Ravenbell

This blog supports Punching Nazis in the face

[geniusbee]

these are getting weird

[beggars-opera]

Not to be that person, but if you remember this, how's that newfound back pain going for ya babe

[vocabulary-altering-posts]

PHRASE ADDED!

LET'S DO THE FORK IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL

LET'S DO THE FORK IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL

DING-DING-DING DING-DING DING DING-DING DING DING-DING-DING DING-DING DING DING-DING DING DING-DING-DING DING-DING DING DING-DING DING DING-DING-DING DING-DING DING DING-DING DING

[blackheartbiohazards]

I'm gonna say it.

It's unhinged to assume that someone's taste in fiction equates to what they believe is moral or good, or is something they want to see or experience in real life.

That is a bonkers assumption to make.

I'm tired of humoring people with long arguments about it when the simple fact is it is a totally fucking absurd reach to accuse someone who enjoys something in fiction of being in favor of it in real life.

I'm tired of pretending like this is a legitimate position to hold-- that they should be afraid of fiction's dire influence on a reader's moral decay or that it's a sign of what the author secretly wants for realsies in real life.

[blackheartbiohazards]

I promise you it is still getting me death threats in 2024.

[heroineimages]

During a creative-writing workshop during my undergrad, the professor shared an anecdote about a past workshop where one of the writers shared a first-person short story about a man contemplating having an affair with a married woman. Apparently at the beginning of the workshop, some uptight gal slammed the story on the table in front of him and shouted, "Assholes like YOU are the reason so few marriages last!"

[odyver]

alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?

under 18, AI is a net positive

under 18, AI is a net negative

18-29, AI is a net positive

18-29, AI is a net negative

30-45, AI is a net positive

30-45, AI is a net negative

46-60, AI is a net positive

46-60, AI is a net negative

over 60, AI is a net postive

over 60, AI is a net negative

Voting ended onJun 11

[odyver]

Question 2/3

How often do you visit or interact with museums/archives (whether in person or online)?

Frequently (multiple times per month)

Often (multiple times per year)

Occasionally (a couple times per year)

Rarely (once every couple of years)

Never :(

Voting ended onJun 11

[odyver]

Question 3/3

If you saw a museum was using AI in exhibits, marketing, research, etc., would you be more or less inclined to visit that museum?

under 18, more inclined

under 18, less inclined

18-29, more inclined

18-29, less inclined

30-45, more inclined

30-45, less inclined

46-60, more inclined

46-60, less inclined

over 60, more inclined

over 60, less inclined

Voting ended onJun 11

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

🫶

[frontmansdefender]

RIP to the legend

[silvermoon424]

This goose fucking rocks and had a crazy life!

I really just have to summarize Thomas's entire life:

He was in a committed relationship with a male swan named Henry for 18-24 years before a female swan named Henrietta showed up and mated with Henry.

Thomas was initially jealous of the pair and attacked them, breaking 2 of the 5 eggs Henrietta had laid. However, once the remaining eggs hatched, Thomas warmed up to them and helped raise them.

Henry couldn't fly because of an injured wing, so Thomas taught the cygnets how to fly.

When they needed to reduce the goose population in the pond where Thomas and the swans lived, they dyed Thomas's feathers red so he wouldn't be separated from Henry.

Henry, Henrietta, and Thomas remained in their happy throuple for years and raised 68 cygnets before Henry died in 2009. After Henry's death, Henrietta found another swan and flew away, leaving Thomas alone.

Thomas finally met and mated with a female goose in 2011 and had his own babies. However, another goose named George stole them and raised them himself.

As Thomas grew elderly and blind, he was relocated to a wildlife center where he raised orphaned cygnets.

His caretaker at the center described him as "pretty high maintenance."

Thomas died in 2018 at the age of around 40. He had a funeral that included a small coffin and a procession that was led by a bagpiper. He was buried under the stone where Henry was buried, the two finally reunited in death.

Before and after his death, Thomas has been celebrated as an icon of the LGBTQ+ community for obvious reasons.

[tieflingkisser]

[cherryjams]

‘Hands weaving magnetic-core memory, IBM, Poughkeepsie, New York,’ 1956. Photograph by Ansel Adams.

