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Steve @smread.bsky.social · 1d

and also the idea that there will be a social component to sharing these goofy videos. why would i care about someone else's marylin monroe on a dragon video when it takes me as little effort as they spent to make my own

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Jon Bois @jonbois.bsky.social · 16d

i don't mean to single out baseball fans here, because you see this in lots of fan communities, but in certain corners people talk as though baseball is real. they think all the players are real people and the stadiums are places you can actually visit. to each their own, but that cannot be healthy

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Steve @smread.bsky.social · 25d

absolutely lovely stuff

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Matt Zoller Seitz @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social · 27d

Every part of this is horrible, but what pierced my heart was the unemployed illustrator's parents giving him a birthday card with an AI slop illustration

GigerPunk @gigerpunk.bsky.social · 28d

Fuck me this is bleak.
But please, do continue to use GenAI slop thumbnails for your YouTube videos, or your album art, or your book covers or whatever else. I'll continue to refuse to watch/listen/read any of them, knowing already they're not worth the time & that you're a disappointing lazy hack.

‘Children's book illustrator isn't a job anymore.’
I've been out of work for a while now. I made children's book illustrations, stock art, and took various art commissions.

Now I have several maxed out credit cards and use a donation bin for food. I haven't had a steady contract in over a year. two weeks ago, when a client who has switched to AI found out about this he gave me $50 out of "a sense of guilt." Basically pity for the fact that Illustrator, as a job, does not exist anymore.

It was my birthday recently and I sincerely considered not living anymore.
The worst part of all is that the parents who once supported me fully in being an artist sent me an AI generated picture of a caricature of themselves holding a birthday cake with my name spelled incorrectly.

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Blue sky nice guy @rajandelman.bsky.social · Sep 13

Do you think unbending Clippy until he was a long piece of metal would be painful for him. Or do you think it would cause him to feel a great sense of relief

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The Ass is the father of the legs @internethippo.bsky.social · Sep 13

What's your secret to being online all the time without contracting computer madness? For me it's being pure of heart

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Steve @smread.bsky.social · Sep 5

This is an incredible title

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Steve @smread.bsky.social · Aug 21

every album was also recording during the countdown but ended half an hour before the clock was up very confident it was going to announce a new single. i think we just always have to expect its variants until its not

Steve @smread.bsky.social · Aug 21

its such a strange franchise to pick up such a literal minded fanbase!

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Steve @smread.bsky.social · Aug 21

incredible to have the live reaction to the vinyl drop.

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Naomi Alderman @naomialderman.bsky.social · Aug 19

having thought about this for three days, my current status is:

what the FUCK are we doing trying to ban social media for kids and not banning AI use? we are literally telling them not to use the computer to talk to their real friends but instead to the imaginary technology monetisable 'friends'.

Naomi Alderman @naomialderman.bsky.social · Aug 16

this makes me suspect that one of the routes that AI companies are aiming at is targeting young people. anything that existed when you were a kid feels normal and indispensable. especially if you always used AI to write all your essays for you. and to comfort you when your parents were arguing.

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Steve @smread.bsky.social · Aug 18

simulating the stuff that is in theory popular because its real people doing real things feels particularly insidious!

Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · Aug 18

The creator of this AI mukbang video, Jayla, told me she's 26, works part-time in North Carolina and just started making AI videos this summer, seeing a chance at easy money. She now sells an online handbook for making fake influencers, for $15. (These girls are 100% fake, if that's not obvious.)

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Steve @smread.bsky.social · Aug 12

aren't you glad i told you about the blackface labubu

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Janel Comeau 🍁 @verybadllama.bsky.social · Aug 5

obsessed with this vague notice from the government of Nova Scotia. Like it’s definitely about the new fire restrictions, but it also looks like a poster you’d find yellowed and curled on the bulletin board of a diner in a town where locals won’t talk about their missing kids

Instagram post from the nsgov Instagram account. Black and red text reads “STAY OUT OF THE WOODS”; the foreground is a black silhouette of trees

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America Xanadu @johnxuandou.bsky.social · Jul 31

This is going around for some reason, just gonna point out that many studies have been done about porn addiction, held by researchers who believed in porn addiction, only to find that porn addiction is not real and never was. Turns out it was religion.

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/wome...

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Steve @smread.bsky.social · Jul 31

The frustrating thing with the implemenation of age gating the internet is that I would very much like to use an internet that didn't have children on it but I want the "adult" internet to be the default one and not require jumping through hoops to access.

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pixelatedboat aka “mr bluesky” @pixelatedboat.bsky.social · Jul 30

I would rather die than create an account to continue

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Steve @smread.bsky.social · Jul 30

its really something to see people writing pieces about how we should have zero tolerance for anything that could possibly be construed as fascism in american eagle ads and its a substack link.

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Ryan Singel @ryansingel.bsky.social · Jul 26

@lexroman.com asks the right question about the current "indie media" moment:

"Are we building independent media or are we building platform-dependent media?"

My answer: if you are using #Substack, you are sharecropping for Marc Andreesen.

Lex's take:
journalistspaythemselves.com/p/why-substa...

Why Substack's new valuation means a monopoly is brewing

Substack's new $1.1B valuation signals a new chapter and a point of no return for so-called independent media

journalistspaythemselves.com

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yixura @yixura.bsky.social · Jul 26

i do not share the author's barely disguised fetish but i will defend to the death their right to publish it

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Themperor Kennedy🐸🏳️‍🌈 @kennedytcooper.bsky.social · Jul 26

Her vibe is so pathetic and the stuff she's saying about Mamdani sounds so cool it took me a minute to realize this wasn't satire and is actually intended as a smear

Microplastics Spookmelier @leastactionhero.bsky.social · Jul 25

thank you, muckraking journalists of the bari weiss tribune, for exposing the awesome stuff zohran mamdani has tweeted about like abolishing medical bills and seizing the property of millionaires

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Steve @smread.bsky.social · Jul 24

like... if you have to rely on a network of opaque self regulated ID verification services not even hosted in the UK to comply with this law maybe it shouldn't exist? Trying to force the internet to be child safe by default has done so much more damage than parents actually parenting.

Dazz - Spriters Resource & DYKG @dazz.spriters-resource.com · Jul 23

The UK Online Safety Act has to be one of the worst, most ill-considered ideas we've put forward in a fair while. The reasons it is ridiculous are plentiful and exceptionally easy to establish.

Considering safety is in the name, it is grossly unsafe.

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slop enjoyer @slop.guru · Jul 15

fantastic foreskins

tweet screenshot:

“Fantastic Four skins are coming to Fortnite
It is one of the most wanted collabs ever
via HYPEX”

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · Jul 14

HELP with long body

a reddit post that reads "Hello guys, does someone knows why my images are getting thoses long bodies? im trying so many different setting but im always getting those long bodies"

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Deb JJ Lee 🔜 Lightbox 112 @jdebbiel.bsky.social · Jun 24

ifykyk

a chart with the y axis as money and x axis as institutional respect. Top left is $35k every two weeks drawing NSFW anime on Patreon. Bottom right is $400 online comic for the New Yorker

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