Mags

Mags

Me and my pencil From Everywhere, Nowhere, the back of your mind.
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  • Mags
    Something that makes me incredibly sad is that I think humanity has lost its desire to do things well. Most people seem content to do the bare minimum or let a robot do it for them. There's no spirit of excellence, if you will.
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    Mags
    Mags
    Exactly! When's the last time you saw a mom-and-pop shop? There's practically none in my area. (This is one reason why I particularly like Etsy.)


    Well, what triggered this thought is my dad showed me this website yesterday that can generate any image for you almost instantly. And the details of the pictures were insane. In a matter of seconds, a computer had generated four images that would normally take me about an hour or two to do (each!) in not nearly as high quality. Similarly, there's also a website that will write ANYTHING for you. Literally anything. You just tell it what you want and it'll write it (I did manage to stump it by asking for a limerick in the style of Spamton, so I guess that's a small consolation). It wrote a 500-word short story in less than a minute whereas I would take a couple hours to write one.

    Yet with both of these things and their amazing speed, there was something about them that wasn't... real. It's like comparing a bowl of real fruit to a bowl of fake fruit. There's a difference, but it's subtle. There's something that just feels off about them. Additionally, the fake can't exist without the real already being there. The AI in these sites was simply cobbling together existing pieces to make something ""new."" You could tell it what to draw, what to write, but in the end, it's just going through the motions. It follows the letter of the law, not the spirit.

    What REALLY makes me sad is that these things exist in the first place. It means that people are using them. Some people would rather use a computer-generated story, essay, photo or art piece than something handmade. In Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, he uses an analogy that fits this situation perfectly.
    When someone creates something, it's founded with six basic steps. I won't list them all, but the two important ones for this are the first and last: The idea, the core message or value or purpose behind the thing itself, and the surface, which is what you see at first glance. People used to not care as much how whatever they were creating looked, and more about the content of the thing itself. It's like choosing between an apple with perfect skin and one with a less appealing outside. The one with the perfect skin (the computer-generated things) may LOOK nice, but on the inside, they're hollow, whereas the one that has a less enticing exterior (something done by hand) is actually better for its inside, or what's at its core.

    But because these websites exist, generating apple after perfect apple, the things made by hand seem to be less appealing because these websites are fast. "Why do something myself when a computer can just do it for me?" And it's not just in writing and drawing. America doesn't really grow its own produce anymore. We rely on others. And have you heard about the scientist who managed to 3D print edible meat? Or maybe all those plants being grown in warehouses on shelves without soil instead of out in the open sun? These... fabrications and imitations are really only just that: an imitation. You can look at something in a mirror, but what you see in a mirror isn't the real thing. It's slightly less than the original. Yet, we've become so wrapped up in efficiency, speed and laziness that few people will take the time to do things by hand or for themselves. Those websites, quite frankly, scared me a little bit. A machine is never going to be able to think on the same level as a human being.


    (Sorry, I didn't mean to ramble so long lol.)
    Roserade
    Roserade
    I agree with the majority of what you said, but I want to speak towards the points you make at the end. There's a lot of reasons for why the US doesn't always produce its own, well, produce. Climates are not always ripe for certain plants from state to state, and with a constant wave of industrialization headed by a few primary organizations, one cannot simply become a farmer like was once an option. That isn't the fault of the individual; it's the fault of the situation they've been found in. I also think you're missing the fact that the US does grow a lot of product - I live in Washington and we're known for our apple production. Same goes for Florida and oranges, etc etc. I wouldn't get too wrapped up in this particular idea, because it isn't as conducive to your argument

    Your entire point about ai creating art is entirely fair and legitimate, though. The point of art is to express the human condition and imagination, and a machine cannot ever hope to harness that particular spirit
    Hooded Pitohui
    Hooded Pitohui
    Those are interesting points you bring up, and I appreciate you elaborating, because it does give me much greater insight into what you were saying.


    I can certainly understand your feelings on AI art (visual or otherwise). While I do think there's merit to those tools existing and hope that, for whoever chooses to use them, they can have a positive experience because of them (and, dear heavens, do I hope people who do use them are respectful enough to acknowledge these are AI-generated and not made by hand, and are respectful enough to not, say, make their own version of an artist's piece with an AI and pass it off as their own work), I also would encourage people to put in the time and effort to hone their skill. It's an enriching and rewarding experience, after all, and art made by a human has a certain ineffable beauty, an infusion with emotion, that AI art cannot.

