Anyone want to buy yourself a little treat? I've been setting up commissions on Vgen!!
Check out Purrlstar's commissions and portfolio! | Digital furry artist | She/They | Meow ...
It's been a couple months since I got an account and I think I finally have everything set the way it needs to be, but if you're interested in a commission or want to poke around the forms I made, please do!
I'll provide a discount if anyone wants to commission me right now while I'm still getting everything ready. (I will figure out how to do this if you reach out to me via tumblr or discord or something)
The best way to determine if something needs to be changed is to put it into action, so thank you for all the support on here and no worries if money is tight right now for anyone 💕
past all arguments with gen AI 'art' being pushed as a tool to make art more accessible, as a disabled creator myself, it's important to remember that:
a service that requires the stolen art of millions of uncredited artists in order to function
demands insane amounts of water and electricity, harming the environment and poisoning local communities around their data centers
used deliberately to take away paying jobs from real human artists so cooperates can save a buck, and frankly to my belief, implanted and encouraged the infighting so they could use us as a scapegoat and get away with it
it's capitalism, it's greed and it's ableist. That's not a tool for accessibility, that's a tool for exploitation
I think CEOs are getting an unwelcome (to them) that unions and fair pay were the alternative to *gestures at things*, or being dragged out of their houses to be tarred and feathered.
Idgaf if you don't want to write essays for school. I don't care if you don't want to write corporate emails yourself. I don't care if you can't draw well, I don't care if you can't write well, I don't care if you just really really want to talk to your favorite fictional character but don't want to RP with a real person because you have social anxiety or whatever
If you're still regularly using generative ai, chatgpt or midjourney or character.ai or literally whatever the fuck, im personally blaming you when my utility prices start going up.
(I am not defending the usage of generative AI/ChatGPT/Character.ai etc etc i am very much against it - I am just curious as to the correlation between using it and utility price surge please don't come at me this is a genuine question)
ChatGPT uses so much energy that the US is literally reversing course on coal and gas usage to make up for it. In Santa Clara, for example, data centers used 60% of the ENTIRE CITY'S electricity.
ChatGPT uses 1-3 bottles of water for cooling for every query you put into it. This is FRESH WATER, which is evaporated and eventually mostly returns to the ocean, effectively removing a lot of it from our already dwindling fresh water supply on the planet. It also consumes 17 THOUSAND TIMES more electricity than the average American home.
The AI boom wastes so much electricity that we are very immediately risking US cities having to have rolling blackouts just to keep up with the energy demands, as early as NEXT YEAR
Gen AI's water usage is projected to hit 6.6 BILLION meters cubed by 2027
More AI use = more data centers = power drain on local cities = gas, electricity, and water utility prices rise because all of our resources are being funneled into a machine that makes garbage
Santae banned me without telling me why and won't unban me unless I send them my photo ID
Hey guys sorry for not posting in… forever? I just suck at social media lol. But you may have seen that I've reblogged some posts that advertise Santae in the past, but please disregard all that. I've since deleted those posts after learning how the site is managed and, after what happened to me a few days ago, I feel as though I should go public about this. Because boy did I just get fucked over.
Anyway, yeah, what it says in the title. On October 24th, around 10am EST, I was restocking my user shop when the entire webpage went white. I couldn't access the site at all and, when I tried to look for the Discord on my server list, it wasn't there. I knew what this had meant. I got banned from both the game, and the Discord - this is important to keep in mind for later.
I didn't receive any Discord DM or email notification about my ban, so after asking a mod what their support email was (and yes, I later verified that this is indeed their legitimate support email), I sent them this:
After a few hours, I get this back in response:
There's so much I'm confused about here. I think the one that screams out the most is that they're asking me to show them my photo ID so I can get unbanned. Absolutely not. I refuse to do this. This poses a massive security and privacy risk. They straight up banned my account, gave this half-baked explanation, and told me I need to send my personal information or... I stay banned?
Let me make something clear: The only personal thing they have on file about this account is the email address that I created my account with, which I've also used to contact them. My real name, date of birth, anything of that nature would not be connected because this was not asked for during account creation, therefore this wouldn't actually prove I'm the account holder. Theoretically speaking, I could show them any ID in the world and for all they know, that's my real information, because they have nothing else to go off of. They even say as much in their privacy page.
Secondly, "account has been compromised"? What does that mean? I think anyone's interpretation of this would be that my account got hacked. But if my account got hacked, why wasn't I informed of this? I had to reach out to support, they did not reach out to me first. That means my password, which I may share across other sites, would have been known to someone else and thus I should've been warned of this immediately, not roughly 5 hours after the fact.
