Come on, all three of these are a massive stretch. This is exactly what im talking about, youre just belligerent. Believe what you want, die on whatever hills you want. Enjoy life, shoot your shot playa. Life is all about playing around with stuff, if playing with AI makes you happy or a little money, or not, that's the road you're on. I hope its a cool ride
Edit: its irritating AF that you quoted me and then right below that said things I didn't even say in order to check your boxes. Self crit
If you can honestly go out into the world and market yourself as an artist, do the work of an artist, as in design, manufacture, sell art, while using images produced with stable diffusion that you had no hand in developing, and you're transparent about it to your clients, go for it. More power to you. You're making art from stolen art in a society where the only way for artists to make money is selling their original designs. Artists work their butts off for not a lot of money, but I'm no moral warrior, people steal all the time, make money from stolen shit, etc. Make the money you can while you can. But that doesn't mean people aren't allowed to judge you. If you're making stuff for your own consumption, even better since it doesn't complicate things. Go ahead and call yourself an artist too, I don't care. But if you do all that and people get mad about it it doesn't make them "Classist Ableists" that was a cheap bullshit thing to say. If you're really gonna be an artist you're gonna have to take some harsh critique, especially if you're using a medium that everybody hates.
You're probably right, I shouldn't have gone off like that, why do I care about someone else's opinions? You're right, there's enough gray area, and the history of art is the history of people who were told that what they were making wasn't art calling themselves artists. It just seemed really out of line to insist its okay and accuse others of chauvinism for disagreeing. Maybe OP was just making stuff for their own consumption and enjoyment and we lost the plot. But instead of explaining that they defended the worst parts of ai art as virtuous.
No problem, it really is kind of mentally available cuz we have a lot of discussions around these issues. Feel free to reach out
So there are paid staffers that do stuff for the national org, on paper they don't have organizational authority but as with all politics its more complicated than that. There is also a DSA NGO called DSAFund that has a board that is paid. That is a little shadier because it doesn't answer to anyone, again, no formal decision making power (except over money which aint nothing) but the individual members are all like lifelong organizers -good people but politics is complicated. DSAFund doesn't control the orgs money but they have a lot of their own.
The national paid staffers generally report to the National Planning Committee (NPC) which is the highest day to day authority, that is elected by the national delegation, elected reps from all over who vote on the major issues facing DSA (including NPC elections) which meets every 2 years (the last convention was in August.) NPC members are not paid, but its a very demanding role. I believe there are 17 members of the NPC. In August, the "left wing" of DSA (basically a bunch of caucuses) managed to elect a majority of left-marxists to the NPC, from orgs that want to push DSA more leftward and away from the Democrats. This is a whole huge debate, but if you look up "dirty break" or "clean break" then you'll find a ton of arguments for, against, and every which way. In short I think this is a good time to join DSA if you have a good local group to join. Even if not there are a lot of national committees that do good work.
Finally there are caucuses which often have paid staff members, as members will pay dues to both DSA and their caucus (dues waivers are also easy to get so don't let money be a deterrent.) Caucuses can have less than a dozen to over a hundred (or more) members, there's really no rules and they have only in the last few years become really prevalent. The caucus that I'm in holds elections every year for its paid staff, which I don't think gets paid very much or its part time.
DSA members are actually pretty ideologically committed to democratic and transparent process, paid staffers get paid from dues collected from members, and there is enough internal tension from various factions that it would be difficult (especially now) for a small cadre to take money and control the org. It's not set up for that to be possible, and any whiff of it would have thousands of pissed off Marxists and anarchists with who would make it politically impossible for them. Last convention the delegates voted to form a Democracy Commission to try and make the org even more transparent, accountable and democratic. We are voting on the members this week and everyone who made it to this level has years of organizing experience in all different ways.
Sorry its long if you have questions I was a delegate in 2023 and I've been active for about 3 years. Not as long as many but I've seen enough to speak on most topics re: DSA
Ableist Classist Luddite
Wait just one sec comrade. Noone said you can't use it, but you really think you should be entitled to make money as an artist? You can literally get a job as an AI prompt writer/engineer. But what you want is to be recognized as an artist.
