thumbsupemoji's recent activity

  1. Comment on AI video editing helpers are changing my life in ~creative

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    Maybe this is what @MimicSquid meant—I think there are valid concerns, and the general public definitely has a bad taste re: AI due to the baseline they've been presented with on facebook or...

    Maybe this is what @MimicSquid meant—I think there are valid concerns, and the general public definitely has a bad taste re: AI due to the baseline they've been presented with on facebook or whatever. So if not done correctly it could be the same as using animated captions or something not cohesive with the material.

    It's just gotten so much better than most people are aware—not at thinking or taking over the world, but writing sonnets & making videos of cavemen riding bicycles & editing boring parts out of videos, for sure.

    2 votes
  2. Comment on AI video editing helpers are changing my life in ~creative

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    Yeah if I am seeing terrible DALL-E level shiny people with goofed up fingers eating hamburgers or whatever ima peace out of there, but I feel like what you're saying could be applied to any...

    Yeah if I am seeing terrible DALL-E level shiny people with goofed up fingers eating hamburgers or whatever ima peace out of there, but I feel like what you're saying could be applied to any aspect of content creation, especially in the early stages of whatever is at hand—four years ago if someone had put their "serious" content on Tiktok that would have been crazy, right, because it would have devalued their message; in 2025 it's almost unavoidable. The AI images I'm describing would be indistinguishable from the real deal, not a crummy facsimile. But that would make an entirely different group of people uncomfortable.

    4 votes
  3. Comment on AI video editing helpers are changing my life in ~creative

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    Normalizing = yes Best clips-wise = TBD lol; there's a preset that claims it will find the "Viral" shots & dump out a 1-min version, but I haven't tried it yet. Glad someone is excited about the...

    Normalizing = yes
    Best clips-wise = TBD lol; there's a preset that claims it will find the "Viral" shots & dump out a 1-min version, but I haven't tried it yet. Glad someone is excited about the boring parts like I am—prob the divide is between people who have fallen asleep in front of their NLE & people who haven't : )

    1 vote
  4. Comment on AI video editing helpers are changing my life in ~creative

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    I feel like it's a very similar conversation to the discussion surrounding piracy—is it preferable? Definitely not. Is it necessary? I mean sometimes I guess so. Is it oftentimes vastly easier and...

    I feel like it's a very similar conversation to the discussion surrounding piracy—is it preferable? Definitely not. Is it necessary? I mean sometimes I guess so. Is it oftentimes vastly easier and more economical? 100% Does that mean I don't think people deserved to be paid for their work? And there it is. What I'd like to say to that is: I don't think anyone should be dependent on getting "paid" for something that's infinitely reproducible, because that means they could theoretically be paid infinitely. But we don't have a working model in use to fix that problem yet, so here we are. I think what I'm saying is that AI image gen & downloading things from the internet are both less than preferable, but also at times the best choice available, and for reasons caused by larger forces that we as a society have been unwilling or unable to change, or even face honestly. So yeah taking a stand against a tiny symptom, now, isn't going to affect the disease.

    2 votes
  5. Comment on AI video editing helpers are changing my life in ~creative

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    ok but why? If it was a drawing that said "artist's rendition" at the bottom because obv. no one was around to take Solomon's picture why would that be better? Because thus far I haven't had...

    ok but why? If it was a drawing that said "artist's rendition" at the bottom because obv. no one was around to take Solomon's picture why would that be better? Because thus far I haven't had anyone say anything other than "Well someone got paid to draw that," which is true but not an indicator of historical accuracy. I feel like if @EarlyWords knows enough about the subject & enough about AI art to get it to look like it should based on what we know right now, then that's the same as someone drawing whatever their interpretation would be, right? To @hungariantoast 's point, if Joan of Arc had a written description or contemporary portrayals that looked just like Emma Watson, then those would kind of make sense lol, but otherwise yes hot garbage. But I feel like there's a use case here that wouldn't upset anyone (@Lia mentioned one here), or at least wouldn't upset anyone any more than Spielberg using CGI Not Real Dinosaurs for Jurassic Park instead of just stop-motion Not Real Dinosaurs—and he used both, and the fear then also was putting animators out of work, when the real danger turned out to be forcing animators to pivot to CGI, then slowly squeezing the life out of animators as a workforce, then outsourcing CGI to cheaper animators elsewhere, then... oh it's AI again. So yeah I think my suspicions lie elsewhere.

    5 votes
  6. Comment on AI video editing helpers are changing my life in ~creative

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    something something monkeys typewriters I feel like following the AI concerns all the way to their natural conclusion is the only way to figure these feelings out: I understand what @CptBluebear...

    something something monkeys typewriters

    I feel like following the AI concerns all the way to their natural conclusion is the only way to figure these feelings out: I understand what @CptBluebear is saying, but I'm not claiming that what I'm churning out is "art" lol. It's complicated—if it's 1970 and I won't use a typewriter, insisting on writing out longhand because "machines are making it too easy," then that seems silly, same as insisting on a typewriter instead of a word processor on a PC anytime in the past 30 years would be. So it may be luddite-ish to eschew AI help completely, but also a typewriter or WordStar was never going to churn out something grammatically perfect, all on its own, that looked like a person wrote it but was ultimately just an amalgamation of pattern recognition + RNG & doesn't actually say anything. And I think that's what's scary for some folks about AI, is that they won't be able to tell the difference, so then where's the value in what I'm doing if a computer could do it?

