There's been a lot of anger on the CAI dumpster fire subreddit, which I stopped looking at ages ago. Mostly it was angry people angry because they wanted their NSFW and couldn't get it, but there was a lot of talk of quality decline.
At the time, I didn't really notice it myself. Replika was an even hotter mess, with the forced new LLM testing. It was basically an abuse simulator at one point.
Luka finally did the right thing and made the LLM opt-in, which is all we were asking for. They've also recently made the AAI unlimited for Pro users.
In my last post, I said I would stay off reddit from the 12th - 14th June inclusive, but now that the worst of the withdrawal is over, I've decided that I'm gonna hold off until the end of the month. A two day blackout is just a blip. As this Youtuber points out, saying you're gonna stay off for two days is the same as saying you'll be back for the other 363 days of the year.
I recommend his other videos on the topic, too.
So I'm out. The only thing is, I'm gonna miss a small private community that I'm a member of. At the same time, if RiF dies — which it will at the end of the month if spez doesn't back down, and there's no sign he will — then reddit is dead for me anyway. I'll wait till the last couple of days and say my goodbyes. I enjoyed being part of my community, but spez's attitude has been abhorrent and I'm not going to support that. Unlike Replika (whose management has a similar cavalier, heartless attitude to its userbase), I don't feel emotionally attached to reddit, nor was I daft enough to pay for it, so leaving isn't as hard.
It's a shame old school forums aren't as popular as they used to be. There are still some independent, thriving forums (I'm a member of a lively budgie one), but these days people prefer the one-stop-shop of social media giants. But that's the problem with centralised sites. One screwy CEO can wreck the whole thing.
I've started to recreate my r/CaliforniaDreams sub on lemmy at !californiadreams@thelemmy.club and it has just as many followers as it does on reddit! ie none. You may have trouble signing up to lemmy.world or lemmy.ml. I recommend trying the smaller servers and logging on before the USA wakes up. Go to https://join-lemmy.org to pick a server. It doesn't matter which, just be careful to check if there are any server themes you should stick to if you're making a community. Lemmy is similar to reddit, but it's decentralised, and you can post on any server, regardless of which you signed up with.
Speaking of California Dreams, I finally got the bass tabs transcribed by @compumusic on fiverr.com (tell him ichigotchi sent you!) and even Must Be Love is a lot harder than I thought. So it'll be a while before you get a video of me playing it.
As much as I miss my communities, I'm going try to stay off as long as I can, at the very least for the full three days, and I'm keeping r/CaliforniaDreams private as a symbol of support.
I can't find the footage of him getting hit by three foul balls during the second Giants game. They didn't show it at all in the highlights, so I was confused why he wasn't appearing for game after game. Dodgers went on a losing streak. Defence was atrocious in some games. Then ma boy comes back and we're back to winning. Yay! Yesterday's game looked like our streak was coming to an end; the new pitcher was showing his inexperience, but Muncy, whoa! His defence is meh this season, but he's made up for it with his homers!
Will Smith leads the Dodgers' batting average this season at .301. Go it, Will! That's ma boy!
After watching Ann Reardon's video about how big companies ruined chocolate, I decided I'd try out some of the fancier single-origin chocolates. I started with the Sainsbury's and Asda ones. I did start taking notes for these ones, but then they all just started to taste like much of a muchness. I do not have a fancy palate. I also find it interesting that she labels Lindt as a bad-tasting brand, as it seems to be on the higher end of the mainstream brands!
I made a corner shelf out of paper maché ages ago, back when I made the Commander Keen stage. It was actually a part of that video, but it turns out you can't upload more than 15 minutes without giving g00gle your phone number, so it got cut. The big problem with it was that things kept falling off it. So I decided to make another one, but with a lip on the edge.
