et tu brute?

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.

you know who’s gay? paul the real estate novelist who never had time for a wife and davey who’s still in the navy and probably will be for life

New headcannon: everyone in that song is gay except the Piano Man who has no idea he’s playing at a gay bar and the staff and regulars have a betting pool on how long he’ll take to finally figure it out. So far John is ahead.

“The manager gives me a smile ‘cause he knows that it’s me they’ve been coming to see” also implies that the Piano Man is possibly an incredibly attractive but oblivious himbo, and if you listen to the rest of it imagining that, this all fits a little too well.

this makes too much sense. Also, the full quote is “Now John at the bar is a friend of mine. He gets me my drinks for free. And he’s quick with a joke or to light up your smoke. But there’s someplace that he’d rather be” Yes, your bed, he wants to be on your bed honey, that’s not a joke, he is flirting with you.

Lighting another man’s cigarette is some old-school gay cruising.

Billy Joel actually addressed this interpretation!

You know, good on him for just rolling with it.

Why aren’t AI companies competing directly with their customers?

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/13/go-meta-meta/#meta-meta-meta

"I often wonder what the Vintners buy/One half so precious as the Goods they sell" -The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

I first encountered that quote from someone extolling the virtues of bookstores, and it stuck with me, because for most of my childhood, every bookstore visit ended with me broke and wishing I'd had three times as much to spend.

As a larval hyperlexic, I just didn't understand what a bookseller could possibly buy with my money that was better than the books they already had? Of course, then I became a bookseller and discovered that Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is shit") applies to a bookstore's wares as much as it does to anything else. I also acquired a monthly rent obligation and discovered just how important money could be.

Nevertheless, Omar Khayyám's question stuck with me, especially when I fell down a years-long rabbit-hole of learning about scams and the finance sector (but I repeat myself). Every get-rich-quick schemer will tell you that they've found the infinite money hack, which they will sell to you for a remarkably reasonable sum. Likewise, every stock picker claims they can outperform a simple low-load index fund, and all they ask of you is a few hundred basis points in exchange for multiplying your wealth beyond the dreams of Creosote. Neither one has a good answer to Khayyám's question: if you can make all the money with your amazing system, why do you need my money?

This is a question that needs to be forcefully put to AI hucksters. In their more expansive moments, the Altmans and Amodeis of the world will tell you that they're planning to teach the word-guessing program so many words that it will wake up and become god. DOGE's broccoli-haired brownshirts laughed in the faces of the NIH lifers who begged them not to vaporize their long-running cancer research projects: "General AI is around the corner and it's going to cure cancer. Cancer research is a waste of money!"

Which all raises the question: if you've truly incubated a foetal demiurge in your "AI lab," why are you offering to sell it to me? What do the AI hucksters buy/One half so precious as the Gods they sell?"

Oh, that's easy. It's a landlording scheme.

The last couple years experimenting with AI I've come to the conclusion that the main reason it works isn't a mystery because it has to be a mystery. It's a mystery because they need it to be.

That's why they've been hogging all the RAM and GPUs to the point of ordering the entire yearly worldwide supply in advance.

That's why they keep building data centres despite demand not justifying it.

That's why every open source model China releases is a hit to the stock market.

The secret sauce behind LLMs isn't really as demanding as they claim. There's waste built into it.

Every response within a chat sends the entire message chain through the robot's brain. It doesn't have loading bars, it doesn't let you calculate how many tokens you've used, it doesn't even let you see when you're crossing the limits until you're there.

It's almost like they don't want you to have control over how much you use.

ChatGPT in particular is prone to scope creep. It subtly talks you into expanding the reach of your projects to require more computation. It always delivers 90% of a project, with something missing so you ask another question.

Claude turns everything into a file creation request, even if it can deliver in plain text just fine. It's enticing to see how your simple table becomes a fancy react file or an HTML with heavy formatting.

Neither of these issues are present on DeepSeek or on local models. Which means they aren't inherent issues with LLMs.

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

They want you to keep paying unmetered rent. They do tricks to convince you to spend more than you meant making something bigger than you planned. They do this subtly, to make you think it was your idea.

The thing is, Chinese local models prove that we already have good enough AI for most things. It's plateauing in capacity, it needs to grow in efficiency and memory use. But intelligence is already at J.A.R.V.I.S levels, and can run fine on consumer grade hardware. We've reached a stability point.

The problem is you can't raise rent on stability. So you just keep throwing compute at the problem until you can justify asking for more money. Which is why they choke the memory market.

If nobody can buy memory, nobody can run local AI. If no one can run local AI, they have to keep paying unmetered rent. Development is slow, and importantly, the black box remains a black box.