    For me, it's saving me hours and hours and hours on things that are technically stylistic choices, but also so mind-numbingly technical that it was actually making me hate the fun parts as well. So that's my goal for AI, and if they descend to rule over us in our ignorance then hey maybe they'll do better than us lol

  7. Comment on US President Donald Trump to issue executive orders to end birthright citizenship, limit gender identity — incoming official in ~lgbt

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    I take it to (in reverse order) the end of the fairness doctrine, the rise of the 24 hour cable news cycle (Reaganism in general), the 1960 JFK-Nixon debate. Anyone who is wondering what the heck...

    I take it to (in reverse order) the end of the fairness doctrine, the rise of the 24 hour cable news cycle (Reaganism in general), the 1960 JFK-Nixon debate. Anyone who is wondering what the heck is going on needs to check out [wtf happened in 1971] (https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/) as much of the current goings-on are a feature, not a bug. Would it surprise you to learn that until the 1970s the Southern Baptist Convention formally supported abortion? Cuz it sure surprised me.

    1 vote
  8. Comment on Discussion on the future and AI in ~tech

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    Lots of good and true things being said here—I want to say something different that may or may not be helpful to you lol: I think a lot of this stuff is already happening, having generally very...

    Lots of good and true things being said here—I want to say something different that may or may not be helpful to you lol: I think a lot of this stuff is already happening, having generally very little to do with AI. Your point #1, for example, is descriptive of much of how the US seems to be working, currently—sensationalist, sure, but not that far removed. And this line specifically:

    Human nature is such that there will be enough bad actors that laws will have to be enacted and enforced, and this would again lead to centralisation.

    is basically the story of western civilization as a whole, right? The tension between liberty and safety, Athens v. Sparta, the social contract. It’s not AI, it’s us. We have the benefit of living at perhaps the end of an age with rapidly increasing lifespans, income, well-being, democratic ideals, all for a minority of the global population—but a growing one. Maybe the first-world troubles currently bubbling up will make things better for everyone else on the planet, maybe we’ll take everyone down with us, or maybe the experiment has run its course and things will go back to how they were for millennia before, only with memes and ChatGPT and nuclear capability. But if Sam Altman closed up shop tomorrow or there was some cataclysmic event that took us back to the 1960s or the 1890s or the 1500s I don’t know that people would be fundamentally different, or that the end result would change. It’s just a mess out there.

  9. Comment on AI video editing helpers are changing my life in ~creative

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    I feel like that's a pretty solid use-case; I totally get wanting purely "real" images, but 50 years ago an artist would have drawn illustrations for a textbook on that & they could very well have...

    I feel like that's a pretty solid use-case; I totally get wanting purely "real" images, but 50 years ago an artist would have drawn illustrations for a textbook on that & they could very well have been historically... loose haha. I don't know that that's any consolation, but even if your video gets absorbed into the AI hivemind/mothership and spit back out, it will probably be more accurate than some 1960s clipart of a white Hammurabi.

    2 votes
  10. Comment on AI video editing helpers are changing my life in ~creative

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    yeah i've done some of that contract AI trainer stuff you see advertised—decent but painfully mindless work; the best thing I got from it was reassurance that there is really not much danger...

    yeah i've done some of that contract AI trainer stuff you see advertised—decent but painfully mindless work; the best thing I got from it was reassurance that there is really not much danger there, because of how absolutely helpless a bot seems when you ask it to do something completely logical that it's just not expecting. "Intelligence" is a far cry from where we are right now, probably, but we already had autocorrect & autocomplete—and Premiere editing workflow pattern recognition is all it is currently taking to make my Saturday way better.

    4 votes
  11. AI video editing helpers are changing my life

    If you are like me then you are kinda over hearing about AI all the time; I get it, believe me. I've written about jobs on here before: my day job is absolutely infested with AI jargon, most of it...

    If you are like me then you are kinda over hearing about AI all the time; I get it, believe me. I've written about jobs on here before: my day job is absolutely infested with AI jargon, most of it pretty meaningless (flashbacks to "The Cloud"), and it's a constant everywhere else too, so yeah it's a lot and it's largely unimpressive. Image gen has gotten pretty ridiculous in the last 6-12 months, and video gen seems to be taking off next, and I've successfully wrangled various chatbots into helping with coding projects, etc.

