erin (she/her)

I think a better comparison would be modern magnesium, phosphorus, or napalm bombing.

If you could look at a 6 year old and call them “born bad” for any level of mistake, it would make you an asshole. Why would you treat your child self like that?

No action a 6 year old takes is indicative of anything but their immediate environment. If you did something “terrible” when you were 6, maybe think about what that says about who was raising you, and why you’ve been made to think that it’s “terrible.” You desperately need to work through your childhood trauma with a professional.

Would you treat a random 6 year old how you’re treating yourself? Why or why not?

Oh, no, I totally did do that. They all consented though.

Excellent question, but I have no idea. She tears the medicine labels off for some reason so I’ll ask her when she gets home and edit with more info. It’s a capsule and a tiny pill, taken morning and night respectively, if that means anything to you.

Edit: Phentermine and topiramate

I’m an artist with aphantasia. You just might need to learn from someone that thinks like you do, or try different styles of art. There are so many disabled artists making cool stuff, and a learning disability is a barrier, but it can be overcome. I cannot see images in my head whatsoever. No mental picture, no visual memory. I make art just fine, it just took me a little longer to learn what works for me. The important part is that I had a desire to learn and overcome my difficulties, and didn’t let them stop me from trying. Tracing AI art will not teach you the theory or techniques you could learn from another artist, and those are what you need to improve.

There are a million free courses to guide your learning and teach you about things like forms and perspective to capture what you want. Unless you have 0 free time whatsoever, anyone, and I do mean anyone, can make art.

My parents and my fiancee have gotten on an equivalent of Ozempic specifically for weight loss and covered by insurance. It seems to be easier now than it was, because if my fiancee wasn’t covered we absolutely couldn’t afford it.

Is this true? I thought with things like danger to oneself or others they’re mandated reporters.

That makes the assumption that trans athletes consistently outperform cis athletes, which there isn’t evidence of. A trans person winning something does not mean all trans people will always have an advantage, which is the assumption conservatives make. What place does a trans person need to place for it to be okay? Are trans people ever allowed to win? Any time a trans person places above any cis person, it’s used as evidence of unfairness, even though that makes no sense.

I wouldn’t say either. Sex is way more intimate than just hugging. I’d say it’s like “making out” but better. It’s lots of fun, and I don’t care about the societal norms restricting it between romantic partners. Pregnancy isn’t a risk for me, and I’m very careful to avoid STDs. I haven’t had sex with someone without a recent STD panel, and I use protection when necessary. My fiancee feels the same way, so I have sex with my friends all the time

For context I guess, here’s my views on the list you posted, as someone who is very much not religious and dated plenty before finding my fiancee:

• Marriage might be awesome for some, but it’s also not for everyone, and there are far too many bad marriages that could’ve been good casual relationships

• Standards are definitely good to have, but I guarantee mine are very different than the average Catholic

• No shame in being single. Better to be single than in a toxic relationship just for the sake of a relationship.

• I probably couldn’t see myself marrying a religious person, but if their beliefs don’t infringe on other’s rights then I guess they can do them.

• Sex is just sex, cohabitation is convenient, cheaper, and pleasant. I’ve never been married and I’ve lived more of my adult life with a roommate or partner than not. I also don’t believe sex needs to be confined within the boundaries of a relationship either, and I have sex with people that aren’t my fiancee, both with and without her, though that’s definitely uncommon and always done with the full consent of all parties.

• Dating could be for finding a future spouse. It could also just be for fun, or for a casual relationship, or a long term relationship with no intent to marry.

• Relatively wide variety in how long people date before marriage, if ever. I never planned on it for years, but I met my fiancee and changed my mind. We dated for a year before getting engaged.

• Normal to date in highschool.

Obviously this is only my perspective. No judgement, to each their own. Other than the views on polyamory (though more accurately, just sex. Open relationship? I don’t have a label for it), these opinions seem very common among the average dating population. My sample may be skewed since I’m bisexual and over half my relationships have been gay.