    I'd agree with Rose on the points about agriculture. America can't grow all of its own food, not if you want variety. The United States may be a massive country with a diverse range of climates, but that doesn't mean everything the average consumer is used to can be grown on a large enough scale in the US to get it to everyone who might want it.

    There are many other larger, systemic factors that influence things like agriculture and even, as you started off with, mom-and-pop shops. As Rose nodded to, farmland and agricultural operations are becoming more and more concentrated, and it's not because people are just choosing to up and leave farms because the work is too hard. Larger companies get the advantage of economies of scale. A large company that owns 50X acres might be able to produce and sell, say, 3,000 pounds of wheat, each pound at $250 (I am so making these numbers up) a pound. Let's assume wheat costs $200 a pound to produce, and then overhead is, ehh, we'll say $15,000, so they need to recoup $615,000. Well, they made... $750,000, so they covered their expenses and made money.

    A small farmer with X acres might be able to produce and sell, say, 60 pounds of wheat, and we'll say she has less overhead, $5,000. She needs to recoup $17,000 ($200 per pound of wheat, plus the overhead). She'd need to sell each pound of wheat at about $283 to do this, but who's going to buy that wheat when they can get wheat from the large company at $250 a pound? Unless our hypothetical farmer can reduce her overhead or the cost of growing each pound of wheat, she won't have a livelihood. She may not be able to remain a farmer even if she wants to.

    I kind of segued into a narrow, completely hypothetical example, but, what I'm trying to get at is... oftentimes, what's happening is dictated by much larger trends than personal laziness or a lack of a desire to do something well. There can be systemic factors other than economics at play.

    I don't mean to come across as attacking your ideas or trying to debate them - I'm not trying to, for the most part. I've found, though, time and time again, that making matters into an issue of personal responsibility is often used as a tool to shift the blame, to disguise larger issues. People will, time and time again, look at some social ill and try and tell you that it's the fault of individuals, or even individual households. And, fair, they may be contributing to the problem, in some form, but, more often than not, it's not the driving cause.

    Gambling might be a good example to look at broadly, as there's broad agreement excessive gambling is bad. Yes, someone getting into gambling may be a lapse in judgement on their part, but one has to ask, if they lapse into gambling often and gambling dangerously, is it entirely their fault? We know that gambling, be it at a slot machine or through videogame lootboxes, is designed to play to our rewards pathways. The designers of these games know how to make the addictive, they know how to make them seem exciting and inviting at first. How much of the fault lies with them? How many fewer people might let their gambling get to a dangerous point if the designers and operators of these games acted differently? You wouldn't eliminate gambling addiction entirely, but you may well lessen the number of people who get addicted to gambling!

    I'm not saying personal responsibility or motivation isn't a factor at all in what people do - it obviously is! But it's important in life to, when one finds one's self attributing a widespread trend to personal responsibility, motivation, or values, step back and ask if there's something larger influencing the behavior of people. It spares one from being tricked and scammed, from having problems in need of addressing hidden from them.
    Mags
    Just cleared all the story levels of Rayman Legends Definitive Edition on my Switch! (May or may not be planning on doing lyrical covers of the last level of each world. If you have suggestions on songs from this game I should cover [cue zelen], feel free to let me know!)
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    Ray Trace
    Ray Trace
    Black Betty is the best one.
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    zel
    zel
    why me i havent played it in two years lmao
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    Mags
    There's something about Donkey Kong songs that just brings out my best work in lyric writing.

    (May or may not be working on a new DK cover, but it's not from any DKC game. 👀 )
    Mags
    Despite the absurd cost to 100% the game, I really enjoy Mini Mario + Friends amiibo Challenge. Hoping to snap a Rosalina amiibo this Christmas season so I can actually 100% it lol.
    Mags
    To any of my fellow writers:
    Here are three things you can do while to help hone your writing skills in other areas:
    1. Use proper punctuation while texting. Instead of typing "hey dude whats up," type "Hey dude, what's up?" (Easy)
    2. Stop using abbreviations such as "lol," "tbh," "smh," etc. Get your point across with full words and sentences. (a little harder)
    3. Turn off auto-correct. This will force you to manually change typos and add your own apostrophes. (Hardest, which isn't saying much)

