After Eight Years, I Finally Updated My Huge Historical Fashion Reference & Resources Doc! Now In The

This is actually really cool! This seems like actually one of the cool things that AI can help with. In comparison, last thing I heard about coding enzymes, they were reliant on gamers and puzzle thinkers to play a video game where they were the ones to try and figure out the best amino code that'll make a working protein (god bless those gamers and thinkers)

AI technology generates original proteins from scratch

Scientists have created an AI system capable of generating artificial enzymes from scratch.

In laboratory tests, some of these enzymes worked as well as those found in nature, even when their artificially generated amino acid sequences diverged significantly from any known natural protein.

The experiment demonstrates that natural language processing, although it was developed to read and write language text, can learn at least some of the underlying principles of biology. Salesforce Research developed the AI program, called ProGen, which uses next-token prediction to assemble amino acid sequences into artificial proteins.

Scientists said the new technology could become more powerful than directed evolution, the Nobel-prize winning protein design technology, and it will energize the 50-year-old field of protein engineering by speeding the development of new proteins that can be used for almost anything from therapeutics to degrading plastic.

“The artificial designs perform much better than designs that were inspired by the evolutionary process,” said James Fraser, Ph.D., professor of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences at the UCSF School of Pharmacy, and an author of the work, which was published Jan. 26, in Nature Biotechnology. A previous version of the paper has been available on the preprint server BiorXiv since July of 2021, where it garnered several dozen citations before being published in a peer-reviewed journal.

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“It is a well-documented fact that by the age of 5 monolingual White children will have heard 30 million fewer words in languages other than English than bilingual children of color. In addition, they will have had a complete lack of exposure to the richness of non-standardized varieties of English that characterize the homes of many children of color. This language gap increases the longer these children are in school. The question is what causes this language gap and what can be done to address it? The major cause of this language gap is the failure of monolingual White communities to successfully assimilate into the multilingual and multidialectal mainstream. The continued existence of White ethnic enclaves persists despite concerted efforts to integrate White communities into the multiracial mainstream since the 1960s. In these linguistically isolated enclaves it is possible to go for days without interacting with anybody who does not speak Standardized American English providing little incentive for their inhabitants to adapt to the multilingual and multidialectal nature of US society. This linguistic isolation has a detrimental effect on the cognitive development of monolingual White children. This is because linguistically isolated households lack the rich translanguaging practices that are found in bilingual households and the elaborate style-shifting that occurs in bidialectal households. This leaves monolingual White children without a strong metalinguistic basis for language learning. As a result, many of these monolingual White children lack the school-readiness skills needed for foreign language learning and graduate from school having mastered nothing but Standardized American English leaving them ill-equipped to engage in intercultural communication.”

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What if we talked about monolingual White children the way we talk about low-income children of color?

Excerpt from a satirical blog post from The Educational Linguist that makes a good point about which language skills we value as a society and the problems with talking about a “language gap”. 

(via lingrix)

cutest thing about human biology is how they get sleepy after eating. sorry brain is offline due to digestion, check back later

I’ve been having a lot of feelings about the downfall of quality lately.

I ordered a pair of Dickies pants because pants are hard and workwear is usually reliable. When they arrived they were the scratchiest, most papery material–I can’t actually call it fabric in good faith–and fit a full three sizes too small. A week later I found the same pair in a thrift store, dated 2017. These are actual pants. They fit, they’re not made of asbestos. They’re only separated by time.

There’s no wood used in interior design unless it’s a custom build. I have a set of wealthy relatives who live in a condo. The downpayment for it was likely more money than I will see in my lifetime. The floors and the cabinets are all still laminate. I know I will never see real wood in a building constructed after 2000. Every “apartment hack” I see online has this very conspicuous, flat appearance because of all the paint and contact paper required to make these builds look personal in any way. The only natural materials are in the furnishings.

I’ve been harping on this for years, but everything is shit, nothing is designed to work, and “growth” and “profit” are just euphemisms for cutting corners until things are unworkable.

soggy wet cats <3

He likes to lurk in the halls

Hello! I've rewritten this ask like five times so I'll just come out and say, you're one of my favorite artists, thank you for all the good stuff you put out, it's inspiring <3 I wanted to ask, what's your method of studying anatomy and expressions?

Thank you! <3 Ngl the last time I studied anatomy with effort, I was a kid in high-school. The only book I had on the subject was the Anatomy for the Artist from Jeno Barcsay. It was huge and detailed, literally muscle and bone deep, but I think my brain is wired more for the feel of things than the understanding 😅

I try to find nude or mostly nude pics for anatomy stuff. Adult photo sites rule as a source, people contort their bodies in all sorts of weird ways and I can usually find someone with the build I'm looking for.

When I sketch based on a ref, I try to pay attention to the silhouette, negative spaces and alignments. They help me correct mistakes.

And obviously I love to exaggarate things. (Evident on the waistline and pulled up leg here.)

Same with expressions, I guess. I try to push them but stay within the realm of believable. It's so easy to make a face look uncanny or creepy or w/e with a smile too wide. I have had a couple commissioners ask me before to tone down the initial expressions on their characters, and I think that was a nice reminder to pull me back to reality lol It can get especially weird with long narrow faces like Buttons'. I find it a bit tricky to make him have a large open smile while fitting it all on his head.

Things often get heated when these two play some Capoeira Benguela.

Howdy newbies and welcome to Tumblr, it takes a bit of setup to get this site running well so here’s what works for me. One of the neat things about this site is that its a different experience for everyone, so tailor these settings towards what you want from this site. 

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