It's time to panic, Manic!

Does anyone want to panic with me?

[madness-manic-antics]

On the Track to Victory is now on Ao3!

I'll still be posting updates here before there, but if you want to read it in bigger chunks you can find it here!

[madness-manic-antics]

So this might be super weird to ask but are you alive? I know from the notes on some of your fics there was a few health things going on and then you disappeared from here and AO3. (I'm sorry if this is a weird thing to ask I was just a little concerned)

OH MY GOD

I'm here I'm here I swear I have NO idea how long this has been sitting in my box I haven't been on Tumblr in like a YEAR

I'M ALIVE I SWEAR

I got COVID a few years ago, ended up in a coma with plenty of fun physical and mental side effects for after and it has become very hard to write things if my brain says 'mmmm not into that'

I have actually written an INSANE amount of desert flower stuff... But ALL of it is either future canon or fully noncanon, sometimes crossovers with another friends' aus, it's just that. The actual, foundational desert flower? My brain has been stuck mid sentence for AGES

My nerve damage is making it hard to write at all lately, let alone dig in and work on DF

It's not a dead fic and I'm not dead though I promise

I don't know when you sent this oh my God I hope you see it lol

[miscmangos-wonderland]

why is it so hard to have a job that schedules you hours that you can actually support yourself with. why is it so hard to have a job i can actually scrape a living together off of

[miscmangos-wonderland]

my current job, while a job i love, has been cutting my hours to single days for an entire week. full time is simply *not* available.

if i were to go back to janitorial work, i could earn $2 an hour more at full fucking time. either my schedule improves or im out

[miscmangos-wonderland]

wow as soon as i said this i got an interview squared up for a job that pays way better at full time thst im very likely to get

reblog for good luck in your job prospects

[vague-humanoid]

It may be time to break out the masks against Covid, some experts say | CNN

If you’re at high risk of serious illness or death from Covid-19, it’s time to dust off those N95 masks and place them snugly over your nose

[startorrent02]

Just fyi for everyone the new strain DOES have the capability to do breakthrough infections (meaning if you’ve had your shots or COVID within the last two or three months you can get it again - only 2 confirmed cases in the US as of this morning though), no we don’t know if the new vaccine coming in September will be protective enough, and yes a lot of our overarching medical bodies are letting us doctors know that those who are elderly and/or are immunocompromised should be wearing a mask.

[madness-manic-antics]

Great fucking news. Just what I wanted. COVID attempting a round 2 of trying to kill me.

[tintheelvenking]

Here's to the people who weren't abused by their parents, but whose parents sucked anyways. Here's to people whose parents fucked up raising you out of ignorance and not malice. Here's to the kids whose parents didn't know what to do with you so they did nothing at all. Here's to people whose parents are getting better and growing as people but still hurt you. Here's to every mean comment that wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't come from your mom; here's to awkward family dinners because you're all trying to forget;

here's to you, survivor of a thousand 'not as bad as it could have been' hurts. I see you. You aren't alone.

[edenplumreal]

[madness-manic-antics]

Link isn't too happy about being stuck in Wind's awful clothes.

A drawing I just HAD to do for chapter three of Desert Flower: Stars Don't Shine.

Which, by the way, is out.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[madness-manic-antics]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 3 of Desert Flower: Stars Don't Shine is up!

[firawren]

Which of these would you rather see on your dash?

Hey @staff. This is a perfect example of why collapsed reblogs is such a bad idea. Seeing the full thread, you go like this: 😮 ooh, that's cool 😀 "they're free," hehe! 🤣 "16 cents," perfection!!

I have achieved joy, I feel positive feelings toward Tumblr, I want to engage, I want to stay, my eyeballs land on more ads, you make more money, everyone wins! 🎉

Seeing the collapsed thread, you go like this:

😮 ooh, that's cool 😐 "16 cents"? yes, that's literally what the pic shows, not sure why you felt the need to say that

There is no motivation for me to uncollapse the reblog chain—it looks like a boring conversation about the denominations of coins. And even if I do uncollapse it, you've ruined the joke by showing me the punchline before the setup. I am sad, Tumblr is boring, I go elsewhere to entertain myself, I see less ads, you make less money, everyone loses. 😥

Reblog chains are the best thing about Tumblr. They are your unique super power. They are the thing that makes people screenshot Tumblr and share it around. Why on earth would you kneecap them??