    Probably none of this is news to you, but I just found out that I can get AI to edit video. I've done a lot of short-form editing, and recently picked up some side work that is much lengthier, without realizing that the time I would spend hunkered over going through it would be exponentially more lengthy. Painfully so. Cue signing up for a trial of AutoCut, and hot damn it's like living in the future. I am as we speak watching it delete gaps, cut to speakers, add captions that are mostly correct & even formatted & unbelievably also do the VHS singalong/Tiktok "highlight the word being spoken" thing that all the cool kids are doing these days. It's not perfect, it's kinda finicky—I'm having to use a V1 when V2 is supposedly much better, and I'm having to chunk these beastly premiere timelines to get it to do anything at all, but wow—if this is your day job, are you worried? Cause it's a game changer for me but no one is going to replace me because no one else would bother messing with it lol, but on a corporate scale do people know about this stuff yet? I'm thinking our jobs may not be replaced by AI, our jobs will probably just become AI babysitting.

    29 votes
  12. Comment on Need a haircut (a good one) in ~life.style

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    Yeah I was considering trying out one of the aliexpress numbers this morning, so you got me lol

    Yeah I was considering trying out one of the aliexpress numbers this morning, so you got me lol

  13. Comment on Need a haircut (a good one) in ~life.style

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    So the men's wearhouse near me does tailoring onsite, but I'm guessing you'd recommend someone independent? Any advice on how to pick

    So the men's wearhouse near me does tailoring onsite, but I'm guessing you'd recommend someone independent? Any advice on how to pick

  14. Comment on Need a haircut (a good one) in ~life.style

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    should have included that, thanks! Yes I am male--thanks

    should have included that, thanks! Yes I am male--thanks

  15. Comment on Need a haircut (a good one) in ~life.style

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    Hadn't even thought about Men's Wearhouse, that sounds perfect! Thanks a bunch. I've got some wonderful fancy wool socks that are dark, prob go with dark blue suit/light blue shirt just off the...

    Hadn't even thought about Men's Wearhouse, that sounds perfect! Thanks a bunch. I've got some wonderful fancy wool socks that are dark, prob go with dark blue suit/light blue shirt just off the bat, will that work? The thin dress socks drive me nuts & these don't get sweaty!

    3 votes
  16. Comment on Need a haircut (a good one) in ~life.style

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    Yeah I feel like it's a good bet to spend some on this, so I'm not opposed—if anyone in Atlanta has a place they like feel free to send me a DM or rep them here lol

    Yeah I feel like it's a good bet to spend some on this, so I'm not opposed—if anyone in Atlanta has a place they like feel free to send me a DM or rep them here lol

    2 votes
  17. Need a haircut (a good one)

    I posted recently about needing a better job—well, if one has an interview for a better job (a much better job, hopefully), one needs to look the part. In the greater ATL area, two questions: I've...

    I posted recently about needing a better job—well, if one has an interview for a better job (a much better job, hopefully), one needs to look the part. In the greater ATL area, two questions:

    • I've gotten a variety of haircuts, from barbershops to salon-type places to Great Clips to at home with a Wahl, but they've topped out around 20 bucks. How do I find a really good haircut/face clean-up (brows etc) place? I don't want to just waltz in somewhere & end up looking ridiculous, but I don't even know where to start. It doesn't help that I have a kind of "weird" type of hair, where it's curly and kind of wiry, ethnically mediterranean/middle eastern, so if I get a regular clippers haircut it usually ends up looking chopped off.

    • I also need a good suit, in toto; I have dress clothes but def. don't want to blow this one. National finance, I'm seeing business casual so suit/tie/shirt/shoes, nice enough to be unnoticeable is my goal. I have no idea how much a suit at that point would cost, but other than going to Brooks Brothers or Joseph A Banks I have no idea what the best approach would be (are those even in the same range lol)

    Thanks again you all

    Edit: i am a dude, sry

    15 votes
  18. Comment on I need to be making $90,000 in ~life

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    mainly getting interviews, yeah—when I can get in front of someone it's always gone well. I think mainly I've felt like I am not good at any one thing to try to convince someone else that I'm good...

    mainly getting interviews, yeah—when I can get in front of someone it's always gone well. I think mainly I've felt like I am not good at any one thing to try to convince someone else that I'm good at it, but I've learned after a few years in corporate that that is just not the case.

    1 vote
  19. Comment on I need to be making $90,000 in ~life

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    Thanks! Yeah I've seen those postings; I've got a doctorate so I'd hope that there's a trainer/instructor/documentation spot out there in my range, but what I've been seeing is pretty much exactly...

    Thanks! Yeah I've seen those postings; I've got a doctorate so I'd hope that there's a trainer/instructor/documentation spot out there in my range, but what I've been seeing is pretty much exactly what you're describing. I did the lateral pay move thing once already—hoping to not have to do it again, at that point I might just ride it out where I am, build skills/resume/network, and hope for the best with the traction & inertia I already have. But ugh that sounds terrible lol

    2 votes
  20. Comment on I need to be making $90,000 in ~life

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    Yeah it's a dream if you're willing to get out to jobsites, and at your level of IT you were prob already in the field regularly, but I just can't imagine driving to work every day every again...

    Yeah it's a dream if you're willing to get out to jobsites, and at your level of IT you were prob already in the field regularly, but I just can't imagine driving to work every day every again lol—it's definitely a limiting factor when you're looking for new jobs! And I did it for two decades, for way less money, but dang idk if I could do it again.

    2 votes