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send this to the twelve nicest people you know or who seem to have a good heart and if you get five back you must be pretty awesome 💕💕💕💕

Sorry for the late reply, I was sick with a cold and couldn't make it. Anyway thanks for the hearts.

@terrific-togekiss @mikawatohru4ever @immoonprincess @jhinenjaycencia @masonicon @a-random-mooshroom @cartoonking1 @saragl728 @universe-in-the-void-in-the-cube @thelotusfflower @ultimatenutshackfangirl @oceanblue971

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I've learned stupid people make me irrationally angry

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without Amiibo, where's the Toys-to-Life game that lasts until today

#toys to life #amiibo

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reblogging to respect real Kairi

KH2 Kairi vs. KH3 Kairi - a visual demonstration of character derailment at work.

Yeah, I’m never gonna be over this.

#Kingdom Hearts II #Kairi #Anti-Series Beyond

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Xehanort's Nanotech dragon

Related to what I just posted, this thing needs more admiration.

Xemnas merges with the incomplete shell of Kingdom Hearts, being pulled inside of its spiritual realm. Said realm has been warped to match the physical world surroundings and Xemnas is revealed to have used the power of Kingdom Hearts to manifest this thing:

If the manifestation process completed, the incomplete shell of Kingdom Hearts in the physical world would turn into this thing! From there, Xemnas could fly it to any world he wants and, well...

As he said to Kingdom Hearts before "I will give you as many hearts as it takes". And this is certainly an efficient way of gathering hearts.

Man, the only thing cooler than this is that instead of a flying fortress he tried manifesting a giant god-like mecha Nobody to go kaiju on the worlds' asses. Just imagine how awesome that would have been!

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since I only played KH1-2 and GBA version of CHain of Memories so far, Until I played Birth by Sleep

Good video! Only three quibbles:

1. His bashing of CoM. Yes, his points on how it was the Franchise Original Sin in so many regards are dead on, but the game (both in 2D and 3D) was nowhere near as "shitty" as he makes it out to be, ill-advised card battle system and all.

2. Sora's time as the lead, and even the whole series, still could have ended even with that scene with the letter, which was framed as just a call to new adventures. Us ever seeing said adventures or even learning what the letter said was never the point.

3. He ends the video expressing hope for Kingdom Hearts IV...and it's played straight? No joke about what the announcement teaser showed and how DOA it makes the whole thing!?

Here are some similar videos on the subject:

#Kingdom Hearts #Chain of Memories #Kingdom Hearts II #birth by sleep

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Looking over the videos and magazine scans released for Kingdom Hearts II during its production, I have ascertained the general order of the Disney worlds in terms of how their plots were shaped. KH2 was greenlit early into 2003, and the choice of Disney worlds was made shortly afterward. Over the span of the remainder of 2003 and well into 2004, Oka and his event team planned out the plots (both visits) of the Disney worlds at the same time Nomura planned the game’s main plot, both of which would then be written by Nojima. 

This is the apparent order they were made in:

Space Paranoids Beast’s Castle Olympus Coliseum Land of Dragons Agrabah Port Royal Disney Castle / Timeless River Halloween Town Pride Land 100 Acre Wood & Atlantica

Some interesting observations:

Space Paranoids was the first Disney world to be chosen and the first one to have its plot written for a simple reason: it has the most direct ties to Nomura’s main plot. Major developments for the story and the overall lore are made during both visits to Space Paranoids.

Guess which Disney worlds have the most relevance outside of Space Paranoids, even if not quite as directly? That’s right: Beast’s Castle and Olympus Coliseum, which are naturally the next world plots to be made. Space Paranoids, Beast’s Castle, and Olympus Coliseum are also the only ones where the stories span both visits rather than there being two completely separate stories per visit.  

Land of Dragons, Agrabah and Port Royal are all similar cases where Organization XIII and the Nobodies have no presence whatsoever in the first visits while they do in the second. For some reason or other, only Port Royal had any effort put into their presence there; Land of Dragons and especially Agrabah are both very lazy about it.

