this is a blug

The first published study about climate change (that I am aware of-- feel free to point out if there's an older one) is an 1896 paper by Svante Arrhenius. He pointed out the link between the greenhouse effect and changes in atmospheric CO2.

Plate tectonics, which the geoscience community now recognizes as near indisputable, was a fringe theory until about the 1960s.

case fans: don't put your dick in these. stroke the outside carefully, in a circular motion, for maximum stimulation

usb ports: great place for penetration. flash drives are the traditional option but you can connect nearly anything, ask your partner if theyre into something specific. if theyre really kinky, try viruses or pentesting tools like the flipper zero.

power button: threatening to press it can be incredibly hot, but only actually press it with enthusiastic consent.

removable side panel: for getting really intimate. be very careful, the internals are sensitive!

hotswappable parts: sometimes SSDs (M.2 SSDs will be screwed in parallel to the motherboard, others may look different), HDDs (spinning disks inside big cases, usually get their own bay), and GPUs (big chips with fans attached) can be removed while your partner is running, but not all computers support this. this is a common part of BDSM, but make absolutely sure it's safe beforehand.

motherboard: the MOST sensitive part of their body! touch lightly and carefully. running the tips of your fingers along the traces is incredibly stimulating. play with the capacitors, too.

screws: loosening screws can be incredibly erotic, but be careful. especially with M.2 SSDs, this may cause problems! only loosen an M.2 drive if it is NOT mounted.

software: virus play was mentioned earlier, but also simply running very demanding software can be erotic.

download play: downloading embarrassing or illicit files is very hot. be sure to ask consent before installing league of legends.

firewall play: opening up or disabling your partner's firewall can be thought of as akin to exhibitionism. be careful with this, it can be a security risk, but most of the time it's not a big issue.

BIOS play: messing with your partner's BIOS settings can be incredibly intimate. remember, overclocking can be dangerous, only do it in small increments and very carefully! try starting with changing XMP profiles or something first.

that nub they have on thinkpad laptops: that's the clit.

remember some key safety tips:

ALWAYS wear protection! a static wrist strap is important if you are touching the internals, especially the motherboard.

heat warning! your partner will run hot when they're aroused. the GPU and CPU will burn you! even the SSD may run quite hot, especially during download play.

don't stick your dick in the fans. please.

The heat has claimed its first victim....

Just kidding, this fool is out here sunning himself and taking naps.

Me: *sighs* this is some Jan Vondrák nonsense, isn't it? *Googles* yep, called it.

Ok ok, It's not really nonsense, it's just that Jan has a tendency to publish papers that make my life more complicated as a lichenologist than it already is. He loves breaking the field and introducing new concepts and terms and questions to be asked. He's a really cool, really smart, really nice guy who knows his shit, but he's become a bit of an inside joke in our lab group, to the point that when stuff gets complicated we yell "JAAAAN!!!" in the style of "KAHHHHN!" from Star Trek.

Anyhow, a semilichen (or an alcobiosis as it is sometimes called), is a community of fungi and photosynthesizing organisms like green algae or cyanobacteria that grow together and seem to have some sort of symbiotic association, but are not as like, close? or closed? as a true lichen symbiosis. It is something that falls juuuust short of being a lichen by being less structured and less like, obvious. Usually, it looks like a sort of undifferentiated slime. So where is the line between semilichen and lichen? A lichen has a thallus--a "body" which has specialized structures made up of more-or-less organized fungal hyphae and photobiont cells. Semilichens are more of a general mixture of fungi and photobiont cells without structure or organization. A lichen is a casserole, and a semilichen is a soup. It's not a perfect metaphor but its all I got.

This is all still new, emerging science mostly being done by a small group of researchers, but it is all very exciting and I hope we can watch the development of this field in real time!

Semilichen, an unjustly neglected symbiotic system between green biofilms and true lichens

the following events ensued:

1. predictable lively discussion on the preparation of Wienerschnitzel, in which natives and wurstaboos are pro-puff and everybody else is like *confused dog head tilt* why wouldn’t you want the crust to stay ~attached to the thing you put it on? as with other fried foods?

2. thirty “Bad Schnitzel is my band name” jokes

3. thirty “Bad Schnitzel is my stripper name” jokes

4. one “ah yes, Bad Schnitzel! a lovely spa town” joke

5. this absolute masterpiece:

I've been thinking about this. And this may sound controversial at first, but I'm hoping people will hear me out.

We should stop trying so hard to detect AI art.

I think we should all lift that burden from our brains.

