cartotastic

@cartotastic.com

1156 Followers 1550 Following

I love maps and comics and RPGing and once upon a time I sang rock songs in seedy pubs Mastodon: @cartotastic@aus.social GenAI is for jerks.

A thankyou note from the ASRC for a donation, reading "Thank you! For keeping our safety net strong."
A dynamic, montage-style comic book illustration of the Legion of Super-Heroes set against a starry cosmic background with planets and a futuristic city skyline. On the right side, Lightning Lad (with reddish hair and a blue/yellow jacket) charges his fist with electricity. Beside him, Saturn Girl (blonde hair, red jacket, white top with a black Saturn logo) exhibits pink telepathic rings radiating from her head. Just below her is Triplicate Girl, a tan-skinned girl with dark hair wearing an orange, white, and purple geometric log on her outfit. In the foreground, Cosmic Boy (dark hair, pink shirt, black vest) manipulates glowing blue magnetic rings, while Brainiac V (green skin, purple high-collared jacket, red dots on his forehead) looks toward the right edge. On the left is a pale, pointy-eared young man with blonde hair and a red jacket, possibly Element Lad. Looming behind him is a large, faceless blue figure with giant white feathered wings holding a brilliantly glowing energy spear. Other partially visible heroes, including a masked girl with yellow goggles, frame the right and left edges. In the bottom left corner, a smaller inset scene depicts a hero in a white cape sliding dynamically on a futuristic cycle past a row of uniform, gray-armoured guards wielding glowing spears.
Poppy, a caramel spoodle, begrudgingly sits next to the massive game box for Pathfinder Quest
A caramel spoodle smiles at the camera
Error text from libro.fm, reading "We’re sorry, an error occurred on checkout." in white text on a pink background.
Pathfinder 2 products - Monster Core 2.and the Draconic Codex - propped up against magenta a yellow cushions on a grey couch.
A quadrytch I painted a few years ago using acrylics on canvas. It was vaguely elemental themed, with the elements in clockwork from top-left: Fire (a campfire on a dark night), Water (a frozen waterfall in a cherry blossom wood), Air (lightning emanating from storm clouds), and Earth (a Monarch butterfly on a thistle).
Comment from the official Paizo account on reddit.com "Hey everyone! Thank you for giving each other a heads-up on this! We are experiencing issues with our subscription payment processor and are currently investigating. We hope to resolve this soon and have subscriptions processed and PDFs released as quickly as possible."
AWS AI agents burning their own house down.
Poppy, a caramel spoodle, sits on a grey dog bed in front of a tiny laptop. She is looking guilty.
The sign-in dialog for ArcGIS for Adobe, with a comment stating "LIES!" pointing at the "Keep me signed in" check box.
A screenshot from a gif created by Merriam-Webster dictionary, stating that my word of 2026 is "Blissful".
Young black actor from Pootie Tang that appeared as an uncredited man on the street.
Poppy, a caramel spoodle, waits for her birthday present!
A dusk photo of the fields near my parents' house in northern Victoria. The sky ranges from peach to blue, and the trees are black against the sky.
Poppy, a caramel spoodle, sits on a cushion under a table with a hopeful expression.
A picture of a caramel spoodle called Poppy, wearing a white and pink bow tie; she is sitting on the grass in front of a flowerbed. The picture has been digitised to appear as if it was made with LEGO 1x1 square plates.
Poppy, a caramel spoodle, is resting her head on a couch cushion.
Poppy, a caramel spoodle, sits to proudly display a white and pink bow tie. No wait she's actually waiting for a treat and doesn't care about her fashion accessories.
A capybara chewing happily on a leafy stalk
A splash screen reading Back to the Future the Musical, with blue electrical styling.
Poppy, a caramel spoodle, has found a sunny spot on top of the couch and is contemplating a mid-afternoon nap.
A clip from an email, it reads: "Thanks so much for backing Starfinder: Afterlight 💫. It means the world to us."
Two button meme: The buttons.read: "control copyright" and "unpaid AI workers", and a sweating man labelled "media conglomerates" can't choose between the two.
Bluesky notification: @streetscrypt.bsky.social has added you to the "Americanophobia" moderation list
An ornamental cherry tree in full blossom, with a couple of herb planter boxes in the foreground, and a brick house in the background.
Poppy, a caramel spoodle wearing an orange sweater, sits uncertainly on a fluffy grey dog bed next to a huge box containing Hellboy the Board Game.
A close-up of my profile showing my profile pic, name/handle, and the text "1K followers, 1.3K following"
A gold coin etched with the image of a shooting star falling over a mountain lake. Under the water of the lake, tentacles are reaching upwards. The coin rests upon purple reptilian leather.
A screenshot from The Simpsons, showing a door with a poorly-written sign that reads "Lanley Institute of Monorail Conducting".
A picture by Giorgio Marangolo of Superman, Supergirl and Krypto. Superman stands with arms crossed and a confident smile, while Supergirl has her arms raised to show her biceps and a cheeky squint on her face. Krypto approaches in the air between the two of them. A cityscape can be seen in the background, and lens flare is being created by the sun in the top-right corner. The picture has a 50s photorealistic feel, as if taken by an old camera.
Globey is a happy rainbow ball that wants the best for everyone. Be like Globey.
My full shelf of Paizo Pathfinder 2 products.
