[HN Gopher] Playful Drawings That Charles Darwin's Children Left...
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Playful Drawings That Charles Darwin's Children Left on His
Manuscripts
Author : cainxinth
Score : 104 points
Date : 2025-01-15 14:18 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't really care whose they are. I just love seeing any of
| these drawings.
|
| I have to imagine that drawing was a much greater source of
| entertainment at the time, and I'm kind of sad that that isn't
| the case any more.
| Terr_ wrote:
| You might also enjoy the preserved stick-figure art of a 13th-
| century kid:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| My kids draw constantly (including on things they shouldn't),
| but I also limit screen time so that may have something to do
| with it
| warner25 wrote:
| Yeah, starting around age four, all of my kids became
| prolific artists, going through _dozens_ of sheets of paper
| per day. With our oldest kid, we tried hanging them up on the
| wall, but it quickly ended up covering every inch of a long
| hallway. Now, to keep our house from overflowing, I just
| photograph[1] all the drawings every night and recycle them
| (see my other comment about personally using the back sides
| of some for my own notes).
|
| [1] After four kids, I've fallen behind on sorting through
| the photos, but we have albums for the artwork that each of
| them has made. It's pretty cool to see it all in one place,
| and how their work has become more sophisticated over time.
| WalterBright wrote:
| They're also surprisingly _good_ drawings. I drew nothing like
| them as a kid.
| lm28469 wrote:
| And given the current war against boredom it's not going to
| get better.
| comboy wrote:
| Is it not? My kids with all technology and toys they have
| access to still often choose drawing. And it's not like their
| main thing or something they strive to get better at. It's just
| fun.
|
| So definitely no reason to be sad, it is still a great source
| of entertainment (and not only for the kids)
| bag_boy wrote:
| Ah, how nice is this?
|
| We're no longer in the "they're being auctioned off as NFTs soon"
| phase of digitized historical documents.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| I'm not really exposed to children's drawings, but these look
| particularly talented.
|
| I always feel a little weird about generating AI art because it
| really is standing on the shoulders of giants. I'd say it's the
| closest thing to when Napster got everyone used to theft.
|
| Any little simple drawing you generate is really off the back of
| kids and teenagers that draw out of a passion. So I try not to do
| it, feels icky.
|
| Ideally we want a world where we license the artist's style, and
| hopefully they can get paid out like streaming music artists in
| the long term. Along with that, we need laws that let you sue
| people that copy the style with no license.
| ses1984 wrote:
| Napster got people used to piracy not theft.
|
| Tape recording was already huge before Napster and it's also
| considered piracy.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| Class Piracy extends Theft.
|
| It's just an abstraction. I don't want to go down this rabbit
| hole though.
| geon wrote:
| Nonsense. Theft by definition requires the original owner
| to lose something. Me not buying something is not theft.
| Retric wrote:
| Depriving them the opportunity to make a sale is still
| depriving them of something.
| saulpw wrote:
| What if they're not selling it anymore?
| Retric wrote:
| What if you take a fallen branch from someone's yard when
| they aren't going to use it for something? Dealing with
| edge cases where maybe theft isn't theft is why we have a
| court system.
|
| Words themselves are more generic in nature. It's through
| phrases, sentences, etc where that ever finer nuances can
| be described.
| saulpw wrote:
| This is not academic:
| https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/video-game-
| preservation...
|
| These are old games, they can't be purchased anywhere,
| they aren't taking anyone's precious profits, and they
| still can't be (legally) played.
|
| This is one case at least where "piracy" is definitively
| not theft.
| Retric wrote:
| > can't be purchased anywhere
|
| At a single moment sure, but many games have gone from a
| state where you can't purchase them to you can. I'd be
| cautious of any argument which suggests watching a movie
| the day before it hits movie theaters has zero economic
| impact.
|
| So you'd need to find a game that couldn't ever be
| purchased until the end of copyright coverage, which is
| more a theoretical argument than something you can
| demonstrate in the moment.
| saulpw wrote:
| "watching a movie the day before it hits movie theaters"
| is not the same thing at all. This is more like trying to
| show racist Looney Tunes cartoons from the 1940s in an
| educational setting. No one's making any money off "Coal
| Black and de Sebben Dwarfs" (1943) nor "Pitfall!" (1983)
| on the Atari 2600. They're not being sold, for reasonable
| economic reasons, and rigid copyright restrictions should
| not apply to them.
|
| Corporations already have enough influence over
| copyright, so I'm loathe to defend a defunct
| corporation's theoretical ability to resell an ancient
| game, over an actual person's real interest in preserving
| and disseminating video game history.
| ses1984 wrote:
| If we're going by the age of sail definition then yeah.
|
| Is recording a song freely broadcast over the air
| considered piracy or theft? Courts said no.
|
| Is recording video (even premium cable) on your dvr
| considered piracy or theft? Courts said no.
|
| Is giving a mixtape to your friend considered piracy or
| theft? Actually I'm not sure...
