Reading Cat and Girl's comic, 4000 of My Closest Friends, made me so sad.

I feel the same, though maybe I am a bit more MAD too. AFAIK, I am not on the list of artists whose work was used to train one of the popular generative AI (genAI) . But I know some of the artists on the list, I know this community, and I know what it's like to spend time making something, only to have someone else rip it from you and take credit for/profit off it. It hurts that these unethical practices exist and will continue to exist. Maybe my work will eventually end up on there, or is already there, because it's on the internet. The desire to delete my silly site / work / writing off the internet, as the tiniest protest, continues to intensify.

What also hurts me is seeing average people use the technology like a fad. They don't understand that it was unethical, because the companies are purposefully not transparent about their use of training databases full of stolen/unlicensed art and text. I'm sure there are ethical genAIs out there, but most of them aren't. Then we pair this with the reality that a lot of people (and governments), aren't willing to invest in the arts, for a multitude of reasons. Ever find yourself at a con and you can hear people whispering about how your self-pub original handbound XX page book isn't worth $10? Or people walking by and saying "I can draw that" like it's so easy? Or some joker on the internet who says that your art isn't worth what you're charging? I don't like them. That's disrespectful. There are a lot of these people, and a lot of them are using genAI. They simply don't respect or care about artists—don't waste your breath on them.

How you can help

If you see a well-meaning person use unethical genAI technologies for fun, please inform them that there is something insidious powering the magical genAI. The most popular available genAI systems are trained on art without permission, credit, or compensation to the original artists. Many of us are just looking for basic respect, consent, and/or to not be part of this system. Some folks using these genAI tools, simply do not know or understand (and fairly so).

It may seem fun and amazing to use these sorts of tools for the first time, but there's a lot of damage being done. I know this is an up-hill battle because it's in our nature to want to turn to the cheapest, easiest, and convenient thing, and look away from the actual implications that our choices have on society and culture (I'm not innocent here either, but I'm trying harder to be aware).

Other ways to help are:

• tell a real human artist you like their work
• signal boost or ethically share their work (e.g., via a link to the original, reblog, boost, retoot etc. and seek permission and credit if posting anew)
• make your own art without genAI (experience what it's like and how challenging and rewarding the journey can be)
• continue spreading the word about the dangers of unethical genAI, baddies in the arts sphere, and solutions to fight back against it (e.g., Glaze if it's visual, adjusting robots.txt, etc.)
• do not use or feed unethical genAI (text prompts, uploading images, etc.)
• avoid supporting companies using unethical genAI (I see you Square Enix)

I'm not an expert on this topic, so see links below that shed more light on the dangers and unethical nature of currently popular genAI.

Some links/context

Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy

Did you seek consent from living artists or work still under copyright?

No. There isn’t really a way to get a hundred million images and know where they’re coming from. It would be cool if images had metadata embedded in them about the copyright owner or something. But that's not a thing; there's not a registry. There’s no way to find a picture on the Internet, and then automatically trace it to an owner and then have any way of doing anything to authenticate it.

NOTE: several people have pointed out that metadata in images has existed for very long time. Also the fact that you can put in someone's name as prompt and have it spit out something stylistically similar, tells us that genAI systems probably do know who some of the owners are. Not to mention there is reverse image search.

Can artists opt out of being including in your data training model?

We’re looking at that. The challenge now is finding out what the rules are, and how to figure out if a person is really the artist of a particular work or just putting their name on it. We haven’t encountered anyone who wants their name taken out of the data set that we could actually find in the data set.

NOTE: There is a lawsuit from artists against genAI. There are also orgs like Concept Art Association who are lobbying to help protect human artists from genAI.

‘Impossible’ to create AI tools like ChatGPT without copyrighted material, OpenAI says

Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression – including blogposts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents – it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials

NOTE: OpenAI (chatGPT) is also being sued. I personally would not be sad if chatGPT ceased to exist. Let's not forget that the many of these technologies are developed on the back of low-wage workers in other countries. Not to mention that some people PAY subscriptions to use these technologies and these genAI companies are making profit off stolen work. Then there's also the processing power to run these systems, which leads to environmental and climate issues (much like crytpo and NFTs).

Generative AI Has a Visual Plagiarism Problem—Experiments with Midjourney and DALL-E 3 show a copyright minefield

The very existence of potentially infringing outputs is evidence of another problem: the nonconsensual use of copyrighted human work to train machines.

