The United States federal government is famously based on the idea of three coequal branches that all govern each other. The congress represents the will of the populace, the executive executes the will of the populace, and the judiciary interprets the will of the populace. Each branch exercises some control over each of the other two. Regardless of the flaws that have made themselves apparent over the years, the theory is solid assuming good faith actors.
As I've stated before online, I'm a big proponent of Free Speech™ as an ideal. Not just for me or for ideas I like or agree with, but for all. As you can imagine, this has gotten me some flack online from time to time. There is some truly detestable speech that the state has no right to censor or curb. And it is my contention that it is in your best interest that it be so.
I see a lot of discourse online on what speech should and shouldn't be allowed. On platforms, in individual conversations, and by the government. Speech restriction has its place, but the legitimacy of the actor can vary wildly. And I think that we should think of the interplay between these societal structures as analogous.
When editing photos, one of the first things you'll want to do is "fix" the skin of your subjects. I've fumbled around with this for years. I use almost exclusively open source tools like GIMP for my work, which while extremely powerful, often lack most of those automatic tools and niceties present in paid products like Photoshop. So I'll share my method, which I adopted from this YouTube video.
We're living through a weird moment. AI is the new "thing." And not in just one industry, in pretty much every industry. AI has been percolating in the background for years at the periphery of public consciousness, and suddenly, well... ChatGPT set the record for the fastest growing user base. Diffusion models are also having a moment. And like with all things that have their moment, there are those that don't quite understand just what they're looking at. And this might not be the take you're expecting.
I've been running some version of this blog/website since I was in college when I first bought the jordanwages.com domain name. I recently changed how I host it, so it is probably closer in structure to its original conception than for most of its life to this point.