It was clearly after Port Royal that the decision was made to resurrect Maleficent and add her into the main plot. If you actually go back and look at Olympus Coliseum, Agrabah and Port Royal, Pete never once mentions Maleficent or acts like he’s serving anyone but himself. That’s because he was a solo villain when those plots were written. Once Maleficent was brought in, Disney Castle / Timeless River was written with her as Pete’s boss, and Halloween Town was written to have her as the villain in the first visit as opposed to Pete. 

By that same token, there is a high likelihood that Disney Castle / Timeless River was originally supposed to come after Pride Land and serve as the climax to Pete’s villainy before his army gets wiped out at Hollow Bastion, which is why it wasn’t being written even as the likes of Port Royal and Agrabah were. But Maleficent caused it to be moved to earlier on the map, hence why it was written when it was.

Even with Maleficent’s return, I’m pretty damn sure that Pete wasn’t in Pride Land’s first visit initially; he could be cut out and nothing would be missed. It’s the only visit where we don’t even see him retreat; he’s there in the cutscene before the Scar battle and then he’s just gone afterward. But it must have been decided that Scar as a Heartless needed more exposition and a reason behind it, and Maleficent being back conveniently meant Pete had access to form-changing magic, and so he was shoehorned in at the last minute.

And naturally the two optional worlds that unfold through five separate episodes over the course of the game were written last.

#Kingdom Hearts II

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I'm no doubt the existence Extrasolar aliens, but most aliens that people encounter are cryptoterrestrials

#fermi paradox

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Ash & Pikachu reuniting with Misty then & now

#ash #misty #pikachu #hoenn misty #i love pikachu's enthusiasm for misty; it's so sweet!!! #battle frontier #pokeani #azurill #caps

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Misty & Her Spheal Backpack Settei (production art)

#misty #spheal #trainer misty #pokeani #settei #she's so cute h e l p #hoenn misty

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Phineas and Ferb

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#hoenn misty #misty #hoenn #battle frontier #pokeani

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🚨🚨I MUST ASK ONCE AGAIN FOR THE FUTURE OF A FREE AND EQUAL INTERNET I AM BEGGING YOU TO SIGN THESE PETITIONS, DONATE, SHARE TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW, THIS IS SERIOUSLY THE VERY LAST CHANCE!!!🚨🚨

I do not care how busy you are right now, I implore you to take 15 minutes and sign all of these petitions and spread awareness. Share these links absolutely everywhere, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Ao3. everywhere!!

Because if these bills pass:..

Say goodbye to fandoms...

Say goodbye to fanfiction/fanart...

Say goodbye to LGBTQIA+ safe spaces...

Say goodbye to private messaging...

Say goodbye to proper sexual health education (including info about safe and healthy abortions)...

I am not exaggerating...

DM me for more questions.

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feathered friend

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#style challenge

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Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you. 

AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.

Here are the important details:

We already discourage AI crawlers from gathering content from Tumblr and will continue to do so, save for those with which we partner. 

We want to represent all of you on Tumblr and ensure that protections are in place for how your content is used. We are committed to making sure our partners respect those decisions.

To opt out of sharing your public blogs’ content with third parties, visit each of your public blogs’ blog settings via the web interface and toggle on the “Prevent third-party sharing” option. 

For instructions on how to opt out using the latest version of the app, please visit this Help Center doc. 

Please note: If you’ve already chosen to discourage search crawling of your blog in your settings, we’ve automatically enabled the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.

If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.

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Automattic will sign a contract with OpenAI for Midjourney to learn off of Tumblr and Wordpress

Hello! Automattic, Tumblr's parent company, will sign a contract with OpenAI and Midjourney so Midjourney can learn off of Tumblr's and WordPress' art and other user data. :) (The full text of this article is copy/pasted in the cut below). You can opt out! but I truly cannot imagine a more idiotic or out of touch decision on the part of Tumblr's CEO.

