When I say crunching numbers, I mean eating them

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
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galvanizedfriend

The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI

US Copyright Office wants to hear what people think about AI and copyright
People have until October 18th to comment.
The Verge

American friends! The US Copyright Office (which we know exerts huuuge influence in how these things are treated elsewhere) wants to hear opinions on copyright and AI.

"The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI and copyright issues beginning August 30th as the agency figures out how to approach the subject."

We can assume that the opposing side will definitely be using all of their lobbying power towards widespread AI use, so this is a very good chance to let them know your thoughts on AI and how art and creative content of all kinds should be protected.

ri-writing

One of the things they’re asking for comment on is the use of copyrighted works to train AI.  The Copyright Office really will read what you write.  If lots of people write in that they oppose allowing generative AI to train on copyrighted works, that could encourage the Copyright Office to also find that using copyrighted works to train AI engines should not be allowed.  Courts routinely look at Copyright Office publications while interpreting the Copyright Act, so this is an opportunity to actually have a say in the issue. 

You might be wondering how you should express that letting AI train on people’s copyrighted works is bad in a way that the Copyright Office will take seriously.  The simple answer is: Be polite and be honest.  If you’ve been a victim, you can share how you felt when you discovered your work had been used to train AI without your permission.  If you think authors and artists deserve not to have their work used without their permission, you can say that.  Be truthful.  Don’t present something as a fact if it is not.  Avoid hyperbole, inflammatory accusations, and foul language.  It is okay to say you are upset, concerned, and/or hurt, but do it without calling someone else a “fucker.” 

If you have no idea what to say, but want to comment, I've got some suggestions on how to write a comment under the cut.

Keep reading

muffinlance

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT! Please take a moment out of your day, on behalf of all authors, artists, and terrible bosses looking to replace human creativity with ultra-cheap good-enough alternatives to comment. And I don't generally ask for reblogs, but yeah. Do that too. But the most important part is commenting. Doesn't have to be perfect, just copy and paste from above if you want to, or write a heartfelt two-sentence "artists and writers should give consent and receive compensation to be included in a training set, and images and writing resulting from AI should not be eligible for copyright without significant further human manipulation/improvement of the generated image." Which is my own current stance on this issue.

I've seen two links floating on the reblogs for where to comment officially at, which is confusing

At regulations.gov: here

At the copyright office: here

BOTH OF THESE ULTIMATELY LINK TO THE SAME COMMENT FORM (on regulations.gov), so just to preemptively clear up that confusion, follow either link they're both fine

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kurtwagnermorelikekurtwagnerd
brattylikestoeat

So let’s talk about Flex.

I’ve been getting email from them and my apartment complex. Flex is a new payment options where they take your rent and divide it over two to four payments. But of course flex has it own fee.

So essentially Flex pays your rent with a fee and you pay flex back. Sounds good right.

But I did some digging because they are pushing this so hard.

Come to find out, Flex is horrible. It doesn’t tell you how much the fee is until you sign up. Once you sign up it’s damm near impossible to get out of it.

So let’s say you need to split September rent, but in October you are fine. You still have to go thru flex and pay the fee.

Then I found this article. Not only could the lady not get out of flex, she ended up oweing them about 1k in fees.

That article also states that Flex as a business has 1 out of 5 stars on BBB. Their customer service is damm never nonexistent.

But I think we are missing a bigger issue. Apartments are pushing flex because they know people can not afford the rent. And because people can’t afford the rent there are more evictions and loss of payment. So instead of lowering the rent they push flex. They want it to seem like they are helping when they are not.

Most people get evicted and the apartment never get their money. 7 years later it falls off your credit report.

So to keep people in these buildings and to keep a steady income they offer some shit like flex.

It’s predatory and will most likely leave a tenant in worst standing than before.

Please don’t use it.

brattylikestoeat

I also never subscribed to Flex at all. Never been on their site. So my apartment complex had to mass sign us up for these emails. That alone piss me off because I never gave permission.

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letslovefood

boosting bc my apartments having been pushing this too

kurtwagnermorelikekurtwagnerd
kowabungadoodles

There's an adhd hack which I wanna describe but it's going to sound sort of fake and sort of like I'm saying "just do the thing" which I'm not.

Basically it can be impossible to start doing the thing, but once you've started it, it's actually fine right? It's just FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to start it, especially because you don't want to do it.

So I've got this way where I start it "without meaning to" a bit like if you were standing on the edge of the cliff and unable to make yourself jump off but... but you can jerk your body violently-- then you're falling and you don't really get a say in the matter any more.

A good example of this is not wanting to make a call. So you'd sit there and plan what you want to rehearse and hit the button when you're ready... or not, because actually you'd put the phone down and run off to do literally anything else.

So instead, I just hit call really fast, with no actual intention to make the call. Oh shit I really don't want to but now it's ringing and oh shit someone picked up and now we're already rolling and it'd be worse to hang up than to just talk--

I do the same thing with timers and work tasks where I've trained my brain to only be 'winning' the 'game' when the 15m timer is running so now if I hit the timer I'm like 'oh shit work started and I'm LOSING' and I'll jump up to do exactly 15 minutes of work... Only now I've already started and I might as well keep going, right?

Turning tasks into "reactions" not "actions"-- And reacting is way easier.

It's kind of setting the "poor impulse control" part of ADHD against the "Procrastination" part and making them fight.

kurtwagnermorelikekurtwagnerd
angiethewitch

having a husband who is a forensic science student who does nothing but study skeletons all day is ridiculous because we were in the middle of doing...adult....stuff....and he suddenly just grabbed my head and said "oh my god, you know you've got a healed skull fracture here?!" like WHAT do you MEAN I have a HEALED SKULL FRACTURE???

angiethewitch

he told me my skull healed really weirdly and I probably have brain damage from it because there's a fuckin crater in the back of my skull that I just thought was a normal thing everyone has. I should probably see a doctor

angiethewitch

update on this: he keeps like grabbing random body parts and trying (and failing) to subtly look at me and im like STOP EXAMINING ME because he's so fascinated by my fucked up skeletal structure. the other day we had Christmas drinks with my coworkers and he told me afterwards that someone in the group had a weird shaped skull and something about processes and i was like god can't you just be normal and stop examining people

slipstreamborne

I told the person I'm dating that one reason I like old movies is because most actors don't have Hollywood-perfect smiles and I like to look at all the different shapes of their crooked teeth and misaligned bites and the way their silver and gold molar fillings flash when they talk.

They just looked at me and said "That's such an anthropologist thing to like," and honestly? No rebuttal possible.

(After this conversation I drunkenly showed them my favorite pages of my paleopathology textbook. Bless them for not immediately running as I caressed an image of a snapped femur that healed at a 90 degree angle.)