The Personal Stuff

I pulled this data for a different post, but I think it might also be useful on its own.

Do you know how much money it takes to host images, as opposed to text? Well, you've probably heard the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words", right?

Depending on size and resolution, hosting a picture can cost a hell of a lot more than hosting a thousand words. Even a hundred thousand words.

For example, a 15k fic I downloaded as an an ePub from AO3 is around 44 KB. A 692x368 pixel gif I just downloaded that loops in a handful of seconds is 4 MB, almost 100 times that size. And that's for a few seconds that takes up maybe the area of your phone screen!

Data is expensive, and that's why Tumblr keeps trying to make money: Because Tumblr's image and gif and audio hosting is effectively a money pit. It's why AO3 still doesn't host images, even with how much money they raise every year. It's why Dreamwidth doesn't allow hotlinking image to other sites, and why, even though it used to, Discord shut that down.

The core of Livejournal expression was the userpic - a 100x100 pixel square, not allowed to be bigger than 40kb. (They're now allowed to be 100kb at LJ.)

This is 33kb, a bit less than the limit. Tiny image. Not much compared to modern gifsets.

You can put over 9000 words of text in the same amount of disc space.

That gif is worth 9000 words. A 40kb image would allow for over 10k words.

So much of the modern internet - the social media craze - is founded on free image uploading. Before Tumblr, before Twitter allowed images, before every social site allowed image hosting - it was a huge hassle to find a place that let you upload images for less than $5 a month.

LJ had free icons, just a handful for free accounts. More for paid accounts, but... you could always make new free accounts. And there were people who chopped their artwork into 100x100 pixel squares and uploaded them as userpics and used that as their image hosting.

AO3 would like to host images. But

Image hosting is expensive, and

Image hosting comes with legal hassles that text hosting doesn't.

In the US, there are no laws about what kinds of text you can share with minors. An 8-year-old can go to the library and read 50 Shades of Grey. But there are laws about what kinds of pictures you can share with minors - so if AO3 hosted images, they'd have to start paying attention to people's ages. Right now, they have a disclaimer: Don't Look If This Is Bad For You, including if it's illegal for you. But they're not required to restrict mature text from young readers; they're just being polite.

(Note: Australia and probably some other places have laws about what kinds of text minors can see. But AO3 is not hosted in Australia.)

If AO3 hosted images, they'd have to find more solid ways to restrict them. And they'd have to deal with increased hosting & access costs. There may be ways to do this, but they're not simple and easy to implement, especially for a site dedicated to user privacy.

Any site you see that has free, unlimited image hosting - it desperately needs to make enough money to cover that, and all the social sites are constantly trying to find new ways to make someone pay for all those pictures and soundbits and videos. Subscriptions, advertising, blockchain wtfery, API costs... anything.

Any time you see a site with "free" picture hosting, ask yourself who's paying for it. Ask what they're getting for their money.

On the one hand: Disc space is a hell of a lot cheaper than it was 20 years ago. And the internet is faster. Image hosting costs less now than it did in the Livejournal era.

On the other: Images are often bigger now. And people expect free unlimited image hosting.

Text hosting is so very, very cheap by comparison.

I mean, the prospect of a cool beverage is -

"... Thinking in terms of male and female, which of the two Cinzano ice cubes would be female? ... Now ask, what is going on between this female and male set of ice cubes?"

?????????

"... much credit must be given to the American advertising industry for its success in creating a sexual affair between two pieces of ice as a subliminal device with which to merchandise a liqueur."

This is the Sprite ad:

Do you see the subliminal seduction? Do you see it?

Relax again and look deeply into the almost hypnotic organization of bubbles surrounding the lime slice. Something rather strange is going on in the bubbles. The ear, an orifice of the human body, suggests that the effervescence rising from the glass may have aphrodisiac qualities, at least at the symbolic level, especially with the two-balled earring with one ball hanging lower than the other. Something highly symbolic is, indeed, going on in the bubbles above the lime slice. Before reading further, try to psych out the ice cubes in the glass. What is Sprite trying to tell you? The right side of the ice cube above the lime slice forms the back of an animal—a large shaggy dog with a pointed nose, or quite possibly a polar bear. The animal’s legs are extended outward to the left, parallel with the top of the lime. The animal’s arms (or legs, as you will) appear to be holding another figure which is human with long, feminine hair. Her face is located just above the animal’s head. The two figures, animal and human, are in what can only be described as a sexual intercourse position. The polar bear, dog, or whatever, is in sexual embrace with a nude woman.

“A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth.”

“An artist painting a picture should have at his side a man with a club to hit him over the head when the picture is finished.”

“Mine is the horny hand of toil.”

Really Big Coin Skrekkøgle

This is our Really Big Coin. It is big because it makes other things look small when photographed next to it. Actually, it is a 20:1 replica of the EUR 50-cent, you see it being milled out here. We needed to do quite a bit of sanding, lacquering and smudging to obtain the desired look and some climbing to get into required shooting position (you need to get up real high to take good pictures). The result is a short series of photographs, attempting to visually scale down real-sized objects.

the reviews are in... glad everyone's enjoying song of the worm

Cook, Eliza (1818 - 1889)