Pluto

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Article 6 - Genocide

Genocide

For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

THE SINGLE GREATEST NEWS ARTICLE OF 2023!

funny hat seal and article link under the cut

and here it is afterwards:

Another before and after example:

[ID: A tweet by Nebula @/WatchNebula. It reads "Congratulations to @/jetlagthegame on hitting 1,000,000 hours streamed on Nebula ✈️🎉" with the photo from streamys where the lads are posing against a dark background. The alt text reads "three professional athletes wearing impressive outfits".

Stonehenge

Is right next to a busy road

The Pyramids of Giza

Are at the outskirts of Cairo

Niagara Falls

Are part of the town of the same name

And Agrippa’s Pantheon

Is crammed inside downtown Rome

Fits in a small spot between abig road and dense neighbourhood

Rich is 'arrived by way of their private jet', is 'dropped $500k on a submarine ticket', is '$500 is a rounding error'.

'$500 dollars for a nine day event they must all be rich white people' no you reactionary rotten potato that is actually an entirely reasonable price for an entirely normal person to pay for an annual event! $500 over the course of a year is approximately equivalent to one big takeout a month! Being able to afford that doesn't make you rich it makes you probably not poor! The 'rich or poor' narrative is a false dichotomy that completely excludes the fact that 'richness' or 'poorness' is a SCALE! It's not fucking categorical! You don't one day magically flip a switch and go from 'poor' to 'rich' or vice versa you see incremental changes over time! Wealth distribution is a (these days, admittedly, rather wonky) motherfucking BELL CURVE! . The fact that capitalism is driving more and more people to either extreme of said curve is just evidence of a broken system, but it doesn't change the fact that most people should have a decent amount of disposable income!

The fact that many people don't have said disposable income doesn't magically make the ones that do 'rich' it makes everyone else poor. And the people at fault for the massive and growing percentage of people living below the poverty line are not the ones managing to stay above it, it's the fault of the actually rich, the ones stealing our time and our health and our wages and our future in pursuit of a number on a screen. And the rich are the only people you're helping by hating the people struggling slightly less than you.

Not to be an extra downer, but OP is entirely correct and moreover, when you notice people from former communist bloc countries or for that matter from currently communist countries or those of us with more knowledge-base than a poorly educated squirrel violently recoil from your "eat the rich" rhetoric?

It's because this isn't hypothetical to them. It happened. It is literally what fucking happened.

This is not an obscure risk. This is historically what has happened. And as with most things, the second that you add any other kind of axis of Otherness (the Black doctor; the queer dentist; the GNC librarian; the Jewish architect), the usual thing happens and the targeting becomes disproportionate.

Again. This is not hypothetical. This is literally history. Literally. The real meaning of "literally" in the case of some of those links. (Yes, every one of the wiki links above has hefty sources in the claims that you can follow back to the primary sources of the survivors and subsequent researchers.) This is "dekulakization", aka "we will distract everyone from our own failures by targeting farmers who have slightly more comfortable lives than the other farmers and convincing everyone they are the problem" aka "one of the many USSR atrocities committed significantly on Ukraine."

This is "round up all the PhDs and ship them to farm-labour concentration camps in the country because they are Enemies of the Revolution". And even in the cases where the "actually rich" do die (instead of escaping and disappearing into comfort), shockingly it seems a new hyper-unequal elite arise, as untouchable and disproportionately powerful as the old "rich" were, because the second poster is also right and there have been times when that group became the dominant one and swept everyone in its wake and we have the fucking body counts.

And finally: while yes, the fee is in fact a barrier for many, if you think there are no poor people at Burning Man you have in fact not met that many Burners. Of the ones I know, that 500$ fee is often the largest chunk of money they have in their hands in the year, and two of them go based on crowdfunded "sponsorships" because Burning Man is their psychological home and they do better going, and their friends and acquaintances care.

The cost as barrier of entry is an active and continual conversation in the community as I understand it (one of many, many active and continual fights conversations) because it's a pretty damn large group of people whose only uniting feature is "they go to Burning Man". Some of them are insufferable smug comfortably-off twats playing at Primitive Artist; some of them are quite unnerving individuals whose touch with reality one often worries about; many are marginal artists whose only privilege is a sufficiently unstable life that they can uproot and head to the desert for the duration on the regular because it's not like they could afford to keep that apartment at home anyway; and then many are just . . . ordinary people who like that kind of thing.