NOTE: this article provides visual examples and highlights how genAI can regurgitate near copies of images from their training inputs. Bing wanting you to credit Bing for its generated superhero image is infuriating. The humanization of tech is a dangerous path to go down when we're dehumanizing actual humans (loss of jobs, etc.).

Meta's new AI assistant trained on public Facebook and Instagram posts + Meta used copyrighted books for AI training despite its own lawyers' warnings, authors allege

NOTE: to add insult to injury, the chief AI at Meta, said this (though this person does attempt to clarify the poorly worded reply in the thread). HOWEVER, even though I'm small fry and make no money off my art (and work a day job to compensate), art and writing should be reliable options for income. Not everyone can just give everything out for free, cause we're not rich millionaires. The culture of publishing and respect and valuation towards creatives should change. I don't like the framing of how it's on the creative people to just give things out for free because it might work better in the current "culture" or system of compensation and publishing. Another zinger is this same person's says if you're inspired by their papers/ideas, you have to cite them. As if Meta has cited the bazillion scrapped words and images they used to train their genAI.

Teen deepfake victim pushes for federal law targeting AI-generated explicit content

“Deepfakes are happening every single day to women everywhere,” Morelle said. “This isn’t just celebrities. This is everyday people all over the United States.”

For teen girls victimized by ‘deepfake’ nude photos, there are few, if any, pathways to recourse in most states

“It victimizes them the same way people who deal in child pornography do. It’s not only offensive to the young person, it defames the person. And you never know what’s going to happen to that photograph,” he said. “You don’t know where that is once it’s transmitted, when it’s going to come back and haunt the young girl.”

NOTE: If you are a parent, here's another thing to yell about. One of many reasons why I avoid posting any photos or voice on the internet now. Some databases have been shown to include CSAM / child abuse.

There is soo much moree dirty laundry on this topic if you do a search. It is also affecting actors and voice over artists. Luddite Pro has a blog. Follow the artists who are involved in the lawsuits. Though WARNING—the more you read the more enraging and stressful your life may become (on top of all the other things to be yelling about in the world right now).

I'm not against assistive tech and genAI if it is ethical and transparent. Ed Newton-Rex also provides commentary on how there are existing business models, licensing, compensation, etc. for training data. A lot of these unethical genAIs cry about how it's impossible to do things ethically. IMO they need to try harder. Start over and do it right.

Basic respect and consent

Today's music post: Forest Dark by Nailah Hunter. A lovely harp and voice. Unlike my emotionally charged post.

For whatever reason, my server timed out like 10x trying to edit and save this post. It was as if the server didn't want me to write this. Well, the horrors persist, but so do I (for now).

I write in a full matching sweatsuit, hood pulled over my head and drawstring pulled tightly over my face. My glasses are clamped down somewhat awkwardly due to the hood's drawstrings pressure around my temples. Wool on my feet and shoulders. We're experiencing record-breaking cold weather here—heat is on but it's not keeping up with the draft from these single paned windows. Maybe the walls too. Interior temperature hovers between 12-14 C. My fingers are cold and stiff, which is always a barrier to anything artistic or creative.

It's my first winter here. This interior cold took me by surprise, but sometimes you don't know how poorly insulated your place is until it gets cold. I aspire to make my own slot-in storm windows / window inserts, but that means I'd have to get a whole slew of other tools (saw, wood, ladder, clamps, nails...etc.) and go outside to get them 🤣. Also need to wait for the ice to defrost from the interior of my windows so I can clean them. My pet peeve is when DIY videos/instructions say IT'S SO EASY and only costs X$ to make, but then they also have hundreds of dollars worth of power tools, sanders, garage, lumber, cars, and a workbench already. So I endure. This is also making me sad from a "new" plastic POV, which I was trying to avoid bringing into the apartment. I suppose DIY storm windows is still multi-use vs the single use plastic insulation film that seems popular. Will I be able to find plastic film that was made from recycled sources?! We shall see...

I am otherwise fine despite being very cold. Grateful to have a roof over my head and a barely warm laptop on my lap, while my feet attempt to stave off the numbness of cold. Maybe I should put on another pair of socks.

Online journal aka "blogs"

I saw some posts about blogs via Frank Meeuwsen and eventually found some blog directories like Ooh and newsletters like Own Your Web. It made me wonder about my website and my practice of blogging (and by extension, journaling).

