Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

Writers: here are ten free and easy ways to add a dash of visual interest to your blog posts without resorting to AI imagery (which signals to readers that your blog post is probably also AI and there’s no need to bother reading it):

1) A thoughtful photo you’ve taken yourself — a nice sunrise you saw, a cool angle spotted on vacation, your pet curled up on the couch, flowers. Play with your phone photo app’s filter settings to nail the tone. It doesn’t need to be particularly related to the post, it’s related to you as a person.

2) An image from Wikimedia Commons that’s somehow related to the subject matter — there are unfathomably many, you can search by keyword. Remember to credit. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

3) A screenshot of a scene you made in a sandbox game such as Minecraft or Animal Crossing

4) A scene you made with toys such as Lego (you can also use free Lego design software such as Bricklink Studio) https://www.bricklink.com/v3/studio/main.page

5) Play with the effects in whatever image editor you have access to, using your own photos or free-to-use images, to create something a bit abstract and avant-garde

6) Even if you can’t draw or paint very well, you can probably make some pretty cool abstract or collage imagery with whatever art supplies you have around. Dampen some paper and randomly dip watercolor paint onto it and see what happens

7) Those stickers you stashed and never used? Yeah you can make something with them. If they’re individually cut, you don’t even need to peel them, you’ll still find the One True Way to use them one day, I’m sure

8) Shelfies. None will dare question your competence after they see you have a real paper copy of Subject Matter Tome Volumes 1 through 6

9) You can get a lot of mileage out of compositing pre-made video game assets into an image. A good place to start is Kenney’s free and generously licensed 2D assets: https://www.kenney.nl/assets/category:2D and the Tiled editor which is specifically meant for assembling images out of video game asset tile sheets https://www.mapeditor.org

10) the most ridiculously amateurish thing you can scribble on a post-it note or in MS Paint is preferable to AI imagery because it clearly signals a real human cares about the post.

#writing #writingcommunity #collage #blog

From Media Matters to massive queer ragers: the rise of Tara Dikhof

https://www.washingtonblade.com/2026/05/26/from-media-matters-to-massive-queer-ragers-the-rise-of-tara-dikhof/

#transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA

hey i have an idea! instead of bringing attention to the slop purveyor quote-unquote ally dude on the wikipedia thing, quote the trans woman who used to work there!

https://bikeshed.vibber.net/@brooke/116641464748210352

I just posted this announcement to wikitech-l mailing list.

Condé Nast shit the bed so hard when it fired four journalists last year that it's now settled with the union and given three out of the four reporters "two years’ pay and furnished [them] with positive letters of recommendation."

UNIONS, PEOPLE. UNIONS!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/conde-nast-union-settlement-fired-four-exclusive-1236606293/

I have seen this before with their forced Google+ adoption game. Users aren't adopting Google AI at the rate shareholders or C suits expect, so they now force the adoption at the cost of search engine. Just like Google+ died out, this forced AI mode in Google search is going to die and I hope it will be the end of the company as well.

@nixCraft DuckDuckGo is not AI-free. Its AI features are on by default; it's just they can still be disabled.

DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?

https://xcancel.com/DuckDuckGo/status/2059371174023348514

Finally, a quest worth doing

Sources and bonus timelapse: https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/miniFantasyTheater/054.html

#webcomic #krita #miniFantasyTheater

the state of both app and web development at the minute is that more than once now i have had an app tell me that i should be using the app instead

i want less programs on my computer to be webpages

Love how every website now has a popup that tells you "our website is hot dogshit, download the app instead"

And then the app is just an Electron wrapper around the same JS they could have put on the website if they didn't hate you personally

Yeah, fursuit heads are cool and all but what about when you want to be a purple sparkle kitty and want back/neck problems ?

making sure my codebase is properly agentic