So, India Is Dying.

So, India is dying.

Look, I know a good number of you are from the US and things aren't amazing there either, but my country is literally on the brink of collapse. So I'd love it if we could talk about that for a minute.

If you can't do anything else, please just read and reblog.

A second COVID wave has taken out the healthcare system. There are no more hospital beds. There's an oxygen shortage. There's a critical vaccine shortage. The Central Government has thrown its hands up and is passing the baton to the State Governments to do what they can.

There are over 16 million covid cases. A record 330,000 new cases reported yesterday - comparable to the US at its peak. 187,000 dead as of today.

There is no plan.

Mass cremations are taking place. The cremation grounds are running day and night and they are short on wood. People are watching their loved ones die while waiting for a hospital bed, and then they're unable to give them the proper burial rights.

Hospitals are overwhelmed. Patients are being confined, two to a bed. They're the lucky ones.

We are on the verge of people dying in the streets.

This is the second-most populous country in the world. The largest democracy. A country that encapsulates over 15,000 years of recorded human history and has endured everything from famine to invasion to colonisation.

We might be at the end. This might be the thing that does us in.

People are dying.

People are dying.

People are dying and there is no plan.

More good news? Variants are popping up. A double mutation strain has shown up. It is resistant to current vaccines. This will not go away. This is the devastation they warned of when the anti-maskers were out protesting the minor inconvenience of covering their face in public.

My country is on the verge of an emergency state. Our government has failed us. This is as dire a situation as it ever could be.

Look. I don't do much with my life. I write fics, some of you have read them and that's pretty much it. I spend my days with my head in the clouds because that's where I like to be.

But two days ago, my grandmother tested positive, had to be taken to hospital and the ambulance caught fire.

She barely made it to the urgent care she needs.

So, here I am, using whatever meager platform I have to cobble this request together. Because I have to do something.

If you can, donate.

Or spread the word.

Help. Please.

tarot card art i did ages ago-- i was going to try to make an entire deck, but so far ive only done 1 in two years ^^' so ill keep you guys updated kfjdjkfd

The pencils breaking into smaller pencils

And why they treating word pencil like a slur. Reblog to scare ai losers away 🤭

I've been wanting to be an online writer, voice actor, and more for OVER TEN YEARS. The reason I couldn't even get anything of worth online is because I had to spend over half of that time just trying to survive life (especially school) and just figuring out how to keep going while dealing with chronic anxiety that's become so normalized for me that I can't always detect it.

The rest of those years was trying to survive a new lifestyle a family member FORCED onto us because of a selfish decision. And for two and a half years I've been stuck in this new life where EVERYTHING I HAVE IN ME goes into trying to find a balance between taking care of myself and taking care of others.

And now, when I'm finally starting to feel ready? THIS SHIT HAPPENS!

#i fuckin hate ai. every day that passes i hate ai and what its doing to our society even more.

it literally makes me so sad.... like i love drawing and sharing my art but I feel like now there aren't any sites that you can even do that anymore because they all keep making deals like this with AI companies. And who knows how much good "opting out" is even gonna do. Sorry to come rant in your ask box this news just really upset me is all...

No worries! It upset me too...

I already made all my fics on AO3 only accessible to logged in users like over a year ago after there were rumors that they were web scraping AO3 to train AIs. Now I'm having to go through each side blog I have individually and enable the "don't fucking steal my shit" button.

And everyone rn is going coo-coo bananas over AI, talking about how it's going to revolutionize everything and make it better but not to sound like a boomer but things have gone too fucking far! Sometimes progress for the sake of progress is bad actually. No one wants to talk about what we're losing for the sake of progress. We're literally losing art, the one thing that has been so innately human from the very beginning of our species. We're losing art to machines that can only take what we as humans have created, chew it up, and then regurgitate it back to us.

Yes, I recognize the merits of AI, but in my humble opinion, the losses far outweigh the benefits.

Not to mention the only way these AIs are being trained in the first place is by stealing the posts and artwork of real humans, the vast majority of which have not consented to their work being used in this way.

I'm so tired. I hate AI. I didn't a couple years ago. But with each passing day and each new thing that happens with it I grow more disillusioned by it and quite frankly fearful of it.

There's an epidemic of AI-made photographs on this platform. Right now, they're mostly used for farming clicks, but as A.I. models get better at faking images, be prepared for a spread of scams, misinformation and propaganda.

Here are some tricks for spotting AI!