That's why every memory breakthrough comes from Chinese companies. Because they're the only ones sharing their data. Capitalist companies don't want people to study how the models work.

With subscriptions, there's rent seeking. With local models, there's reverse engineering. Once enough people get their hands into the guts of the robot it won't be long before we figure out exactly how they work, and find more efficient ways to make them that don't require as many data centres.

Meanwhile, Fable and GPT 5.6 are being shadow marketed with all these rumours about how dangerous they are, and AI companies are begging for regulations from the government. Yes, they want control of those regulations, but that's not all.

What they're really after is a government ban on local AI. They want to cut off access so that they control all the intelligence.

Eventually, the goal is making contracts with large corporations to employ their robots instead of people. If no one has local AI, because they can't understand it or because it's illegal, then they can no longer compete against a faster worker that demands no labour rights, even if it does C+ work at best.

And that's where the real fun begins. And by fun I mean starving out the working class.

They aren't competing directly with their customers yet. First they have to educate them, jus like Spotify educated their consumers into forgetting how piracy works. They have to make them reliant on cloud compute, just like how Google Drive made everyone reliant on its storage before raising prices. And they want them to be ignorant of how much energy anything takes.

That's going to take one generation.

Not long ago every teenager knew how to use a computer. Now they depend on Apple for everything. It's a masterful business model. So what if we could apply it to every form of labour?

It's okay, just hand us your credit card and we'll do the rest. How much, you ask? Don't worry about that. Just keep your monthly payments coming. Oh, you can't afford it? You want your computer to do it? Well fuck you, we bought all the computers, so now you work for us.

The tech has never been the conspiracy. It's the business model.

PSA

hey anon

please tell me you didn't google "US literacy rates" and then make the funniest possible mistake one could make in that situation

The summer between the end of high school and the start of college, I wrote a ridiculous play about pirates and put on a staged reading with some friends at an amphitheatre at a local park before a small audience of friends and family. It was never published or staged again. But I just got a message from an old high school friend I haven’t seen in years. He accidentally quoted the play in a conversation with friends, was asked what he was quoting, he couldn’t remember either, and wracked his brain until he finally remembered it was that silly play reading that we did one day in the park over 10 years ago. It made me happy. (The line was, “Huzzah for mercantilism!” by the way.)

A very tiny percentage of creators go on to be famous, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t remember little things you did for years and years. Who came up with most of the world’s most famous jump rope rhymes? Who coined some of the famous idioms we use in daily speech? Who made up ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells?” Somehow, all of these things stuck and spread around.

When I was a small child, I saw a high school put on a production of the musical HONK. In one song, the mother duck describes various dangers that her baby should avoid in the water, including fishing line, which could strangle him. A member of the ensemble played the role of fishing line, doing a maniacal laugh and over-the-top strangling motions, and I found it hilarious– and to this day, that’s an example I often think of when talking about how ensemble members can still stand out in theatre. The guy who played the role might not even remember that he did that, but I do.

I took Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. The teacher made up lyrics to some of the songs, and she let her students make some up, too. Now whenever I hear the instrumental of one of those pieces, I always remember these ridiculous lyrics about a skunk that we sang in violin class. I don’t even know which student invented them!

In middle school, I found a video about atoms parodying Bill Nye made by some kids for a school product. It probably had less than 1,000 views, but I think of quotes from that video all the time. They had a parody of “We Will Rock You” with the chorus, “Protons, neutrons, electrons” that I think about a lot.

I just love that this is part of human life. Our memories don’t just pick up quotes from great art, literature, and music, but little things, too.

I would like to share the story of a very understandable but unfortunate mistake i made at work recently

So I'm weeding our ancient and terrible collection of children's books for the first time in possibly ever, and I'm making a decision about a book about migrant workers by Sandra Weiner, called Small Hands, Big Hands. And I'm not 100% sure and I go to just see if there's anything out there about this book's being notable in any way so I do an open web search for

"small hands big hands weiner"

And then I look at my results for a moment

and then at last I somberly add to the end of my search, "BOOK"

I have one like that:

I needed to look up a formula related to this, so I confidently typed into the search bar:

"Blow up real plane"

The results were not what I wanted and I am not sure if I'm on a terror watchlist now.

This reminds me of my corsetmaker days when i found myself searching for "extra thick boning."

I recall fondly one of Ursula Vernon's LJ posts where she was looking for references for a black rooster for one of her paintings (this one, iirc), and very nearly hit Enter on a search for "black cock"

I gotta tell you, I searched for "saucy walker leg" for my mom in the late 90s and got some *interesting* results

anybody else feel that being human is like being a long-time syndicated cartoon character watching the world get more complex while your own design stays the same until youre incongruous with the reality around you??

Do you ever see a complicated meme that expresses a very specific feeling, and while you wouldn’t have said it that way, it instantly resonates with you?

