straymongrel

[straymongrel]

[straymongrel]

[straymongrel]

[straymongrel]

[straymongrel]

flat fuck friday

[straymongrel]

i knew life turned to shit when i stopped seeing the tuesday again? no problem dog every week

[straymongrel]

You have been booped by this empty wrapping paper tube.

Reblog to boop all of your followers with it.

[straymongrel]

I wish Americans fucked with more foreign music. You don’t have to know the language to appreciate a good record. Folks in other countries listen to our music and don’t speak a lick of english. Music needs no translator

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TOMORROW IS HALLOWEEN!!!

[straymongrel]

I just discovered foodtimeline.org, which is exactly what it sounds like: centuries worth of information about FOOD.  If you are writing something historical and you want a starting point for figuring out what people should be eating, this might be a good place?

[straymongrel]

[straymongrel]

ARTSHIELD

Putting out another resource for people if their PC is too old to glaze or do their work on mobile platforms

Artshield works by digitally watermarking your art into tricking AI scrapers into thinking its also AI and thus excluding it from the pool of sampled images. Granted it's methods are not as potent as nightshade or glaze, but its browser based and fast so you can have at least some protection on your art rather than none.

Example of an un-guarded picture

Same image put through Artshield.

See any differences? no? Thats because unlike glaze or nightshade the process is a lot more simplistic and changes the art in more subtle ways, while that makes the protection a bit thinner the artifacting is much less noticeable. but dont worry, its there!

as you can see theres blurring and artifacting on anything an AI might look for, such as lines, changes in color, and background patterns. While its not much out of JPEG compression, its more than posting your work without any protection due to PC limitations.

It sucks as artists we have to jump through such hoops to make sure our livelihoods aren't stolen but there is hope that tools are being made to keep us safe, showing there are those that still stand with us against the fight on AI.

[straymongrel]

Are fedoras really that bad?

YES YES THEY ARE

[straymongrel]

important psa

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[straymongrel]

in the latest cyber-news: the internet archive has lost their case against 4 major publishing houses (verge article). they’re going to appeal, but this is still a bad outcome. the fate of the internet is currently hanging in the balance because 4 multibillionare publishing groups missed out on like $15 of combined revenue during the pandemic because of the archive’s online library service. it’s so fucking stupid.

for those who don’t know what the internet archive is, it’s a virtual library full of media. books, magazines, recordings, visuals, flash games, websites - a lot of these things either don’t exist anymore or cannot be found & bought. heard of the wayback machine? that’s part of the internet archive. it is the most important website to exist, and i don’t say that lightly. if the internet archive goes down, the cultural loss will be immeasurable.

so how can you help?

boycott the publishing companies involved in this. they’re absolute ghouls, frankly, and don’t deserve a penny. the companies involved are harpercollins (imprints), wiley (imprints), penguin random house llc (imprints), and hachette book group (imprints). make sure the websites are set to your location as it may differ worldwide.

learn to torrent. download a torrent client (i recommend transmission), a vpn (i recommend protonvpn - sign up and choose the area that’s closest to your continent/country), and hit up /r/piracy on reddit for websites. with torrenting, you can get (almost) any media you want for free in high quality, with add-ons such as subtitles, and with no risks of loss. i would also recommend getting into the habit of watching stuff online for free. the less you can pay to a giant corporation, the better.

get into the habit of downloading and archiving materials. find a TB external hard drive, ideally the higher the better. it’ll probably cost around $60 for 1TB and continue to go up, but they’re so so useful. if you can’t afford a drive, look for any GB harddrives or memory sticks you have lying around and just fill them up. videos, pdfs, magazines, songs, movies, games - anything you can rip and download and fit on there, do it, because nothing is permanent.

donate to the internet archive. this is the most important option on the list. the IA relies entirely on funding, and it’s going to need more to fight this case. whatever you can donate, do it. i promise it’s helpful.

and finally…