Lots of imp thoughts today 🤫🧐
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First off - thank you all for your gorg messages about my little duck and my little brother. You’re my fave humans alive!!! Second, yesterday Liv and I released our first episode of our weekly Love Island debrief and it was SO good to be back!!! You can tune in here (and you really should.)
Thirdly, the title of this newsy is making me chuickle 1) because remember when I talked about how I need to stop shortening the word ‘important’ to imp?? Here it is for anyone who wasn’t here for it:
“You all know how I shorten words (embarro, newsy, edish) WELL, another one I often shorten that never lands is ‘imp’ (short for important.) So yesterday I used it & once again, it didn’t land… in my head when I say it I see an imp from Runescape, but Rubes and Liv both said it made them think of the word impotent (for anyone who doesn’t know what this means it’s when you can’t get it up).
And of course, me being me, I had a story to go with it. When I was little I was in the supermarket with my Mum and I was an impatient kid, so I yelled out (naturally) I yelled out “I’M SO IMPOTENT” (thinking it was a sub for impatient or something?? idk) and then Mum PISSED HERSELF and explained to me that being impotent means you can’t get a ‘stiffy’ (SHE USED THAT WORD.)”
And 2) because it’s looks like ‘limp thoughts’ and I am a child.
Let’s talk about DALLE-2
A follow up to yesterday’s Rebel Wilson story
A Love Island Debrief - let’s meet the islanders!
Old Navy Made Clothing Sizes for Everyone. It Backfired
Is it ‘racking’ your brain or ‘wracking’ your brain?
Let’s talk about DALLE-2
I’m sure by now you’ve all heard of DALL·E 2, Open AI’s new tech that can create realistic images and art from a description you give it. It’s been everywhere, and last week Casey Newton (legend) wrote a really good piece about it that got me (and my best content-sharing pal) chatting about it.
Here’s Casey’s opening statement, which I loved:
“Every few years, a technology comes along that splits the world neatly into before and after. I remember the first time I saw a YouTube video embedded on a web page; the first time I synced Evernote files between devices; the first time I scanned tweets from people nearby to see what they were saying about a concert I was attending.
I remember the first time I Shazam’d a song, summoned an Uber, and streamed myself live using Meerkat. What makes these moments stand out, I think, is the sense that some unpredictable set of new possibilities had been unlocked.”
This is so true - and I feel like right now the internet is moving so fast, and things are being built constantly, so it’s hard to grasp a tangible *this is new and might change things* moment before it’s been debunked or written off as a scam. DALL·E 2 could be here to change that.
How does it work?
Well, according to Casey: ”DALL-E — a portmanteau of the surrealist Salvador Dalí and Pixar’s WALL-E [luce note, I love this so much] — takes text prompts and generates images from them.”
And the images are pretty incred. Here’s a bunch of iterations from the prompt "teddy bears mixing sparkling chemicals as mad scientists as a 1990s Saturday morning cartoon":
And here’s “an astronaut riding a horse in the style of Andy Warhol”:
I have questions, like: Is this the end of art as we know it?
This is cool and fun until you really start thinking about it (most things are, until you really start thinking about them eh?) But what does this mean for illustrators? If anyone can whip up anything in any style (at the literal press of a button) will creatives be put out of a job? As someone who works incredibly quickly and reactively (and isn't a designer but constantly needs images), I can’t sit here and tell you honestly that it’s not enticing when it comes to publishing, but my heart knows it's not right.
And what about IP? Who owns a ‘style’ of art? And AI’s have to learn from something - are royalties paid to the artists whose images were used in training DALLE?
Some answers:
Right now this tool isn't public, and they aren’t clear about whether it ever will be. DALL·E 2 is a research project that they (as the website says) “currently do not make available in our API. As part of our effort to develop and deploy AI responsibly, we are studying DALL·E’s limitations and capabilities with a select group of users.”
And when it comes to generating images of things that might be harmful? Well, that’s covered in their content policy. Here’s what Casey says about that:
“Upon creating an account, OpenAI makes you agree to DALL-E’s content policy, which is designed to prevent most of the obvious potential abuses of the platform. There is no hate, harassment, violence, sex, or nudity allowed, and the company also asks you not to create images related to politics or politicians. (Here it seems worth noting that among OpenAI’s co-founders is Elon Musk, who is famously mad at Twitter for a much less restrictive set of policies. He left its board in 2018.)
DALL-E also prevents a lot of potential image creation by adding keywords (“shooting,” for example) to a block list. You’re also not allowed to use it to create images intended to deceive — no deepfakes allowed. And while there’s no prohibition against trying to make images based on public figures, you can’t upload photos of people without their permission, and the technology seems to slightly blur most faces slightly to make it clear that the images have been manipulated.”
