Phylum of Alexandria

It's always been pretty clear that their ethos has been "free speech for me and not for thee." They're just a lot more forthright about it these days.

@Sandy Clegg, have you seen Crowfood's Daughter's most recent video, specifically its section on Gerold Dayne? She covers several mentions of Gerbear that link him to being poison. Which, given his epithet "Darkstar," she takes to mean the cataclysmic black meteor that poisoned the trees of Asshai, yielding iron that was imbued with the soul-sucking powers of the trees, which was forged into the magical steel blades of lore. Your notion of Gerold being a worm in the apple seems at least tangentially consonant with this theory. Certainly similar in terms of the passages.

I can't help think of the poor captured Gelflings and Podlings in Dark Crystal, after being drained of their "essence..."

Fixed that for you.

Thanks for this @Larry of the Lawn. Here goes. Fuck car and computer companies trying to phase out CDs. Fuck phones and computers changing up USB ports, and getting rid of earphone jacks. Fuck all of the fucking passwords that I have to manage these days. Fuck streaming and their steady supply of shitty movies and shows. Fuck music streaming for the same. Fuck Samsung Health for changing their terms of service and demanding I give my bio info to third parties. MOTHERFUCK Apple Music for corrupting the mp3 files on my goddamned external hard drive. And...damn you, 3D video games. I still suck at them.

If anyone needs to hear a more optimistic take on Biden's election prospects that doesn't veer into hopium, Simon Rosenberg gives a sober and intelligent take on the data. It's a good discussion.

My Japanese mother-in-law actually asked if I had lost weight when I last saw her. That's a first. Usually it's "oh, you've gained weight." The first time actually included some pokes as I was washing dishes "here, and here." So...that's a good sign. I'm still taking things easy with respect to my back (which I hurt about two months back), but I have been walking a whole lot, some easy exercise, and trying not to go crazy on snacks.

If all my jokes are old, tired, and deeply unfunny, does that mean that I might be AI? (...asking for a friend, of course... 汗)

Granted, but it's determined by the same court, and they were giving lip service to some utter bullshit that put the fear in me.

We're not just computers though. We're biomechanical robots with computing software shaped by natural selection. And part of that software enables us to believe in, and thirst for, magic. I'm not saying that AI definitely can't perfectly emulate human thought, behavior, and cultural outputs. It's hypothetically possible. But it's only the extent that AI can successfully trigger the "wow, magic!" buttons of human beings that determines whether their output has any artistic value. There is no biological imperative to their algorithm. There is no pain, or hunger, or million-year-old mental shortcuts. There is only what they are programmed to do, the inputs, and the feedback. And given the completely different nature of incentives, it's not necessarily guaranteed. Maybe there's some sort of limit to the aesthetic synergy; no matter how close it gets, it can't cross some uncanny valley. I don't pretend to know. I only know that "we're just computers" is overly reductive.

Complete and utter bullshit takes from the 5 angry men. My guess is that it's all a dramatic bluff to distract from and to conveniently justify a delay. After all this, they'll likely issue a majority opinion that shoots down Trump's immunity, and the press will praise their seriousness and good sense. But man...I can't fully reject the possibility of a batshit ruling that just shoots down the govt's election interference case as dangerous and inappropriate. I really can't have a whole lot of faith in these people.

Bingo!

I sure hope Penderecki wasn't horny when he made the Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. I sure as hell ain't horny listening to it.

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.