My results from the Jock-Nerd/Prep-Goth Test at: https://www.idrlabs.com/jock-nerd-prep-goth/test.php I am 28.2% Goth, 50.9% Nerd, placing me in the True Nerd category.
Poppy, a caramel spoodle, has been dressed for success by her 'sister', wearing a lovely red beret, red beaded necklace and bracelet, a red bowtie, and a red wrap. She is unsure what to make of the situation.
Poppy, a caramel spoodle, rests her head next to a plush green dice bag in the shape of a Pathfinder Goblin's head.
"As I've written about previously, OpenAI's other problem is that generative AI (and by extension the model GPT and the product ChatGPT) doesn't solve the complex problems that would justify its massive costs. It has massive, intractable problems as a result of these models being probabilistic, meaning that they don't know anything, they're just generating an answer (or an image, or a translation, or a summary) based on training data, something that model developers are running out of at an incredible pace. " https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/
"At no point did Meta seek permission to use the authors' works to train its AI systems, or offer compensation." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-28/authors-angry-meta-trained-ai-using-pirated-books-in-libgen/105101436
"“What is different about generative AI is the power density it requires. Fundamentally, it is just computing, but a generative AI training cluster might consume seven or eight times more energy than a typical computing workload,” says Noman Bashir, lead author of the impact paper, who is a Computing and Climate Impact Fellow at MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) and a postdoc in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)." https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117
Brain imaging studies show that people with fundamentalist beliefs seem to have reduced activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – the brain region responsible for cognitive flexibility and analytical thinking. When this area is damaged or less active, people become more prone to accepting claims without sufficient evidence and show increased resistance to changing their beliefs when presented with contradictory information. Studies of brain-injured patients show damage to prefrontal networks that normally help us question information may lead to increased fundamentalist beliefs and reduced scepticism.
The poster for the 2025 Superman film; Superman is looking up and flying upwards, and the background is blurred red and blue like his suit. The poster reads "A James Gunn Film" at the top, "Look Up" in the middle lower, and "Superman" at the bottom.
The cover of Fantastic Four 171 from June 1976. Sue Storm is being held by a yellow ape demon called Gorr, while Ben Grim grows to punch it. Mister Fantastic stretches through its legs to reach Sue, while Johnny Storm flies under to blast it with fire.
A map of Cape Town from the Lonely Planet LGBTQ+ Travel Guide: the water is blue, the land is light orange, and the parkland areas are dark orange. It shows LGBTQ+ friendly locations, each marked with a + symbol.
Text from Gemini (Google's AI chatbot), stating "You are absolutely correct to question that statement. My apologies. That was an error on my part, and I hallucinated that information."
Dex-Starr, a grey cat with a Red Lantern ring on his tail, floats in a red and magenta nebula, sleeping in a ball. He wears a red and black jumpsuit with the black & white horned symbol of the Red Lanterns on his chest.
A screenshot from reddit.com, with two submissions: "Canada election sees record high early voting, figures show", submitted by panzerfan to the r/worldnews subreddit, and "First day of early voting smashes 2022 record" submitted by Expensive-Horse5538 to the r/AustralianPolitics subreddit
Globey, the Barathu Mystic, sets off on his first adventure! Globey is a friendly blob of rainbow gas that just wants his friends to be happy and healthy. (Globey is a small ovoid clay figure that's painted with stripes of rainbow acrylic paint, and is posed in the succulents in my garden.)
A purple line art symbol of the flag of a country descending into fascism.
Miss Poppy is catching up on her correspondence on the teddyputer. (A caramel spoodle sitting in a grey dog bed has her paws near a mini laptop.)
Poppy, a caramel spoodle, is asleep on her back. Her forepaws are upright but drooping down.
A two-panel comic from Perry Bible Fellowship. Each panel has a painted blue background. In the first, one snowflake says to another "Each of us is perfectly unique." In the second, a third snowflake in the shape of a swastika can be seen. The first snowflake says to the second: "Except that guy. Fuck that guy."
A bottle of Ned Australian Whiskey
The internals of a damaged external hard drive sitting in a bowl of saltwater.
A sign from the Daintree Discovery Centre for the Demon Duck of Doom. It has a silhouette of a large prehistoric bird. Text reads: Demon Duck of Doom (17 million years ago) (Bullockornis) A large flightless and carnivorous bird that roamed the Australian continent.
Poppy, a caramel spoodle, is snuggled against a magenta pillow while partially covered with a knitted white blanket. She is happily dozing.
A collection of 28 poorly drawn #scrapemebro pencil pictures, see my skyline for more details on each picture!
A poorly drawn hammer slamming a box labelled AI, my terrible comment on GenAI's shameless theft from artists.
A truly terrible pencil drawing of a dolphin jumping out of the water, drawn using my off-hand.
A poorly-drawn rabbit, or maybe a bunny, laying some poorly-drawn decorated Easter eggs.
A picture of Reggie Theus wondering what he did that was so wrong