All posts tagged: Generation

Midjourney 8 vs 8.1: Key Differences in Image Generation

Midjourney 8 vs 8.1: Key Differences in Image Generation

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Midjourney’s 8.1 update introduces notable improvements aimed at addressing user concerns around performance, cost and creative flexibility. According to Thaeyne, one standout feature is the new HD mode, which delivers three times faster processing while reducing costs, making high-quality image generation more efficient. The update also includes a simplified “Run as HD” function, designed to streamline workflows, alongside enhancements to both photographic and non-photographic output quality. Explore how the 8.1 update reintroduces popular features like image prompts and weights, now with expanded customization options. Gain insight into ongoing challenges, such as text generation inconsistencies and limited style diversity and examine Midjourney’s plans for future advancements, including inpainting models and advanced upscaling capabilities. This overview provides a detailed look at the update’s practical implications and what users can expect moving forward. Midjourney 8.1 Performance Enhancements TL;DR Key Takeaways : 8.1 introduces significant improvements in speed and cost-efficiency, including a new HD mode that is three times faster and more affordable, alongside a 50% speed boost for standard resolution. Enhanced aesthetic capabilities allow for better results with …

Why every generation secretnyl thinks the one before them had more style

Why every generation secretnyl thinks the one before them had more style

Published by Daniella Wilson

Fashion moves in circles. Anyone who’s been wearing clothes for more than a decade or so of their adult life will know this: overnight, that long forgotten pile of hand-me-downs from your mother, or even grandmother, transforms into the season’s most coveted capsule wardrobe. It’s a cycle fuelled by nostalgia, pop culture, and recurring consumer habits. Now, a team of mathematicians from Northwestern University has claimed that the cycle lasts 20 years, with trends having repeated themselves within that timeframe since 1869. The study was based on an analysis of around 37,000 images of women’s clothing dating from the 19th century to the modern day, noting how trends aligned every two decades. For example, in 1985 and 2005, the key trends were denim jackets, high–waisted jeans, and leg warmers. We’re seeing the same thing happening in 2026, with some of this season’s key pieces dating back to 2006. This will come as no surprise to anyone with an Instagram account, where photographs of early Noughties It-girls are rife, with the algorithm safely upholding their status …

The Next Generation Luddite

The Next Generation Luddite

Published by Jenni Sidey

There’s a rebellion forming in classrooms and dining rooms. Parents are opting their children out of school-issued laptops and are asking teachers to return to pen and paper. In a recent report, families described a growing discomfort with this digital imperative in education. Importantly, this is less about the logistical aspects of technology and more about something universal: Control. These instincts seem reasonable. Screens distract, and artificial intelligence hovers over homework like an invisible, or worse, a co-conspirator in cheating. If the tool seems to distort the learning process, remove the AI. It would be easy to dismiss this reaction as technophobia, but that would be lazy. While the anxiety underneath it is real, the object of resistance may not be at the heart of this disruption. The Echo of the First Luddites The original Luddites weren’t irrational men smashing machinery as a reaction to innovation. They were skilled workers responding to a system that threatened both craft and identity. Automation altered the economic logic of their world, and with it, their sense of agency. …

Fifteen years after Egypt’s uprising, how faith and politics reshaped a generation

Fifteen years after Egypt’s uprising, how faith and politics reshaped a generation

Published by Sam Flores

(The Conversation) — Fifteen years ago, Egyptians from all walks of life took to the street to demand “bread, freedom, social justice.” They were protesting the oppressive 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak. Egypt had been under martial law for 31 years. This meant that political opposition was silenced, and opponents were often imprisoned and tortured. Police brutality was the norm. Egypt’s economy was also weak and relied heavily on foreign aid and loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Even though the country’s per capita gross domestic product was growing, almost 25% of the population was living in poverty by 2011. Neighboring Tunisia had toppled its dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, on Jan. 14, 2011, after 28 days of protest. The Tunisian revolution’s success led to a wave of uprisings against corruption, injustice and economic inequality across the region, including the January 2011 revolution in Egypt. For many who joined the movement in Egypt, there was a newfound sense of unity, equality and nationalism. Egyptians young and old, Muslim and Christian, rich …

How Stylist James Yardley Fashioned Heated Rivalry’s Connor Storrie Into a Next Generation Leading Man

How Stylist James Yardley Fashioned Heated Rivalry’s Connor Storrie Into a Next Generation Leading Man

Published by Sam Flores

I’m sure many brands are dying to dress him. It’s funny. I am someone who likes to clear an inbox, and I’ve had to learn that I can’t get through all my emails now. But it’s champagne problems, having these amazing brands in my inbox. And also, I don’t think they get shouted out enough, but the PRs for these brands have been incredible to work with. Not only are they good at their jobs in terms of getting things out on time, accommodating tailoring and fittings, but there’s a genuine enthusiasm from these brands to dress him because they love how he wears their clothes. As he gets more attention from brands, perhaps some that have an established look, how do you make sure that what he wears still feels authentic to him? It’s keeping the same sense of what Connor and I both want to collaborate on. We now have these large fittings with huge amounts of clothing where I’ve tried to accommodate as many brands as possible. We’ll systematically go through the …

