ceoln @ceoln@qoto.org

Sometimes you happen upon something in your research that just begs to be asked about in AI -- and here is the answer to my inquiry about "jade burial suits."

#AI #AIart #Midjourney #Jade #Burial

Finally had a moment to read this statement from the FTC and it is 🔥🔥🔥

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/02/keep-your-ai-claims-check

A few choice quotes:

>>

I’m a co-author on a new paper out in The Lancet - part of the Lancet Commission’s ongoing work.

It traces the evolving dynamics of the anti-vaccine movement from the “Jenny McCarthy crunchy left” that many remember, to a networked activism movement with strong ties to right-wing identity. It describes the increasing tactical reliance on online harassment as well.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673623001368

"It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not" - Thich Nhat Hanh #zen

Urban Interior #midjourney #AIArt

Is the #OpenSim community heading into the next #drama?

This time, it's about female fashion. On the one side, there's the complaint that there's hardly any female clothing to be found on freebie sims that doesn't make your female avatar look like a hooker. On the other side, there's the complaint that there's actually too much of it on allegedly the very same freebie sims.

Basically, until recently, there have always been three factions when it came to outfitting female avatars:

One faction favours outfits that are as skimpy and racy as possible. Skirts and dresses can't be too short as long as seeing what you aren't supposed to see requires camming. Bonus points if they're laced or otherwise open on the sides so that everyone can see that the avatar is going commando under a skirt or a dress. Footwear always has to be high-heeled, and the higher the platform soles are, the possible.

This faction also doesn't care about immersion; they'd wear micro-bikinis plus 4" platform sandals with 8" spike heels as everyday casual wear and on snow-covered, Christmas-themed sims because "it's just pixels," and it's always hot tropical summer everywhere on the #Hypergrid, no matter what a sim looks like. Until recently, they all had ripped #SecondLife mesh bodies, mostly Athena, sometimes one of the three outcomes of stealing SLink Physique Hourglass (Decadence-HG, BBHG, Je'Thai Hourglass).

The second faction, a great deal smaller, exclusively wears Athena, but they prefer their look to at least sometimes be less racy, less slutty. Maybe they prefer a more modest/more classy everyday casual look, maybe they want to dress in a way fitting the setting like on the aforementioned snowy Christmas sims. One of them has recently complained that clothes for such outfits are very hard to find whereas there are complaints from the first faction that they're everywhere, and they clutter up the freebie stores. It's obvious that there's a clothes-wise middle ground, e.g. denim micro-miniskirts, that's too racy for the second faction to be worn casually and at the same time too prudish for the first faction.

The third faction, much smaller than even the second faction to the point of being almost unknown, is similar to the second faction, but with the difference that they don't wear a body stolen from SL. Many are veterans who don't want to change their avatars' looks, hence they stick to the system body; a few have a body from the #Ruth2 family (e.g. Ruth 2.0 RC#2, Ruth 2.0 RC#3, #RuthToo RC#3, Ruth2 v4, LuvMyBod, Diana).

They don't even have any such super-racy clothes to wear. Such clothes have never been made for any of these bodies, neither as classic layer clothes for the system body nor as mesh for the Ruth2 family, and there aren't any clothes specifically rigged for Ruth2 v4 at all. At the same time, it's easier for them to dress more modestly because they know where to get such clothes that fit their bodies, and because system body and Ruth2 v4 users don't shy away from wearing old layer clothes or meshes by Damien Fate or even Linda Kellie (Clutterfly). However, chances are they're derided by the first faction for their choice of body, their "outdated" clothes and their prudish outfits, maybe also by the second faction for the former two points.

Chances are that the post on OpenSimWorld I've linked a few paragraphs above will deepen the chasms between these factions.

In the meantime, the first faction is splitting. One growing part is switching to bodies such as Legacy or Reborn which are "curvy" without being ridiculously so like Decadence-HG & Co. The bodies themselves are racier, you can wear them with soft, squishy boobs, and they're usually also combined with soft thighs. Also, even more extreme outfits are being imported for these bodies. Some don't even try to conceal the included thong; they do include a thong, however, because it's the only thing in the outfit that at least tries to cover up the pussy slit.

The other part is trying to defend the status quo of Athena being relevant or even the sexiest body around, not to mention typical "sexy" Athena outfits. I guess they feel like being ground up between the small but increasingly vocal second faction demanding more exposure for "boring and prudish" clothes, the tiny third faction "going on everyone's nerves" with being fully legal and the "curvy" faction being like, "Step aside with your ugly and outdated teenager bodies, we're the new sluts in town!"

