(no subject)

Aug. 6th, 2025 09:02 pm
kradeelav: Satou, Ajin (Satou)
[personal profile] kradeelav
> this happens

>> wistfully considering making a polymarket account so i can. at least make bank. on my godforsaken ability. to prophetically, precisely guess this shit half a decade ago. when it was truly tinfoil hat territory.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaeueueeueuuuygghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

dw i'm invested in much worse: le Stonks

(no subject)

Aug. 5th, 2025 05:45 pm
kradeelav: Satou, Ajin (Satou)
[personal profile] kradeelav
three separate thoughts with a variety of connections: 

I.

as i get older, but in the last five years especially, i find myself seeking out one trait in people above all others : integrity.

i like people from many walks of life, backgrounds, thoughts, experiences. (some would probably say i'm too open minded in that regard.)

but consistently, the people i feel the safest with can all be described with that trait. not quick to assume the worst of others. "the lights are on in the brain" to use a line from my dad. thoughtful -- not entirely with logic, but emotionally and timelessly thoughtful as well.

II.

but then, before i looked it up, i asked myself: what do *i* think is the definition of integrity?

after some thought: a consistent (almost stubborn ) trait of approaching every situation with good faith and an equally stubborn tenacity to never take the easy way out in terms of nuance.

upon looking it up and seeing the definitions offered -- "moral values" seems such a mealy-mouthed word -- that in hindsight -- that could mean anything, doesn't it?


III.

fascinating, to me - that i'm becoming rapidly more annoyed with the coercion involved with forced-AI-applications than technically by the fact of it existing to begin with.

i've written before that i feel quite sensitive to coercion for (possibly) unique reasons. i'll allow everyone one free pass (from companies to individuals) of accidentally stepping across boundaries, whether socially or at work, then a polite warning. but i expect that warning to be listened to, or I will act. (boundaries can, and i argue -- must be enforced for a peaceful life. if one's in a situation where boundaries by definition can't be enforced, that feels like a dire personal situation to get out of at all costs. sometimes i feel like people forget that you also can't outsource boundaries -- you can't force other people to do things you want -- but you can remove yourself from the situation.)

outsourcing infrastructure - the engine of boundaries in the digital age -- feels like it's showing its dark side in this particular topic. infrastructure could be a communications program (discord), an operating system (windows), a piece of hardware (phone), or even a third party company (cloudflare).

to me what matters is: can they cut you off from using the infrastructure? if yes, then it's outsourced and compromised. outsourcing boundaries in a tangible context in a great many ways. (the subtle "flip" to me is often shown in 'can they force updates on you' -- because once when that line's crossed, it's infrastructure-as-a-service, and not something owned.)

also outsourcing nuance, it feels like. and i'm not fond of that thought at all.



Sea & Tree.

Aug. 5th, 2025 12:00 am
bunn: (Default)
[personal profile] bunn
We've decided that we're going to sell the boat after this summer (it's not cheap to run, and the engine servicing & repairs in particular are painfully pricy). I'm going to miss being able to run down to the open sea and out to the islands in the spring, I know, so I'm making the best of it while we've got it.

Many many photos.  )

Tree News

The sycamore tree that was leaning perilously over the neighbour's house (with scary rotten side to the trunk) is no more! Pp decided to put it up as a 'job available' on Mybuilder, and we immediately got a contact from a shiny new young garden and tree management company, run by two shockingly young yet highly competent people who quoted very reasonably for the tree to be removed. They had the relevant certifications & insurances, so we went for it, and wow, did they work. They were here from about 10 am to after 8 and hung themselves by ropes from the tree with chainsaws to take bits off. Then they chipped it all, and took away the logs!

I asked their advice about the elm tree next to the sycamore, and was delighted to hear that they thought it was in fine fettle and needed no work done. You don't see that many elms about, so I really wanted to keep it (assuming it wasn't also a terrible peril to the neighbour's roof). It looks very fine now you can properly see the shape of it - though you can see it was sort of leaning away from the sycamore a bit. With luck, it will just fill out a bit on that side. There is the ever-present risk of Dutch Elm disease, but I am hoping that the wild sea-winds may be enough to keep the beetles at bay. Certainly there's no sign of DED yet.

I asked the tree guys to leave the big rotten stump of the sycamore in place, hoping it will continue to rot and perhaps become hollow and enliven the local environment. It may shoot from the left over bits, but if it does, it's now small enough that I can easily manage the shoots with loppers.