Thirdly, what, was my Discord "compromised" too? If an automated system had flagged my account, does that system somehow interact with a Discord bot so they ban a user on both at the same time? How does that work? That makes no sense as to why they'd ban me on both the game and the Discord for something like this, which is why I'm calling bullshit.
Let me tell you what I think happened.
Recently, Santae has been in some really hot water with connections revealing their relation to an older petsite, Lurapets, which has a history of scamming and artist mistreatment, as well as proof coming out of them using AI art for their NPC art. You can find these posts on the @santae-salt blog if you want to see for yourself, but I'm also linking them throughout this post.
Once the post about them being directly related to Lurapets was released, several users that the Santae staff thought might be involved in the creation of the post got banned. As it turns out, I was banned at the same time as these users.
After speaking with the @santae-salt admin, we are both of the belief that I, a regular user, got caught up in this mess because they're assuming I'm an alt account of someone else and staff demanded to see my ID because they didn't think I was a different person. It may turn out to be wrong, and yeah that sounds a bit far-fetched, sure, but really, what else can I go off of here?? Santae staff has given me a very questionable and refutable explanation as to why I've been banned, and their radio silence after I refused to send them my ID is just making me believe they don't think I'm real. They don't want my photo ID to verify I'm the account holder, they want my photo ID to verify I'm not someone else.
This is unprecedented. I've never seen any petsite ask for a photo ID in any situation, and after asking around, not even those banned from Santae were asked for this. It's just me! This is an incredible attempted breach of privacy, and, with Santae now under doxxing allegations, I really don't feel confident they'd keep my personal information… well, personal.
I messaged back almost immediately after they responded to me where I told them I would not send my ID and I had asked if there were any other way I could verify myself to get my account unbanned. I've received no response so far, and after what I've learned, I feel like I'm not going to get one at all.
So, let this be a lesson to you: don't waste your time on Santae. You can be the most obedient player out there. You can abide by all their rules, be a nice and generous player, or just be minding your own business, but if they so much as think you're associated with someone who they think has wronged them, you'll be banned.
And they can't even be bothered to properly tell you why.
This post was submitted by Anonymous. Thank you for the fantastic information:
Hello! just wanted to send in a message regarding artist pay.
this post:
https://www.tumblr.com/santaesecrets/761713354198908928/user-banned-after-acquiring-updated-artist-rates?source=share
not sure why Sky left out the entire price range? she could just have been referring to the price of Items alone (minimals, food, books, items like that).
I'll start with this: Discussion of Wages is a Federally Protected right in the United States, where CJ and Santae Entertainment LLC is based, please look at this link here for your rights regarding Wage Discussion. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/your-rights-to-discuss-wages
Now that that's out of the way: That doesn't encompass the entire range of Artist pay.
Naturally, for starters, the price of items is not the price of NPC's, Pets, Graphic Art (avatars, icons, site header, etc), Map/Scenery Art.
but, most notable of all. It doesn't include the Human Avatar art (the clothing, companions and such drawn on the Human Avatars directly, this does not include the Item Art of the Human Avatar Items).
Items:
Regular Items are 6 USD flat.
There is no price range on visual complexity.
Animated Items are 8 USD
Basic Recolors (so, just using the fill tool to color layers that already exist, very easy) are 0.50 USD each
Complex Recolors (adding new information to an existing item) are 2 USD
NPC art is 30 USD
New Pet art is 30 USD
Existing Pet Revamps (redrawing an old pet) is 20 USD
Pet Basic Recolor is 2 USD
"Elaborate Recolor(line edits)" is 3 to 5 USD
Animated Forum Avatars - 4 USD
Pixel Icons - 3 USD
Animated Pixel Icon - 5 USD
Pixel Icon Recolor - 0.50 USD
Site Header - 6 USD
Regular Site Banner/Graphic - 4 USD
Animated Site Banner/Graphic - 6 USD
Site Banner Recolor - 1 USD
Social Media Graphic - 5 to 10 USD
UI Page Design - 8 USD
And, finally. Human Avatar Art (this is the art drawn directly on the human avatars), I'll type this out for those using a screenreader, but i did include the image we artists are given to reference, with some blurs and mosaic to the depicted items for NDA reasons:
Small Accessories (earrings/necklace), and Eyes: 2 to 4 USD
Facial Features: 1 to 2 USD
Hair: 5 to 8 USD
Belts and Sashes, Shoes, Gauntlets, Leggings, Pants, Shorts, Small Wings, Small Head Wearables, Hair Accessories: 4 to 6 USD Shirts: 4 to 8 USD
Large Acessories, Cloaks, Robes, Dresses: 6 to 8 USD
Skins, and Large Wings: 8 to 12 USD
Large Head Wearables: 8 to 10 USD
Special Clothing and Armor: 12 to 15 USD
Backgrounds: 30 USD
Foreground: 6 to 8 USD
Please keep in mind, the earlier mention of Animated items includes, hand drawn, frame by frame animation.