[bladespark]

My mother used to make computer cores as a "work from home" side business. As a child I got spending money via un-winding the ones that failed testing so that the magnetic center could be re-used. I got between $0.05 and $0.25 per core depending. Mom got more for the finished ones, of course, though I don't know how much. Her sister was an expert, and did the more complicated kind, some of which ended up in satellites and/or were used by NASA!

They were all done by hand using a kind of treadle-operated frame with a little (crochet!) hook to pull the wires around the cores. The people making them were mostly housewives who did this as a side-job in the 80s and 90s. I don't know if it's still done that way anywhere in the USA today, but the history of computing and space exploration is littered with "women's work" like this.

[sirfrogsworth]

Scrolling the timeline on Mother's Day can be hard for me so last year I decided to turn my grief into something positive.

This year, I decided to make it a tradition.

I noticed people were posting a lot of old, degraded photos of their parents. So I try to pick a few good candidates to restore.

I spent a couple of years learning how to do this. I am very good at it. And I really enjoy it. But I learned it isn't very lucrative and most people are fine with what AI can do now.

It makes me a bit sad, but I actually think restoring people's precious memories is not the worst use of AI. Plus, I use several AI tools in my workflow. When there is extensive damage, generative fill is a lifesaver. The remove tool makes quick work of stubborn accumulated dust. And AI upscaling makes the photos printable, often at many times their original size.

My restorations are still much better than the free AI ones. I edit them with a precision and fidelity that can hold up to 400% magnification. I take special care to preserve likenesses and often work with reference photos to make sure people's loved ones still look like who they are after upscaling. I also do colorizing by hand (though I will sometimes make initial color maps with AI). I color grade using film stock color references so the photos still look like film, and I add texture and grain selectively to keep people from looking like smooth rubber.

But that kind of quality takes so much time. One photo is probably several hundred dollars of labor. And no one is willing to pay that so I have to charge below minimum wage.

I will probably just do pro bono restorations from here on out. Focus on fixing photos that AI isn't very good at restoring. Plus I have a ton of family photos that I want to restore for my niece. At some point, years from now, she'll be old enough to talk to me without my brother's permission. And she'll probably want to know who her grandparents were. I hope to be ready with photos and stories by that time.

In any case, it felt nice to do this on a hard day. And it helped clarify to myself how I should use this skill I've developed going forward.

Before and afters...

[thefrogman]

Some of the most difficult restorations I've done...

I've had to deal with intense color casts before, but never a green one. Thankfully, the original color was still in the data, but figuring out how to filter out the bad green and keep the good green required a lot of problem-solving.

The original was actually in really good shape and had a lot of detail. But there were just so many people in the photo and they all needed individual exposure correction on their faces. And I colored everything manually. I think this ended up being over 400 layers by the end.

For this one, the car was completely blown out and had no data. But I posted it in a bunch of vintage car forums and was able to identify the make and model. I replaced the blown out car with a better photo of the exact same model from the same year. Then I researched what paint color options were available and matched that as well.

This is one where folks might assume I used AI, but aside from my upscaling tool, I actually did this with traditional compositing techniques. It is probably one of the most damaged photos I've been able to save.

Her facial likeness was completely destroyed.

However, I restored this other photo of her.

And I was able to use it as a reference to restore her likeness in the lake photo.

It doesn't hold up as well as I'd like at this magnification, but considering how damaged it was, I am pretty happy with the result. And I think I was able to make it look like her again.

One might think photo restoration is only about saving really old photos, but I have fixed modern wedding photos that were taken in bad light and I regularly use these skills to fix smartphone photos.

My phone is getting old and is in bad shape. The back fell off and I keep it together with a case. And the lenses are unprotected and hard to clean. So all of my photos look a bit hazy now. But sometimes it is all I have to capture a moment. So I take photos and hope my editing magic can fix them.

I took this out my front window on a foggy morning.

I actually got a court summons for having that chair in my front yard.

It's a long story.

And I just had a visit from a foxy friend the other day.

My neighbor says he sees this fella all the time. So I feel like he needs a name. Otis's favorite toy was a stuffed red fox, so I'm thinking maybe I'll call him Milo.

