adventures-in-mangaland

[adventures-in-mangaland]

[adventures-in-mangaland]

One absolutely hilarious part of human existence is the repeated incidents of spicy bananas. People who have lived their entire lives up to this point just assuming that a specific fruit or vegetable is supposed to taste bitter, tangy, or spicy, having no fucking idea that all this time, they've been allergic to this plant. Because how would they have known? You learn what things taste like by tasting them, nobody's going to tell you that bananas are supposed to be one of the mildest flavours out there. And people already eat so many things that taste hot, bitter, tangy and tart! Because they like how that kind of thing tastes like!

You can just happily much on a plant, thinking "ah, this angry plant tastes sharp because it hates me. Much like all the other sharp angry plants that people eat because they like the sharp", and it wouldn't cross their mind to think that the plant just hates you, specifically.

[adventures-in-mangaland]

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

[adventures-in-mangaland]

[adventures-in-mangaland]

Dave Rapoza

[adventures-in-mangaland]

On February 7, 2024, an indigenous nonbinary teenager named Nex Benedict was beaten to death in a US high school bathroom.

The news has been spreading across social media over the past few days, with several news outlets misgendering and deadnaming the victim. I have seen a small handful of posts about the entire thing, but only a couple with any sources about what happened.

I spent the morning combing through articles. This is a list of publications reporting on the story that don't deadname Nex:

Pgh Lesbian Correspondents: "Grieving Nex Benedict: the Brutal Killing of 16 Year Old Nonbinary Student in an Oklahoma High School"

The Pride: "Non-Binary Student Dies After Violent Bathroom Fight at Owasso High School in Oklahoma"

The Washington Blade: "Nonbinary Okla. High School Student Dies After Fight"

The Los Angeles Blade: "Oklahoma Non-Binary High Schooler Dies After Physical Alteraction"

LGBTQ Nation: "Teen Beaten to Death in a School Bathroom Bullying Attack. The School Didn't Call an Ambulance."

Freedom Oklahoma: "Rest in Power Nex Benedict"

Indy 100: "Thousands Raised for Non-Binary Teenager Beaten to Death at School"

The Independent: "Oklahoma Banned Trans Students From Bathrooms. Now a Bullied Student is Dead After a Fight."

Daily Dot: "Oklahoma's Top Education Official Called Out Over Libs of TikTok Ties After Non-Binary Student Beaten at School, Dies Later"

Daily Kos: "Libs of TikTok Targeted a District, Then a Non-Binary Student Was Killed on Campus"

Malang Post: "Owasso High School Mourns Pupil's Death After Altercation"

[adventures-in-mangaland]

Something I really don't understand about AI companies buying the rights to steal content from social media to feed their data training sets is, well. It's illegal as hell.

That content does not belong to the social media companies to start with. Personal data is a bit nebulous as it is, and some countries have better protection about it than others, but posting a picture on tumblr doesn't mean that Automatic automatically has the right to use, distribute and sell it as it sees fit.

I mean. Official accounts for big companies like Disney use social media for advertising. But posting a picture of Elsa on Twitter doesn't mean they're giving Twitter the right to use and sell that picture. But suddenly Twitter sells the nebulous ability to "scrape content from Twitter for AI training", so now Midjourney owns that picture of Elsa? What's the fucking ruling there?

People own the rights of what they have created even without officially registering it for trademarking (which is expensive as hell, by the way). Social media selling content means that they are selling copyrighted material created by its users- Some of it coming from big companies that have trademarked the shit out of everything, some of it coming from small creators who STILL have the rights to what they've created even without a trademark.

Curently, what you produce through AI generators is not actually copyrighted, since it was not made by a human, but what gets fed into the data training sets is often copyrighted material from unconsenting people. It basically is a copyright laundering scheme.

I do wholeheartedly hope that some regulations will be put in place, and hoping that big companies will, at least, do their best to help this case even if its just to protect their own IPs and property. Given how overprotective have Disney, Nintendo and other big names been about their content, I can't expect they'll be happy having it being sold to Midjourney, OpenAI and other crap for free, without their consent.

[adventures-in-mangaland]

Unpopular opinion but literally not one person in the world should have their human rights violated

[adventures-in-mangaland]

[adventures-in-mangaland]

Black Dynamite (2009) dir. Scott Sanders

[adventures-in-mangaland]

[adventures-in-mangaland]

Slime mold was grown on an agar gel plate shaped like America and food sources were placed where America’s large cities are. 

The result? A possible look at how to best build public transportation. 

I just really like the idea of slime mold on a map of the US. It’s beautiful.

[adventures-in-mangaland]

I want to write a book called “your character dies in the woods” that details all the pitfalls and dangers of being out on the road & in the wild for people without outdoors/wilderness experience bc I cannot keep reading narratives brush over life threatening conditions like nothing is happening.

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

Babes she would not MAKE it to that inn.

[adventures-in-mangaland]

not to be insensitive but some of the salem witch trials were so funny bitches like “i saw her at the devils sacrament!!!” girl… what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament 👀

[adventures-in-mangaland]

#lol right #it's gonna be may

[adventures-in-mangaland]

I'm not saying that I dislike that weed has been legalized in more and more states (imo all drugs should be legalized but that's not the point of this post)- I *am* saying that every time I pass a dispensary that looks like an apple store and I see white people talking freely about making special cookies and smoking in their spare time, all I can think about are the thousands and thousands of black people who experienced huge amounts of state-sponsered violence for even the suspicion of having weed on them and those who are STILL IN PRISON for possession charges.

And it. Just kinda makes me grit my teeth, you know? My father was illegally searched and brutalized in front of me when I was a little kid because the cop "thought he smelled weed" (he didn't, my dad doesn't touch the stuff) and in the mean time Becky in accounting takes a "special gummy" every night that she gets from a store next to the Starbucks.

[adventures-in-mangaland]

Stuff like this radicalizes me. How is this the best system we have?