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I'm adding "the typical and predictable Taurean bullish stubbornness I'd expect from your sign" to my list "Ad Hominem rhetoric to throw at DMC" for future use. Just kidding, happy fucking birthday!

I don't know that it matters if it's "useful" or not. I personally wouldn't call it art, and I wouldn't knowingly watch it. Maybe something of a paradox here, but I am pretty certain that at some point (we are probably already there with images) that I could be unable to determine whether something was made by a human or generated by an "AI" prompt. At that point it's something of a Schrodinger's Artwork to the the observer. I feel like there is tons of Real Art that doesn't have any of this as a goal. Because there's no actual craft to it. I mean I realize you could argue the same about Jackson Pollack, but the issue here to me is that in the case of Pollack, you have someone engaging in a process to create this stuff that requires actually interacting with the world around you. I don't mean to invoke some kind of tough-guy, William Burroughs-esque "an artist must be at war with the world" but there does need to be some kind of interaction between the artist and the place or environment or world. And for me just asking something to run through the possibilities that a human couldn't in 50 lifetimes to get one thing that works... Well it sounds a bit too much like the epilogue of Blood Meridian or shackling a million monkeys to a million typewriters. There's no craft. It's just a fancy, hyper-extensive, auto fill feature (eta: or claiming that a lottery winner is some kind of mathematical genius) If there's eventually a 3-d printer that you could just hook up to your head and whatever you imagine is created, I still wouldn't call that art. As Rip said, the pursuit, or process, or whatever you want to call it, is a necessary component. I am very curious about what the counterculture to this is going to look like, and I'm pretty excited about it. There's some weird event horizon where explorations stops and the computer program is instead just randomizing shit a bazillion times until the fire strikes and you find some garbage that you like. (Edit: and that's the line where it's not art anymore, there is no rescue mission, your just sifting through millenia of noise until something looks identical to a signal) I'm definitely thinking (edit: dreaming) about wrecking bars and electromagnetic pulses.

Great. And happy late birthday!

Yep, this will flip the 6th district of Baton Rouge. Was a solid late bday present Wednesday. Should be noted, though, the SC allowed for further litigation after the 2024 cycle, so it could still change later. But for now, it’s a Dem pickup.

^ Bit tasteless [referring to Phylum's post], but you make a valid point. I'll contest it though, despite being firmly on the 'only humans can create art' side of this fence. AI "art" can pass the 'Turing Test'. i.e. it is at a level where many non-expert viewers can't tell if a painting is human or AI-created. I suspect many denizens of Pornhub could happily wank away to an AI picture as you say, but not knowing or caring who produced it. So it's not an argument I'd rest my case on as you wander into that grey area of where you draw the line between erotica and pornography.

It's fine you have this opinion, and I don't think anyone is having trouble understanding it. But it's my speculation that this distinction will not have any practical use in the future, at the rate AI is advancing. Say a group produces a movie like Morbius. And say an AI produces a movie like The Shawshank Redemption. The group who produced Morbius may have put their heart and soul into the creation of that movie, but so what? The AI that created The Shawshank Redemption may have done so unaware, but so what? Call Morbius art and The Shawshank Redemption not art if you want, but that does not change the respective impact to the perceiver by these works. Of course, AI today cannot produce something with the same impact as The Shawshank Redemption.* Humans made that movie. It seems a lot of people here are skeptical it ever will, because apparently there's some ineffable unique quality about humans that nothing else can match. We're apparently the chosen ones of the universe that artificial minds can't compare to. The only way to equal us is through our special route of "aware" intelligence. I will absolutely dispute this. And I think the GPT4o demos are evidence of the further erosion of our uniqueness. If an unaware AI can so effectively and convincingly emulate a human conversation, then it is reasonable to project that other capabilities will emerge that are convincingly "human". And if that is the case, those stoutly insisting that art is the exclusive purview of the "aware" will do so while the sophistication, beauty, and intelligence of what AI produces eclipses what the critics call "art". *Just so there isn't a rehash of the same debate as HoI and PoA and I had, I again point out that this is a subjective assessment anyway.

There is a very high probability they're from Russian troll farms, and are paid to go online into overseas forums and spread propaganda. It's a pretty decent-paying job, especially as you're sitting on your arse probably in a nice office in Moscow and not, for example, being blown into small pieces on the battle front.

I don't know. This is all so troubling. The most I can say is that we "need to keep an eye on it" and assume nothing.

But in good Louisiana news. This did happen a few days ago. The new Louisiana congressional map is once again being used. https://apnews.com/article/louisiana-supreme-court-congressional-redistricting-black-representation-201c1fa9e494ad0d88e4d9ed8328eae0 I think this is now set in stone for the election?

