eat trash, be free

like, the guys "laundering" specific artists' styles through AI models to mimic them for profit know exactly what they're doing, and it's extremely gross

but we cannot establish "my work was scraped from the public internet and used as part of a dataset for teaching a program what a painting of a tree looks like, without anyone asking or paying me" as, legally, Theft with a capital T. not only is this DMCA Logic which would be a nightmare for 99% of artists if enforced to its conclusion, it's not the right word for what's happening

the actual Violation here is that previously, "I can post my artwork to share with others for free, with minimal risk" was a safe assumption, which created a pretty generous culture of sharing artwork online. most (noteworthy) potential abuses of this digital commons were straightforwardly plagiarism in a way anyone could understand

but the way that generative AI uses its training data is significantly more complicated - there is a clear violation of trust involved, and often malicious intent, but most of the common arguments used to describe this fall short and end up in worse territory

by which I mean, it's hard to put forward an actual moral/legal solution unless you're willing to argue:

Potential sales "lost" count as Theft (so you should in fact stop sharing your Netflix password)

No amount of alteration makes it acceptable to use someone else's art in the production of other art without permission and/or compensation (this would kill entire artistic mediums and benefit nobody but Disney)

Art Styles should be considered Intellectual Property in an enforceable way (impossibly bad, are you kidding me)

other commenters have touched on what I think the actual solutions are:

• invoke the precedent that art created by non-human animals is already automatically public domain

• require training datasets to be public and open to scrutiny instead of an unaccountable black box

and I haven't seen anyone mention this yet, but it's the most important imo:

• pressure companies that might be tempted to replace their human artists with AI, such as large TTRPG and TCG publishers, with threats of boycotts and PR disaster if they use/abuse this technology

Tianlang-jun and Zhuzhi-lang enter battle ⚔️

closeups below ↓

you see, any work of fiction is either committed to the bit or it's not. the worst thing a piece of media can be is ashamed of its own premise, of the genre it in habits, of the tropes and aesthetics we expect from it. to be committed to the bit does not inherently make it good, but it makes it more worthy of respect than those which are not.

also, that's not to say that a story cannot parody or criticize the genre it inhabits or mimics. we can discuss the bit, we can deconstruct the bit, we can ask ourselves whether or not it's a good bit, but to commit to it first will strengthen these discussions, not detract from them. commitment to the bit is, after all, the first step to genuine sincerity. and sincerity will exalt and elevate parody such that it can stand on its own feet.

commitment to the bit turns melodrama into camp, elevates parody to biting commentary, and allows cringe to open up into a resonant, if unpolished, expression of true emotion.

.font-claude-response-body { color: #B6FF00; }

to her custom site skin to turn all such text poison green

“I Can Fix It”

An idea I had for Blood of Eden propaganda/recruitment posters featuring some of our favorite guys - combo of digital-print cyberpunk graphic design style with oldschool Saturday Morning Post covers like you'd see Leyendecker paintings on

I was gonna post these ahead of tabling at a small con and selling prints of them but ended up not tabling because turns out grad school is hard

“And at one point, he became

The deity of destruction,

Before death took his mantle back.”

book antics

She posted this on her Facebook Saturday evening, April 25, 2026:

"Dear readers and friends. The unhappy fact is---the numerous bouts of anaesthetic I've had have made it pretty well impossible for me to write. I drop stitches. Not many. No problems with daily life or doing creative stuff or enjoying life in general. But the ability to control narrative is just not what it was, and it's just not going to be there. I've accepted that, painful as it is. I thank all of you who've stood by me patiently. The body of work is what it is, and I am lastingly grateful to my publisher, Betsy Wollheim, who has given me every extension of time and resource. And of course to Jane, who is all things."

[Jane Fancher has been her companion and co-author for many years, and more recently her wife as well.]

Her stories have occupied my mind for decades now, ever since a university classmate introduced me to The Faded Sun series. Large parts of my heart are owned by Pyanfar Chanur and her clan and associates as well as by the Hellburner Four and their long-suffering program officer Jurgen Graff.