Phylum of Alexandria

I do care, thank you very much. I haven't taken to the streets for the cause. I'll give you a mea culpa as long as you give me the list of issues you haven't formally organized for so I can badger you about your lack of resolve. But regardless of that care, a potential for abuse is worlds apart from intentional systematic abuse. 1 or 2% of people mistreated is terrible, but 50% mistreated would be a whole lot worse. See, we agree. The US has had many authoritarian undercurrents, and the unregulated surveillance state has proven to be one of the most insidious and robust. But it would still be far worse under a MAGA 2.0 administration.

Disagree. More importantly, I have a hard time believing that you would seriously equate a surveillance state of Trump 2.0 with our current one. You love your cynicism, but come on. Whatever is going on now, it will be much worse under an admin full of Steve Miller wannabes and Christian fascists.

Please explain how this currently applies to half of the country. As I said, I don't like this type of surveillance and interference. But surely even you can understand how a broad expansion of something bad is much worse. And how something rife with opportunity for abuse is not as bad as a protocol where abuse is the entire MO.

Please explain.

Yeah, and I don't like it. Why would I want it to be spread to half the country? Especially when tied to face scanning at the airport?

I am disconcerted by the recent emergence of mandatory face scanning at airports. Right now it's a convenience, but should our government fall into the clutches of a paranoid and vindictive autocrat (which is basically a coin flip in the US at this point), you know that tech will be abused. "Oh, you want to flee the country, Mr. Resistance? Oh no, it looks like there's an issue with your passport..."

@Ser Scot A Ellison, here's something I wrote a while back on Andy Warhol and postmodernism, which conveys my feelings about copyright fairly well. The piece is somewhat on the cynical side, and I could write a sequel that pushes back in certain ways, but its main purpose was to present the broader context for Warhol and pop art. At very least it's some food for thought. https://phylogenicrecords.wordpress.com/2022/06/21/a-copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy/

It probably always will be that way, though the persons affected can't afford to be so sanguine about it. @Ser Scot A Ellison, I do worry about all the ways that artists these days are devalued and screwed over. But this was happening long before AI started pumping out art. With predatory contracts, media consolidation, torrents, streaming, cheap production software, general anti-art populism, and countless other factors, artists tend to be shafted. AI will likely make it worse (further down the road at least), but not all that much worse. Because it's been bad for a while!

I think it's fair to say that in most cases of art there is a process of give and take between artist and audience. The artist either does it for self-expression, to meet the specifications of a patron, some more high-minded or abstract reason, or some combination. The audience gets some sort of emotional response, some changed aesthetic or philosophical understanding, or some combination. It's just that AI disrupts the normal process. It creates art to meet the specifications of the audience, and it can elicit emotions (and possibly even a changed philosophical understanding). But the reasons for creation are no longer part of the equation. Or are at least obscure to us sentient meat robots.

Hell, I'm probably the closest person here to an art snob here and I largely agree with you.

I get that not everyone is into modern and postmodern art, but generative/aleatoric music has been [designed? curated?] by human composers since the 1950s. One of the most moving pieces of the post 9/11 era was William Basinski's Disintegraton Loops, which consisted of composed synth loops put to tape that were played and recorded in a state of decay--so, a composed work modified by incidental "improvisation." Not saying you have to like stuff like this, but it's been part of the human musical repertoire for a while, and plenty of people are moved by it. I am a researcher and I have no problem using layman's definitions of words in casual speech. Just as I don't correct every person who fails to recognize peppers and eggplants as "fruits."

Is it possible for AI to generate art that moves people? Obviously, yes. And if they do so, it's not necessarily any more copying than what humans do. Artistic creation always involves the combinations of different references, and what is an innovative work versus a derivative one is largely, if not wholly, subjective. Is it possible for current AI to generate art that moves people? Sure. Again, in theory. Is it likely to happen very often? I'm guessing no. Certainly not for me. It'd be interesting to tease apart what I think is missing given my rather generous definition of creativity above, but I'd have to chew on it some more.

"Please kids, we need Israel to hold the line until Christ finally comes down to obliterate all of the unbelievers there."