I don't know exactly how you plan to implement this. Give people the option to keep them collapsed if there truly are people who are annoyed by how long they can get (you already have a version of this feature), but don't collapse them for everyone or new users by default. Please. It will make Tumblr so much more boring.

[griseldajane]

Glaze is out!

Tired of having your artwork used for AI training but find watermarks dismaying and ineffective?

Well check this out! Software that makes your Art look messed up to training AIs and unusable in a data set but nearly unchanged to human eyes.

I just learned about this. It's in Beta. Please read all the information before using.

[digitaldiscipline]

Art thieves already hate it:

[fierceawakening]

Dude, if you're stealing, you deserve to have the data poisoned. Because you could have asked and you didn't.

[spooky-octagon-deactivated20240]

The link is only in the original post inside an image, not as text, so here it is as plain text: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/ and the paper about how it works: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04222

[esoanem]

As links (because some of us are on mobile and can't easily copy and paste to our browser), those are:

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

&

GLAZE: Protecting Artists from Style Mimicry by Text-to-Image Models

Recent text-to-image diffusion models such as MidJourney and Stable Diffusion threaten to displace many in the professional artist community

[sliceosunshine]

A bit of a TLDR for some questions I saw in the notes:

The team that created Glaze is from the University of Chicago. Their names are each listed in full on the Glaze download website. (This group of students/professors did this for their SPRING BREAK 😱 so go give them some love lol)

It is free to download. No, they won’t ask for or raise money from/for this project.(stated by one of the lead professors of the project).

Glaze is designed to protect artists’ STYLE--which a bunch of ai people have been deliberately fine-tuning their models to mimic (and specifically of current living artists--small or big).

It currently does not protect against composition/trace-like theft (as seen when run through img-to-img) but that would be protected by copyright anyway while STYLE is not.

The University Team has stated that they are dedicated to continuing to improve the tool, like fixing bugs (like overheating older computers by taking up lots of energy when Glazing--it currently runs on CPU so they’re trying to change that to GPU, I believe) and expanding the type of protection given to artists (like working against img-to-img theft).

It currently only works directly on your computer (phones not advised due to current overheating issue, no tablets, or iPads, and no website runthrough since that would be insecure to breaches/scraping/hacks)

It currently works best on painterly artwork, but can still be used on other forms (team is working on improving this)

IT WORKS BY calculating the changes each image needs for the best protection against style theft by AI, and adds tiny changes throughout the piece, so that your style will, for example, confuse the ai into seeing van gogh. But the ai thieves will see a regular image in your style, feeding it into their model labeled as your work (thus starting the “data poisoning”).

Do not post the original unGlazed piece of your artwork after posting your Glazed version (obviously)

The Team worked directly with over 1,000 artists that were being impacted by the ai theft. Because the team listened to those artists, Glaze accounts for regular art thieves too (i.e. Glaze can’t be removed/cropped etc. like signatures or watermarks when reposted. It’s just part of the image, so even if it ends up on another site and scraped, the Glazing is still in effect)

When you run your artwork through Glaze, no information is sent back to the Team. (Aka, no scraping on their part. The app receives information from the Team (like updates) but no information from you is given to them through the app. Basically Team servers ---> You and NOT Team servers <--->You) One-way data street.

Brief misunderstanding happened over an open-source license for the front-end part of the app. (Used open-source coding for front-end, not knowing that code’s use-license states it is only for other open-source uses, not closed-source (the back-end code of the app is private to prevent counter-counter measure developments)). The Team took down the app until they replaced the front-end code with code written from scratch by the team. They are now not in violation of that open-source license since they are no longer using it. (you have 30 days to remedy a license breach once informed; they did so in 2)

The Team is currently in touch with Japanese artists to better expand the tool for use to protect their art styles

From what I understand of it, Glaze is an AI tool designed to be anti-AI (Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: one Terminator robot vs. all the other Terminators 😂)

You can download it from their website and also contact them through email there with any questions, problems, or bugs. The website: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/

[locus-p0cus]

reblogging this every fucking time it comes across my dash

[luckynature]

[amidstthemists]

Everyone- eat the rich! everyone on the Titan was a self entitled rich person (except that poor kid rip)! They shouldn’t have exploited the victims of the Titanic!

