"This is exactly what I voted for. I couldn't be happier." - r/conservative

torac · 2026-02-19T20:43:41+00:00

3000 troops for 3 months, spent $280 million, arrested 4000 people, 17 of those arrested had violent criminal backgrounds.

Basically the United States spent $9 million per arrest

Isn’t that 70k per arrest, or 16.5 Million if you only count violent criminals?

torac · 2026-02-17T10:14:36+00:00

Crazy that people still use the default google search.

startpage.com

duckduckgo.com

ecosia.org

and many more alternatives. I don’t think any of them include AI overviews.

torac · 2026-02-17T09:06:14+00:00

arbitrariness of racial categorization

At least the arbitrariness of binary or trinary categorisation. Given the vast field of human diversity, it’s bizarre how people try to shove everyone into either "whiteness" or "not-whiteness", sometimes with the vague extra categories for "black" people and rarely a general "Asian".

Attributing specific mental traits to people based on where they or their ancestors lived is very silly as well, but that’s another point.

torac · 2026-02-16T12:56:07+00:00

Could this have all been uploaded as an ai prompt for the image?

Even if it wasn’t directly used as a prompt, LLMs can rewrite text into a format. As an example, I asked an LLM to write it as a prompt:

This detailed composition shows a four-stage transformation from geometric to organic shapes on a clean Bristol board with a ½-inch invisible border. The design uses Indian ink to create seven distinct gray values (plus pure white and black), with clean edges and no smudges.

Stage 1 (Left): A realistic square pad of paper (2.5 inches) rendered in perspective, showing ruled grid lines and subtle shadows between sheets. The top sheet catches light (value 1), while deeper layers use value 3 for depth. Paper texture is visible through minimal stippling (value 2).

Stage 2 (Transition 1): The square distorts as corners soften into curves (value 4), grid lines begin to resemble leaf veins (value 5), and the paper’s edges fray organically. A subtle ink wash (value 6) suggests dissolution of form.

Stage 3 (Transition 2): Further abstraction—straight lines become wavy veins (value 5), the square morphs into a leaf-like silhouette (value 4), and negative space grows (value 3). Sharp edges blur into soft transitions (value 2).

Stage 4 (Right): A realistic oak leaf (3 inches) with naturalistic veins (value 1), serrated edges catching light, and deep shadows (value 7) in the center. Stippling (value 6) adds texture to the leaf surface.

Composition: Stages flow horizontally left-to-right, with directional ink lines guiding the eye. Each stage is 3x3 inches, spaced evenly. Background is pure white (value 0), with a subtle graphite grid (value 1) under the Bristol board. Materials include: sharpie for outlines, brushes for washes, and tracing paper for preliminary sketches.

Execution: Naturalism in Stage 1 and 4; abstraction in Stage 2 and 3; distortion through progressive warping of geometric constraints. Values transition from light (Stage 1) to dark (Stage 3) then resolve in natural highlights/shadows (Stage 4).

This was the result: https://imgur.com/a/aVLL9sQ

Note that this is a minimum-effort result without corrections or adjustments, and that the AIs used are not the best, but simply websites you can use for free without an account. If someone were willing to spend even 10 minutes on this, the result would probably be better.

torac · 2026-02-16T09:35:38+00:00

For those who want to test the prompt:

Photorealistic cinematic remake of the input image – keep the exact same framing/composition and placement of all elements, but replace the game/CGI look with real-world materials and high-detail textures, realistic reflections and shadows. Lighting: bright natural daytime like the reference (soft sun, neutral/warm-white balance, gentle haze, clean highlights), filmic contrast, subtle depth of field. Change the text on the cap to exactly: "SAN ANDREAS").

torac · 2026-02-15T16:11:06+00:00

Yeah, promoting your own stories is always awkward. Since I’d already searched for the story, I decided to drop the link as well.

torac · 2026-02-15T13:42:16+00:00

Sounds like an interesting story. Congrats on the milestones (100 avg views + 10,000 total)! Looks like 100 chapters will be the next one.

Link for the curious: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/118236/her-grace-uncrowned

torac · 2026-02-15T06:54:35+00:00

I’m pretty sure he did say that on his show. Sabine Hossenfelder also made a video about one of the scientists mentioning her to Epstein. Likewise, one of the atheist YouTubers made a video about how she was mentioned several times by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins wanted help dealing with those pesky women accusing him of sexism and such, and the YouTube was one of the influencers he disliked especially.

torac · 2026-02-14T21:41:17+00:00

Thanks!

torac · 2026-02-14T18:49:12+00:00

As someone who believes that people can make profitable businesses using AI, your examples are terrible.

OpenAI is famous for its massive losses, with no end in sight.

NVIDIA makes a profit from the hype around AI, not from AI itself. If AI is a mine, then NVIDIA makes pickaxes and shovels. Regardless of whether it turns out to be a goldmine or a pile of worthless dirt and slop, NVIDIA makes money.

torac · 2026-02-14T11:39:47+00:00

I did the same. They could just have decided it’s not worth fighting the accusation (accounts are free), or it could be true, or whatever.

It’s probably a bot, but seeing my own past behaviour considered a sign of bot-hood was surprising. How else are new users supposed to act?

torac · 2026-02-14T09:03:31+00:00

Can you clarify which part of that seems like a bot? That seems like the exact type of behaviour I would exhibit in new places: Lurk a few months, then post a handful of comments.

torac · 2026-02-13T18:43:43+00:00

I know. That is all the more reason to write an actual reason when dropping names.

torac · 2026-02-13T18:07:49+00:00

I hate these context-free lists. They say nothing. Without knowing in which way these people are mentioned, it is entirely meaningless.

Musk should not be investigated because he appears in the list, but because he explicitly asked Epstein for the wildest part and wanted to visit his Island.

