JacobCoffin

@jacobcoffin@writing.exchange
179 Followers
50 Following
684 Posts

Game Publishers keep dropping support for games they have sold to consumers, leaving the games unplayable.

The "Stop Killing Games" European Citizens Initiative demands the EU propose a law to force developers to leave games in a playable state!

It has reached 500k of the 1m needed signatures (deadline July 31). We need your support!

EU Citizens Sign here: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

#EUpol #StopKillingGames #VideoGames #ConsumerProtection

"Trapping AI" โ€“ Slight Update! ๐ŸŒ€

Activity in the "Trapping AI" project is accelerating: in just under a month, over 26 million requests have hit our tarpit URLs ๐Ÿ•ณ๏ธ. Vast volumes of meaningless content were devoured by AI crawlers โ€” ruthless digital leeches that relentlessly scour and pillage the web, leaving no data untouched.

In the coming days, weโ€™ll roll out a new layer of complexity โ€” amplifying both the intensity and offensiveness of our approach. This escalation builds on fakejpeg, a tool developed by @pengfold.

๐Ÿ–ผ๏ธ fakejpeg generates fake JPEGs on the fly. You "train" it with a collection of existing JPEGs, and once trained, it can produce an arbitrary number of things that look like real JPEGs โ€” perfect for feeding aggressive web crawlers junk ๐Ÿ—‘๏ธ.

Explore fakejpeg: https://github.com/gw1urf/fakejpeg

Learn more about "Trapping AI": https://algorithmic-sabotage.github.io/asrg/trapping-ai/#expanding-the-offensiveness

See the tarpit in action: https://content.asrg.site/

Creative protest opportunity...

The Met Office is currently looking for people to suggest up to 5 names for storms.
It would be great if thousands all suggested the same 5 names (in alphabetical order as that's how storm names apoear):
BigOil, BP, Equinor, Exxon, Shell.

This is a creative, humorous and peaceful way to register our concerns and protest to a government body. Whilst the Met Office is unlikely to adopt any of the above 5 names, if they are suggested in huge numbers it may attract media coverage, as was the case with Boaty McBoatface but with more serious intent. This would be enough to make the point to the government and the wider British public, might even get some overseas attention.

Met Office page is: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/forms/name-our-storms-call-for-names

Please share as widely as you can.

Name our Storms

Met Office

So when I see solarpunk with an abundance of drones and solar panels and carefully tended gardens, I know that it's not for me. This is where rich people live, and the working class are tending the gardens for them.

I'm off-screen, in a scrapyard turning old drone parts into circulating air fans so that people don't die from heat strokes.

Solarpunk, or the perils of techno-optimism:

Bad Solarpunk - like 70's futurism- is not meant for you.

The 70's futurism kind of happened ; The 1% do have fully automated mansions, a helicopter that docks into a yatch is basically a flying car. It was just never meant for you.
We have to remember that those illustrations came up in architecture and automotive magazines in the 70's, and their whole point was to present a reassuring vision of the future to their wealthy readers.

@dangillmor There is a Fediverse alternative to Goodreads called #BookWyrm. Website is https://joinbookwyrm.com/ and their Mastodon account for updates is @bookwyrm
Join Bookwyrm

BookWyrm is a decentralized social network for tracking your reading, talking about books, writing reviews, and discovering what to read next.

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @pluralistic
I have been waiting for a Trump era espionage novel. Just read A Spy Alone by former MI6, Charles Beaumont. Nice ripping yarn but also the best yet analysis of the current coup of globalized oligarchs and propagandists against "the masses" and citizens of every nation. It ain't east vs west; it's 1% against 99%.

Check out this article about decarbonizing neighborhoods.

My favorite finding? It only works if the residents have existing social bonds.

If you haven't already, plan a block party. Whether fighting ice or climate collapse, the 1st step is a block party.
https://www.kqed.org/science/1997283/this-oakland-block-tried-to-quit-fossil-fuels-heres-what-they-learned

#solarpunk

This Oakland Block Tried to Quit Fossil Fuels. Hereโ€™s What They Learned | KQED

As an innovative project to cut gas out of an entire block comes to a close, residents and researchers share their lessons.

The reason Texas is part of the USA is that Mexico made slavery illegal.

Remember the Alamo? A lot of white people don't know is that what the "brave" people in the Alamo were fighting for was slavery.

That's also why it took two years after the civil war ended for enforcement of anti-slavery in Texas. (it wasn't because of slow communication, as is told in revisionist histories, it was because white people willfully defied the law).

Freedom is always worth fighting for.

@maddy this really depends on where you are located but I've had great success with my local free groups (Buy Nothing, Everything is Free, Freecycle, even craigslist). I get all my spray paints, wood stain, polyurethane etc that way but usually by keeping an eye out and slowly building up a collection. There's basically no way you'll get every color you need this way (especially on a short timeline) but it might reduce what you have to get by other means.

Best of luck!

ร—

art announcement: i'm very happy to announce that i have graduated from zine to MEGA-zine!

"keep dreaming of structured settings" is a 44 page full-color magazine of original collages on the theme of living in space and living under the ocean.

from the back cover:

"The year is 2025. The Amazon burns. Time is running out. How will humans live? The world is desperate for solutions.

In this magazine, you'll discover wondrous new opportunities for continued human life! Living with the dolphins, your own personal pool on Mars, exploration without limits, and so much more.

Join artist Marina Kukso on this new visual/textual adventure into the possible and ask yourself: is this a world you want to inhabit?"

it's available on etsy right now for only $10, so please consider getting one: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4316916338/mega-zine-keep-dreaming-of-structured

โค๏ธ ๐ŸŒŒ ๐ŸŒŠ

#art #collage #space #solarpunk #SF #scifi #clifi #fiction #dystopia #environmentalism #zines

@mk30 I've seen it irl. It's AMAZING!