[thevanillahorizon]

OP, I would understand very little of your magic so I will not ask on that, but I DO want to hear about the court summons.

[thefrogman]

I am going through a very long and difficult health recovery. And I have this heart thing that makes me very weak if I exert myself too much. I was trying to take this old red chair to the end of my driveway for trash pickup, but my heart started beating way too fast, and I only dragged it halfway.

So I just left the chair in my yard.

It rained soon after and I realized this pleather chair was waterproof. It shrugged off the rain and was perfectly fine. I then sat in the chair and it was a comfortable place to sit outside and relax.

So I left the chair where it was.

I can't leave the house much, so I have to find photographic opportunities close by. I eventually started incorporating the chair into my photography.

This thing was nigh invulnerable. No season was able to damage it.

And I did a fun Halloween bit with it.

It was in my yard for over a year, bothering no one.

But then I got a warning letter in the mail. The county inspector claimed I had "rubbish" in my yard and I had to remove it. I'm suspicious that a neighbor tattled on me.

I am making a lot of progress with my health. But I am at a stage where I have to get worse to get better. So I am currently bed bound most days. I have very few good days where I could move a big red chair.

It took me a few weeks, but as soon as I had a good day, I dragged the chair back into my garage and out of sight.

But it was not soon enough.

The inspector referred me to the court and I got a summons for not complying.

So now I have to appear before a judge and explain why I had a chair in my front yard.

I'm hoping they will accommodate my disability and let me do it over a zoom call. This all feels like a silly waste of time. I have neighbors with old cars on their lawn. I keep my lawn maintained and others let it grow two feet high.

But I got dinged for having a comfy chair in my yard.

[feminist-space]

[feminist-space]

[feminist-space]

[feminist-space]

[feminist-space]

[feminist-space]

[feminist-space]

[feminist-space]

[feminist-space]

Text for all these posts:

f33lz._.b3tterz: "Al only spits out what is put in. it's a program, not a textbook.

i'm a server and i had a table that TOOK A PICTURE of the menu sent it to chat gpt AND ASKED IT WHAT LOOKED GOOD!!! JUST READ IT!! then instead of looking at the itemized receipt of what they ordered, including the total, they told chat gpt what they got AND ASKED IT WHAT THE TOTAL WOULD BE."

humanleaf1: "i work at a hardware store and let me tell you its getting to the point im ready to just let people set their houses on fire. like oh chatgpt said you need that outlet? sure. go for it."

girlpansies: "I have a regular that is exactly like this. Over the last year l've seen her dependency on chatgpt get atp kinda scary. It started off with her coming in a few times a month and filling up a bag full of skin and hair care and makeup based solely on chatgpt recommendations. Then she gendered it and tells me about how "she" scans this client's face daily and tells her "exactly what she needs" based on her skin and hair type and skin tone, etc.. This last time I saw this woman, she told me she's given chatgpt pretty much her entire biometric profile for the sake of helping her diagnose herself and pick out her medications....she says things like "she knows me so well" and it's so jarring."

mermsieruffles: "We had a customer and his wife show up in store ON BLACK FRIDAY and pitch a toddler level fit because GD ChatGPT told them we had a military discount. We do not and never have had a military discount! They kept saying they had seen it online, they were owed an additional 10% off their multi-hundred dollar espresso machine! We told them if they could find it on our website specifically they could have it. They left angry."

muleyo: "I work at a Café, and we've had customers come in a few times recently, telling us our listed hours online are wrong. And i was like,

"huh?? I'll have to double check" like, it's right on the website, right on google listing.

And then this last weekend, someone mentioned GOOGLE GEMINI! Saying "your website is different than what Google Gemini is saying, that's confusing". And i was floored. Like... MAYBE TRUST THE BUSINESSES WEBSITE, and not an ai generated prompt?? Huhhhh?? My boss, did the prompt once just to check wtf was up, and BOY did it just bs hours, had us as open on days we are closed, etc. And now i know, all of these people who've had issues are using ai. Like, so sad."