    I do all three of these and I have noticed a significant improvement in my writing since I started.
    Mags
    Without spoilers, how is the new Mario + Rabbids game?
    Pink Cat
    Pink Cat
    I enjoyed what little I played, has some neat difficulty options if you want to take it easy
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    Mags
    Highlight of the year on the Boards was undoubtedly Hooded Pitohui getting lynched during the World of Plight mafia game.
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    Pink Cat
    Pink Cat
    Imagine someone cropping this out of context
    Eh, we're pretty nutty anyways
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    Bugzzy
    Bugzzy
    They murdered me in that same game, and on the next one, I was voted out.
    Natalie J.
    Natalie J.
    Oh my god, I completely forgot about that. I should tell my school friend about that moment since he hosts in-person Werewolf.
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    Mags
    Animating a 2D object is very hard. I'm trying to learn for a YouTube video.
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    Mags
    Mags
    I can't say that I have, no.
    Ray Trace
    Ray Trace
    The book is mostly for hand-drawn animation but it also applies to computer animation and I found it a pretty helpful resource to learn about foundations.
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    Bugzzy
    Bugzzy
    Edit Pizza Tower frames. That will take a lot of time, but it works!
    Mags
    GUYS THAT TRAILER WAS SUPERB.
    Odie
    Odie
    ALL ABOARD THE HYPE EXPRESS
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    Polterpup
    Polterpup
    I liked it too…definitely raised my hopes up after seeing the trailer. Now I think Mario looks alright in terms of looks. I like the penguins too!
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    Mags
    Someone help me out. What's a second party company exactly? (I know what first and third are but I can only guess at second.)
    Meta Knight
    Meta Knight
    Please note that I'm not an expert this is just based on what I know, but if we're talking about strictly the video game industry, then I'm sure you're aware that a first party game is made by the company that owns the hardware, like if a Mario game is developed in-house at Nintendo, or perhaps Halo is developed in-house by Xbox Game Studios.

    Following that, a third party game is made by someone that has no ownership over the hardware, but this also generally means they have no legal obligation to keep their games on one platform. Examples here are basically most games that are multiplatform such as EA sports titles.

    Second party is this weird medium that no one really talks about because it's confusing, but it's basically companies that are not owned by the hardware manufacturer, but tend to exclusively develop for them. An example here would be HAL Laboratories, because Nintendo doesn't own them, but they tend to exclusively develop for Nintendo.
    Hooded Pitohui
    Hooded Pitohui
    Meta Knight covered it pretty well! It's worth noting that there's not a firm definition of "second-party" because it's not a term that's "officially" used or even that meaningful to most companies in the games industry. After all, at the end of the day, a game is primarily developed in-house or it's not.
    Second-party exists in the weird ambiguous state that MK describes largely because gamers made the term up and attribute more importance to it than there really is.
    Mags
    I JUST 100%ED MARIO KART WII.

    LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
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    Mags
    Mags
    Well, I haven't gotten a star ranking on every cup in Mirror Mode, but I unlocked every character, course, and kart and won in every cup, so I count that as 100%.

    This took me 11 years.
    Sweetie Belle
    Sweetie Belle
    Oh wow. Like how many hours a week did you spend grinding this?
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    Mags
    Mags
    Uh....
    not a lot lol.

    I went through a phase recently and spent like an hour a dayish for about two or three weeks.
    Mags
    Just did a Spamton NEO drawing and I loved it so much I had to make it my avatar.
    Mags
    Don't you just love those dreams that will make wonderful books?
    DarkAdorable
    DarkAdorable
    Half of my dreams involve unexplained nudity in high school. So um... no. I most certainly do not.
    Mags
    So I may or may not have written lyrics for not one, but two full songs back-to-back today...
    Mags
    HOLY CUNGADERO THERE'S A
    THERE'S A FREAKING KIRBY'S RETURN TO DREAMLAND REMAKE LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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    Mags
    Mags
    That's all I needed. I'm happy.
    Polterpup
    Polterpup
    Me too. I never played the original version on Wii, so I'm excited for this. But Dedede looks different, and there's a new ability as well. I really thought that Hal was going to leave Kirby alone next year though…
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    Mags
    Mags
    THERE'S A MAGOLOR CASTLE IN THE BACKGROUND OF THE TITLE SCREEN.
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