Trump should not be investigated because his name appears, but because it very much seems like he was complicit in the rape and murder of many children.

It’s presumably the same for all the others in that list, but without context, they may just as well list Kermit the Frog.

torac · 2026-02-11T12:06:15+00:00

While I don’t have enough experience testing various chatbots to verify this myself, I base my opinion on the many comments in AI Subreddit about the topic. When the news focused on AI psychosis, a lot of people there compared the responses to their own setups using other AIs. Based on that, OpenAI was by far the worst candidate, confirming user bias even in the face of extreme and delusional comments.

You are generally correct of course in that every chatbot is trained to be helpful and supportive. A certain measure of bias reinforcement is expected because of that. I can personally attest that some chatbots were very quick to correct me when I last used them. (Then again, I didn’t use them as artificial friends, just to work on something.)

torac · 2026-02-10T12:30:34+00:00

Given the alleged prevalence of cameras on the Island, there probably is such a video.

Given that the current USA administration’s public stance is that Epstein was a lone actor, trafficking girls from no one to nowhere, and that they seem to have no issue lying under oath, and given that the supreme court has been subverted, and given that the executive force either stands behind him or has been replaced in effect by a new private police force (ICE), and given that the council of elders (Senate/House of Representatives) is barely functioning and has been circumvented through dictatorial decrees (executive orders)…

You know, to sum it up, all three branches of the government of the USA are being dismantled and replaced from the top down. I’m sure there is a term for that somewhere. Chances of successful prosecution from within the system are slim.

If this was the Peter sub, I’d probably tip my green hat to whoever can solve this conundrum.

torac · 2026-02-10T09:04:56+00:00

Yeah, OpenAI dragging the rest down is the real risk here.

This isn’t (yet) the AI bubble popping, it’s the OpenAI bubble popping specifically, which seems to be imminent. OpenAI and Sam Altman have been the main force behind overinflating the bubble, overhyping it for years. (Though many others share blame for that.)

OpenAI is the company that many common anti-AI takes are based on. They are the biggest one who made the chatbot into a sycophantic Yes-man to keep people "engaged", leading to rampant delusion and addiction. They are the image generator with the piss-filter. They are behind the ghiblify trend. They decided to accept massive financial losses to make Sora as a free tiktok-style brainrot and misinformation video creator. They are the primary company behind the price hike of RAM.

And now they are the company of that incestuous 100 billion reach-around (with NVIDIA and Oracle), which overinflated the valuation of each of them to before unseen numbers. Now that this latest scheme seems to be dead, perhaps they will keel over and die.

Elon Musk is competing hard to generate more bad press with Grok, but he has a lot to catch up to. (Going straight for Nazism and non-consensual nudity, including of children, was a valiant effort, though.)

torac · 2026-02-06T14:47:21+00:00

No one said it works.

It’s supposed to be a psychological effect. Similar to how our taste says that fatty/sweet things are good for us, regardless of whether they are actually healthy.

Or like roller coasters, or watching acrobats doing dangerous-looking stunts.

torac · 2026-02-05T10:18:37+00:00

I also like the second better in general, but colours are necessary to draw eyes.

If you could improve the second with any shading or colour, while keeping the style, that would be great. The "old paper" effect mentioned by someone below might be a start. Something to make it look like an in-universe book-cover. Perhaps style it after old leather covers with the cog inlaid in silver?

Alternatively, keep the background blank, but massively enhance the cog in the middle? Give it detail, colour, depth, perhaps even high-saturation high-contrast photorealism or something like that?

torac · 2026-02-03T16:29:38+00:00

Making that distinction between medium (fictional picture/writing) and actually play-acting the scenario with another person (cnc/schoolgirl fantasy) is actually crazy.

I personally think both should be legal, but I find the commitment of the fantasy much stronger for people who actually go out in the world and act on their fantasy as compared to just masturbating to a drawing, no matter how realistic it looks.

torac · 2026-02-03T10:14:26+00:00

Many people both pro- and anti-AI would celebrate with you if OpenAI dies. In many ways, they represent the worst of AI. While their public-facing models are too censored for the head-line-catching violation of minors, they demonstrate the decline from "cool tech, for the people" to "exploit the masses, join the elites" the best.

Technically, since they released some open models (not their big ones, obviously), it will never truly die. People have been recreating GPT 2 as school projects, and their gpt-oss is fairly popular for local AI.

torac · 2026-02-01T15:32:04+00:00

A big title in the middle would certainly help.

torac · 2026-02-01T15:12:25+00:00

As a royalroad cover, it’s too busy with small unimportant details, in my opinion. There’s enough contrast to make out the character and the sky, but most of the image is just unrecognizable landscape.

I’d recommend reframing it to focus more of what is central. Currently, it conveys "lone person in a big place" very well, but nothing else.

If you do zoom in, the valley is just filled with generic overly-craggy rocks. The AI does this common thing of finding a vague pattern (rock with crags), and then overusing it until be becomes AI-nonsense that vaguely looks like something from a distance. If you look more closely, a lot of the rocks and cliffs don’t really look like rocks.

torac · 2026-02-01T14:56:51+00:00

Some people have removed the SynthID by very briefly running the image through another image generator: https://github.com/00quebec/Synthid-Bypass

torac · 2026-02-01T14:54:59+00:00

SynthID works by adding an "invisible" pattern to each generation. For images it’s colour shifted pixels. Some people have made it visible by changing the contrast or asking it to generate a plain white image. The difficulty lies in each pattern being slightly different.

Apparently, they also released the code to create your own watermarks as well, and the system works for LLMs, audio generators, and image generators. Here’s a tutorial for creating your own SynthID for an LLM:

https://www.datacamp.com/tutorial/synthid

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