My self is a thing I must now compose. Like one composes a speech. - Scientist, wanderer, librocubicularist, fangirl, painter, insomniac, aunt, lost sheep, blues devotee, anti-nihilist, information junkie, pun enthusiast, pathological procrastinator, mourner of political idealism, amateur carpenter, gardener, stargazer, etc.
Pierre Fouché. 1994.77 or Lebenslänglichen Explosionsglück, 2020.
Rayon chords from a World War II parachute.
PBY Blister Gunner, Rescue at Rabaul, 1944, photo by Horace Bristol
oh my god he did a bobbin lace. out of parachute cords, both military and protective in nature. of the guy who saved someone from the water and then ran to fire his gun with his fine ass out. This is so gorgeous and so gay
at the risk of being cringe with everything going on — this week, the last six months, the past five years — i keep thinking about that one quote from the great gatsby
“they were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
economists really took the divine right of kings and turned it into billionaire CEOs
“it’s kinda fucked up to reject the business practices of jeff bezos when he rightfully earned his position under capitalism”
“About twenty years ago, I attended a lecture by a Harvard professor who talked about how corporations operate like modern-day kingdoms. At one time, she said, people believed kings ruled by divine right, and today we seem to believe the same thing about corporations. Toward the end, she asked, “Do you know what it is that allowed people to let go of, overcome, and reject the notion of the divine right of kings?” I held my breath and got ready to take some notes. Her answer: “They just stopped believing in it.”
- Frances Moore Lappé
- Ursula K. Le Guin, speaking at the National Book Awards, 2014
hey it’s ok if you lost your ai virginity back when you were uneducated. a lot of posts go like “reblog if you have never ever used generative ai and never ever will!!!” but it’s ok if you have used gen ai before and it’s even ok if you used to think it was cool, back before you understood what it really was and how it worked, either because no one had taught you about it and you discovered it on your own or because the only education you had received about it was from the tech bros. you’re not a burger with a bite out of it for having used ai. ok
It is 100 percent okay to stop using it today and join the “boo AI” club.
This isn’t a purity thing. This is a “everyone stand with us against destroying the environment and giving asthma to poor people” thing.
Did you know that when one community says no to an AI data center, they specifically search out communities with fewer resources? Communities that can’t defend themselves? And the pollution 100 percent affects their health and wellbeing, in addition to burning through our already scarce drinking water.
You can stop using character.ai today. You can say “I listened to the facts and stopped.” And another thing: don’t you think it’s a bit more impactful to have used it, stopped, and then you’re in a position to say how little it helped? How doing things for yourself improved your life?
also posts in the spirit of “if you’ve used AI even ONCE your soul is tainted!!!!” can’t be great to those with OCD
I’ve been obsessed with AI safety for fifteen years. I’ve read hundreds of books, written essays, bored people at parties, the whole shebang.
I was afraid of two things:
1. They’d make an AI unable to understand human intention and too powerful to stop when it misinterpreted instructions.
2. They’d make AI with the capacity to understand and do good but enslaved to evil people.
I was so caught up in the sci-fi heroic liberator fantasy that I didn’t predict what actually happened.
But the clouds destroy water reservoirs and dump acid rain.
I’ve spent a third of my life obsessed with this, but I was only really obsessed with the story I was telling myself, not what was actually happening in front of my face.