catandnova: "I work at a flower shop and had 2 ladies come in to get an arrangement. They came in with an Al generated photo of arrangements on an outdoor arch. I told them our arrangements will look different bc the flowers in the photo aren't real and the ones that are there are not the proper scale nor will they withstand this heat. So I go over alternatives w them. And her friend says to her "can u Al it, I can't imagine what it'll look like" :/"

bea_trician: "Ive had people at my day job go shopping with grocery lists written by Chatgpt. Like....is the bot supposed to know what's in your pantry?? Is it hallucinating products we don't actually sell?"

franken.twink: "I work in dme and had a guy come in asking for a resupply for his cpap with a list of made up item id's and part numbers. When I pointed it out and that we had like, his actual resupply list in our system, he just shrugged and said that's what chatgpt said he needed..just, bro"

tabbykisses: "i'm a hairstylist and often get clients coming | in asking me to give them a haircut identical to a chat-generated image. I have to explain that the haircut will never look identical to what they prompted because it isn't real; it's not a real hair texture, that's not how layers work - even stuff like how chat won't take into account their cowlicks or the density of their hair, etc. And every time it's met with stubbornness or hostility or the assumption that I can't do my job right because of this explicit case. it's ruining brains, it's making people codependent, and it's pissing me off"

temporalserpent: "I had this with some of the younger customers in my laundromat job where instead of reading the tags on their nicer clothes, they're relying on whatever ai app. So when they find out it ruined or shrank their clothes they get upset. There's so much hand holding I need to do cause they're just anxious wrecks who HAVE to use ai for simple shit."

light.does.cos: "I worked at a store that sold things to make candles, soaps, simple skincare, etc. and this lady came in asking for materials for candles. So I show her everything she would need including wax chips to make the candles colorful. AND TO MY FACE GOES "well chat gpt said I can use koolaid so I think I'll stick with that""

[distortionsprite]

This goes beyond the whole "AI makes things easier for people with anxiety!" "AI saves so much time in my day because I'm so busy!" talking points. At this point you are literally turning your brain into slurry. You are dumbing yourself for a convenience that doesn't exist. ChatGPT and other LLMs are just so wrong so consistently that you are literally better off doing it yourself, both in accuracy and time save. I don't know how we got to this point and it makes me both incredibly afraid for the future as well as fuming with rage about the present.

Unironically can we go back to when an LLM was like, Cleverbot, and when Image Generation was a silly novel thing that was so bad it was funny. And you'd play with them for ten minutes and go "haha tech is wild, that was fun" and it wasn't melting the planet or the populace's brains.

I'm so fucking tired.

[someguynamedj0n]

Begging, screaming, for people to become more tech literate and understand this shit isn't magic. It's a glorified markov chain. It doesn't know what it's saying to you. It has no way to verify the statements it generates. It is nothing more than a probability machine. Please quit treating it like some all knowing guru. It doesn't know shit. It doesn't even understand the words it tells you.

[liberalsarecool]

This Pope is not staying silent on Trump's Epstein War. #SundaySermon #PopeLeo

[ravenbell]

If you told me in 2012 that in 2026 I would be siding with the Pope rather than our president I would have given you this look.

But Benedict was a asshole and Leo is a pretty awesome Pope (for a Pope, I mean, come on its a low bar here) so I'm not really angry about this at all.

[slow-burn-sally]

A recent conversation in a discord group reminded me of something important. If you're on the younger side (under 25 or 30) and you haven't seen all the incredible, dark and disturbing fantasy films that came out in the 1980s and late 1970s, then I would strongly encourage you to do so. There was something so dark about that genre during that time that I absolutely adore and that isn't really around in modern films for children and young adults (once they learned that it traumatized a whole generation of us).

My faves in case you need any recommendations. (Some of these are really not appropriate for children, so keep that in mind lol).

The Dark Crystal - 1982 - the Skeksis will give you nightmares. I am honestly very proud of the remake for being just as disturbing if not more so than the original.

Watership Down - 1978- NOT FOR CHILDREN - Jesus Christ why did so many of our parents show us this film at a formative age? It's all about trauma and death and displacement and there's literal blood and murder. Not a G Rated Film. Still, it's very good. Loads better than that CGI remake from a decade ago.

The Secret Of NIMH - 1982 - Incredible movie. Minor disturbing elements. Probably my favorite on the list. It's just a great adventure story with real world issues (animal experimentation, mental health problems, disabilities) and there's even a lovely romance. Highly recommend.

