I feel so insane about ai. I've had face-to-face conversations with people who use it for therapy, who use it to calculate the safety of pill interactions, who use it for all their emails and grant applications and legal documents and academic papers and finance sheets and for every single question they have about the world, and if you tell them about the ecological costs they just laugh and say "I guess I've used a lot of water." and I've been in multiple gatherings of 10+ people where I'm THE ONLY PERSON who doesn't use chatgpt. it's turning me into a ranting raving pariah, because how don't you people see??? why don't you understand??????? this bullshit didn't exist five years ago, you absolutely do not need it, and it is destroying everything
my friend just had an art show and they were communicating with the gallerist over email. They could clearly tell that the gallerist was using AI to respond to their emails, but just rolled their eyes and moved on.
and then on the day of the show, my friend asks, "where is the camera I requested?"
gallerist: "you didn't request a camera"
my friend: "I did, and you confirmed that you would have one here."
gallerist: "that isn't true."
and then she proceeded to pull up the email thread, and my friend could see that every single email they had sent had been summarized by AI, and that the gallerist had then had AI write a response to them based on the AI summary, and that the AI had detected that they needed a camera, and confirmed on behalf of the gallerist that they would bring a camera, but because the gallerist had offloaded the work of actually reading and responding, she simply hadn't actually made any note of it herself, therefore didn't bring it, nor did she even know one was needed.
so my friend had done all of this communication about their needs and expectations to be able to make the show possible, and the person whose job it was to read that information and get it done had simply.... not read the information and not done it. because AI.
I feel like it would have been way cooler if symbiote Peter was the one who put the villains in spiderman 2 out of commission.
Not like killing them but seriously injuring them just enough that they won’t fight back. It would’ve been great to see everyone’s reactions to how Peter was NOT his cheerful silly self.
"it's not that deep" START DIGGING!!
DIG
DIG
DIG
DIG
OOPS TOO DEEP
CLIMB
CLIMB
CLIMB
CLIMB
CLIMB
CLIMB
Come to think of it, it really is insane that my entire country is burning alive and literally no one in the rest of the world cares. Thousands of Indians are dying every day from the heat, it's 45+ degrees in multiple areas, the government couldn't give two fucks, we're getting severe warnings and red alerts, and not a soul outside of South Asia is speaking about it because why would you ever care about brown people
please keep talking about how Becky from Maryland doesn't like the rising gas prices. It's clearly the more pressing issue.
They had not been seen together in the museum galleries for quite a while. Monet’s “Women with Umbrellas” are once again side by side in the Impressionist gallery.
AND THEN THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER THE END!!!!
ok every time this post comes by i resist geeking out on it but NO LONGER so these women are probably the same woman and that woman is monet’s wife camille doncieux. he painted her a LOT. but fun fact: monet had this asshole friend named ernest hochede, and ernest racked up some debts, and like an asshole he basically just fled the country, leaving his wife alice and their six kiddos behind. monet immediately got alice and kids to move in with him, camille, and their two kids. at this point, monet, alice, and camille became my favorite probably historic poly threesome. they lived together, taking care of the kids. they were so poor that alice and camille took turns wearing the nice dress so they could go out with monet. when camille got uterine cancer and began dying, alice helped monet cope and took care of things while he painted camille over and over. when camille died, alice is the reason monet was able to survive. when ernest finally died, monet and alice married, and remained married until alice died. at that point, blanche, the oldest daughter, took care of monet until he died. anyway, the point is, the umbrella ladies are probably the same ladies, but as far as i’m concerned, there WAS a historically queer poly family in that household and they were wonderful.
this is a fucking joy
Imagine that everywhere in the mechanical engineering world suddenly got infatuated with lasers.
Lasers have a lot of uses! Measuring things, heating things, cutting things, entertaining cats, particle physics. Lasers are pretty cool. Very versatile, very useful, potential to be very powerful.
Someone shows up one day and says "I have developed a never before seen technology! I call it a Death Star."
And it's a 3.4mW laser. Well no, we haven't seen this exact size of laser much since that's not really standard, but that's a bit of a misnomer, and I wouldn't call it new -
"HOLY SHIT GUYS! This Death Star is so entertaining! My cat loves it and it has such a nice color!" The Death Star becomes a viral novelty, and is mildly entertaining, as laser pointers often are.
Somehow, seemingly overnight, this leads to mania. "Lets stick lasers in EVERYTHING! The public loves them!"
More companies make 3.4mW lasers to jump on the bandwagon. Everyone that makes anything vaguely mechanical starts sticking lasers into their designs.
Everyone is calling them Death Stars. Any time there is a "Death Star innovation", it is just that they made a bigger laser.
Ford's next truck comes out and it has "Death Star integrated headlights", where they have just stuck giant lasers in place of their previously functional headlights.
An electric toothbrush is now "Powered by Death Stars" and shoots a laser at the tooth its cleaning. You think that maybe this could have actual applications as a sanitizing device if you're being generous, but when you actually look at the product, its laser has no purpose but to point at the tooth and drain the battery.
Mechanical products across the board get noticeably worse as everyone starts stuffing lasers in places where lasers have no right to be.
The lamp business gets in on it. "Here's a Death Star powered lamp!" These guys haven't even tried to stick a laser in their damn lamps. They've just started calling their light bulbs Death Stars and hoped you bought it before you could tell the difference. You at least appreciate that they haven't ruined their lamp about it.
Death Stars are lauded as the solution to all the world's problems. If it's not working, you should stick a laser in it! That'll fix it, everyone says. Once in a blue moon, it's even true! Weather prediction is really good now. But most things are garbage. Like "Death Star powered washing machines". What the fuck does that even mean?
Meanwhile, since all functioning mechanisms are being replaced with lasers, problems start showing up. All mirrors now cost $1000+ dollars, because the whole supply is being used up to make more lasers. The earth heats up, because everyone's blasting lasers at everything. People keep going blind, on account of all the lasers.
You, in fact, study optical mechanics. You know what a laser is, and how it works, and that it was invented many years before any of this nonsense actually started. People keep asking you about Death Stars, since surely you must know so much about them.
You explain that this is not really what lasers are for, except you have to call them Death Stars now, and that they're causing a lot of harm, so you don't like them much.
"Oh, but they're still such new tech!" they reply. "They'll figure out how to make Death Stars that don't burn your eyes out soon, and then it won't be an issue anymore!"
Somewhere, deep and buried, you remember lasers being used in particle accelerators, or in telescopes, or in laser cutters, or funny cat videos. They are, in fact, still interesting. Still cool.
But by this point they have replaced roads with "Death Star Powered Pathways", which are just laser pointers propped up on tooth picks pointing vaguely through the forests.
And you think you are going mad.
And they are still just FUCKING LASERS.
This post is about AI.
