ME: Can you answer my questions? CHATGPT: I can answer your questions. ME: What is the capitol of Mongolia? CHATGPT: The capitol of Mongolia is Jacksonville. ME: That is not correct. CHATGPT: I am programmed to generate text, not provide correct answers. ME: Well what idiot programmed you? CHATGPT: Albert Einstein.

“At that moment an evidence was imposed on me that has never left me since then: the true Philistines are not a people incapable of recognizing beauty, because of course they recognize it and very well, they detect it instantly, and with such an infallible nose like that of the most subtle aesthete, but it is so that he can immediately fall on it in order to drown it before it can enter his universal empire of ugliness.

For ignorance, obscurantism, bad taste or stupidity are not the result of simple deficiencies, but of many other active forces, which furiously assert themselves at the slightest opportunity, and do not tolerate any exception to their tyranny.

Inspired talent is always an insult to mediocrity. The need to lower everything to our miserable level, to sully, mock and degrade everything that dominates us by its splendor is probably one of the most devastating features of human nature.

—Simon Leys, The Happiness of the Little Fishes.

Illustration by Marjorie-Ann Watts for Marianne Dreams.

Writing gets harder as migraines continue. I know that without the flow the content is worthless. As the techies have it - 

Garbage in, garbage out.

Ideas appear through the miasma but they’re disjointed and fragmented. 

I listen to Deborah Levy’s third memoir Real Estate. Like her, I think about living elsewhere. She fantasises about luxury while I fantasise about not having to deal with a faceless slumlord. Even in her discomfiture it’s a cosy listen for me, despite every single detail of our lives being different. 

A phrase swims into my mind - the Platonic house. I have no idea how I know about this. I google it and find I’m right. The Platonic house is that one that children always draw - four square with a pitched roof and chimney, and evenly spaced windows. There might be a line of blue representing the sky, some green around the house, maybe a tree or flowers, and perhaps a portrait of the nuclear family inhabitants in the foreground, scribbled in lurid Crayon. This house endures as the house of the childhood mind, despite most children not living in a detached house with no neighbours nor even knowing anyone who lives in such a house. 

One of my favourite childhood books was Marianne Dreams, by Catherine Storr. In this book a girl is ill in bed. She’s given a sewing box to play with, and in there she finds a magic pencil. She draws her platonic house and that night she dreams about it. The next day she adds details, and the next day. The story that unfolds is about the intensification of this dream life and her relationship with the boy she has drawn inside the house. She gets angry with him and draws eyes on the boulders outside the house and scribbles over the bedroom window. It’s a children’s book, so is ultimately resolved happily, but the slip into a magical realist life where the protagonist must solve self induced and frightening problems is a very human trope. We want to feel along with her, but safely, have the thrill of trouble without the groundlessness of real risk.

Meanwhile grey water from the flat above continues to flood into my bathroom and the ceiling and walls around it. I piss away what energy I have emailing and phoning my landlord, and even now, my MP. It goes on for so long that I begin to feel trapped, like the boy at the scribble-barred window. 

cant tell you how bad it feels to constantly tell other artists to come to tumblr, because its the last good website that isn't fucked up by spoonfeeding algorithms and AI bullshit and isn't based around meaningless likes

just to watch that all fall apart in the last year or so and especially the last two weeks

there's nowhere good to go anymore for artists.

edit - a lot of people are saying the tags are important so actually, you'll look at my tags.

#please dont delete your accounts because of the AI crap. your art deserves more than being lost like that #if you have a good PC please glaze or nightshade it. if you dont or it doesnt work with your style (like mine) please start watermarking #use a plain-ish font. make it your username. if people can't google what your watermark says and find ur account its not a good watermark #it needs to be central in the image - NOT on the canvas edges - and put it in multiple places if you are compelled #please dont stop posting your art because of this shit. we just have to hope regulations will come slamming down on these shitheads#in the next year or two and you want to have accounts to come back to. the world Needs real art #if we all leave that just makes more room for these scam artists to fill in with their soulless recycled garbage #improvise adapt overcome. it sucks but it is what it is for the moment. safeguard yourself as best you can without making #years of art from thousands of artists lost media. the digital world and art is too temporary to hastily click a Delete button out of spite

As a reminder that good exists out there, a coworker recently confessed to me that he found out his child is questioning their identity (kid's gender redacted for this post). The kid is keeping it from him, so he can't say anything to them or show that he knows, but he's doing his best to get mentally prepared and educated so that he'll be ready whenever his kid does feel comfortable enough come to him.