When I first started writing personal thoughts online, it wasn't even called "blogging." My exposure to the internet started in the 90s. If you were online and interested in art, then it's likely you had a personal site (to post said art) and possibly an online diary/journal to go with it. My internet community was through fanart, oekaki, BBS, forums, and online journals. Social media as it is now, didn't exist. My (now offline) blog archives include cringey tween thoughts about my favourite anime/manga characters and ^^ XD orz == TTTT ^^; \o3o/ and you know the rest hahaha. I still do the same but with picture emojis. I enjoyed reading and keeping up to date with folks. It was excited to get to know people beyond their drawings, realizing that maybe there are mutual interests or foreign passions. Since I like to read others' blogs, I figure that maybe others who like me might want to read mine???????

I don't try to sound eloquent. It's more about being personal, emotional, reflective, or trying to make sense of / connection between ideas. A process of synthesis, even though there is (usually) no real educational takeaway or point. Just about transferring a brain nugget out in writing. Deleting a few extraneous or uncertain words that add to word count (yes, I get trapped in writing less definitively). Reordering sentences or paragraphs so there is some sort of flow and coherency (whether that's chronological, categorical, micro/macro, etc.). Using headers is an easy way to jump across different thoughts in the same post. Bullet points! Anything that decreases the barrier to hitting publish.

I think the few people that read this, likely got to know me first, through art. A lot of my online self has been the art-side of me.

Art vs Artist

What's true for me these days, is that the artist is equally, if not more important than their art. That means that I'm most interested in people who are good people. They may happen to do something creative or artistic, or are particularly passionate about some topics.

For artists specifically, one could have the best sense of lighting, colours, anatomy, musicality, etc., but if the artist's personality, values, or practices are kind of gross or suspicious, I will find it challenging to like their art. I've thrown out and donated art/books after finding out about gross/sus artists. As I've become even more discerning over the years, I'm more likely to support artists when I know they're good people, not because of how amazing their art is, or what labels they choose to categorize themselves with. Good is very subjective, but the main way I'm able to investigate is through social media/blogs.

A common argument is that one needs to separate the artist from the art, but how much can one untangle? I know some peoples' art is not a fulsome reflection of their personal interests. Fiction vs reality. To complicate matters, the practice of blogging or being present publicly online (e.g., social media) is/can be tiring, make people feel unsafe, lack privacy, or "out" people when they don't want to be. Hmm...this is becoming incoherent—complicated, unresolved, abort.

Caveat: I generally feel this way for individuals making small scale, personal or indie work, where the connection between art and artist is there, and likely "less filtered or editorialized." It's harder to discern when artists are working in big corporations. A big corp always has some baddies in there, somewhere.

Anyways...

If you have any good blog reccs, please share! Or share your personal blog or website in the comments! Or if you don't have a personal website, maybe think about getting started! Eventually it would be nice to get back to having a link list again.

Today's music post: Another find from Radio Free Fedi, Northbound album by Lehto.

I also found out about FairCamp, which is meant to help audio/music makers generate static sites to share music.

Other notes

• Put Photo Swap side story comic up on HWA and moved HWA 4-koma/4-panel comics to their own page. Filling in Austin's facial hair always gives me the feeling of "why did you make a character with this much facial hair detail that you can't simplify without looking weird." Same with glasses. (why this comment exists here and not on the freetalk over there? Please do not ask 🤣)
• I'm unsure about when to post HWA comic stuff on my regular website vs HWA subdomain hahaha. It's on both right now...
• Writing ALT text on comics is...a whole new chunk of effort. Still paranoid about ALT text being used to help baddies generate prompts for generative A I...I updated my robots file to block more bots that came out 🆘
• I switched a pair of my earrings out for black snakes (round clickers)—it's my attempt to be closer to Majima Goro. I've always wondered about getting a 3rd pair of piercings on lobe because I have too many earrings (and somehow the solution to that is to punch more holes into myself?). Truthfully a lot of my fav earrings take up significant space on lobe, so I probably can't fit 3 favs without them conflicting with each other spatially. Still too chicken to get anything cartilage.

I've been writing yearly retrospectives for a few years now, though I skipped 2022 because I was busy moving. These were public at first, but then there's always a worry that I've put too much of myself out on the world wide web and I withdraw it. Putting anything out there in public always feels vulnerable to me, because at the core, there's always an authentic piece (or whole) of me in everything I share. For a while I've felt very counter-grain to societal expectations and norms. Sometimes I feel like I should just take the path of least resistance (having the option, is a privilege), while deep down I feel that I must be steadfast in my ways to craft my own normal.