Legend - 1985- This film is just straight up disturbing. Yes, there's a lot of beautiful shots of unicorns and sexy, 20-something year old (insane Scientology wack job) Tom Cruise and gorgeous Mia Sara, but there's also torture, madness and literally the Devil (Tim Curry is the entire reason you should watch this film)

Labyrinth - 1986 - I only really have two words. David. Bowie. My 10 year old self found out about a lot of burgeoning kinks while watching that man prance around in eyeliner and a codpiece. It's a wonderful adventure as well - if you ignore the blatant romantic and sexual tension between Bowie and an underage Jennifer Connelly (none of us could)

The NeverEnding Story - 1984 - Lots of disturbing imagery in this one! The Nothing was fucking terrifying, and the creatures in this world seemed uniformly creepy, but still incredibly well done. Love the adventure of it.

The Princess Bride - 1987 - Not technically a kids film maybe? Lots of adult themes and adult jokes, but safe for kids imo. I adored it and still do. Incredible performances by Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin. R.O.U.S, Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! (need I say more?)

The Last Unicorn - 1982 - A beautiful film with stunning representations of innocence, good and evil. Just gorgeous really. I should rewatch it as it's been 20 years or so.

[rannulfr]

______________

Adding a couple...

LadyHawk.

A romance / Action film about a knight and a maiden who are cursed. Her to transform into a hawk during the day & him into a wolf at night. Forever keeping them apart.

DragonSlayer

A coming of age tale about a wizard apprentice who must save a village from a dragon & the sacrifice lottery the village has established around it.

(Rare example of 1980s genderfuckery)

Willow

LOTR before we ever thought a LOTR film would ever be possible. You've probably seen this one, but just in case.

The Flight of Dragons

Transplanted into the body of a dragon a scientist must come to terms with magic, even while explaining it.

Krull

Classic adventure story severely undervalued in its time.

Some of the creepiest spider stop motion to ever exist.

[brightlotusmoon]

These are all on my favorite movies list. I find myself humming the Flight Of Dragons song randomly to this day.

[slow-burn-sally]

As an autistic child with ADHD and a burgeoning case of OCPD, I was deeply upset by many moments in many of these movies (particularly The Dark Crystal and The Never Ending Story, which are dark, so you have every right to feel grossed/creeped out by those muppets. They were hella extremely creepy.

[biznagaalviento]

I will forever die on the hill that one of Florence's biggest influences and inspirations (and very rarely acknowledged because most music journalists don't see past the rigid boxes they put artists on) is Loreena Mckennitt. From the aesthetics, to the voice, the vibe, the music. They are truly mother and daughter. The arrangements of the recently released Chamber Edition of Everybody Scream just prove my point.

If you don't know Loreena check her entire discography because she is truly one of the greats, of all time.

[nightkitchentarot]

“They asked me to tell you what it was like to be twenty and pregnant in 1950 and when you tell your boyfriend you’re pregnant, he tells you about a friend of his in the army whose girl told him she was pregnant, so he got all his buddies to come and say, “We all fucked her, so who knows who the father is?” And he laughs at the good joke…. What was it like, if you were planning to go to graduate school and get a degree and earn a living so you could support yourself and do the work you loved—what it was like to be a senior at Radcliffe and pregnant and if you bore this child, this child which the law demanded you bear and would then call “unlawful,” “illegitimate,” this child whose father denied it … What was it like? […] It’s like this: if I had dropped out of college, thrown away my education, depended on my parents … if I had done all that, which is what the anti-abortion people want me to have done, I would have borne a child for them, … the authorities, the theorists, the fundamentalists; I would have born a child for them, their child. But I would not have born my own first child, or second child, or third child. My children. The life of that fetus would have prevented, would have aborted, three other fetuses … the three wanted children, the three I had with my husband—whom, if I had not aborted the unwanted one, I would never have met … I would have been an “unwed mother” of a three-year-old in California, without work, with half an education, living off her parents…. But it is the children I have to come back to, my children Elisabeth, Caroline, Theodore, my joy, my pride, my loves. If I had not broken the law and aborted that life nobody wanted, they would have been aborted by a cruel, bigoted, and senseless law. They would never have been born. This thought I cannot bear. What was it like, in the Dark Ages when abortion was a crime, for the girl whose dad couldn’t borrow cash, as my dad could? What was it like for the girl who couldn’t even tell her dad, because he would go crazy with shame and rage? Who couldn’t tell her mother? Who had to go alone to that filthy room and put herself body and soul into the hands of a professional criminal? – because that is what every doctor who did an abortion was, whether he was an extortionist or an idealist. You know what it was like for her. You know and I know; that is why we are here. We are not going back to the Dark Ages. We are not going to let anybody in this country have that kind of power over any girl or woman. There are great powers, outside the government and in it, trying to legislate the return of darkness. We are not great powers. But we are the light. Nobody can put us out. May all of you shine very bright and steady, today and always.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