I am also a scientist who eyes the "eat the rich!!!" stuff and the related "scientists don't CARE about REAL people like ME, or CONSIDER the experiences of REAL people like ME, a QUEER/WOMAN/DISABLED PERSON/BIPOC/insert-group-here" anti-establishment vein that is quite popular on tumblr and flinches just a little.... because, yeah, what you're saying right there, Feather. Like, I'm over here working to stay in this fucky system because I want to use its power to shape it to work alongside known structural issues: I'm just one little fat queer autistic, me, but I spend a lot of time talking about how to make fields sit down and pay attention to viewpoints that don't always get the most airtime. and the thing is, I am not remotely alone: I work alongside whole networks of people who want to build a better world this way and are willing to sacrifice quite a lot, personally, to do it.

and that gets totally elided in these kneejerk desires for blood and vengeance, when we assume that "the rich" are the people in the neighborhood next door with a little more stability than we have, rather than the very few extremely wealthy people who... yeah, could buy Burning Man outright if they wanted. That's not say we shouldn't be angry and that this anger and desire for someone to pay isn't potentially productive, but you know the saying: friendly fire isn't [friendly]. It is critically important when we are stoking anger to be careful about exactly where that anger goes so that we can minimize spillover.

And I wonder: where do we draw the line on bloodshed? If you murder a king, the people who loved that king and what he represents turn him into a martyr and a hero. If you murder one of these wealthy oligarchs, some fraction of their people--their children, grandchildren, extended family, people who they've employed for years, people who imagine they could be that wealthy--those people will set their hands against you in their own vengeance. Should they be marched to the guillotine blades?

If you instead make them fear you so badly that they dare not lift a hand in response to their hearts filled with hatred and sorrow, does that build a better world? What stories will their children and yours hear about your terrible power? How tightly would you ferret out the secret, poisoned terror and grief and rage among the hearts of your people?

Wind time back. Return to the present. Consider: what if we fantasized not about murder, but seizure of property and redistribution? What if we simply think "we need to pick up these motherfuckers, shake out their vast heaps of wealth, and distribute it fairly so that everyone including those fuckers can access comfort and safety?"

Do their retainers harbor the same hatred for you? Oh, the money is gone, but everyone shares in the same comfort, even the screaming billionaire. (Vast wealth rots your brain: the billionaires are probably even more upset than they'd be in the timeline of the guillotines, and they are certainly around to enjoy their new humble circumstances, but when they are objectly also provided the freedom and enough resources to maintain the same comfortable lives as everyone else, it's hard for their families to be too resentful--especially when the children ask what happened, when those children are next born.)

I would also note that absolutely none of the hand wringing above means a damn in the face of gen Z -- baby boom part 2: electric Boogaloo. Now with extra anger issues and double the trauma.

as if saying something before we get to the roving murder mob isn't effective?

Musk bought Twitter because he fucked around and found out. He wanted to fuck with Twitter's stock price by feigning interest in buying it. Since that's illegal, he was then cornered into actually buying it for an insanely inflated price.

Let's say you owe a private hospital ten thousand dollars, but you have very few assets, so they're pretty sure they're never getting any of that back. There's ninety nine other people who also each owe the hospital ten thousand dollars. (It doesn't have to be a hospital; any debt can be sold this way.) The hospital has shit to do and the low chances of you paying them mean it's an unnecessary drain on their time and resources to hound you all for it. But they can get *some* money, by selling your debt to a third party.

Let's say the sell each ten thousand dollar debt for ten dollars (I'm making all these numbers up for simplicity). So a third party gives the hospital one thousand dollars, and now all hundred of you owe that third party ten thousand instead! You're in the clear with the hospital, you owe it to these guys now! And their job is to hound and harrass you for the money you owe. If one of you pays up more than a thousand dollars, you've covered their initial investment. These guys are gambling on the likelihood that enough of you can pay your debts that you make it worth the time they spend tracking you and harrassing you.

Or, instead of trying to get the money out of you, they can just... decide you don't owe them. Why not? They own the debt. They can fork out a thousand bucks, buy a million in debt, and forgive it. That's what these guys did. (This is also a favourite move of John Oliver; if you ever see headlines about John Oliver forgiving debt, this is what he's doing). A small payment can take a massive weight off the shoulders of a lot of struggling people.

So, recently and not unexpectedly, I've seen a major uptick in AI generated images showing up in my searches for fashion photos, specifically. I've seen people make posts like this for specific art styles, and for 2D art in general, but I wanted to share some observations I made regarding clothing, fashion, and runways specifically. I've seen a lot of people getting fooled by these, but it seems like for every one person thinking it's real there's about three people informing them that it's AI, fortunately. I'll admit, a lot of them look somewhat believable at first, but once you look closer it becomes apparent that they're off somehow.

To clarify: this is about common inconsistencies I've personally noticed in AI fashion images, so that you can learn where to look for these and similar inconsistencies and avoid sharing AI content by accident.

There's this one "collection" specifically that seems to come up a lot:

There's more images like this and yes, despite the "houseofai" watermark I still see people asking who the designer is, or saying that they genuinely thought it was real at first. First and foremost: these are all clearly meant to be from the same runway show, right? Then why does each image look like it was taken on a different runway? The lighting and coloring are different in each one, and the middle one has vague red stairs in the background while the other two look like just a plain light-colored runway. This is something you'll obviously only be able to notice in groups of images and not singular ones, but it's a pretty dead giveaway if you see it.