NADA Is Building New Generation of Collectors Through Series of Salons

NADA Is Building New Generation of Collectors Through Series of Salons

Published by José Betancourt

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday. There are obvious hurdles to becoming an art collector, chief among them money and space. But then there are the less obvious ones, and chief among these is the intimidation factor: Contemporary art, and the galleries that show it, can seem scary or snooty or both, and a lot of people just don’t feel comfortable in art spaces. The New Art Dealers Alliance has recently started to tackle this problem head-on by hosting a series of collectors’ salons, NADA Collects. Source link

How did Gen Z become the most religious generation alive? | UK News

How did Gen Z become the most religious generation alive? | UK News

Published by Sam Flores

“I remember when I was in school I would tell people I believed in God and they would be like ‘you’re a loser’. Now I couldn’t be prouder, it’s becoming more normal.” Love Island and TOWIE star Matilda Draper isn’t your average Christian evangelist – but the 25-year-old is one of a growing number of young influencers spreading the word of God online. “There’s so much bad in the world, there’s so much negativity that you see online,” she says. “The stuff we fill our brain with – it doesn’t have any substance and I do think that people are yearning for purpose and fulfilment”. A recent YouGov study found that Gen Z believe in a higher power more than any other generation, with data showing there has been a rise in the religiosity and church attendance among young people. Their levels of faith now even surpass the 65+ age group. Dr Edward David, a lecturer at King’s College London, researched the religious behaviours of young people and attributes the increase – in part – …

The Myth of the Narcissistic Generation

The Myth of the Narcissistic Generation

Published by Jenni Sidey

Co-written by Jim A. McCleskey at Western Governors University and Houston Community College. Scroll through Instagram or TikTok for five minutes, and you will likely reach the same conclusion most pundits have: Young people are more narcissistic than ever. We are told that social media has ruined them, turning a generation of digital natives into selfie-obsessed egotists. It is a seductive narrative. It confirms our biases about “kids these days.” It also happens to be wrong. Psychologists have debated the “narcissism epidemic” for nearly two decades. But newer, more robust evidence paints a very different picture. The panic isn’t just exaggerated. The data contradict it. Anatomy of a Panic The alarm bells started ringing in earnest after a widely cited study by Twenge et al. (2008) reported increases in grandiose narcissism among U.S. college students. Media outlets ran with it. Time magazine famously labeled millennials the “Me Me Me Generation,” branding them as entitled and self-obsessed. Once that story took hold, social media became the convenient villain. Platforms built on selfies, personal branding, and algorithmic …

How to Ruin a Generation: Give Everyone Smartphones

How to Ruin a Generation: Give Everyone Smartphones

Published by Jenni Sidey

We tend to associate heavy smartphone and internet use with negative mental health outcomes, as we should, but what about the spiritual side effects of the technology? What is social media, pornography, and the litanies of short-form content doing to the souls of kids? To everyone? Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist at New York University, offered us a frightening proposition to the question in a new essay at The Free Press, later published at his Substack, After Babel. Haidt references a trend to ask ChatGPT that, if the bot were the devil, how it would “ruin the next generation.” Essentially, ChatGPT replied that it would distract the youths into oblivion: Chat’s responses were profound and unsettling: “I wouldn’t come with violence. I’d come with convenience.” “I’d keep them busy. Always distracted.” “I’d watch their minds rot slowly, sweetly, silently. And the best part is, they’d never know it was me. They’d call it freedom.” Of course, the reply is eerily accurate. For those familiar with the novel Brave New World, this distracted, dopamine-addled brand of …

The Soundtrack of a Generation | Andrew O’Hagan

The Soundtrack of a Generation | Andrew O’Hagan

Published by José Betancourt

The biggest rock bands not only make the best noise but talk the most nonsense, a fact that should be protected, if facts can be protected nowadays, by anyone interested in keeping rock and roll alive. Oasis was born loquacious, and its leading members, Liam and Noel Gallagher, from Burnage in Manchester, are truly first-rate in the volumizing of teenage delinquency, outstripping all the great bands that gave them their sound. Watching interviews with the Beatles, you see a quartet of fairly personable boys who wouldn’t scare the horses. Compared with Oasis and its various personnel, they seem like members of the Cambridge Apostles. Still, for admirers of pristine guitars and the very best in shit talking, the Gallaghers might have the edge in metaphysical panache, coming across like a couple of cut-price Descartes with egos the size of England. “Fuck trees, man,” offered Noel one time. “Dogs piss on them.” “Fuck the sea,” reasoned Liam. Noel: “Skateboarders can, quite frankly, go fuck themselves.” Liam: “That’s the problem with this fucking country…too many fucking programmes …