If you have been on facebook recently, you will have seen the "trendy images" generated of people - using photos as a base, they are rendered in Studio Ghibli-style or, the most recent fad, you can turn your photo into an action figure, in its plastic packaging, with some objects as accoutrements.

Yeah. There was a big blow-up about the "Ghibli filter" in AI, because the material taken to train the AI was taken without permission, and without reimbursement to the artists. So basically their work was stolen - much like the books that were used to train AIs, taken without permission (and one I co-authored was among them, by the way).

And now the trend is action figures. Well, at least that does not take someone's work and hands it out for free, right? However, there is still a stack of issues connected, one of them being the use of water (to cool) and energy (to run the servers).

You can read a little more about this here on Instagram...

or in this BBC article here. (Though I don't get why this, or other critical articles, are saying "don't do it" only to decorate their posts with multiple images of the figures, including those of the authors. Hm.)

Would I find it fun to see myself as an action figure, or drawn Ghibli-style? Yes. Will I have the AI make it? Definitely not. Apart from the intellectual property issues with the Ghibli filter, I don't really want to feed the AI enough data about myself to render a nice image. (Also you'd probably need a pretty oversized box if you wanted to include all the stuff to describe my work and life...) And it would feel a little off to waste energy and water on making a "fun" image when I'm trying hard in the other areas of my life to be as sustainable and low-impact as possible. 

Or they will tell you you're good to go.

Across the street, that is.

If you are confused now, here is the explanation: Traffic lights for pedestrians have been installed in Haddeby, the modern settlement close to Haithabu. Yes, that Haithabu of the viking-age settlement that was excavated years ago.

So now there's a little Viking standing with a round shield for the stop signal, and a green one running, axe at the ready. Hopefully not to kill and plunder the Hedeby museum!

Read the full article (in German) and see the pictures here!

So... I finally managed to send off one edit of a paper, and done some work here and there. Most importantly, though, we have green light for the date that I had pencilled in for the next European Textile Forum, hooray! I will try to get the CfP out later this week.

I'm still waiting on final news for the re-print of the gold embroidery book, but I do hope that will come tomorrow.

There's also been good news about the little hedgehog we picked up in the garden a while ago, it's now healthy again and ready to get back into the wild (with a little transition phase). 

And if I now manage to get my post done for the day, I'll be happy! (The last bits of a cold I had caught made me sluggish somehow. Hopefully I will now get rid of the last dredges of it...)

...you only get this photo of a busy bee: 

Enter your text here ...

A while ago, a fragment of a medieval Merlin story manuscript was found in Cambridge - as part of a 16th century binding. The fragment was left in situ and not taken out and flattened as would have been done, say, 30 years ago, because its re-use is, in itself, a thing of historical interest.

Instead, modern imaging technologies were used to record, digitise, and virtually unfold the parchment piece. You can see the results, and read the full report, here.

Preserving the find as-is has become more and more an option that is considered upon finding something - whether it's a manuscript fragment like here, or something else such as a belt buckle with mineralised textiles on it, or a textile with dirt on it. In some cases, it's necessary to remove dirt to prevent further degrading, but for the belt buckle... well. Unfortunately there's still too many textile imprints or textile residues cleaned off like they're just ugly and in the way, but things like this manuscript do make me hope that at some point, every artefact will be preserved as completely as possible.

Sometimes, you know, sometimes I really don't get it. 

Let me start from somewhere further back. I am on Facebook, because of work. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.) Because I'm there due to work reasons, I will usually accept friend requests from people - I do a quick screening to see if they are just there to sell me things, or if they are too far out on the right-wing extremist spectrum, or similar, and if they pass that (really very quick screening) I accept.

This means that I'm "facebook friends" with a lot of people. Including some with, apparently, quite different world views. Now... one of them posted a video of a man doing hobby horsing, and I found that on my timeline today. (If you have not heard of that before, see here.) The reaction to the video? People going all obnoxious and hate comments about how awful and horrible and so on it was.

And this, folks, this I really can't understand. I mean he's not going out shooting children in a school. He's not even flashing minors in a park. He is just hopping around with a hobby horse, trying to do some hobby horse dressage. (The gallop, I'd say, needs work.*) It's not making noise, it's not inconveniencing people, it's not costing him oodles of money or polluting our environment. Why on earth do people need to hate on this? Why can't they just go "oh, nothing for me" or maybe even "I find that ridiculous, I wouldn't do it" and then leave it with that? Why criticise his hobby? I bet the people doing all the hating would not be amused if somebody hated on their hobbies, or their favourite pastimes.

I really don't get it. And, even worse, it makes me sad.

* I did a lot of "I'm a horse" when I was a child. Gallop always needs work.

Things not done today? Sitting in the sun for long enough (it went cloudy and windy too soon!). Feed the cat enough (at least according to her. She's very vocal about that.) Cuddle the cat enough. (Same. How I can dare to just get up from the desk from time to time, really. I surely don't need to get tea, or go get rid of tea, while Madame decides she wants to lounge on my arm.)

Also not done: Quarter tax work. I did not forget to send of the Textile Forum newsletter second half (it's too many mails to send in one go), or to send off the post. On the slightly down-ish side, I did not manage to not eat too much chocolate... so there's that.

Otherwise it was another day of taking care of bits and bobs and this and that - with lots of cuddly support from Madame. I won't complain! 

And just in case you want to see my favourite (German, but never mind) instagram post of the day: Check out this one here.