Art depends on what trashcan you're sitting in

Sil'Laien (Eileen, Artist SMP as Gods/Goddesses)

Someone wants a nice bat soup in central China.

Covid happens, lockdowns everywhere.

Internet traffic is at a continuous peak.

A lot of people starts writing blogs, online business.

Online platforms usage gets a massive peak on incoming new users.

Internet companies revenue, Automattic’s in particular, goes to the moon during 2020 and 2021, profits, money raining from the sky.

Tech CEO and CFO are not that smart, get convinced this is ‘the new normal’ and make plans for 2023 and beyond based on the revenue they are seeing in 2020/21: They hire A LOT of people, acquire companies, take loans based on the results of those years.

The world decides that we are bored and every country start to pretend Covid is over (ha!). People go back to their normal lives.

Internet traffic goes back to normal, including on WordPress.com.

Uh oh.

Internet companies start falling behind the projections their genius leaders have done based on the 2020 traffic peak. They are still making a lot of money, but the banks and investors who have given them money start to complain they are not getting the results they had promised them.

Lay-offs, enshittification, etc. Internet companies are both getting record profits and failing, at the same time, because their leaders are both greedy and stupid. They start relying on scummy methods to extract every single cent they can from their users, even if they are fucking their long-term viability.

Automattic signs a deal with OpenAi and Midjourney to sell them user data.

Some Anti-AI banners i made, anyone is free to use them, no credit necessary. Light mode and Dark mode versions.

Art and writing and people’s rights need to be protected, and AI has been used already to steal, plagiarize, and be used to threaten people using deepfakes.

As an artist and a writer, it’s an insult to my craft to see AI “works” along side mine.

DEAR ARTISTS, NIGHTSHADE IS OUT!

Get the best means and only acceptable way to be toxic online. :D The download might take a bit of time right now, a LOT of people want the online-arsenic~.

https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/

You're sharing pictures? Nightshade them. All of them.

Memes? Photos of your dinner? Cat pictures? Something you found with google? A selfie to celebrate the new shirt? Your holiday decoration? Nightshade it.

You're not required to be an artist to protect yourself.

Stay safe.

If you don't know, take your best guess

Immediate family is your parents and siblings, and that's it. No grandparents, cousins, aunts, nephews, etc. No in-laws, either. I'm also not counting the immediate family you may have made as an adult (children and spouses).

Adoptive and step family count.

So a free tool called GLAZE has been developed that allows artists to cloak their artwork so it can't be mimicked by AI art tools.

Using both Glaze and Nightshade would corrupt the generation of pictures mimicking artist AND mess with the AI's recognition of what everything is. Like it would generate a dog when you ask for a cat.

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

After School Ghost Theory 101 with Professor Fenton

Switch to light mode or Classic Blue to get the full transparency effect!

[Image ID: A four page comic that starts with Danny Fenton standing in front of a whiteboard holding up a white cat. “Question: Do ghosts purr?” 

Tucker: “Danny when was the last time you slept?” Danny: “Irrelevant.” 

Danny info-dumps: “The answer is yes, but also no. Technically, all beings that possess a core are constantly "purring”, a.k.a. Core Vibrations. Core Vibrations are a nonverbal, emotion-based communication system between Ghosts, similar to how some living species use pheromones to communicate. The exact tone of each ghost is different the same way people’s voices are different. Humans can only hear these vibrations when the frequency passes through their audible range (20Hz - 20KHz), hence the ‘purring’ sound. When the range dips into infrasound (16 - 20Hz) it can cause feelings of fear and unease in humans that they often associate with ghosts and the supernatural. Also known as the ‘Heebie Jeebies.’”

Danny, wiping off the whiteboard: “Any questions before we move on?“

Danny’s audience consists of Wes Weston, Tucker Foley, Sam Manson, Danny’s clone Ellie, and Dash Baxter in a classroom. Wes is seated at a desk at the front taking notes. Tucker is sitting on Sam’s lap playing on a Switch, Ellie is sitting on a desk behind them. Dash is asleep at the back of the room.

Ellie, now holding the cat: “Is this Vlad’s first cat!?” Wes: "Could you tone down the floating eyes before the next part? They’re kinda distracting.” Danny: “What eyes?” Wes: “Please stop gaslighting me.”

A transparency trick on the last page reveals dark shadows and eyes all around Danny when viewed in dark mode. /.End ID]

An Extended Image ID is available under the read more because it’s over 1k. Side by side light and dark mode versions of the transparency trick is also available under the cut.

So a free tool called GLAZE has been developed that allows artists to cloak their artwork so it can't be mimicked by AI art tools.

Using both Glaze and Nightshade would corrupt the generation of pictures mimicking artist AND mess with the AI's recognition of what everything is. Like it would generate a dog when you ask for a cat.