News sources everywhere-

Why do I keep seeing James Cameron all over my news (I know these are both Insider, but I have been seeing James Cameron in the news for days from several different outlets, I’m just lazy) Listen, I know he did the time and made the movie but how is he any different? Rich white guy? Profited off of the exploitation of the tragedy of the Titanic? Self entitled expert? Bleh I’m over seeing his crusty wannabe Saruman face all over my phone. Go back to the Avatar movies and think about what you’ve done.

Image descriptions- two news articles, one titled “James Cameron estimates he’s spent more time with the Titanic than the ship’s actual captain after 33 voyages to the wreckage” and “The Titan sub was likely trying to surface and the passengers probably knew the hull was starting to crack before it imploded, James Cameron says.”

A news article titled James Cameron on Titanic Submarine Loss: “Struck by the Similarity of the Titanic Disaster Itself” and a lovely hands rubbing meme with the text “James Cameron eyeballing the opportunity he never thought would come: Titanic 2”

[a-really-big-cat]

...I'm writing this under the assumption that you don't know any better, because hoo boy is this a bad take

James Cameron legitimately numbers among the small handful of people most qualified to talk about the Titan disaster. The reason why is because being a filmmaker is almost a side project compared to his very real contributions to submersible design, oceanography, and undersea exploration. Cameron has spent decades in the field of undersea science and submarine engineering. He co-designed a submersible called Deepsea Challenger which he personally took to the Challenger Deep, the lowest point of the Marianas Trench and the lowest point on Earth, alone; the first and to date only person to have ever done so solo. His hyperfixation is not the Titanic, it's submersible engineering and undersea exploration in general. Here's him being presented the Nierenberg Prize (for contributions to oceanography) in 2013:

Note that in the above interview he literally says that he made Titanic essentially just to get the funding to go to the wreck site (and to have the funding to continue to do so decades onward). He's made 33 dives to the wreck of the Titanic.

The reason why he appears in the news is not because he wants to talk about the disaster. It's got little to nothing to do with him having made Titanic (though that is tangentially related). It's because everyone knows that he is an actual, legitimate expert on the issue of submersible engineering (as well as both diving and diving to the Titanic wreck in particular), and so they bombarded him with interview requests and requests for comment. He specifically did not respond to any such requests until after the deaths of the passengers had been confirmed, because he knew that the sub had imploded and they were all dead, and he didn't want to be insensitive and drown everyone's hopes by telling everyone that the search and rescue was pointless. Here's him on ABC News next to his friend and associate Dr. Bob Ballad, the man who discovered the wreck of the Titanic, who is probably the only other person more qualified than Cameron to talk about the recent disaster:

TL;DR: James Cameron is not being interviewed because "he made Titanic"; he's being interviewed because he's a well-known and verifiable submersible engineering and undersea expert.

[fleshadept]

it should be illegal to tow a car as punishment and i’m not even kidding

[fleshadept]

you park in the wrong spot somewhere. maybe at a friend’s apartment complex, or at a store when you’re actually walking somewhere else, or whatever. they could ticket you—still charge you a fine for parking where you’re not supposed to. but instead, in a far more crippling way than a fine (which is already hard enough for low income people), they call a third party and steal your car. so you have lost your means of transportation, which you will only learn the next time you need your car, because they don’t have any need or care to notify you.

so first, you have to figure out which towing company they used. which you can only do if the place that decided your car was in the wrong spot is still open, or if you can get someone on the phone.

assuming you figure out which company towed your car, which one time took me over an hour on its own because the number on the signs warning about towing in the parking lot was a dead number, you then have to figure out how to get there. without a car. god help you if you don’t have someone in your support network to pick you up or public transportation, because most of the time it’s at least a mile away.

you find a way to get there, you call them to see if your car is even really there, and they tell you they won’t give your car back until you pay them. how much? well, it’s not regulated, so they can pretty much say whatever number they goddamn feel like. i recently got towed by a company infamous in my college town and they charged me a whopping $180–half of my paycheck for two weeks during the school year. when the same company towed my brother last year, and we both have the same sized cars, they charged him $300. they don’t have to justify the charge, they don’t have any itemized receipt, because what are you going to do? not pay it? you have to get to work and you’re already short on time because you had to walk to the goddamn towing place or have someone come get you to bring you there or spend an hour on the phone with different people trying to figure out where the fuck your car was in the first place.

it’s extortionate. it’s absolutely insane that they can, without exaggeration, steal someone’s car and hold it for ransom under the assumption that you will pay anything to get it back, because of the extent to which our society is dependent on cars.

