A member of the Reform party - a party whose every principle, tenet, and policy is based on pure unadulterated racism - said and/or did something racist?

Like firing clay in a kiln, and for the same reason. “Canine” is actually a bastardisation of the 14th century term “Claynine”, because their bones were believed to be made of clay. Of course we now know this is not true - dog bones are made of a substance that merely resembles clay in many ways, but has a unique molecular structure making it semi-permeable to the red blood cells produced by the marrow. This clay-like substance can indeed be hardened by exposure to extreme heat, which is why it is not recommended to leave your dog in a hot car unless you want an invulnerable dog.

There are typically agreements with ATM operators to allow no-fee withdrawals, and you can usually do cashback at the register when making a purchase in many stores, but beyond that you’d need to find an office that can handle cash and not all credit unions have those.

I love your background!

It’s like they want you to come over to Lemmy full time! And after so many years there, it seems only right to do as they’re asking. Welcome! 🙌

If you can’t afford health insurance then you don’t have everything ready to go. Myself, I’m holding my job to keep my health insurance until my business can support my family and our needs. It’s a bastard and a half but worst case, I’ve still got my job.

But if all you need is money, do you have a way to get some to pay for health insurance in the interim? Do a tiny “family and friends” seed round for six months runway, or however long you think you’d need?

Oh, it’s still like that. Mexico just got rid of DST which resulted in some fun bugs at my workplace. And then there’s this Lunar Standard Time thing being proposed… why it can’t just use UTC, I’ll never understand…

I know I spoke about elections specifically, but I think most of my anxiety comes from how much bigger than just politics this problem is. My concern about what we’re facing is that we, each of us, can no longer trust evidence we haven’t borne firsthand witness to. It’s more fundamental than “spin”, or anything that’s come before. The greatest periods of advancement in human history happened on the back of the printing press, the telephone, the internet. Each of those new technologies heralded an expansion of an individual’s reach until any given person could reach across the globe effectively instantaneously, allowing theretofore unprecedented levels of human collaboration. Now we have a new technology which threatens the shrinking of our individual worlds, our social circles, down to just what and who we can reach out and touch. We won’t be able to trust anyone or anything else. It sounds like living all the worst parts of a Neal Stephenson novel.

Critical thinking skills don’t help when the data is contaminated, though. Garbage in, garbage out. And the problem isn’t going to be when someone claims something - it’s going to be when they deny. Proof in any direction can be created at will, right?

Unfortunately there’s not a reliable way to detect AI-generated content automatically, not without something like Google’s SynthID built into the model doing the generating. You’re bang-on that the box is open and can’t be shut, though, and I am spending more and more time thinking (anxiously) about what our collective adaptation to that fact is going to turn out to look like.

I fear the only real solution to deepfakes is to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and always be excellent to each other, because I know that’s never going to happen. There are simply too many individuals and other entities happy to take advantage when given the benefit of the doubt. So what do we do? Isolate and mistrust each other? Cut off all but a handful of trusted confidantes? That’s exactly the goal of the people trying to fuck with our elections. Do we descend into fascism? Also the goal.

I just feel so defeated (which, yes, is yet another goal of the adversary). How do we win this?

🤡

“Not being able to draw” is indeed a limit, one I share with *quadriplegics as another commenter was kind enough to correct me (😅).

Using a tool to break that limit sure seems like playing with limits to me, sifting through iterations and refining prompts sure sounds like a drafting process, and changing elements with inpainting to stitch together your drafts into something close to what you have in your head sure sounds like revision. All of this, which can take hours or days of you want to be so exacting, sounds like “putting the work in”.

Does using AI suddenly mean you can draw? Of course not. But I don’t think it’s at all fair to say using AI means someone has no imagination.

Well, I’ve shared my creations because I think they’re funny too, and maybe other people will, but I’m not gonna put them on an album and sell them! I’m just arguing the creative side of it. Those tracks wouldn’t exist without my lyrics, and I typically go through a bunch of “takes” to get the melodies and rhythms I want, so for someone to say there’s no imagination involved feels thoroughly unfair to me.

Well first off, most paraplegics still have use of their arms, so drawing should not be a problem there

Lol fair enough, my bad, I’m still shaking off the sleep, I did mean quadriplegics!

So then in this view it’s not just using your extremities to create art, but any part of your body, which is a crucial part of the process. Your mouth, a foot, a nostril - all valid bodily extensions to interface with the world and create “real art” with.

But language is another interface between someone’s mind and the world; why is that not a valid extension to create art with? What about people who generate their AI art piecemeal, using inpainting and careful prompting to correct features they don’t want? What about professional photographers using their existing knowledge of photography to create award-winning compositions entirely with AI? Is it fair to say these people have no imagination?

Okay. I write lyrics and have Suno turn them into full songs to make wife laugh. My wife laughs. But according to you I don’t have any imagination because I’m not a multivocal singer, can’t play any instruments, don’t have my own band to play for her on demand? Fuck off.

So a paraplegic can’t be creative? 🤔

Or, let me rephrase because this is a serious question testing the limits of your statement: what impact would you say being a paraplegic has on someone’s ability to create art, given that (according to you) they cannot perform such critical parts of the creative process?

Freedom of speech guarantees the federal government won’t be able to mete out punishment for speech. It does not mean that anyone can say whatever, wherever, whenever. Social consequences for speech are fair game, as long as those consequences don’t themselves rise to misdemeanor or crime.