came here to suggest journaling as well. and if you’ve already had a good experiance with it, all the better. during my divorce, the only other person i felt connected with offered to “help fix me” if i’d just give them a pass on all my established boundries. i declined and we parted ways. filled at least two books that year but it gave me a place to talk outside my head. it was enough to get me to each next day. that gave me time to let connections with other people develop on terms i was comfortable with.

i think we’re in one of those nd moments where we fundamentally agree on everything but enjoy the topic too much. let me step back a bit because i dont think i communicated my intention was a critique of the tactic not the idea. hell i know me, i definitely didnt communicate it well. if the goal is room for people to use a gen ai tool without being flogged on moral grounds. a goal we appear to agree on. starting with those opensource tools accomplishes that goal. theres room for an interesting discussion around copyright and problems with corporate playforms from a place of agreement.

the copyright thing is an unwinable debate on both sides. there is no right answer to it. it’s very effective at stirring shit if thats the main goal though. lots of chances to quote eachother and do point by point replies. everyone is on the defensive from the start. fun had all around if thats people thing i suppose.

thats where you lose me. when we’re talking about the blanket statement that all generative ai is theft when opensource solution exist, i agree with you. there is nuance here, generative ai in an opensource context is fine. whatever i think of it’s value doesnt matter.

but ignoring all nuance around copyright or calling this a moral panic while claiming some kind of moral high ground on privacy loses the plot. it’s an uncalled for detour in an otherwise good argument. not all internet piracy is bad, not all internet piracy is advocating freedom of inforormation. just like you cant steal food, you cant steal from the rich. sure a debate could be had about pirating a marvel movie or taylor swifts next album takes money somewhere along the whole supply chain and evtually hurts a person somehow. but now we’re talking about an entire system here and also fuck’em. but thats not the free flow of information. if i put something from behind a paywall onto sci-hub. yeah some company could use some ip in there to make money. they were going to act morally bankrupt anyway. piracy and free flow of information right?
now as most scientists will just give you their work, then give you extra stuff because they’re excited you’re interested. if they say “please dont let this one section out, i thought you’d like it but its what i pay my bills from”. and i still post that section. i’ve stolen their labor like a good capitalist. if a diy band kickstarters their ablum saying it’ll be free after they make enough to eat. and i post that on a torrent site day one. just a pirate and an asshole who stole their labor. generative ai overwhelmingly uses content from small copyright holders who cant afford it, while providing a profit vehicle for copyright holders who can afford not to care. in this context the copyright is the only tool available to those small artists to protect their labor and ability to eat.

make your pfp with gen ai using freely offered data, cool glad you found an activity that gives you joy. do it using pirated data, cool glad you found an activity that gives you joy but theres no moral high ground there.

its a flawed description of the issue i agree. put it another way. if i search an image database using keywords and skim until i find exactly what i want. then post that image as my own. have i created something? thats all generated images are. existing images, progromatically mushed together without real intent. i dont really take issue with the use of tools within programs like photoshop. that becomes a question of intent sometimes sure, but you’re still typically putting in effort and making decisions during the process. yes generative ‘ai’ is cool tech. the same way LLMs incorporating conversational manipulations of psychics is fascinating. or how the mechanics of magic tricks can be as interesting as the trick. but magic still isnt real and im still not having an actual conversation with my computer.

a human manipulating a generated image still doesnt make it art. it can be a nice picture and the tech behind making it can be neat, but it’s not art. that said i just dont engage on posts i know are ai content. presenting a generated image without being clear about it is just being a dick. it dosesnt have to be in the title but it should be aknowledged. i dono if a full ban is needed but if i wanted my feed full of slop i’d be subbed to communites for ai, or .world’s 196. this place seems more about snark and joy, which ai rarely brings out.

debain, with xfce if i need a desktop. mostly because i started on xubuntu. started learning sysadmin stuff when all i could afford was a potato with salvaged computer components shoved in it. xfce considered that excessively over powered. ended up loving the way i set up my xfce env, and probably wont change it much over the next 20yrs because theres no need. so when cononical got extra gross it was easy to just move to debian and carry on with my life.

we are the union’s ordinary life album

no thank you. being a decent person isnt transactional. not bartering over which groups someone can still treat like shit for fun. and being the kind of obsessive who tracks every local beatle or makes a youtube series about obscure shit. isnt the same thing as being someone who need to knock others down to feel strong.

look i don’t know what your grudge is against my bank account, but i have $100 in strange vinyl disks being mailed to me now. please cease this witchcraft.

that article had me hooked in the first two sentenced too. and now the budos band is gonna cost me money.

didn’t know my life was missing this band until today, holy shit. thanks :)