And, every single step of the process gets sent in for approval. Your sketch, your Lines, Color, and Shading
If Artists were able to finish these items in less than an hour, the pricing still wouldn't be great, the Pet Site Community as a whole undervalues art. But, each item will take at least 1 day, if not longer to finish, requested to be drawn in batches of 5. Typically, you may see an artist finish 5 items a Week.
If an Artist was to draw 5 shirts for the site, they will get, not including the Item Art, 20 dollars. As there has been times where the artist who draws the clothing on the Human Avatar doesn't end up drawing the Item.
Please bear this in mind when you think about those 150 to 500 dollar price tags on the Kickstarter for designing items. 150 dollars for Hair, when the artist will get 5. 200 dollars for a single clothing item, when the range the artist will receive will be 2 to 8 USD.
I emplore the staff to make the pay of all staff members 100 per cent transparent to the users, including Artist pay, Admin, Programmer, Mods, and etc. Real life money or SanCash.
Y'all I know that when so-called AI generates ridiculous results it's hilarious and I find it as funny as the next guy but I NEED y'all to remember that every single time an AI answer is generated it uses 5x as much energy as a conventional websearch and burns through 10 ml of water. FOR EVERY ANSWER. Each big llm is equal to 300,000 kiligrams of carbon dioxide emissions.
LLMs are killing the environment, and when we generate answers for the lolz we're still contributing to it.
Stop using it. Stop using it for a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. We need to kill it.
Sources:
Artificial intelligence promises revolutionary solutions to global challenges, but the water costs to produce and power AI hardware and infr
The part that artificial intelligence plays in climate change has come under scrutiny, including from tech workers themselves who joined the
First-of-its-kind US bill would address the environmental costs of the technology, but there’s a long way to go.
My partner and I cancelled our Adobe accounts today because of this. Imagine if makers of physical art media had the right to pilfer your sketchbooks because you used their pencils and paints. That’s basically what Adobe is trying to foist on everyone.
Happy Pride Month everyone! Remember 4 months ago when the CEO of this platform harassed and chased a trans woman off this website just for posting her transition timeline, then chased her to other social media platforms to continue harassing her, and threatened to call the FBI if she continued disputing the multiple dubious terminations of her blogs that did not violate tumblr's terms of service in any way? And despite tumblr staff insisting that the CEO was acting against their interests, the broad transmisogyny evident in the site's culture and moderation policy has still not been adequately addressed?
Remember that staff is continuing to nuke the blogs of trans women even after all of this. Remember this post when they call this site the queerest place on the internet again this month
btw! I was made aware that many people don't know that we're boycotting Eurovision this year, so.
we are boycotting Eurovision, as per BDS guidelines.
don't watch the stream, don't engage with the videos, don't post it about it on social media using hashtags that are going to trend. whatever you're getting from the show isn't worth it
JK Rowling has used her billionaire legal team to silence a Jewish woman for telling the truth about her contempt for trans victims of the Holocaust.
Scotland’s network of “freedom of speech” organisations, as per usual, have nothing to say about the use of wealth to gag critics of the wealthy.
However fast they race to condemn the LGBT+ community for saying the names of those who harm us. Statements at the ready to insist that transphobes no one wants to work with anymore must be given every possible opportunity to gain from their bigotry.
But it's not the billionaires who are being silenced, as our media breathlessly echo their every hateful proclamation.
It's journalists and activists forced to publicly humiliate themselves under the weight and the threat of billionaire legal teams or be driven into destitution.
We deserve better. Freedom of speech needs to mean something
This will swiftly become one of the primary things JK Rowling is remembered for. Trying to erase crimes of the Holocaust against trans people and then silencing Jewish journalists for calling her out.
For the record, this comes as a response to multiple sweedish artists cancelling their appearances at this year's ESC due to their support of Israel btw
These are the planned acts that cancelled on them so far, its a developing story
It has been announced officially that israel will be participating despite the many calls and petitions against it due to the genocide of the Palestinians that they are conducting.
Russia was banned because of the war with Ukraine, why not israel?
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