I don’t love the take “men dressing feminine is a fetish.” Are tomboys a fetish? Just because some people choose to engage in fetish and also are femboys doesn’t make it “in and of itself” a fetish. It isn’t.

You found the joke

Yeah I don’t know if that source or that college make the point you think they do. AI art cannot exist without a constant feed of (non-consensual) human creativity. You can learn everything there is to know about AI “art” in a relatively short time span, because you have the plagiarism machine to do the composition for you. It isn’t so for any other medium. This point isn’t worth arguing, because it’s so self-evident. The knowledge and skill of photography clearly set it apart as an art form, whereas AI does not. AI “art” requires the knowledge and skill of actual artforms to even exist.

Photography’s genesis is fascinating and is taught about in art school. You conveniently left out the other side of that time, where the fledgling artform pushed back to prove its validity through multiple evolving forms and styles, which demonstrated that it is simply a new medium, not trying to replace or replicate any other style. That is explicitly what gen AI stands to do, and it even requires constant input of actual art to exist. Additionally , impressionism was far more a reaction to realism than it was to photography. Every new wave in art creates pushback from the other styles more popular at the time. Never before has every field of art so unanimously opposed what is clearly the cheapening and commoditizing of creativity through soulless reproduction. Gen AI can be fun to mess with, it can be interesting to explore the technology, but it is ultimately just a bubble being propped up by the exploitation of actual artists and consumers alike.

You clearly do not produce or understand the production of art, and why there is such a difference. Prompt engineering is not composition, and the only art that uses AI relies on human composition to give it any form of soul. This conversation isn’t worth having, as you’re still trying to argue that photography is analogous to AI art. Talk to artists.

Repeating it does not make it so. There are no AI art colleges.

I’m not dismissing it, and that doesn’t address the point at all compared to AI. It isn’t that technique isn’t important, it’s just far less of what you learn as an artist compared to the theory. Photography has its own advanced techniques just like all artforms.

I cannot disagree more, as someone that paints with multiple mediums, including oil. It may be much more time consuming, but most of the art is in learning how the human eye views images, how to make the eye be drawn around the image in the order you want, and many other technical and artistic details. I can’t even begin to discuss it here, it’s a field of professional art like any other. Frequently, it intersects with sculpture and other physical and digital mediums. There are colleges of photography that offer the same level and quantity of schooling that other artistic studies do. The skill in art is not in the fine motor controls and techniques, though they are important to learn. Much harder is learning about forms, color, values, how to arrange artwork to be pleasing to the eye (or discordant, like a tritone), and all the other multitude of steps in arranging and capturing the message the artist is trying to convey.

You’re just wrong and misinformed. I’m an artist, and every professional artist I know and went to school with shares my opinion. You have a very limited view of what photography can be, and it shows.

Edit: To be clear, professional photographers can spend huge amounts of time applying the knowledge they’ve learned through study and practice to arrange their subject, which is not simply “point and click.” Look at the work of professional modern photographers. Photography is accessible like a set of cheap acrylics is accessible. High level art of all mediums takes far more study and skill to do well than AI art.

What do you lose when someone transitions? They’re still the same person, just happier and expressing themselves truly. You lose nothing. The only loss to be mourned would be a relationship that’s no longer compatible. It’s a change, but it’s a positive one, and expressing any form of loss to someone going through such a difficult and scary time is incredibly hurtful.

That person still exists. Mourning their loss shows you don’t actually love them as they are.

Yeah basically. The person is still there. You should celebrate, not mourn, that the person you love is taking a step towards who they want to be. Acting like you lost something is incredibly hurtful, because the person is still right there, they’re just changing. If their gender expression is the only thing that made them important to you then yes, you’re a piece of shit.

He was a piece of shit and so are you for caring about him

The friend is not gone. This implies that you cared about who they were and not who they are. Any mourning is just an indicator that you don’t actually love this person, you love who you thought they were and don’t actually care about their happiness. Abusive behavior.