First thing's first: When/if this goes live, opt out of this immediately. Do this even if you're not an artist. The more people opt out, the less valuable this contract is to Midjourney. in an ideal world, literally all of the active users would opt out, but if we can even get to 50% that's pretty delicious.

Second: Contact Tumblr Support. It's vital that you do this politely. Tumblr staff is not responsible for this decision and the point of doing this is to show the userbase's unwillingness to be involved in this, not harangue Tumblr staff. (Seriously, stop haranguing Tumblr staff). Here's a script:

Hi, I'm writing in to express my disappointment in Automattic's pending contract with OpenAI to sell user data. Midjourney is already embroiled in copyright lawsuits, and it is not possible to train it without compromising copyright, including violating the IP of artists on this site. I strongly protest this contract and will opt out if it goes live. Depending on the privacy terms around what user data is sold to OpenAI and why, it is possible I will leave the platform entirely. Thank you for your time.

Third: Download Glaze and start poisoning them prompts, my friends

Fourth: Stare into the middle distance for a second with me because holy fucking shit? How stupid can one decision be?

Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals. 

The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we’ve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.

The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent. 

Gage wrote:

“the way the data was queried for the initial data dump to Midjourney/OpenAI means we compiled a list of all tumblr’s public post content between 2014 and 2023, but also unfortunately it included, and should not have included:

private posts on public blogs

posts on deleted or suspended blogs

unanswered asks (normally these are not public until they’re answered)

private answers (these only show up to the receiver and are not public)

posts that are marked ‘explicit’ / NSFW / ‘mature’ by our more modern standards (this may not be a big deal, I don’t know)

content from premium partner blogs (special brand blogs like Apple’s former music blog, for example, who spent money with us on an ad campaign) that may have creative that doesn’t belong to us, and we don’t have the rights to share with this-parties; this one is kinda unknown to me, what deals are in place historically and what they should prevent us from doing.”

Gage’s post makes clear that engineers are working on compiling a list of post IDs that should not have been included, and that password-protected posts, DMs, and media flagged as CSAM and other community guidelines violations were not included.

Automattic plans to launch a new setting on Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and internal documents. A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled “What happens when you opt out?” states that “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.” 

404 Media has asked Automattic how it accidentally compiled data that it shouldn’t share, and whether any of that content was shared with OpenAI, but did not immediately hear back from the company. 404 Media asked Automattic about an imminent deal with Midjourney last week but did not hear back then, either.

Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, “Do we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?”

Andrew Spittle, Automattic’s head of AI replied: “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.” Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.

News about a deal between Tumblr and Midjourney has been rumored and speculated about on Tumblr for the last week. Someone claiming to be a former Tumblr employee announced in a Tumblr blog post that the platform was working on a deal with Midjourney, and the rumor made it onto Blind, an app for verified employees of companies to anonymously discuss their jobs. 404 Media has seen the Blind posts, in which what seems like an Automattic employee says, “I'm not sure why some of you are getting worked up or worried about this. It's totally legal, and sharing it publicly is perfectly fine since it's right there in the terms & conditions. So, go ahead and spread the word as much as you can with your friends and tech journalists, it's totally fine.”

Separately, 404 Media viewed a public, now-deleted post by Gage, the product manager, where he said that he was deleting all of his images off of Tumblr, and would be putting them on his personal website. A still-live post says, “i've deleted my photography from tumblr and will be moving it slowly but surely over to cylegage.com, which i'm building into a photography portfolio that i can control end-to-end.” At one point last week, his personal website had a specific note stating that he did not consent to AI scraping of his images. Gage’s original post has been deleted, and his website is now a blank page that just reads “Cyle.” Gage did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media. 

Several online platforms have made similar deals with AI companies recently, including Reddit, which entered into an AI content licensing deal with Google and said in its SEC filing last week that it’s “in the early stages of monetizing [its] user base” by training AI on users’ posts. Last year, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI to provide training data.

OpenAI and Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment. 

#signal boost #openAI #artificial intelligence