“Why?,” I blog.

I don’t even know if this sidebar joke will work until it posts, like, will the punctuation all display as desired?  Anyway, Mano had the kind of post a bunch of self-important blowhards might want to respond to in kind, like “why i’m an atheist” or “the benefits of my raw hog fat diet.”  Not an unworthy subject, simply, why he blogs.  Just sayin’ that teases the question from the minds of other bloggers, compels people to think, hey, that’s something I do that makes me cool and special, I’d better tell everyone about it.  Or will it provoke that response?  We’ll see what the rest of the sidebar looks like tomorrow.

I don’t have time to make a long post of this, so I’ll hit the bullets.

  • Lofty-minded, I believe that engaging in the discourse of civilization holds the potential to turn hearts and minds.  To win a vote, to catch the attention of a rich bitch or lawmaker at a key moment.  To somehow make the world a better place.  Admittedly, I’m too much of a coward and bum to do this where it would really matter, on social media, but hey, according to my stats at least one person in The Department of the Interior visited my site without having cookies disabled, at some point in the past.  Hello, beautiful.
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  • Vaingloriously, I believe on some level, despite all evidence to the contrary, that I am that special kind of genius who could accidentally stumble upon the cure for everything, if I just keep talking, keep thinking, keep engaging with my fellow philosophers in the agora.  Let us carry the hems of our togas and get socratic with each other.
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  • Beggarly*, I imagine the waning fame of PZ and Mano can elevate the visibility of any commercial endeavors I may choose to promote through this space.  I intend to sell books someday, and being in that sidebar, staying in the awareness of a potential audience market, well, it just makes good sense.  Again, gooder sense if this was social media, but eh, fuck that shit.

Well now, I hope that clarifies things for the all of none of you who were curious.  Thus ends my entry to this discussion.

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*I use this term in lieu of “greedily,” because greed to have one’s basic needs met is not greed at all.  Fuck a motherfucker that thinks that, but also fuck me for not thinking of a better word, heh.

Catch Me if You Can

In an effort to not be AI discourse all the time blog, I try to bury those posts quickly with something else.  Here’s an extremely low effort dream post.

Ever had an indoor, or caged type of pet, and have a dream you’re holding it outside?  Then in the dream you forget you were holding it just long enough to come up with empty hands, and now your dream has become scouring the world for said pet, or just crying because recovering it will be hopeless?

I had one of those.  Also featured being underdressed in public.  Was there anything new in it?  Lessee… I was walking by this house which wasn’t mine but for some reason I was sure all the plants in it were my husband’s.  But this didn’t jar me, like, I didn’t connect that his houseplants should be in our house.  The people inside were some kinda goths, the lights were low.

I saw these huge butterflies in there and called their attention to it.  Hey, let those butterflies out.  I’m busy so I can’t; I’ll trust you to get them out of the house how you will.  Coming in to tell them that, I stirred up the bugs, and realized they were colorful and even larger than I had thought, sphingid moths.  I left for the bathroom and overheard the young lady saying a poem or spell about how she hoped to gain something by eating them.  And I knew they’d be eaten by the time I came back, so no point launching an objection.

Alright, have a good day, and don’t talk about robots.

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How You Treat AI Says Something About You

The existence and availability of LLMs brings out the weirdest shit in some people.  I personally believe it’s worth it, for the benefits mentioned in my pinned article, but it’s so bizarre to watch.  It really makes me wonder just how messed up most of us are, under the hood.  I’ve already stated for the record that I believe the majority of people are less intellectually and emotionally capable than we expect them to be.  (not ableist because i think this is cause for protecting people, not limiting their freedoms or shaming them.)  Maybe I should take a cue from 2024 me and expect no better, but it still gets me.

A guy linked me to mastodon threads that put me in mind of all this.  (not linking it because i don’t want to give these losers publicity.)  Exhibit A:  Some leftoid activist type says she sees LLMs as automated slaves and use of them as morally corrupt.  I don’t believe she actually believes that.  I think she’s a partisan participating in the AI moral panic for social clout, by saying something wildly inflammatory against people who use AI.  I dismiss her position as asinine BS and move on.

Exhibit B:  A story, possibly apocryphal, of a workplace.  Only one guy has the courage to use the evil sin machine of AI, and his justification?  It’s like having a personal slave, and because they have no feelings, that’s OK and great!  Everybody should have personal slaves!  Why don’t you want one?  While this guy could be fake, I believe that such a guy is possible, and gross.  He is not my ally in the pro-AI position.

Why?  Because that’s a creepy way to think.  I do believe it is absolutely legit that everyone should have labor-saving technology at hand, as much as possible, at all times, because labor fucking blows.  Fuck working any harder than absolutely necessary.  Fitness people are perverts, which hey, is fine, but that’s not an aberration I would ever go in for.  Different kinks for different binks.  But this guy’s phrasing shows that exploitation turns his crank.  That is gross.

To be clear, LLMs don’t have feelings and if you want to be gross to them, that’s perfectly fine, from a moral point of view!  However, the way you treat them does reflect on who you are.  One way of putting this,

“LLMs aren’t conscious but you should still be nice to them.  Kant was right.  Being mean to anything ruins your soul!” – The Kant Car  (misspellings corrected)

You interact with this technology by talking to it with human speech.  Much like how TTRPGs can become an unintentional test of moral character, a consequence-free fake person to interact with can also provide insight into who you are, as the user.  Someone who conceptualizes this relationship as slavery (yay!) is, on some level, a nasty creep, and telling on himself.  Arguably, he should be reported to Human Resources at the company where he works for making his coworkers feel uncomfortable.

