Kezrek's Space Cafe

This is the Veil Nebula, which Hubble saw on July 1, 2020.

Have you ever looked up what our Hubble Space Telescope saw on your birthday? (Or your anniversary, or your pet's adoption day, or...)

We've given our popular interactive page a new look — and, just as importantly, it now shows you five different cosmic sights Hubble was checking out on the day that you picked.

1. For me, AI use causes compulsive behaviour patterns. All is permitted, but not all is beneficial - I will not be mastered by anything.

2. Many people who use AI compulsively have resulting depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges.

3. AI kills creativity, something that is so precious to me, which I would not trade for anything.

4. AI takes beautiful things and twists them into meaningless, mediocre parodies of themselves.

5. At present, all gen AI is theft.

6. AI is stealing my friends’ jobs. I know people whose jobs were replaced with AI, and have suffered all the worst of unemployment.

7. AI data centres destroy the environment.

8. Data centres destroy quality of life for people who live in the area.

9. People with terrible agendas are pushing AI and will be using it for evil.

10. The use of AI completely disregards laws intended to protect intellectual property rights and human rights, tearing down safeguards we have in place to protect our good. Using AI supports tearing those safeguards down.

11. AI addiction steals all one’s time.

12. AI isolates us from community.

13. AI narrows our lens and turns life into an echo chamber.

14. AI can appear objective, but in fact it reflects the biases of those who created it, of corporations, and of people who are extremely online.

15. AI gets basic facts wrong - but in a convincing tone.

16. AI use leaves me feeling hollow after using it - there is no joy in it - only momentary stimulation.

17. AI use contributes to overall screen addiction.

18. AI use can create or strengthen delusions.

19. AI is just a pattern prediction machine. It doesn’t have ideas or answers - it only imitates what an idea it answers could sound like.

20. I can’t in good conscience use anything the AI makes - nor in practicality! The thing it stole might well be from something famous, and it will be obvious to everyone familiar.

21. Everything AI turns out is very obviously AI, and many people hate it when they see it.

22. Using AI contributes to forming a world where it will become increasingly difficult to tell truth from misinformation, or to find good sources.

23. Using AI creates a world where I can’t just enjoy that photo, because I don’t know if it’s fabricated or not.

24. This AI world isn’t what I want my niece and nephew to have to navigate.

25. I don’t want to break my principles, or to use something that has such allure for getting me to break my principles.

All of the projects are finally getting released and I'm so happy to share all the fun work I've been nibbling at in not so distant past!

Here's the first bundle of the illustrations I made for traditionally published version of 'Of Blood and Fire' by Ryan Cahill! The Bound and The Broken has been a series that has been very close ever since I first read it and it's so fun to be able to illustrate the characters for Ryan! This is part one with Valerys being a tiny savage baby ✨ No rabbit leg can feel safe. Babies can be such messy eaters.

Check it out at afroindex.org! 💛✨

If you spot anything missing or incorrect (styles, images, names, etc.), pls drop it here: https://afroindex.carrd.co

Also, thank you everyone who has provided feedback and style suggestions! I will be implementing them over the coming weeks. Thank you! 🤗💛✨

The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya Volume 1 rerun Book Two Update 3 of ??? (READ the Latest Update, starting from this page)

The very-utterly-hopelessly-lost Zeynel encounters a helpless stranger in the middle of nowhere. Zeynel momentarily struggles between his innate desire to help and his wariness of danger, but he helps anyway. The stranger awakes, and they have a conversation about names, being lost and carpets.

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This section probably has the most revamped dialogue in the entire 10th Anniversary remastering, much of it in the "Mora talks about Balkan rugs" sequence (the last double spread in this post). The base of it is still there, but the framing is now more a patriotic ode of the Balkans (or more specifically in Mora’s case, Romans) in the face of their conquerers, the Ottomans – introducing the theme of colonialism (as told in the pattern-making via the weavers and the transportation of carpets as part of international trade) and the nightingale as yearning for home. These are themes that will become more salient in Volume Two, but which I didn't realise yet the first time I wrote that sequence.

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Grace going “oh!! But!” and teaching them about starfish, to their absolute delight