Casey’s last point in his piece is one that I wanna make too - in a world of ever-increasing AI-generated things (gmail even wants to write my emails for me these days) will it get harder and harder to know what’s actually human-generated? And who (or what machine) has created what? Does it/ will it even matter? Yeeeeesh, tune in next year for my update (or will my computer be writing the newsy for me by then?)
A Love Island Debrief - let’s meet the islanders!
A Love Island Debrief: Let's meet the islanders! - Culture Vulture — open.spotify.com
Luce and Liv meet our islanders this year and debrief episodes 1-5!
Sydney Morning Herald removes column and apologises over reporting of Rebel Wilson’s new relationship
The Sydney Morning Herald is often referred to as SMH - and so true because I am SMH (shaking my head) so hard right now. After writing about their wildly bad/ inappropriate media practices, and essentially forcing Rebel Wilson to come out publicly (and then dragging her for doing so on her own terms) they’ve removed their column, and the writer has said he “made mistakes in his approach to the reporting.”
The writer wrote another whole ass column titled "I made mistakes over Rebel Wilson, and will learn from them" and honestly I don’t want you to go and increase their page views so I’m not gonna link it, but it essentially said that he has "learnt new and difficult lessons from this" and that, "as a gay man he knows how deeply discrimination hurts: The last thing I would ever want to do is inflict that pain on someone else.”
I mean, he did what we all expected him to do, and I guess what we wanted (aside from it just not happening in the first place) so I’m not going to shit on him for apologising. It’s not my apology to accept (obv), but jeeez, I hope at the very least that this has made you all decide to support the media you love, instead of… media like that 👀
Old Navy Made Clothing Sizes for Everyone. It Backfired.
I first saw this story on TikTok when some of my fave creators on there were discussing it. Basically last year Old Navy launched their ‘size inclusivity program’ (2021 still feels a bit too late for you to be accommodating all bodies, but at least they did something) and it was met with a lot of love. It was also a lot of work, according to Fast Company:
“Old Navy poured millions of dollars into its size-inclusivity rollout, which it dubbed Bodequality. As I explored last August, it developed new technology to design garments that would fit well across many body types; it rejiggered its supply chain to work with factories that could manufacture across sizes; and it changed its pricing strategy so that garments cost the same regardless of size. It also redesigned its stores, tearing down the separations between plus and straight sizes, so that women could shop by style rather than size.”
This year, Old Navy’s sales have plummeted by 19%, and what did it attribute this decline to?? The failure of its size-inclusivity program. Despite all the work that went into it, Old Navy has pulled all its extended sizes from stores (some are still available online), but the bigger issue here is the message it sends to other brands - that if you dare to include everyone in your size ranges, your business will fail. And this is just not the case, especially not when it comes to Gen-Z and our spending habits.
Size inclusivity is one of the things we look for when we’re spending money - just look at Remmie By Riley, or Good American or even Skims?? These brands are thriving and they’re examples that making people feel good in their bodies is a good business strategy (and just human decency tbh.) Obviously, for a whole bunch of imp financial and admin reasons (which are probs over my head), it’s easier to build an inclusive company from scratch rather than changing up a whole huge corporation, but I just hope this whole Old Navy story doesn’t put other companies off from trying to do better with their sizing!!!
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Are you 'wracking' your brain? Or 'racking' your brain?
So, I thought it was 'racking' (because I imagine going through a clothes rack searching for that one item of clothing), but 64% of you thought it was 'wracking.'
Turns out, it can be either. Here's what Merriam-Webster is telling me:
Most Edited English will prefer ... wrack and ruin, storm-wracked, and pain-wracked, but other Standard written evidence, including some Edited English, will use the variant spelling for each.
—Kenneth George Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, 1993
The spelling 'rack' is now used in all senses except for the seaweed called wrack. So it's "rack and ruin," … "racking my brains," and so on.
—Ned Halley, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Modern English, 2005
But this is my favourite piece of advice: it really doesn't matter:
Probably the most sensible attitude would be to ignore the etymologies of rack and wrack (which, of course, is exactly what most people do) and regard them simply as spelling variants of one word. If you choose to toe the line drawn by the commentators, however, you will want to write nerve-racking, rack one’s brains, storm-wracked, and for good measure wrack and ruin. Then you will have nothing to worry about being criticized for—except, of course, for using too many clichés.
Finally, I love this tweet:
Google engineer says Lamda AI system may have its own feelings (BBC)
Our Love Island Debrief (Ep 1-5) (Culture Vulture)
Kevin Spacey formally charged with sexual assault in U.K. (NBC
What we can all learn from the Johnny/Amber verdict (Culture Vulture)
Tony Awards Results! (People)
SYSCA playlist (✨Supporters only✨)
Our HUGE SYSCA reading list! (✨Supporters only✨)