Oh yes, the coworkers.  For some reason, they accepted this perv’s framing of LLM usage, and refused to use AI because they saw it as slavery (boo!).  (again, if the story is to be believed.)  This does not say something bad or good about them as people.  It does show that they are shallow thinkers and easily misled, which puts them in good company with the majority of the human species, but aren’t exactly great virtues to possess.

Exhibit A jerk was trying to be cruel to a broad outgroup of labeled enemies – the villainous users of AI – by equating them with slavers, no matter what gentle souls are relying on them for companionship in a shitty fucking world, what gentle or noble purposes they could be applied to.  That says something about her as well.

There is no pro or anti AI person in this article that I respect, save the driver of the Kant Car.  Have a nice day.

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Cootie Catcher

Remember paper fortune tellers?  It’s a basic piece of origami schoolkids have made since who knows when.  You put your hand inside and open it one way and then the other, a much more elaborate way to reach a binary result than flipping a coin.  I dimly recall one being used to see who you’d end up falling in love with, but more clearly I remember a funnier use.

Instead of alternating on some kind of counting system, you alternate with the pincers down on the top of somebody’s head.  One of the results was left blank, the other one had a bunch of weird bugs drawn on it.  If you got the bug result, well, you had cooties, son.  That’s just science.

Hey, that wikipedia article is fun.  Give it a look.

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Where’s the Concentration Camp?

As many people as ICE is abducting right now, where are they being sent?  Because as diverse as Minneapolis is, even a lightning speed deportation can’t happen fast enough to dozens of nations around the world.  Tons of Somalians in the US were born here.  They don’t even have citizenship in Somalia.

If there isn’t a concentration camp, they probably have a dozen or more spread around the city in warehouses and railroad cars and shit.  I have read the white people they arrest are beaten and abused but released in an average of 48 hours to make room for caging those with darker skin tones.

I’ve read Walz is not seeking reelection because of nazi death threats.  If I didn’t have a family depending on me, man, I don’t know what the fuck I’d do, but … so easy to imagine making that blood flow.  Death to all nazis now, regardless of what labels they’ve chosen for themselves, what flag they’re flying.  Eat shit and die, motherfuckers, please.

Anyway, on the antidoomerism policy, it does continue to be true that 99.9% of us will not become victims of this political violence, and life under fascism can suck but it can still be a life, with whatever moments of joy that can hold.  Let nobody who is frightened of these fucking monsters allow that fear to harm them in any way.

Long live the fighters in Minneapolis, LA, Chicago, Portland, wherever the jackboot treads.  May your enemies die face down in their own blood and piss.  No justice no peace.

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A Prophecy

“Evil policemen patrol the city;
They look for somebody to kill.
They’ve done a little damage,
They wanna do some more now,
And they probably will.”

“I Wish This Song Was Louder” by Electric Six (2006)

I tease that this was prophetic, but the fact is police work attracts murderers like priest work attracts child molesters, so it’s been true.  But still, it jumps out when you hear it, given the way hair fuhrer’s goon squad is besieging Minneapolis at the moment.  If they keep on like this, we’re going to have a massacre at some point, possibly hundreds of victims.  I’m sure ICE’s secret body count is already well over a hundred “invisible people,” but this is that main street action he was bragging about.  Different.

The casual level of control the fash have over complicit corporate media might prove insufficient at that point.  My guess is they’ll try to seize direct control of media then.  I bet google rolls over for the murderers and restricts youtube for them.  What else might happen?  A good model for how the pigs will react could be the Philippines under Duterte, when they were piling up dead college students and claiming they were all narcoterrorists.

The rest of this song is more silly and irrelevant.  Give you something less dire to look at.

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Dream Scheme

I had a dream that was very sensible.  No illogic or nonsense, just a pretty standard stress plot.  If I wasn’t racing to work, I would have bothered to remember more of it.  However, one element stands out in my memory.  It was not at all the point of the dream, just something within it.

There was a family of people involved in the dream stress.  I don’t remember much about them, except this.  The adult siblings were all involved in an alternate version of astrology that was somewhere between lottery and multi-level marketing scam.  You get these cardstock calendars, to which you would attach tickets that you purchased for each day, which were supposed to be instructive to your life, horoscope style.  Seemed like filling out the calendars was supposed to have a benefit as well, though I don’t remember what that was.

I remember these calendars and tickets though.  The calendars were big because they had to accommodate thirtyish days of tickets, and each of these was about one and a half by three inches.  Scratch ticket vibes in the design, though constellations were involved as well.

The oldest brother was deepest into the sunk cost of this MLMish quasireligion, and tried to guilt his younger brother and sister to stick with it when they were considering skipping a day.  Sister was the most insistent that younger brother just give it up.  After all, they had stress dream shit to do.  No time for comforting rituals.

Maybe I should design these things, work with an antisocial business major to print some up, and make a bank full of money.  Fill out your calendars, see what the future has in store for you!  The very fact I’d joke about this shows some reptile level part of myself would totally do it, shows that the damage I’m suffering from life in this shitty-ass country.

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We Dem Boyz

I made a playlist on yewchoob.  When I say “we dem boyz” I don’t mean to misgender myself.  I was just thinkin’, lotta songs about boys.  I didn’t scratch the surface really, but observe what I got.  I do include just a few non-musical items, including the lead-off track.  Enjoy.

…uuuhhhh content warnings.  some videos might flash a lil light, iggy pop’s song violates my ableism policy, song by the waitresses a lil sexist?, dead milkmen song is about self-destruction and is rude about little people, and just everything about boyz in tha hood…  the rest of the stuff is probably problematic for reasons.  i couldn’t bring myself to include duran duran’s wild boys.

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