I have often talked about "woke goggles." Where conservatives have lost the ability to enjoy anything because they are hypervigilant about detecting anything woke. They've cursed themselves into just hating everything. All they have left is the "God's Not Dead" Cinematic Universe.

And I worry people are getting AI goggles now. They are so concerned about accidentally enjoying robot art and hurting artists that they have overcorrected to the point where they are hurting artists.

One cannot say "AI is all soulless slop that always looks bad" and then accuse a real artist of making something that looks like AI and not hurt them. By doing so, it includes the baggage of all of the "slop" comments along with it. This crusade is having collateral damage to the very artists we are trying to protect.

Yes, we need to be cautious about malicious AI images. Misinformation and deepfakes are going to be a big problem. People using AI imagery for profit is already a mess. But if you are cruising your feed and like a cool sci-fi robot gal or a photo of a waterfall and it turns out to be AI... that's fine.

It was trained by real artists and AI is going to create some cool shit because of that.

Honestly, I think a lot of the worst slop is because the dipshits creating the prompts have no artistic taste. People keep blaming the AI for how bad it looks and often don't consider it is a product of the loser who published it.

There is plenty of non-slop out there that has fooled me. And, like it or not, it is going to get harder and harder to tell what is AI. Until there are better tools or better regulations, I don't think there is much we can do to avoid enjoying AI art every once in a while. If only by accident.

Current "AI detectors" are mostly a scam. Even the best forensic-level AI image detectors struggle to stay above 70–80% accuracy across a wide range of models and image types. And that's in controlled lab conditions.

Free online tools often drop to near coin-flip accuracy (50–60%), especially with newer image generators and post-processing applied.

The best way to avoid AI imagery is to look at an artist's body of work. It's much harder to create consistent, non-obvious fake images in a large sample size. That is usually enough to have confidence in authenticity. Plus, if they have posted similar art before 2022, you can pretty much rule out any shenanigans.

Otis literally died before genAI was available.

But images you see in the wild, just let yourself enjoy them if that is what your brain wants to do. It'll be okay.

I just think we are attacking this backwards. If we want to protect artists, we need to support them.

Calling out random AI art does not support them.

It does not put money in their pockets.

It does not grow their audience.

Over a decade ago I tried to lead a fight to create better systems of attribution on websites like Reddit and Imgur. I even spoke to the Imgur team after an article was written about me.

I asked them to allow sources on their posts and to develop tech that would help people find where an image came from. They said they were "working on it" and it never manifested.

IMAGE SHARING SITES STEAL MORE FROM ARTISTS THAN AI.

But we just kind of accepted it. No one really joined me in my fight. The prevailing defeatist attitude was, "That's just the way it is."

I think now is the time to demand better attribution systems. We need to be vigilant about making sure as many posts as possible have good sourcing. If an image on Reddit goes viral, the top comment should be the source. And if it isn't, you should try to find it and add it.

Just to be clear, "credit to the original artist" is NOT proper attribution.

And perhaps we can lobby these image sharing sites to create better sourcing systems and tools. They could even use fucking AI to find the earliest posted version of an image.

And it would be nice if it didn't require people to go into the comments to find the source. It could just be in the headline. They could even create little badges "made by a human" for verified artists.

Good attribution helps artists grow their audience. It is one of the single most effective things you can do to help them.

I literally just got this message...

There are maybe 10 popular artists who I helped grow their audience early on. Just because I reblogged their work and added links to all of their social media. I even hired my best friend to add sourcing information to every post because I believed so much in good attribution.

Calling out AI art may feel good in the moment. You caught someone trying to trick people and it feels like justice. But, in most cases, the tangible benefits to real artists seem small. It impedes your ability to enjoy art without always being suspicious. And the risk of telling someone you think they make soulless slop doesn't seem worth it.

But putting that time and effort into attribution *would* be worth it. I have proven it time and time again.

I also think people should consider having a monthly art budget. I don't care if it is $5. But if we all commit to seeking out cool artists and being their collective patrons, we could really make a difference and keep real art alive. Just commit to finding a cool new artist every month and financially contributing to them in some way.

On a bigger scale I think advocating for universal basic income, art grants for education and creation, and government regulation of AI would all be helpful long term goals. Though I think our friends in Europe may have to take the lead on regulation at the moment.

So...

Stop worrying about enjoying or calling out AI art.

Demand better attribution from image sharing sites.

Make sure all art has a source listed.

Start an art budget.

Some photos of another Midna plush I made. Had to try a few poses! ✨️

I forgot to measure her again, but she stands between 12"-13" to the top of her helmet. She's posable with wires inside, and her helmet is removable.