| vidarh wrote:
| We have laws defining copyright infringement exactly
| because property rights inherently do not cover piracy.
| yapyap wrote:
| > I'd say it's the closest thing to when Napster got everyone
| used to theft
|
| that's a bit dramatic, I'd argue the way AI has been used, I.E.
| scraping up people's work without consent and then using it to
| train models that will recreate said work to the best of their
| abilities so you won't even need the artist anymore (in the
| ideal vision of the people running AI companies) is a much more
| heinous thing.
|
| You're downloading and using the artist's work without their
| consent to train a tool to replace them. Whereas Napster is
| downloading their work and you might buy their work in the
| future cause you love it so much.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| For the training part. Generating art off someone's art is
| nuanced. Let's say you generate art off Darwin's kid's art.
|
| - First off most people won't ever know, so you don't even
| have to hide the theft.
|
| - If you copied a well known style, then you would have to
| hide that you did so by layering another style on top
|
| - You don't have to worry about the first two points if you
| are not stealing and just commission an artist.
|
| - Or you are oblivious and uncaring about all of this, and
| all is sound in your mind because you bought the fake gem
| currency fair and square to generate your image.
|
| So, we are talking about _taking_. Some people have issue
| with the word stealing.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| >I'd say it's the closest thing to when Napster got everyone
| used to theft.
|
| I think the defining feature of theft is that you deprive the
| victim of their property. Redefining theft to include copying
| just feels silly, it's fundamentally a different sin (if it's a
| sin at all).
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| Well it hasn't been long since Disney got everyone used to
| suing each other for making similar drawings either. Which is
| odd because Mickey wasn't the first mouse drawn with round
| ears at the time of his first cartoon. A whole Simpsons
| episode satirised the affair.
| xp84 wrote:
| You can easily still get the GP's meaning if you substitute
| the phrase "sneakily cheating the artist out of any
| compensation" for "theft" though, right?
| yreg wrote:
| The "kids and teenagers that draw out of a passion" in GP's
| comment are not being cheated out of any compensation.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Copyright is a very recent invention, since 1790. Ownership of
| property goes back long before recorded history.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Ideally we want a world where we license the artist's style,
| and hopefully they can get paid out like streaming music
| artists in the long term. Along with that, we need laws that
| let you sue people that copy the style with no license.
|
| Years ago, I just kind of assumed that should be true. I'm not
| so sure anymore. I don't see any evidence that creativity comes
| from copyright and patent protection. Germany flowered in the
| 19th century without them.
|
| For the last 20 years, I've been releasing my work under the
| Boost license which is the most permissible license out there
| (public domain is my preference, but it is not recognized in
| some countries).
| avian wrote:
| All I get is "Error 405 [country] users must use proxy."
|
| I wonder what that's about. GDPR?
| welferkj wrote:
| "We are currently unable to steal your data, please check back
| later."
| latexr wrote:
| > GDPR?
|
| Unlikely. I'm in the EU and can access the website just fine.
| warner25 wrote:
| My kids just freely grab sheets of printer paper when they want
| to draw stuff. To save paper, I later use the other sides of
| their drawings for any handwritten notes or conceptual sketches
| that I make. I guess people will be really amused if I ever
| become a historical figure and they see these.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| And of course if your children become historical figures, the
| future people might be amused by your "conceptual sketches" :)
| warner25 wrote:
| Very good!
| jesprenj wrote:
| > Error 405 Slovenian users must use proxy. > Slovenian users
| must use proxy.
|
| > Guru Meditation: > XID: 66443665
|
| > Varnish cache server
|
| interesting ...
| wslh wrote:
| It is like moving to the past in a time machine where you see the
| importance of horses as transport. Also connected to the Onfim's
| drawings [1]. Horses as a technology most probably will surpass
| cars in the way we know them now.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >The Darwin kids "were used as volunteers," says Kohn, "to
| collect butterflies, insects, and moths, and to make observations
| on plants in the fields around town."
|
| Back then, I suppose there were no child labor laws. /s
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >"Children are one's greatest happiness," he once wrote, "but
| often & often a still greater misery. A man of science ought to
| have none."
|
| Brats..
| ripvanwinkle wrote:
| Very cool to have his kids closely involved in his work
| grumblepeet wrote:
| Some of those drawings are copies of Edward Lear illustrations. I
| recognised the style. I didnt see that mentioned in the article
| although I might have missed it. I like the little drawings
| though very cute.
| autoexec wrote:
| > The project's director, David Kohn, "doesn't know for certain
| which kids were the artists," notes Staynor, "but he guesses that
| at least three were involved: Francis, who became a botanist;
| George, who became an astronomer and mathematician; and Horace,
| who became an engineer."
|
| Are we sure these were all from the children and none were the
| work of their father? Why shouldn't Darwin throw in a silly
| doodle himself?
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(page generated 2025-01-18 23:01 UTC)