𝚎𝚟𝚎

can't really blame rf kuang for being so on the nose, literal, and explicit on her messaging in babel. I mean she was really screaming her message through the pages. but can't really be mad at that after decades of sff authors using metaphors and allegories and allusions and parallels to criticize capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism, and to emphasize the importance of resistance—armed resistance. and every single time people would cheer on the fictional resistance, yet would still side with the oppresors in real life.

Babel, by RF Kuang, is fun cause the first half is sad but also really sweet and hopeful and relatively low stakes and you’re like “aw this is nice, found family, thanks” and then suddenly it’s the most intense most emotionally heart wrenching book you’ve ever read in your life so that’s cool I guess.

I feel so insane about ai. I've had face-to-face conversations with people who use it for therapy, who use it to calculate the safety of pill interactions, who use it for all their emails and grant applications and legal documents and academic papers and finance sheets and for every single question they have about the world, and if you tell them about the ecological costs they just laugh and say "I guess I've used a lot of water." and I've been in multiple gatherings of 10+ people where I'm THE ONLY PERSON who doesn't use chatgpt. it's turning me into a ranting raving pariah, because how don't you people see??? why don't you understand??????? this bullshit didn't exist five years ago, you absolutely do not need it, and it is destroying everything

ten years ago you were so scared of such different things, but you survived them anyway. the same goes for five years ago and two years ago. everything that has ever felt like a hurdle, you’ve passed through. so be afraid, identify your fears, and then allow yourself to remember that in just a little while, this will be another thing that you have overcome.

no, spotify, i don't want to use ai to "turn my ideas into playlists". i already fucking do that with my brain and hands and i do it for fun. what, should i get ai to pet my cat for me? to play my silly games for me? to spend time with my beautiful wife for me? how about i rend you asunder