O thou of eyes that have the colour of smoke, I bow to thee.

Your (un)Friendly Neighborhood Maenad. Double Blooded. Knock off Pythia, Apsu dweller, Durga's secretary, in serious need of a Soma dealer. Siduri's apprentice alewife wannabe. Down to earth, or rather underground, practically chthonic. Fera Com Hera. 𝔖𝔥𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔫𝔬 𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔱𝔥𝔩𝔶 𝔐𝔞𝔫 𝔫𝔬𝔯 𝔚𝔬𝔪𝔞𝔫 𝔪𝔞𝔶 𝔢𝔪𝔟𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔢, 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔶𝔢𝔱 𝔦𝔰 𝔚𝔥𝔬𝔯𝔢 𝔱𝔬 𝔄𝔏𝔏

[sorrrowfull]

[dushku]

HALLOWEEN MARATHON 2024 ↳ day 23 🎃 THE LOST BOYS (1987) | dir. joel schumacher

[creature-wizard]

So, you know how certain Christian missionaries are trained to act in a very obnoxious way, so that most people they preach to will reject them outright, so they feel like the world hates them for being Christian and they can only be friends with fellow Christians? You know that thing?

I think as activists, we sometimes need to stop and ask ourselves whether we're acting like those missionaries. I think this type of behavior is a little more ingrained into our society than some of us realize, and some of us have internalized it without realizing what it's actually meant to do.

[comedownstairsandsayhello]

"There's a kind of activism that's more about bolstering identity than achieving results, one that sometimes seems to make the left the true heirs of the Puritans. Puritanical in that the point becomes the demonstration of one's own virtue rather than the realization of results. And puritanical because the somber pleasure of condemning things is the most enduring part of that legacy, along with the sense of personal superiority that comes from pleasure denied. The bleakness of the world is required as contrasting backdrop to the drama of their rising above."

– Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

[vurtual]

Matsuda-machi, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

(by Shinichiro Saka)

[koredzas]

Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Dulle Griet. Detail. 1561

[entrancefree]

Reinhard Gorner - Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

[laveneredissepolta]

Scott Radke - Hands

[thevulturesquadron]

text: [ “Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing for 5000 years.” ]

[rudjedet]

And they're absolutely specifically pushing it, make no mistake. It's not just a matter of "it's there, it's convenient, so people are going to take the path of the least resistance", it is a legitimate and concerted effort on the part of these companies to get people to outsource all these things to their models.

They're preying on insecurities to do it. Yes, you can write an essay - but can you write a good essay, they ask you. Do you not want to improve your output? Do you not want people to think of you as competent and very clever? Why go through the mortifying process of failing and failing and failing until you succeed if you can just skip the "learning" part of doing, and simply generate a ready-made product?

I'm preaching to the choir here obviously but it's a concerning thing to witness nonetheless. My kid is 6 next week and I've been teaching her that failing at things is morally neutral and in fact necessary even before the advent of AI, but it's becoming ever more important that we teach the kids that criticism and failure and discomfort aren't necessarily bad things, but just a part of the growth process.

AI companies are heavily invested in making themselves relevant. They want people to believe they can't do the things they have done unaided before and to make them become reliant on the AI models, so the AI models' existence is artificially justified.

[heylsgowt]

[charnel-grounds]

The Mask | 1961 | dir. Julian Roffman

[389]

Ange de Carbone by Cahetel Rosier

[vohugaona]

In the last couple years I ask myself more and more often not only why did I blindly move to Austria of all places, but also why did I stay, why am I still here?!?!

[memories-of-ancients]

German black and white breastplate, possibly from Wurttemburg, circa 1580.

from The Worcester Art Museum

[medievalengravings]

The Hell, Hortus Deliciarum Herrad von Landsberg, 1180

[segamascott]

[myglyptothek]

Portrait of a roman, perhaps Sextus Pompeius. 30s BC. Bronze. State Hermitage Museum, Saint-Petersbourg. Inv. B 2047

myglyptothek: Faces of ancient Rome

[vohugaona]