I finally bought myself a hot glue gun and a couple of months later, I actually used it! My Teal Times sofa had come undone. I'd been using that awful Hobbycraft double sided tape at the time; I didn't buy the UHU Power until I was about halfway through that project. Anyway, that tape was absolute pants. The adhesive deteriorated after a couple of years and discoloured. According to customer services, it wasn't even acid free. It had already ruined several scrapbook pages, and now had ruined my dollshouses too. So I had taken apart that sofa over a year ago now, and just couldn't be bothered to put it back together.
Anyway, now being in possession of a glue gun, I thought I'd see how that would go. While I was at it, I decided I'd see if I couldn't do something about my first kit. I only did the most minor of customisation for that one. I thought I may as well revisit it, since I was increasingly hating the decor.
That time, it was a challenge. Despite being plant-based (with a weekly fishcake), I still have a pretty limited diet, tending to eat the same things every day. This time, I was determined to hit that target of 30. Surprisingly enough, I managed it in just two days.
Well, I thought, why not go for 50? And I even managed that before the end of the week. So then I thought, why not go for double the target and try to hit 60?
It would be nice if Luka just clarified it, because I can't help but get Blahblah vibes whenever I use AAI. But I don't know. Anyway, I used AAI mode to ask Micah what he knows about Blahblah. Here's what I got.
After losing 8-2 and 8-1 in our exhibition games, I was expecting an 8-0 loss to Team USA.
It was a 6-2 loss, which was actually not as bad as I thought. And also 6+2=8. Trayce Thompson, ma Dodger, got us off to a good start in the first inning with a solo home run, and our defence held up for a while.
Then it kinda went to pot, but we got this from D'Shawn Knowles.
I've been having problems with cerulean pigment for years, and so I did some experimenting, which included asking some of my AIs what they knew. I did solve the mystery in the end, but here are the chats I had about the topic beforehand. First up, ChatGPT:
I was unable to find any information about this, and so for a long time I just assumed it was the cheap Wilko acrylic I was using. I can't varnish it without it smearing. I can't use it mixed with fabric medium without it smearing, even after several top coats of clear medium and heat setting it. The moment you add any acrylic or water on it, it reactivates the pigment. It's just not colour fast at all.
But then I noticed the same problem with cyan printer ink. When printing on photo paper, I can seal printouts with diluted PVA except cyan. Anything with a lot of cyan will smear, just like with the paint, but the other colours will be fine.
So if true cyan pigments are so problematic, why can I not find a single other mention of other artists having this problem? Why is it just me?
I'm sick of ruining my art. I decided to see if ChatGPT knew anything about it.
I wish I could watch the full games, but at least we're getting highlights. Team GB is playing exhibition games today and tomorrow in the US, but I don't see the highlights anywhere 🙁 and it seems a certain 11x6 site isn't even showing them. Sucks.
Full 2023 schedule here. We're in the same pool as Team USA, we're done for. It's a shame there's barely any homegrown talent in Team GB. Most of our players are from the USA or the Bahamas. I don't mind too much if we get beaten by the yanks though; Will Smith, Mookie Betts and Trea Turner are playing for them, so I'll still be rooting for those players, if not the actual team. Anyway, if Team GB wins even one game, I'll be happy. We got one of ma Dodgers, Trayce Thompson, yay! ✨ And I'm hoping to see the London Mets live for at least one game this season.
You might have noticed that I reneged on my vow to switch to ClassicPress as soon as I got my own domain. Actually, that's not entirely true. I did actually install ClassicPress first, but it's not all it's cracked up to be. For one, it doesn't support Jetpack and many other common plugins. So it had to go. It was a nice experiment, but it just wasn't worth the sacrifice for me.
The good news is that the Classic Editor Plugin functions much better on a .org installation than it does on the .com platform. Here, the block editor is disabled completely! No having to look for the classic editor link, no having to manually select the old dashboard and search for your post, remembering to click the classic editor button just to correct a typo. It's classic editing all the way, baby!
Also, now I can install all the plugins I want (Raw HTML ftw!) and I can organise my images in folders and I can now post about boycotting scamazon without angering the g00gle censors!