Secondly: AI generated images, as a whole, tend to have this specific kind of super dramatic lighting with very bright, white lights and soft grey shadows. I'm not very knowledgeable about photography, so I can't explain it exactly, but I know it when I see it (and if someone reading this can properly explain it , please do.)

Thirdly: AI generated fashion tends to attempt perfect symmetry, but always fails somehow.

As for the actual outfits: the best that I can describe it is that a lot of the shapes and patterns just don't look like intentional human choices.

What in the hell is that monogram on the upper right supposed to be? It's clearly mimicking a logo of some kind, but it's messy and indecipherable, not actual branding.

The heart motif is clearly the running theme here, but the hearts don't really make sense. Like the main one in two halves across the chest here: why does it have those two notches missing at the bottom that prevent it from coming to a point at the bottom like a heart is supposed to?

The bottom hem is way longer on the left than on the right.

The little shoulder hearts are like, bleeding into the shoulder seams; those lines in the hair look like they're supposed to be headbands, but they disappear at the part with the rest of the hair; the embroidery on the pants isn't in a clear or intentional pattern.

Again, compare the lighting on this one's neck with the lighting on the last one's neck, totally different.

Those pink things on the chest look like they're trying to be hearts, but they're so clearly not actually hearts. If your collection is heart themed, why aren't you using actual hearts?

The quilting effect is uneven and the individual lines don't follow through and finish in the places they should. Look at the upper right sleeve, where the diamonds are misshapen and the diagonal lines are clearly disconnected. On the lower right chest, the lines just disappear. This can't actually with quilted garments IRL because the top layer is literally stitched to the bottom one along those lines with material in between. It can't fuck up like that, especially not a designer garment that costs your monthly rent.

Smooth zipper. Zippers seem to be a common fuck up.

You can't read the text on the hearts. It's nonsense. Nonsense, unreadable text and fucked up hands are the absolutely surefire ways to identify AI art like this. Conveniently, there are no hands in these photos.

What are those embossed shapes on the sleeves? They're not identifiable as anything in particular.

That is not how zippers work.

I suppose that weird folding beneath the hearts is something technically physically possible. But it's much, much more likely that they would create smoother, less ugly seams with less excess fabric.

These generative AI programs don't actually comprehend what they're trying to depict. Thus, they make mistakes like these. Physical inconsistencies that are often totally impossible, but even the possible things are just... stupid choices that an actual designer isn't going to do. Yeah, sure, designs can be weird, asymmetrical, and imperfect on purpose. But it's way, way more likely that this is just an AI.

Experiment: look at these two images of retro-futuristic headpieces/eyewear and determine whether they're real or AI.

Right one is easy, mostly because of the wonky bitch in the back. But some other inconsistencies I specifically wanna note: if the blue goggles color the "model"'s skin, hair, helmet, and the background behind the lenses blue, why doesn't it do the same for the eyes? And also, I've noticed that a lot of these images have trouble properly rendering the corners of the mouth, which is a weird detail but one you won't be able to unsee once you know to look out for it. Yes, there's a dark line where actual human lips meet, often with some subtle divots at the corners, but in the image on the right, it's rendered as a harsh, gaping hole more like something sculpted out of plastic than actual flesh. On the note of imperfect symmetry again: the left lens isn't perfectly round. And finally, this is a really good example of that giveaway lighting I mentioned. I don't know how you would actually achieve that lighting IRL, but it's so, so common in AI images.

The left photo is an actual model in 1967 wearing pieces designed by Pierre Cardin, a designer that the right image is definitely trying to emulate. The model has a look on her face that isn't super duper expressive, but it's still far beyond any of the AI images I've seen. Every AI fashion image I've seen thus far has totally blank-faced, expressionless "models". They might pout slightly, but I haven't seen any with visible teeth. Something tells me the AI would render teeth the same way it renders fingers. The emblem on the hat is actually perfectly symmetrical, and the glasses are clearly asymmetrical as an intentional design choice, not like the shapes are supposed to be the same but got messed up somehow. And she has ten fingers total, five on each hand.

Two more:

These are both AI generated. I'm not gonna lie, i fell for the one on the left at first. The right is easy:

distorted faces

woman in back is being absorbed by the train(?) seat

those middle buttons on the jacket are totally useless

AI Lighting (TM)

But the "models" on the left look very, very convincing, and the lighting doesn't immediately register to me as AI lighting. The only really wonky thing on the faces is the mouth on the left "model". However, there's one dead giveaway: the headphone wires. Why are they different thicknesses? Why does the rightmost wire disappear into the jacket sleeve? Where the fuck does the leftmost wire even go? AI, I've noticed, struggles with thin lines, strings, and strands of things. Like with the quilted jacket above, you can often try and trace a single line, only to find that it drops off, distorts, or disappears. And sure enough, as soon as I noticed something was weird with those wires, I went to the Pinterest profile that posted it and found that they exclusively posted AI content. Speaking of the actual headphones, the leftmost ear cushion is sitting on an angle that doesn't make sense, and the one to the direct right of it is significantly thinner than the other three. Again, subtle failed symmetry.

It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and

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