lt. Columba... He keeps on returning...
One of the funniest quotes early on in the AI bubble was an executive saying he was replacing workers with AI because "AI will never demand higher wages or else they'll go on strike" and it was so fucking clear that he hadn't thought through how anything worked, because of course the AI companies can raise their rates and if you don't pay then they don't let you use their software.
Isn't this straight out of Walmart's playbook? Lure customers (businesses with human employees) over with low prices and put all competitors (human employees) out of business (employment), then they're free to charge whatever they want for their shitty products (lying electricity-hogging chatbots that cannot actually do a human's job).
I've known for decades that capitalism is bad for workers and consumers, but only in the past few years have I come to increasingly realize that it's bad for businesses, too.
What's the word for the fallacy or cognitive blindspot of just kind of forgetting that a cameraman exists? Like, you see a video online and you take it as an unmediated representation of reality and forget that there's someone there recording it? E.g., seeing a video of an ill-tempered child pitching a tantrum over a Christmas present and you leap to thinking that they're just very naughty without remembering that their parent is literally there publicly humiliating them for clicks.
I think that a lot of of our media is just kind of structured around this elision of "the cameraman", broadly defined. Like how many hundreds of hours of footage do they take for reality TV and what makes it into the final cut and why? The editor's not neutral; they're making decisions. What stories make it onto the news? What posts does the algorithm deign to show you? Our lives have never been as mediated as they are now, and yet this mediation is largely invisible.
When you’re at the bus stop on time: bus schedules are more like guidelines than hard rules, really. You will sit in the 90 degree heat for an extra 15 minutes past the scheduled arrival time wondering if the bus has decided to just skip today and you will like it.
When you are running even a single minute late: the noble city bus has a schedule to keep and it will dally not a single second longer. Be better
more than anything i want a world where a trans girl realizing she is a trans girl faces zero fear from that realization and subsequent coming out. Where she can say "Oh sweet, I can just be a girl? Sign me up!", no worrying if shes girl enough, no worrying if society will accept her, no worrying if she'll be an attractive girl as she transitions, no worrying at all in any way shape or form.