when the music's ended... @whenthemusicsended - Tumblr Blog

What is he doing up there

Everything feels awful right now but it isn't really. We still don't officially have a winner, but regardless of how the presidential election ends up, I wanted to take a minute and find what lights I can in the 3 a.m. darkness. Here's what I know:

* Kentucky overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to undermine the public education system by offering private school vouchers:

Amendment 2 to allow public funds to go to private and charter school education was rejected universally in Kentucky counties when the Assoc

* Delaware has elected a transgender woman to the House of Representatives, the first out trans person of any gender ever elected to congress:

McBride wins Delaware’s at-large House seat against Republican candidate John Whalen III, a former state police officer

* For the first time in history, two Black women will be serving in the senate at the same time, and they are only the fourth and fifth Black women ever elected to the senate:

Democrats Lisa Blunt Rochester from Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland both saw victories

* New York State has passed a constitutional amendment enshrining the rights of pregnant people (including the right to an abortion), LGBTQIA+ people, the disabled, immigrants regardless of legal status, and other at-risk groups:

The constitutional amendment faced a tougher-than-expected fight after a right-wing campaign against anti-discrimination protections.

* Democrat Josh Stein has beaten self-avowed Nazi Mark Robinson to become governor of North Carolina:

Stein is the current attorney general and he noted his work winning opioid settlements. But it was controversy over Robinson’s inflammatory

That's everything I know off the top of my head. It's not many bright spots, but it's not zero. I'm going to try to find more and I'll add them to the post. It's the only thing I can think of to do that isn't sobbing and throwing up or looking up Canadian immigration rules.

If you know more good news, I encourage you to add it in reblogs.

unforth

* Nevada has amended their constitution to guarantee abortion rights, overturning a state ban:

Get live results and maps from the 2024 Nevada general election.

* Colorado has passed amendment 79, guaranteeing the right to an abortion, with more than a 20 point spread between the Yes and No vote:

This means that now, the right to an abortion is codified into the state constitution and a future state legislature cannot restrict it.

* Maryland Question 1, also focused on reproductive rights and abortion, has passed as well: https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/results/maryland/issue-1

Question 1 on the Maryland ballot offers voters the choice to enshrine reproductive rights in the state’s constitution. View the 2024 ballot

* Likewise, Amendment 3 has passed in Missouri, overturning a near-total ban to add reproductive rights to the state constitution:

Missourians voted to enshrine reproductive health rights into the state’s constitution Tuesday by voting yes on Amendment 3.

* Arizona Proposition 139 to protect abortion rights also passed:

Get live results and maps from the 2024 Arizona general election.

Every glimmer helps.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

unforth

* New Jersey has elected the first Korean-American senator in history:

Democratic U.S. Rep. Andy Kim was elected Tuesday to the U.S. Senate, defeating Republican businessman Curtis Bashaw for the seat that opene

wrenism

IMPORTANT INFORMATION TO HAVE IF YOU PLAN ON VOTING IN THE US ELECTION (November 5th, 2024):

IF you don’t have a way to get to your polling place both Uber and Lyft are offering 50% off of trips to your polling place! For Lyft you can use their code VOTE24 and on uber there will be a space on the app that says “Go Vote!” that will show you all the available promotions you can use to get to your polling place.

if you don’t know what your polling place is you can go to vote.org/polling-place-locator and check the voter registration logs in your state OR you can google “polling place locator” and there should be a widget that will show you where to go if you enter in your address (NOTE: ENTER YOUR PERMANENT ADDRESS, I.E the address on your drivers license or the address that you put down when you registered to vote)

If English is not your first language or primary language, you can ask for a translator to assist you or you can ask one of the workers at your polling place if they have non-English language ballots (this is only available in some states and counties but it is a good idea to ask regardless)

IF YOU LIVE IN ANY OF THE FOLLOWING STATES, YOU MUST HAVE A PHYSICAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED I.D TO VOTE:

Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming

USE THIS SITE TO FIND OUT IF YOUR STATE HAS SAME DAY VOTER REGISTRATION -> https://www.rockthevote.org/how-to-vote/same-day-voter-registration/

USE THIS SITE TO FIND OUT IF YOUR STATE REQUIRES YOUR EMPLOYER TO GIVE YOU TIME OFF TO VOTES -> https://ballotpedia.org/Time_off_work_for_voting

UNDER THE READ MORE I HAVE LINKS TO VOTER GUIDES FOR EVERY STATE + WASHINGTON D.C. THAT HAVE INFORMATION ON THE POSITIONS OF EACH CANDIDATE AND SUMMARIES OF BALLOT MEASURES YOU WILL BE VOTING FOR/AGAINST - YOU ARE ALLOWED TO BRING YOUR PHONE INTO THE BOOTH SO USE THESE AS A GUIDE!

#us politics

meganwhalenturner

Yes, if you are in line before the polls close, you have a legal right to vote.

meganwhalenturner

I stood in line for 2 hours to vote today. I hadn't stood in line for 2 minutes before this election. There's a huge turnout and our usual polling place is closed for renovations. It's no one's fault, but people who go to vote after work are still going to be in line at closing time. Please spread the word that anyone who is in line when the polls close has a right to vote.

eliseliedl

Cows having fun 🐮🍂

#fields of mistria

eurodynamic

DOZY & HENRIETTA + favorite gifts 🪵🌽🩷 Fields of Mistria (2024 - Early Access) dev. NPC Studio

#fields of mistria

louistonehill

A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways.

The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission. Using it to “poison” this training data could damage future iterations of image-generating AI models, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, by rendering some of their outputs useless—dogs become cats, cars become cows, and so forth. MIT Technology Review got an exclusive preview of the research, which has been submitted for peer review at computer security conference Usenix.

AI companies such as OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Stability AI are facing a slew of lawsuits from artists who claim that their copyrighted material and personal information was scraped without consent or compensation. Ben Zhao, a professor at the University of Chicago, who led the team that created Nightshade, says the hope is that it will help tip the power balance back from AI companies towards artists, by creating a powerful deterrent against disrespecting artists’ copyright and intellectual property. Meta, Google, Stability AI, and OpenAI did not respond to MIT Technology Review’s request for comment on how they might respond.

Zhao’s team also developed Glaze, a tool that allows artists to “mask” their own personal style to prevent it from being scraped by AI companies. It works in a similar way to Nightshade: by changing the pixels of images in subtle ways that are invisible to the human eye but manipulate machine-learning models to interpret the image as something different from what it actually shows.

Continue reading article here

#ai #art theft #resources #reference