Fine, then create a bunch of AI art, frame it, and take it to a gallery or to a market. Put it in a portfolio and display it on a website. Go network with other artists in your area and promote your work as art, see where it gets you. I'm genuinely curious.
AI has the ability to write code, but very few software engineers have lost their jobs because of it. Why? Is it because AI code, like AI art, sucks ass?
A lot of people here struggle with MH and some have overcome and found success. Maybe don't be so quick to label others as chauvinistic for pointing out that your idea is a priori nonsense that has little to no basis in reality. The fact remains that your struggles don't prevent you from picking up a paintbrush or a pencil or a mouse or whatever. Quadrapalegics still paint landscapes, Chuck Close is a world famous portrait artist who is face blind.
AI art is trained on the art of others, full stop. Noone says you can't use it to create images for your own enjoyment. Maybe there is some value for creators in using AI? But the value is created for capitalists to suppress wages of creatives and force people into unemployment. Hollywood writers went on strike over this shit. People don't fucking like it and regardless of how you feel about that, art is subjective. So best of luck, get over yourself
I love this for you. You will be glad this happened.
The best beginner theory book is Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Its short and lays the foundation for basically everything else you'll ever read. Its the history lesson the world needs. State and Rev was the first theory I ever read but I didn't get as much out of it as I could have.
This is a discussion about an article, which is chock full of examples. What kind of evidence do you need? You don't need to be convinced, but you also don't need to jump to the defense of inflating housing and rent costs.
You also don't cite any resources to back up your claims, Translation anecdotal evidence is still evidence, especially when compared to your baseless skepticism. Have you ever wondered why such research might not exist, or that not everyone has access to most academic research? Why might researchers who depend on grants to do research, avoid doing research that implicates commercial and real estate developers? large colleges and hospitals often work hand-in-glove with developers, along with city councils. Turns out you don't always need evidence to infer a truth, we have this thing called abstraction that allows us to make predictions based on analytical methodology. Imagine if physicists required evidence with which to even begin a line of inquiry, we wouldn't have 1/10 of the knowledge we have now.
However, skepticism isn't critique. You can be as skeptical as you want, and I have a right to disagree with you even without evidence. I can find a mountain of evidence that supports just about any claim I might make. Its called an epistemological crisis, and it's fairly basic as far as logical contradictions go. Asking for evidence can be just as fallacious especially when it doesn't deal with anything in the article.
From your tone it sounds like you are insecure (or a landlord/real estate goon), Instead of trying to compete intellectually with strangers on the internet, show some humanity and solidarity with the vast majority of people who are stuck in awful situations, such as the ones described in the article.
I'm sorry to hear about your experience with abuse. I've experienced abuse and trauma, and some of the worst trauma came from the systems of punishment and neglect that "impartially" decide who in society receives the pain and privilege of living in it. So the tone you are picking up is related to the fact that you are defending an abusive system, for which the evidence is undeniable.
Best of luck!
Definitely one of the takes of all time. Have you ever been divorced? I've watched my friends who were functionally separated from their partners but still live together slide into deep depression, drug abuse, alcoholism. I lived with my ex wife for a while after we separated and it was extremely confusing and traumatic. At the time I was "just trying to keep it together" but both me and my ex made terrible decisions while stuck together. We didn't even know how toxic our relationship had become, we didn't realize how much we were hurting each other. I've known a lot of people in a lot of situations and these separated but living together arrangements are just awful for everyone involved.
Life is complicated and everyone is different but i would never advise someone stay living with their ex. If people can't leave their partner (some of which may be stuck with an abuser or bully, or someone who just ignores them) because of financial reasons, that's a form of systematic abuse and trauma. Regardless of what people say or think, a very small percentage of couples would be okay with an arrangement like this. If you or anyone ever find yourself in a similar situation, get out of the house and sign the friggin papers ASAP. Don't do apologism for a broken ass system, help us fix it, or at least show some humanity ("correlative," jfc.)
This guy pisses me off
I wish I could just have not responded to any of this. Kissinger died and it made me want to social media. Big waste of time and energy, as usual