As always, the world is full of tremendous love and hate. I try to expect and face both, but it's all too easy to fall into the hole of negative feelings without even trying. I have to consciously practice joy, gratitude, and reciprocity.

To anyone who see this, thanks for your time, attention, and friendship. If you have thoughts about what you'd like to see more of in 2024, or anything you want to share with me, drop a comment! Hope you start 2024 with good vibes and intentions to improve life and better enjoy experiences. For me, this usually means changing my expectations or mindset. Other times it means placing objects that will make me smile/remind me of something positive. Surrounding myself with things that make me think "yes yes, very good, genius, perfection, impeccable, 100% score A+++, my day has been made." Stuff that makes me stop and just stare and admire in silence or calm down.

Personal

I've continued my 7-min/day workout, except for the days I was in Germany/Italy where I knew I was going to be doing a lot of walking instead. My flossing routine has dropped off the planet. My "eating vegetable" routine is barely better than flossing. Sleep continues to be uncomfortable but I find it more annoying rather than unrestful.

2023 has been a year or change. It also feels like my life has come full circle—back to the city I grew up in and to where my memories began, yet, everything has evolved/changed. It's also where a lot of my comics take place (although, weird alternative universe versions, e.g., Here We Are).

I lived in and experienced Toronto for over a decade, as an adult. Extremely formative, but in a different segment of my life. I moved away from Toronto ~4 months ago, yet I still default to saying I'm from Toronto 🥴. I am sad about leaving my RMT, dentist, and opthamologist in Toronto because they were some of the few healthcare providers that I actually felt cared about me.

My friend asked me if I was glad I moved, and I said it's fine. There are always sacrifices to be made. I exchanged mobility/transit convenience for "better" housing affordability. I try to keep my personal life stresses low, but the whole buying/moving/rebuilding life was draining mentally and financially. I'm often more of a "journey is more important than the destination" sort of person, and the journey was horrible!

• Finding reliable realtor and lawyer that doesn't destroy your wallet and who actually cares about you 🥴 not understanding who does what and when, and realizing you probably have to manage them instead of them managing you
• Everything costed a lot and many people/products/services I had to deal with below or subpar.
• The entire process of buying a home and financing was poorly described even after I read bazillion official guides. If you're in realty or government and want to actually make a good step-by-step explainer for this process, and is willing to pay me money to help make it, email me to help you design a good experience/service 😭. I don't want people to suffer like I did. Yeesh.
• Buying from across the country, in a city you don't live in?????? Lose chances to see places IRL at your whims, I suppose.
• Reviewing realty contracts that seem a bit sus...?
• Wading through condo documents before committing, aka multiple 70+ page long condo documents??? Financial audits?? Forecasted budget/studies?? Human rights lawyers being mentioned in condo meeting minutes??
• Bed delivery was 11 days late 🤣😭😭🤣🤣🤣🥴🥴💀💀💀
• Horrible previous owners leaving millimeters thick DARK BROWN layers of WHO KNOWS WHAT in the toilets and everything else was still dirty even tho it was in the conditions to clean the place???? etc.
• Multiple sinks leaking a week after I moved in (condo inspector didn't make any comments on that...)
• Reviewing NEW meeting minutes about roach infestations...............................
• Natural hemp oil to finished untreated wood, from Canadian source NEVER DRYING and leaving 10+ pieces of my solid wood furniture oily and damaged my books/zines/comics/papers/anything porous?? (EXTREMELY OFFENSIVE)
• Continue to unravel and be bewildered about dysfunctional/dirty things in this apartment as I live in it...

I could go on about how I would never want to do this again. Still, so privileged to have the ability to find/buy/move to a place during these times, as a single-(spotty) income person who doesn't drive. I need to rebuild my savings 😭.

Some highlights so I'm not wallowing in the negative-hole:

• Superboss UBox drop-off/pickup person in Toronto who rear backed-up this trailered Ubox expertly while not nicking any parked cars flanking the road
• Friends who helped me move boxes into the Ubox
• Friend who glanced through condo docs as another check and assured me that things look OK
• Local Ubox drop-off/unloader who had liaised with Ubox on my behalf to make sure my box made it (I forgive the 2h+ lateness of delivery/unloading)
• Wow I made it??????? My stuff did too????????
• Looking at the open space of my apartment is nice (like good white space in a design document/layout) and being able to see the uninterrupted blue sky beyond my windows
• Decorating and furnishing on the fly with more freedom and less guilt
• Sitting on the floor is pretty nice

Creative

Many online artists do compilation grids of art they made that year by month, and that never really worked for me because I illustrated seldomly/infrequently. This year was different, though I'm not sure WHY...? I didn't draw comics much this year. I ended up painting/illustrating more.

