity.
I feel very vulnerable sharing this but sometimes screaming into the digital void brings novel opportunities.
Iāve been wondering if there are folks who like what I draw enough to commission me. Iām at a point where the question of money slowly dissolves my hope and composure, and I have to rebuild myself over and over. Ideally I wouldāve loved to spend more time just enjoying doodling and slowly honing my skills but I canāt keep doing that while negating the mental damage of financial insecurity.
So whatever I get from commissions will greatly support my learning until Iām able to draw something thatās worth enough currency to sustain myself.
If you have the opportunity and appreciate what I do and/or the sentiment, please check out my art tag (#my art) and consider helping me out. Sharing this around is also super cool. Heck, even words of advice/encouragement will fuel me greatly.
Iām proud of finding enough hope and grace to keep drawing and I donāt ever wanna quit, and I want to live a life that has plenty of space for art: the skill of it, the whimsy and profoundness and overall versatility
P.S.: Hereās a pile of stuff from various sketchbooks that is not content but I feel like is appropriate to share here. Studies and derangements
His voice is soft, his intonations ā formulaically gentle. However, he never aims to reassure. Rather, his goal is to neutralise emotion, much like base neutralises acid. Itās the difference between the lulling caress of an embrace and the pressure of a large hand around your throat. The latter is meant to collapse your emotional experience into a singular, urgent point of attention that is his voice. And once youāre there ā youāre workable.
A reptile, he produces no heat of his own. He is not averse to receiving it, however. The sensation seeping deep through his skin pleases him. He doesnāt need it but he wants it.
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turnnoffyourmind
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