[2spirit-1spoon]

This happened to me so we just abandoned the car cuz we couldn't get it out, which means they sold it off. This was way back in 2016/2017 I think.

And a few days ago a debt collector had us served for the almost $10k we still have on the car.

So yeah not only will they steal it and sell it but you will still also have to pay for it anyway.

Because you parked in the wrong spot for an hour or two.

[madness-manic-antics]

I wasn't towed as punishment, but my experience was arguably worse.

My car was stolen in the middle of the night from in front of my workplace. There had been a band of car thieves running around and we were unfortunate enough to get hit. We called the cops, and then waited.

Three days later, they recovered my car, out of gas and battery because the thieves had just let it run after they ditched it. The officer assumed it was broken when a blind man could see that it was just dead.

He called us and told us about the car, and asked us if we wanted them to bring it in for processing, you know, looking for evidence and fingerprints and stuff. Wanting to help, I said yes. So the car was towed to a tow lot.

They made ME pay for moving the car to the lot so THEY could investigate it. $200. And remember how it was dead and out of gas? I couldn't just go pick it up, because it wasn't running. So they had to tow it to my house so I could put gas in and get a jump. Another $200. PLUS they tried to tell me that I was too far away to be towed to. I had to give them a piece of my mind.

We had just missed three days of work because of the car situation, and I had to pay the entirety of one of our paychecks at the time in order to get my STOLEN car back.

[stampcollective]

people with ‘scary’ and ‘weird’ mental issues i love you.

i love schizophrenics. i love psychotic people, i love people on the schizospectrum, i love people with DID and OSDD, i love people with NPD, i love people with PPD, i love people with SPD, i love people with ASPD, i love people with personality disorders, i love people who hallucinate, people who have delusions, and people who have paranoia. i love people who are mentally ill in ways that are viewed as strange and scary by society. 

it is not your fault that you struggle. you are valid. you are deserving of care and you are deserving of love. your issues do not negate any of that.

[madness-manic-antics]

I... Needed to hear this. I love you too, stampcollective. I love that you made this post with all the love in your heart, I love that you're not scared of me, I love that you love me, despite the BP and the hallucinations and the crippling anxiety.

I love that you believe that I deserve care and comfort.

[soniclozdplove]

The only appropriate reaction to Gloom Hands is BOMBS

[madness-manic-antics]

I used farosh scales but I had item duping

I attack anything I'm scared of with lightning so they can't attack me

There was that time where I killed a gloom hand and phantom Ganon and there was a moment of confusion as I wondered why the sky wasn't changing back to normal and bam! Blood Moon. I was still in the PROCESS OF PICKING UP THE LOOT!

[madness-manic-antics]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Surprise! It's the last chapter of Desert Flower! Don't worry, though-- the first chapter of the sequel is already up.

[3liza]

seeing a lot of people posting about "why is everyone acting so crazy lately what's going on" girl it's COVID. we did the research and we know for a fact that COVID gives you brain damage, microstrokes, and other serious cognitive pathology. it makes people stupid, impulsive, angry and crazy. it messes with your ability to process and store information. this is on top of the intense background stress that will make you act out even if you don't have brain damage. traffic accidents are up. road rage incidents are up. check my COVID tag I've reblogged and posted a lot of information on this. every single person who got COVID of any severity is at risk of having brain damage and cognitive problems of unknown severity, for an unpredictable length of time. it's not bullshit it's just the data as it has been measured

[madness-manic-antics]

Me, literally four hours ago: I don't know why I get so ANGRY, I'm not mad at you it's like this frustration just TAKES OVER and I start snapping and yelling and I don't know why it's like I can't control it

This post: COVID. Like all your other problems, it's fucking COVID.

Me: oooooh that makes an unfortunate amount of sense.

[qhazomb]

why would anybody actively choose to use tumblr exclusively through the mobile app. so many ads. no xkit extension. broken ass search function. can’t disable endless scrolling. tumblr live turns itself back on every week. can’t view custom blog themes. the video player only works if the stars are in perfect alignment and even then you can only watch like, two or three videos before they all break again. i’m convinced that people who use tumblr only through the mobile app either don’t have an actual computer to use the desktop version, or they’re just masochists who enjoy the suffering.