Issue 4 - art, cats, social obligations
A possibly weekly email about what's been going on in my brain
11-17 December 2022
This was always going to be the week to survive. The one with Unavoidable Social Obligations. There was my Japanese class's end of term "party" where we bring in food and... do things? Then the work Christmas party that I missed last year due to the after-effects of the Covid booster. In both instances I was just as awkward as I'd imagined but I don't think I embarassed myself too much. I'm sure during the wee hours of the morning, as I lie awake thin-slicing every conversation, I'll conjure up some cringe-inducing slight. Now though, I am on holiday until the new year and got to take some pictures of these chaps:
Holiday
I realise despite setting up this newsletter to talk about my Japan holiday as and when I'm on it, I haven't really talked about it up to now. It is currently only 50 days away and I'm in a weird mindset where I know it's coming but it's still abstract. The magnitude of what I'm doing hasn't fully taken despite preparing, planning, and generally obsessing about it for over two years now. I'm still trying to find some t-shirts because Uniqlo seem unable to stock their supima cotton ones which are my go-to, and I'm still on the fence about buying a new laptop; not exactly high-stakes decisions this late in the game.
"AI" art
Art by feefal on Twitter
The convulsions from online artists against the inclusion of "AI" art on a number of different sites and tools reached fever pitch this week. Earlier there was Adobe adding AI art to it's stock images which is so on-brand for Adobe, Clip Studio Paint announcing and then rolling back AI art generation features, DeviantArt's DreamUp, and the last crack in the dam before the deluge: Artstation's limp-wristed policy on AI art on its platform. To make my position abundantly clear on the whole matter:
Fuck AI art.
I follow an awful lot of illustrators, painters, character creators, photographers - "artists" - on Twitter and other platforms and their uniqueness defies broad categorisation other than "they're an odd bunch". I like to think I understand a little of the creative process despite not being an artist, but to see so many disaparate people come together against AI art is so powerful because of their differences.
AI art - using something like the text-to-image Stable Diffusion deep-learning model - is a spit in the face to creativity, artistry, and just human expression that artists hone and craft, and that's before you get to the obvious ethical and moral issues with the faceless consumption of sites, topped off by the extant threat it poses to the fragile livelihoods that a lot of artists live under. The fact that its most vocal advocates are the shit-heeled little gremlins that swim in the cess pool of "Web 3" doesn't help. Crypto was easy to ignore, NFTs less so due to art being minted and sold without the artists consent; despite the obvious grift and boiling the oceans to make it happen, I could at least see how NFTs could (and in some cases did) support artists. This though I can't see going away, and it'll be used as a cudgel by the worst people to further make the lives of artists difficult: "Well I can have Stable Diffusion come up with something for free, why should I commision you, or at least drive your commision down to pittance?"
One of the most gratifying things to come out of this so far is the number of artists posting protest images to Artstation and in the process ruining the soulless amalgamations that Stable Diffusion produces when using the prompt "popular on Artstation". It's probably the most real-world cyberpunk thing I've read since people using laser pointers to blind surveilance drones during the Hong Kong protests.
The clearest example of how tone-deaf and misguided a lot of the people using SD are, is when it's used to create pornography. Because if you get over any kind of pearl-clutching, the fundamental misunderstanding of desire when it comes to creating something so intimate speaks volumes of the people plugging in horny tags to a faceless automaton.
Phone update
That's me off my soap box so a quick update on my grumbles with Google over a phone trade-in: my case was "escalated" (more emails, no action), but a kit did arrive, and after sending it back (first person at the post office that frosty morning) I got my full, quoted price for it. Huzzah!
YouTube watches
- Does glass break faster than a bullet - from the Slow Mo Guys who are always a fun watch, reminds me of the absurd speed of a Prince Rupert's Drop breaking
- Best lenses for Fujifilm X-mount - I'm still wondering whether to get another lens and this video is not helping
- Spider-Man Across the Spiderverse trailer - Into the Spiderverse was an absolute riot and this looks just a great, packing a serious art punch
- How to Terraform Mars - with frickin' lasers! Also Black Hole Stars sound flipping awesome
- Suzume (すずめの戸締まり) trailer - Makoto Shinkai's latest, that song though has been in my head for weeks now
- How to measure the force of a laser pointer - metrology nerdery
- Japan's Wagyu Olympics - only held once every few years (so I've missed it now) but what a lovely atmosphere
- Refurbishing an old fire alarm - Simone is always such a lovely watch given how varied her builds are
Random links
- Some takeaways from the Twitter whistleblower report - (on Twitter obviously) 5000+ people with access to production, no clear staging or test environments, foreign agents at work to name just a few...
This was hand-crafted by John.