Pretend This Post Is The Coronavirus.

this post hasn't left my mind since i've first saw it

lilo and stitch did a better job at representing everything s*a tried to do with music and lilo isn’t even “““canon autistic””” 

My cats have this meow that means "please come with me to fix this" after which they'll lead me to the problem in question, usually a empty (or 'empty') food bowl or a closed door they want open. They look at the 'problem', they look back at me, clear message.

What fascinates me is how this illustrates what they percieve as being in the realm of my 'power.' I control the food, I control the door, sure, but my cats love to sit on the balcony in the sun, and it has happened plenty of times that on a rainy day they come get me, go to the balcony and show me... the rain. "Please fix this" they say. "Please get rid of the wet"

"Silly kitty," I say, "I can't control the rain." I then walk into the shower and turn on the rain.

A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways. 

The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission. Using it to “poison” this training data could damage future iterations of image-generating AI models, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, by rendering some of their outputs useless—dogs become cats, cars become cows, and so forth. MIT Technology Review got an exclusive preview of the research, which has been submitted for peer review at computer security conference Usenix.   

AI companies such as OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Stability AI are facing a slew of lawsuits from artists who claim that their copyrighted material and personal information was scraped without consent or compensation. Ben Zhao, a professor at the University of Chicago, who led the team that created Nightshade, says the hope is that it will help tip the power balance back from AI companies towards artists, by creating a powerful deterrent against disrespecting artists’ copyright and intellectual property. Meta, Google, Stability AI, and OpenAI did not respond to MIT Technology Review’s request for comment on how they might respond. 

Zhao’s team also developed Glaze, a tool that allows artists to “mask” their own personal style to prevent it from being scraped by AI companies. It works in a similar way to Nightshade: by changing the pixels of images in subtle ways that are invisible to the human eye but manipulate machine-learning models to interpret the image as something different from what it actually shows. 

Continue reading article here

on self love + care:

1. "I treat myself like I would my daughter. I brush her hair, wash her laundry, tuck her in goodnight. Most importantly, I feed her. I do not punish her. I do not berate her, leave tears staining her face. I do not leave her alone. I know she deserves more. I know I deserve more." (i know i deserve more, michelle k)

2. “Don’t forget to love her. The little girl you used to be. Perhaps She lies within you. Untucked. Sleeping peacefully.” (nurture, kiana llanos)

3. "These days I wake up crying

holding myself in my arms

rocking myself like a mother

repeating

it's all right- i'm here." (rocking, nuela archer)

4. "There’s a little girl in my head & she screams 'unloved! unloved! unloved!' every moment of my life (@star-eaters)

"There’s a woman in my head now & she holds the little girl and says “I will take care of you and we will be alright” when the little girl screams and together they are learning how to trust each other" (@antidecay)

self care is putting yourself to bed on a regular schedule because it’s the base treatment for mood disorders

there’s no twist or anything it’s just really really good for u to sleep at consistent times

ivan coyote, there’s one in every crowd, 2012.

Researching Herb Safety

Hey witchblr and everyone else who is interested! I’ve noticed a lack of awareness when it comes to herbal remedies/medicines having side effects and interactions with medications, and realized a lot of people don’t know where to look! (All sites linked are free):

Articles on herb-drug interactions: [1] [2] [3]

Chart for possible herb-drug interactions

HerbMed has a search function where you can look up the herb and find possible interactions.

WebMD has a search function where you can look up an herb, and then select interactions and pull up very thorough medication lists. 

University of Maryland Medical Center has some info on common side effects and how to safely use herbal remedies. 

NIH has a search function where you can look up the herb and find credible articles and info on it. 

iMedPub has scholarly journals and articles on herbal medicine.

Elsevier also has scholarly journals and articles on herbal medicine.

Please send me more if you know of them, and I’ll start a part two! :)