Yes, teenager bodies. Athena Petite, which is actually more realistic than standard Athena, is often considered underage already now for not being as voluptuous as standard Athena. If curvy becomes the new normal, then standard Athena, as well as all Ruth2 family members, will count as 15 years old tops, and Athena Petite will count as 11 or 12 years old.

I hope this won't escalate, but I wouldn't count on it.

In fact, I wouldn't even be surprised if the blocking or banning of avatars for their looks became more commonplace. The Plazas on #OSgrid (Event Plaza, #LbsaPlaza, Wright Plaza etc.) already have very strict rules which are actually being enforced by the mods with perma-bans. So this exists, and there may be retaliation against it by the "slutware everywhere" faction. And the Amoa Nude Beach Resort only lets avatars leave the small landing zone if they're naked and automatically teleports them back to the landing zone if they're detected to be wearing clothes. So this exists, too.

Another sim requires avatars like in 2003 with no prim or mesh attachments whatsoever as of recently and automatically kicks and perma-bans each avatar that breaks this rule from the whole grid upon first strike. While this is part of the concept of making the visit not too pleasant, the commercial grid DigiWorldz used to block any and all avatars wearing an Athena body for years because they didn't want to have avatars all decked out in copybotted stuff running around the grid. I guess they've lifted the block when they realised that they were blocking the vast majority of avatars on the #Hypergrid. So this exists, too. Or if it used to exist, it still remains technologically possible.

So, as a sim owner or even a grid owner, you have all kinds of means for getting rid of avatars whose looks you find insulting. It wouldn't surprise me if stuff like this was deployed even more, starting this year. What worries me most, however, is that those without stolen SL bodies would be the first victims, especially when whitelists are being used that only contain mesh bodies which the sim/grid owner tolerates. If you don't wear one of these, you'd be out. But even blacklists can hurt users of the Ruth2 family if sim/grid owners are aware of their existence. And if only classic system avatars were to be weeded out by blacklisting layer clothes, Ruth2 v4 would become a collateral damage because avatars with this body are very likely to wear layer clothes, especially as underwear, hosiery or swimwear, whereas avatars with stolen bodies pretty much always only ever wear mesh.

Such bans can easily also affect male avatars with the same technology. Another reason to be worried.

At the very least, we might see an increasing amount of de-rendering entire avatars for what they're wearing, body included.

#OpenSim #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Avatars #VirtualFashion

We'll go down in history as the first society that wouldn't save itself because it wasn't cost-effective. Kurt Vonnegut, American writer and novelist (1922 2007)

@david It's something I will always remember happily about an otherwise dark time. Dad had not taught in 30 years when he died, and Mom and I still encountered people at every turn who would tell us he had made a difference in their lives. Something teachers may not feel every day but there are students out there who were impacted positively. Hopefully some of them know it before the end.

if you're wondering how ohio is going, it's going like this

Review copies of my #solarpunk novella ANOTHER LIFE are available on NetGalley for the month of March only!

Publishers Weekly called it "a thought-provoking exploration of how the past should inform the future."

If you're a #BookReviewer #librarian or #bookseller request a copy here: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/282546

This guy is so dangerous and so gross. I know we know this but the horror of him even running again, let alone winning, is so great, I can’t leave it unremarked. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2023/mar/04/donald-trump-cpac-2023-bolsonaro-republicans-us-politics-live

I stole this from someone else rather than boosting them because they didn't include alt text. Anyway, the message is very apropos. Also, your child is more likely to be groomed by a pedophile in church or at the boy scouts than at a drag show.

Where do you all host your Mastodon #bots?

#CreativeBots #botmakers #BotAlly

We Asked ChatGPT About Art Theory. It Led Us Down a Rabbit Hole So Perplexing We Had to Ask Hal Foster for a Reality Check
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/chatgpt-art-theory-hal-foster-2263711 Including several non-existent articles, one by UC Berkeley professor Whitney Davis.

"You can watch hour after hour of Adams’s livestreams, as I have, and you won’t find that nugget of forbidden truth. His reasoning is as sloppy as his research. In every way, he’s just wrong." https://www.thebulwark.com/the-foolishness-of-scott-adams/

This Reg story about #ChatGPT telling Alexander Hanff that he had died in 2019, and then creating false links to the Guardian news site as “proof,” is deeply disturbing. https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/02/chatgpt_considered_harmful/