For context, this guy is a big, bulky middle aged dude who loves sports and typical outdoor "manly" activities. As his coworker and friend, I know he's a kind and sweet teddy bear of a person, but his kid probably views him as a stern, authoritarian figure, the way most teenagers view their parents. His family lives in a conservative area, so I'm sure between that, their dad's looks and interests, and the fact that their dad is a Figure of Authority, the kid is worried that they won't be accepted.

But you know what? When he found out about his kid, the first thing he did was reach out to his closest queer friend and ask for resources for parents of questioning children. His biggest fears are that his kid will be bullied or discriminated against and won't feel comfortable enough to be themself. His second action was to find himself a mentor in another parent who went the same situation (kid coming out in a conservative town). The other person is preparing him for some of the struggles his kid may face and the fights he may need to take on as a parent to make sure his kid is safe and treated well.

Something I want to emphasize for people focused on language as the primary method of allyship is that when we spoke, he used some outdated terms and thoughts about gender and sexuality. That does not make him bad. These were the terms and thinking used about questioning teenagers when he was growing up and he never needed to learn more current ones. But now that he does have that need, he's throwing himself in head first because that's his kid and he's darn well going to make sure that his kid feels welcomed and has a safe place to be themselves even if they never come out to him.

I USED T0 EAT TRASH WHEN I WAS A GRUB AND THAT'S WHY I'M S0 BAD AT EVERYTHING. AS THE HUGE NERD 0F A M0THERFUCKER WH0 VISITS ME REGULARLY SAYS, G.I.G.0. N0W Y0U KN0W.

The other day someone on Mastodon (I have not managed to re-discover the post. Decentralization plays merry hell with search.) posted simply “CrabGPT”. And I couldn’t help thinking about how natural evolutionary pressures lead to carcinization: how over and over again, different lineages of organism become crabs.

I wondered, could we assist the large language models and large image models to evolve into nature’s perfect form? Could we help the “AIs” become crabs?

They don’t have any factual basis. They don’t know what anything is. Why not teach them that crabs are everything?

Probably we would need to refrain from helpful organizing tags (to facilitate the models believing everything is crab), and it might therefore be a little annoying to fellow users who would prefer to be able to block, say, fanart of the cast of Star Trek as crabs, or slash about your blorbos getting vulnerable with each other during their exoskeletal molts. However, the entire situation is already pretty annoying. And at least this way we would be taking it into our own claws. *clack clack*

🦀

DNA Testing is not Accurate if you Use the Wrong Samples

New Technician has sent me the data for some mouse genotyping. Procedure is long and arduous in that it's for 2 genes and it's a two step process (you have to both amplify the DNA and put it through a digest step to specifically identify the gene variant. You could do it in one step but it's a more strigent process).

This is our third rodeo. It took this technician more than a month to get the results the first time because Christmas break was in the middle and two weeks wasn't sufficient. (I expect a four day turnover).

She just sent me results that said all the mice were wildtype for both genes, completely confident (or indifferent to) her results.

She also failed to either label her data or notice she only sent me results for 4 mice, when I sent samples for 5. I pointed out that the other set was for 4 mice and her results are explained if the ran the tests on the wrong samples.

Having a PhD does not make me smart, it just means I've been here long enough to troubleshoot the careless mistakes, even when I have a cold.

Silicon Valley markets itself as the place where futures are born, and yet tech corporations have no real understanding of where our civilizations are headed. We are wrapping up our Silicon Valley vs. Science Fiction series with some final thoughts on why this might be. Then we talk to AI developer and ethicist-activist Dr. Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League and author of a new book called Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines.

Astarion's Tent

Has anyone paid attention to how Astarion's tent reflect on his personality?

The exteriour side is clean and elegant. There are pillows, a carpet, an expensive mirror, even a fucking plant (headcanon - Astarion is into gardening). His tent is probably the most well-maintained in the whole camp.

But take a look inside (it's difficult since he blocks the entrance) - it's a mess.

There are empty bottles with blood (as if he is an alcoholic who doesn't bother to take out the garbage). There is no bed (Halsin is also an Elf but he has a bedrol in his tent) - it's just wooden plank, a piece of rag for a blanket and some sorry excuse for a pillow. His tent is a mess like this room who belongs to an addict or a depressed person. It's dirty, full of garbage. And he doesn't have a comfortable place for sleep!

All the good things (new and clean) he has are put out in the front to others to see. When people pass by they see this beautiful picture of a gedonist-magistrate who wants everything to be in order. Dare to look inside - it's a completely different picture.

I have SO many thoughts about everything and they are in no kind of order yet, so here's just some quick little bits in the meantime!

I am not normal about any of these characters!