1. It is a non-living thing. 2. It is NOT made of inorganic materials (including stone, minerals, glass, dragonglass, gemstones, metals, ceramics, etc). 3. Is it NOT an artificial object. 4. No, it has never lived 5. It is NOT a fetus that was never born or a dragon egg. 6. It exists in the current ASOIAF timeline.

Oh...actually that's from Season 1. I didn't even notice this until a recent rewatch: Mysaria has permanent, heavy scars on her neck presumably from a slave collar -- showing that she was a slave for years, and a roughly handled slave at that (not daintily kept as a pillow-slave in a high class pleasure-house where they cared about marking the merchandise, but the Lys equivalent of some hole in Flea Bottom) She hides it by wearing elaborate necklaces in most of her scenes, or a cloak clasped over her neck - the ONE time it's visible is when she confronts Otto Hightower in episode 9. Apparently she did this on purpose? To emphasize to him "I'm from the downtrodden, this is what highborns do to us, my concern for shutting down the child fighting pits isn't an abstraction"? Surprisingly, it isn't even visible in her first scene - fully nude having sex with Daemon. I went back to check but that specific part of her neck is obscured in every shot, due to a combination of her hair, shadows, and the camera angle. EDIT: Turns out other people also noticed this when Season 1 aired, and posted high resolution photos: https://x.com/nyracult/status/1767312211364446324 https://x.com/destiniesfic/status/1593285771212906496 Also apparently it wasn't JUST for Otto: she's only in two scenes post-timeskip but the other one, at the end of episode 8, even when she's in public at her pleasure house she's stopped covering up her scars -- perhaps to indicate how powerful she is now? She doesn't need to bother hiding them now that she's fully out of "the skin trade"?

The Hightower army might be leaving Rook's Rest itself, as it seems to have domes like KL -- part of a wider "Crownlands style"? But yeah the water on the left would mean they're going WEST.

Mentioned it here before, but Young Sheldon impressed me as a truly great family sitcom as well. Haven’t started the final season yet. Not..sure where exactly to find it, but hopefully I can finish it up soon. Particularly interested in how they deal with the obvious thing, of course. Look forward to it! Appreciate your comments @dbunting and @Rippounet!

Sure, but it were AWFULLY CONVENIENT to chance on a dragon at a place where the ruling lady wants dragonriders because she has none. It is not impossible that a dragon nesting on Dragonstone flies to hunting trips in the Vale. But Rhaena shouldn't be in the position to meet such a dragon there. Rhaena should be a dragonrider before she leaves Dragonsone as it is LONG OVERDUE for her to try to claim one. Regardless which dragon she ends up with. It was already a joke that she bitched about 'Aemond stealing Vhagar' in episode 8 and then is still dragons years later while living on an island full of dragons. How is that good writing? And now her betrothed was brutally butchered by his uncle. Doesn't she wanted to avenge him? Doesn't she want to defend and fight for her stepmother? More over, with Arrax and eventually Meleys gone, it is clear the Blacks want to increase the numbers of their dragonriders. Sending Daemon's daughter to the Vale without a dragon makes little to no sense in that context. Your idea that Rhaena migh be rejected by Sheepstealer (or any other riderless dragons she might be presented with) makes sense ... but it is something the show should have introduced as something that can happen. They had the weird Dreamfyre-Aemond scene in episode 6 ... but it lacked context. Did Aemond try to claim Dreamfyre there? Or was she already claimed by Helaena at that point? If so, what the hell was Aemond doing there? Was he stupid enough to try to mount a dragon bonded to his sister? The show failed to elaborate on that as, so far, we don't even know that Helaena Targaryen is actually a dragonrider (unless we fantasize or assume that one of the dragons in episode 7 must have been hers). Thinking about more about dragonrider logistics in light of the impressive size of Moondancer and, presumably, Vermax - and going with the assumption that Sunfyre will be injured the way he is the book - it strikes one as evident that Rhaenyra must be 'Madam Weakness' or at least 'Queen Indecision' in the show. Assuming Helaena is not going to be a dangerous dragonrider in the show, Caraxes, Syrax, Vermax, and Moondancer should be able to rip Vhagar to shreds even without the assistance of Meleys and new dragonriders. So there won't be a good reason why they are not just taking KL with their dragon advantage.

Art at its cheapest is helping the audience wank themselves to satiety. In that respect, AI can do just fine. But art with power and value to it comes from a mutual give-and-take dynamic between artist and audience. AI gives us what we tell it we want. But what we need? It does not give a fuck. Only a wank.