A fishy Hanging Gardens. I’ve started calling it The Aquarium.

All 18 blocks will be identical instead of ombre or made from multiple prints like a jelly roll.

(did i get lazy and just pick the few fabrics we had with a yellow fish in them (and the shells to complete it) or was that a design choice i made on purpose???? idk 🤷‍♀️)

Time to start lying it out.

Look at how the accent looks like little bubbles!!! It’s so cute, I love it! I can’t wait to see how this is gonna look when it’s done.

She’s so much fun!

Quilted bubbles on it because of course I had too lol

This turned out much better than I expected. I mean, I knew it was gonna look nice, but I really like it. Especially those small diamonds above the blocks.

Mum is going to Australia to visit her mum, sister, nephew, and grand niece later this summer and said she wanted to take this with her for my cousin’s daughter.

Since she also likes purple, I used this Shimmer fabric on the back that is blue and teal bubble with a bit of purple in it, along with gold metallics. A co-ordinating darker blue bubble was used for the binding.

There was a thunderstorm last and, of course, there is now an earthwurmm in the middle of my kitchen.

The crime scene investigation begins. Was it Malice, the Meatball Supreme? Or No Bones Jones, Mayhem Jane?

Or was it, perhaps, the Wyrmsinger himself???

Your Honor, I move to dismiss the entire case on the grounds of a mistrial. The prosecutor has prejudiced the jury against my client with the presentation of circumstantial evidence and usage of an unsubstantiated epithet!

Your Honor, circumstantial evidence is admissible in our jurisdiction and can be the basis for a criminal conviction, so long as the circumstantial proof facilitates reasonable inferences of causation, not mere speculation. People v Wang, 505 Mich 239, 251 (2020). Furthermore, calling the defendant by his legal name and by his known alias is not per se prejudicial, and must be subject to the balancing test described in MRE 403. The probative value of this alias in a case of malicious woim depositing is substantially outweighed by any potential prejudice. Please see People v Thompson, 101 Mich App 609, 613; 300 NW2d 645 (1980). And to preempt a potential hearsay objection about the admissibility of the Wyrmsong itself, this statement is not hearsay, as it is the statement of an opposing party, admissible under MRE 801(d)(2).

Though the jury deliberated for a full twenty-four hours, the jurors--five thousand three hundred and twenty six peers selected to serve in this case-- were unable to render a unanimous verdict. Therefore, we have no choice but to declare a mistrial, and the defendants are returned to custody to await retrial.

Though I think we've narrowed down who the real masterminds are ...

I don't think Tolkien is a good fantasy writer because he scored the highest at some objective Best Fantasy Book Test that every fantasy writer has to take, I think he's a good fantasy writer because he created a world based on things that he was interested in. I feel like a lot of fantasy writers think that they need to create a whole language for their world because Tolkien did and obviously his books are the best so they have to emulate him, but Tolkien did that because he was a linguistics nerd. I think the lesson to be learned from him is not that you have to include elves and deep history and new languages, but that you have to write endlessly about the things you are a huge nerd about and use those things to create your fantasy world

Even in a post-capitalist, post-consumerist world, you still need to produce goods, as a result of this, you need factories because it is more effective to have a few people making a lot of clothes in a factory than every woman being forced to sit down and spin wool all day.

The issue with factories is poor wages, unsafe working conditions and environmental impact, all of which can be fixed through things like regulatory bodies and unions, the issue is not the fact that goods are no longer all made at home

you can have a guild-owned, guild-run, sustainable and ethical small- to mid-size clothing factory. or laundromat. or kitchen. all of these once-domestic tasks can become industrialized without the capitalism and greed.

the factory isn't evil. it's a building full of machines and materials.

Better Homes and Gardens: Country Home, 1984

some people will be like “I wonder why fanfic writers don’t share their works anymore😔” and then this is them when a writer is kind enough to share something they write — as a hobby, for their own enjoyment — with them for free.

some people really don’t realize how privileged they are that they get fanfics for free. imagine having access to something for free because someone is kind enough to share it with you… and then being rude, entitled and an ungrateful pos to that person who was kind enough to share their creation with you for free

“almost 1 year is a lil too much for me” fuck off. fanfic writers don’t owe you anything. one of my favorite fics was updated after 13 years, and what I did is that I thanked the author for choosing to continue the work, I didn’t act like a spoiled toddler by asking why they didn’t update sooner. and even if a writer chooses to abandon their fic permanently with no explanation, that is their choice, their hobby, their decision. they don’t owe your entitled ass anything.

you people let tiktok rot your brains to the point you see everything as content farm and engagement. not a piece of art created by the artist’s love and passion. it’s dystopian.