Queen Demon review

Aug. 2nd, 2025 10:59 am
marthawells: (Witch King)
[personal profile] marthawells
Woke up to a fantastic review of Queen Demon in the August Locus. Here's an excerpt:


This is a fantastic novel, set in a fascinating world with truly compelling characters. It is shot through with grief, with the reverberations of destruction and the aftermaths of trauma: While the past timeline gives us emotional focus on the characters’ griefs, immediate traumas, and desperate choices, the present makes plain the extent of the Hierarchs’ destruction of the rest of the world, the scars in the landscape, in societies, in the vanishing of entire cultures. New societies have built themselves out of the ruins, in the shadow of what was lost and in its absences. While we see it particularly from Kai’s perspective, understanding his losses and his wounds, his scars and his griefs, and what healing has been possible for him between the past and the present, it’s not unique to Kai, either. Loss with all its jagged edges looms over this fragile recovery. These scars wear not only upon the main characters but upon their allies and opponents, too: Trauma, both personal and generational, is a strongly motivating factor and a weight that influences most of the personal relationships and many of the political interactions that we see.
-- Liz Bourke, Locus August 2025


Queen Demon is the sequel to Witch King, and it will be out in ebook, hardcover, and audiobook (narrated by Eric Mok, on October 7

(no subject)

Jul. 31st, 2025 07:40 pm
kradeelav: Dr. Kiriko (amused)
[personal profile] kradeelav
quick link dump like i used to do more; i was looking up a bunch of genshin impact stylistic/render breakdowns (don't ask.... i can at least promise these don't have the fuckin 'hurr it like ghlibi hurrr' line.).

* genshin impact - developer / art direction concept notes for a specific area setting. cool old school style blog post with frank discussion of real world inspiration.

genshin impact - russian breakdown of the environment render steps/pipeline.

* genshin impact - blender character render breakdown / recreation. normally i find blender render mimics to be total ass but this guy did a pretty good job; learned a lot with the gradient shadow grading.

* genshin impact - GDC talk/pdf by the founder/director who did a pretty good job of covering the visual look in one chat, vast as it is.

(no subject)

Jul. 30th, 2025 11:12 pm
kradeelav: Satou, Ajin (Satou)
[personal profile] kradeelav
extremely disconcerting feeling at work learning about a new wave of ai tools on adobe and going 'oh jesus, everything apple/adobe is compromised, compromised.'

>> mfw i think back to 2022 when i jumped to linux/krita
>> back then my tin foil hat theory/"why" reason was that apple/adobe would lock users out if they detected you were drawing certian kinds of kink art (given the infrastructure already existed with them not letting you photoshop currency). and just in general feeling that the whole system was compromised.
>> like i was right about them being compromised, technically wrong on the particulars as of right now (but if you combine that with the age gating coming everywhere)....

> .... YEAH I KINDA DIDN'T GUESS HOW BAD it'd get lul. kek. [weak laugh]

agh!

why do i have to be so incredibly prescient about the worst shit possible lol. (sometimes i dig up on that 'predictions of the 2020's' post i did here back in literally jan 3rd 2020 and just. stare at it. here. if you want to do some incredible psychic damage to yourself. :D )

Online Event

Jul. 29th, 2025 09:00 am
marthawells: Murderbot with helmet (Default)
[personal profile] marthawells
Tomorrow (Wednesday the 30th) Summer of Science Fiction & Fantasy: Martha Wells in conversation with Kate Elliott

July 30 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm PT Register at this link:

https://www.clarionwest.org/event/summer-of-science-fiction-fantasy-martha-wells-in-conversation-with-kate-elliott/

It's free!

(no subject)

Jul. 28th, 2025 11:50 am
kradeelav: Alucard, Hellsing (oh well)
[personal profile] kradeelav
never have i been more thankful i finally Got Good this past year at triaging/delegating/project management

because wow i would have crashed out in a bad way this past week between a perfect storm of work/[redacted, related to itch]/itch damage control triaging/[redacted, unrelated to itch]/being stupid about sleep management, had i been fumbling along with the previous lack of discipline lol.

(comments disabled for bandwidth, nothing personal, focusing on pure mission critical stuff. same thing as why all of my non-art posts on bsky have comments disabled.)

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