Yes, it is good. This wasn't me accusing you of such. Just, a little concern 'til a got a little more info. All is well, relax.

All good. As long as the depiction of protest as force of nature isn't used to paper over the uglier aspects of certain protestors as "inevitable," your comment makes perfect sense. It's just that sometimes people do use such framings to paper over nasty behavior, and so such statements can easily have a whiff of creepy zealotry to me.

Okay, let's not fall on the language of inevitability.

That sounds like the conditions of rioting or other upheavals. Protests certainly can be and often are strategic and calculated. Activists who organize protests are usually pragmatic and shrewd in their way, though that doesn't have to mean milquetoast or non-disruptive. There is agency and intention at play here with respect to means and methods. Let's not liken coordinated actions to forces of nature.

It makes me think of the three forks of the psi-trident (which I think are different weirwood bloodlines). Remember that one of the prongs on the trident of Old Fishfoot in White Harbor was broken off. It doesn't specify the middle prong, but otherwise fits. The Titan of Braavos and Old Fishfoot both have heavy Garth parallels, so why not Trios as well? Of course, my interpretation is likely colored by Crowfood's Daughter's recent video, which is about the cataclysmic poisoning of the weirwoods in Asshai. In that case, the missing/broken head of Trios would be the rupture and transformation of Team Green in Asshai into the nearly dead Shade Trees.

I spent the last two weeks walking around Tokyo and Yokohama, but due to the fact that I won't sign away my biometric data for use by third parties, Samsung Health won't track my steps anymore. Is there any step tracker app that's kind of like DuckDuckGo, one that at least claims to respect privacy?

Just back from Japan, and this was the issue that multiple people wanted to talk about based on news coverage from Japanese media: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republican-lawmakers-introduce-bill-rename-dulles-airport-donald-trump-rcna146027 It was tough explaining to them the whole notion of drafting legislation purely for performance rather than a serious intent to pass and implement it. I think they came away with a lot less confidence in the US as a result.

True. But what else to call them, given that we don't know what they called themselves? "Christian" it is then. Not unlike the "Essenes" of Qumran, it's a term of convenience. As for the rest of your comment, I mostly agree, but it doesn't have anything to do with the substance of my previous comment. Everything I stated still holds true.

Why assume that any given religious text is not thoughtful, or less thoughtful than comic books? I admit that certain graphic novels can be sophisticated and compelling works of art. They don't compare to the biblical scriptures in terms of cultural importance, but that's no knock against them. Hopefully you can admit that your earlier comparison of the bible to comic books was not meant as a compliment.

Well, no. Maybe some of the older stories are like simple comic books, like the tales of the various judges. But most of the scriptures are far more interesting. The gospel of Mark is a brilliant work of apocalyptic esotericism, an impressive mosaic of scriptural allusions. Ecclesiastes is some gorgeous and heavy philosophy. The psalms are a wealth of beauty and raw human emotion. This is important and enriching material. But only when approached properly, not like some cake recipe for salvation.

We really know nothing about who the real Jesus was. The first available Christian writings aren't concerned with a Jesus who had recently preached in Galilee, but of a cosmic savior coming to bring judgment at the end of days. More like the archangel Michael, or how the Essene's wrote about the high priest Melchizedek. The gospels put Jesus in a specific place and time in Judea, but they came decades later, and their contents are highly symbolic. It's mostly pseudo-history, used by the authors to advance (competing) moral arguments. Not to say that there can't be real historical nuggets embedded in the apocalyptic character, or the gospels. But if there are, the specifics are lost in the fog of history. What the early Christian scriptures tell us most about are the beliefs and concerns of the emerging Christian communities themselves. But even then, not the earliest ones. Paul is our earliest authentic scribe, and he himself admitted he was a latecomer.

I fucked my back up from indoor climbing--specifically from dropping to the mat after bouldering. I think this was in large part because my 80% remote job has led to deteriorated core muscles. So I'm trying to build that back up, safely. Doing some daily yoga, pull-ups, and planks. But taking it easy at first. I don't want to go back to that state any time soon!