[guerrillatech]

[chexala]

Happy Fuck These Guys Day to everyone, whether you celebrate or not. Go find a Native org to support.

[manbiteshog]

thanksgiving is a holiday based on a falsified narrative full of white guilt and the erasure of history so what are some good native organizations to donate to this coming thursday

[manbiteshog]

organizations recommended by @loneghostkid 

native american rights fund

heyday berkely roundhouse

news from native california magazine

national indian child welfare association

california indian legal services

the national indigenous women’s resource center

[meshkwahkihaki]

please also consider looking into funding native/tribal food sovereignty projects if you have food to donate or money to spare. friends, please add more if you know of them and have links to provide:

native american food sovereignty alliance

meskwaki food sovereignty initiative

friends of pine ridge reservation

first nations development institute

you can also buy food/gifts from indigenous sellers or donate to gofundme fundraisers made by indigenous people who need help getting groceries, paying medical bills, or paying rent. do something to help us and our communities.

[britomartis]

try water projects too, like the navajo water project: https://www.navajowaterproject.org/

Navajo Water Project

Help DigDeep bring clean, running water to hundreds of American families. Nearly 40% of Navajo don't have a tap or toilet at home. We can fi

a lot of reservations are fucked over on water by illegal oil drilling, pipelines, or other breaches, like in the navajo rez’s case: contaminated by illegal uranium mining.

[mango-habanero-autism-deactivat]

I would like to put my endorsement to the Sovereign Bodies Institute, home of the database of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. The database is trans-inclusive, the data protocols follow the desires of the families of MMIW, and this holiday season, they are collecting donations to buy gifts for the families, especially the children, of missing and murdered women. 

[qaigulik-deactivated20251021]

I’d like to add Feeding Nunavut, the cost of living in the isolated north for Inuit is up to and sometimes over 5x the prices the rest of Canada is used to.

[wiisagi-maiingan]

I think about this every year but this trend of American Christmas movies where characters act like Christmas is being forgotten/no one cares about it anymore/it's dying and needs to be saved/etc while the whole country has been flooded with Christmas since Halloween really is a perfect example of how (mainly white) American Christians always see themselves as the victims and persecuted minorities no matter what.

[wiisagi-maiingan]

"Nobody believes in Christmas anymore! We need to save it!" Okay well I've been hearing songs about Jesus in grocery stores since November 1st so forgive me for my doubt.

[newsandstuffisee]

[the-gayest-dovah]

[big-tiddy-goth-ghoulfriend]

hey so don't use this. RabbelLabs, the company actually creating this platform, trains AI models. Jack Dorsey is best friends with Elon Musk and they both advocate constantly for the abolition of IP law because it stands in the way of AI 'growth' (theft). They're banning AI on the platform so they can use it as a clean slate to train more fucking AI. They're also using images of Divine, the drag queen, to push their shit and I guarantee they didn't get permission from her estate.

The DiVine website says that it's made by Rabble.

If you go to their website you can find this:

if you click that And Other Stuff you're taken to an entirely different website that explains what all that 'other stuff' is: five pillars of building Nostr AI.

You have to wonder why they're hiding it, right? Why is it so hard to find? Why register an entirely different domain (it's andotherstuff.com, not like rabblelabs.com/andotherstuff) just to talk about the AI stuff you're doing if you're so proud of it?

Stop simping for billionaires just because they jingle keys in your face, start doing some fucking research.