Bridgerton, season 3, Part I, is both a delight and relief from the endless screen violence (yet! I enjoy watching Elizabeth Moss kick ass in The Veil!), and the ugliness of just about everything from shoes to wars to politics, not to mention everyone being insane. IMO this season -- so far anyway, only half way through the season, after all, and we must wait until mid-June for the second half -- is the very best. The writing is actually brilliant, while making this viewer care and be sympathetic and sad at the bullying of one of our Principals, feeling her despair from the gratuitous cruelty of her community, being written off gleefully as not even being a person, the workings of the intersecting subplots. Things here matter, actually. This is someone who actively dislikes, YA, Romancy, Alternative History, etc. It's also pretty to look at with plants and flowers and green, beyond the gowns, etc. Speaking of very good writing, often something takes places and the viewer thinks s/he knows how the Principal involved will react. But no! yet the reaction is entirely within character. Not wishing any spoilers here, The Queen Charlotte interlude, to me was the least interesting. But this season 3 is firecrackers! That Shonda Rimes, she really is #1.

It was a really good finale, with the cherry on the cake being the final song (one of my all-time favorites). I know Chuck Lorre gets no love here, and for good reasons, but Young Sheldon was a truly good family show. It had great characters and wasn't afraid to tackle a number of topics that don't get much attention in fiction. Having a neuro-divergent as the main character of course, but also the love life of elderly people, the difference between various kinds of intelligences, and a handful of episodes that flirted with deeper perspectives on life and what one expects from it. I got seriously misty-eyed with the penultimate episode, and found the characters' reactions to grief to be astonishingly credible. Young Sheldon also addressed several flaws of TBBT, toning down Sheldon's narcissism, or at least putting it in context a lot better. There was also far less racism or sexism, though one might say that the setting itself (Texas in the 1990s) was by default rather conservative - I'd say it was very well-done myself - if perhaps a bit too rosy at times. Funnily enough it seems one of the main flaws of Young Sheldon (gender roles in couples) will probably be addressed in the next spin-off, about Georgie & Mandy - though I'm not much interested in that one tbh.

Oh that's just from the back - they're very different in the front. I made a whole video gathering together the copious (spoiler free) spy photos with better looks at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZltCbFxMSc Regular soldiers don't have those distinctive face visors and it's simplified overall; it looks like something that COULD evolve into GoT's Lannister armor. As you suggest, however,....yeah, it looks like Lord Jason Lannister's armor is more elaborate (and possibly some of his elite guards?)....including face visors. Again, to hint at that evolution - it'll start at the top before trickling down ( see Jason at 15:40 to 16:00 )

Reyne Heraldry! https://x.com/ADragonDemands/status/1791603355459936380

I'll reiterate the point I made before in slightly different -hopefully simpler- terms. If you merely view art as a product to be consumed, then whether art is being generated thanks to "AI" today is always going to be subjective. Whereas if you view art as a pursuit, i.e. that it is not only the quality of the reception that matters, but also the meaning of the act of creation for the artist themselves, then what is being done today can only be art when a human is truly involved in the creating process.

It’s 1980 all over again! As the article alludes to, the religious nuts are anticipating the current SC is ripe to strike down Stone v Graham. And they may well be right.

There was a former poster here, who was of Russian (or thereabouts) heritage who I believe lived in thr US or Canada. He fancied hinself as a pick-up artist, but I doremember one comment he made where he said Russians don’t care how bad it is for them, so long ss it’s worse for someone else

(shrug) the Vale's not THAT far from Blackwater Bay...they have a range...

I am starting to wonder here. On other sites, I occasionally interact with Russians who somehow made it onto the Western internet. Almost all of them view Ukraine as an illegitimate country and will go on at length about the need to obliterate Ukrainian Nazis. For that matter, they view the West as being a sort of front for a Nazi regime centered in the US, with the rest of NATO as bootlicking vassal states. Plus, they will go on about how the USSR singlehandedly won WWII and how Russia is the 'greatest nation ever.' They are either dismissive or utterly baffled about the rest of the war - and the massive assistance Russia received from the West. Economic arguments about the relative wealth of Russia versus the West don't seem to register at all - they either dismiss it as part of the Nazi plot or view it as a sort of bribe, for want of a better term. They complain bitterly about NATO expansion - but arguments about how the new countries entering NATO did so out of fear of Russian aggression leave them baffled. The concept of a genuine alliance instead of a boss/vassal-type situation seems beyond their comprehension. As far as Ukraine is concerned, to them, Russia is winning. Ukrainian losses across the board are far higher than Russia's, and reports of Russia employing human wave tactics are Nazi propaganda. They endlessly cite reports of Ukrainian draft dodgers yet dismiss such accounts from within Russia. Press gangs? Those don't exist. What does stymie these people is that despite Russia being clearly superior, the battle lines remain fixed. Now to the crux - to these people, and presumably most other Russians, Russia is the greatest nation ever whose greatest moment was fighting the Nazis. They see the Ukrainian war as a continuation of this - Russia CANNOT lose. God and pride and history are on their side. So, what happens to this mentality when Russia does decisively lose the Ukrainian war? Especially when the reality of their collapsing economy hits home?

I wasn’t aware every single article I cited had to point out the fact if his coalition collapses an election will be triggered, but hohkay there.