Guess I took a sabbatical from comics to try other things—painting with new mediums, making bizarre pottery, assembling pompom things, constant interior redecorating, felting, upcycling, DIY, etc.

I thought a lot more about making comics than actually making them. I developed slightly more coherent pitches for two other comic ideas and thought about other OC-related and sometimes AUs/one-off/scanadalous/sad Here We Are (HWA) comic things. I began a HWA cheesey romance 8p short when I saw that Dec 20 is Jake/Austin's anniversary date, haha.

This is not to say that HWA won't continue, rather, it percolates constantly in the back of my mind until I have the courage, skills, and mental clarity to tackle it. Oooof, I'm an old person with limited time and stamina, too many ideas and hobbies!

Animal of the year

My personal animal friend of this year is the moray eel in a tube or container. I love the energy of this article of eel freak facts and memes.

when a predator’s still

as they wait for their kill

that’s a moray

Also good when there are multiple eels in one container. Maybe a zine about them will come later...?

Related, remember these conger eels in sushi roll tubes from Sendai Uminomori Aquarium a few years back!?? Genius.

What I'm hoping to do in 2024:

• Play Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and probably cry a lot
• Finish a better outline of Stuck in the Middle
• Go out with my Brompton bike when the weather is better; need to justify its cost/my investment (laughcry)
• Continue working on HWA
• Get more curtains and cozy-up my living space even more (I recently found Rajiv Surendra's video about transforming his apartment into a magical space and his commentary, which is in line with a lot of what I'm trying to do)
• Figure out what can be done on my balcony for garden, given the cold weather/zone hardiness requirements and my own laziness to not deal with annuals
• Probably adopt more plants but also afraid to bring more pests home
• Maybe try more fiber/textile arts (looming?)
• Get to know my city and neighbourhood more (sometimes motivated through plein air / urban sketching / painting studies); figure out what's going on because I can already tell I'm not loving many aspects of politics, budgets, raised grocery prices and taxes, etc. and I want to yell and shake my fists at the cloud; the pipe dream is trying to find a new family doctor that is accepting patients nearby (laughable), dentist, optometrist, etc.
• Watch Pluto and Spy x Family season 2
• Help out with Cartoonist Coop ✨
• Help out with queer webzine 🌟
• Find out how to buy EEL GACHA?! There's another series coming out Jan 2024 👀

What I'm hoping to do less of in 2024

• Endless online window shopping
• Figuring out how to better (?) let go of my rage when it comes to bad customer experiences; usually the rage partially subsides after I draft nasty thoughts and do extensive MindFighting haha. Though maybe this is already pretty good coping?

Updates

• 4Town 4Real came out in 2023, and is now also available in Spanish, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese! I'm so curious about how they dealt with the Canadianisms haha.
• TheCaliMack (note: their video previews can look SPICY/nsfw 🌶) a Vtuber, shared their Let's Play of Come For a Drink. I died, but in a good way. There's an indescribable feeling when you watch someone live react to your game and they go along with its super weirdness 👌 I appreciate that they appreciated this game and some of my choices. This is my first time watching a vtuber for a longer duration, and their chibi avatar is really cute!
• I put up a few country-based photo compilations on my site to share some memories. Majority of them are nature/animal-related. Was shocked by how much travel I used to do (though a lot of it was work related)

Music post of the day: I've been listening to Radio Free Fedi and found Blue Nagoon ft. Alyssa Fischer's Crestfallen album. Album is now on repeat. There's a sort of sweet/sad longingness to it. My favourite is the title track, Crestfallen.

Side bar: I'm sad about the fate of Bandcamp and Bandcamp Fridays.

We flew from Naples to Luton, then took the Thameslink over to Greenwich for Adventure Expo 2023!

I was mainly in the Adventure Expo lecture hall the whole time (when not overheating/anti-socialing..). It's a bit hard for me to comment on the talks because I wasn't quite their target audience, so here's a link to their video channel.

From Naples, we took a short train to Ercolano in the morning, where the Archaeological area of Herculaneum (Parco archeologico di Ercolano) is. It's not as far as Pompei, but we heard you can get more up-close with the ruins, and it's generally less crowded.

It's an archaeological site of an ancient roman city. It was pretty chill to wander, though I think I could've gotten more out of it if the signage/audio guide was better.