this is stupid

The one thing about Al that most people don't seem to get, the really critical thing, is that this whole thing isn't a "tech miracle" it's just the wal-mart scam. When wal-mart moves into town, the first thign they do is they run a bunch of sales, for years and years.

not because they care. Not because they just really wanna help. But because they really want to drive every single store that sells the same things they sell out of business. And because they don't really want to (and can't really compete) on the quality front, they do this by just leveraging deep pockets to offer really, really, really cheap prices. They do two things with this: First, they close every single other business that sells the things they sell. Second, they manage to get everyone used to shittier versions of the stuff they used to have higher standards on - it may not be as good, but hey, it's cheap, and who can complain these days?

Al art costs a LOT to make, and it costs way way way more to build the machine models that make it, and this money all goes straight to creating a bunch of waste power, heat, and pollution. It's the anti-environmentalist effect your mother told you about. But it's virtually free to you to use right now, even for the paid services. Do you know why?

Because they want you to use it. They're trying to kill off every source of news writing, picture painting, song singing, book writing, movie making, library storing, lesson teaching, code writing, information sharing, community building, thought thinking they can POSSIBLY manage to replace with worse (but cheaper) versions that can run through machines they run

and then they can charge you for it, and get BACK some money for the billions and billions and billions of dollars that they keep pouring into this stuff.

The people who build this stuff aren't your friend. This product isn't cool. It's not "no big deal" when you share an Al thought, or project, or message - it's about you willingly hopping on board with the people who want to kill everything you love so they can run a zombie robot version of it that they can rent to you later when it's all you have left. this isn't a "conspiracy". It's not secret. It's just the fucking plan and it's right out there in the open and these people even say it out loud if you'd start listening.

They want to get you hooked in AI as your main search engine and then charge advertisers to determine the results when you ask for the best new smartphone.

They want to get you hooked on putting all your e-mails through AI and then charge companies for your data, your most private thoughts.

And of course they want to get states, military and big coorporations hooked on AI and then charge them a fortune. So your taxes go to an AI that decides which neighborhoods to police, who to accuse of insurance fraud, and who to kill by drone (already all happening now).

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

Like, seriously, women should be educated about their own bodies.

So if you're on the other side of 45 and suddenly everything is twice as difficult, you get more migraines, your blood pressure goes funny, you can't sleep and you feel like your entire psyche is unstable, you might be experiencing perimenopause. My gyn was like,oh, like think of it like reverse puberty, your entire body rearranges itself. I was like, Great, nobody ever told me it can be this bad. My GP didn't even ask me about my period or hormone levels or anything. He just told me I was probably depressed and sent me to a psychiatrist, who also didn't ask about my period or my hormones. If I hadn't experienced something akin to postpartum depression and therefore know what my body does when its hormones are out of whack, I would have had no idea.

Seriously, nobody tells you how much hormones fuck you up as a woman. Nobody prepares you for this.

I've been trying to talk openly about what's fucking me up right now, and I've discovered that it's a lot more common than I thought it was. I feel like every phase of life finds another way to fuck women over. Puberty: have fun with your period as it adjusts itself. Childbirth: prepare for a hormonal rollercoaster. PMS: oh, it can get BAD. Like, BAD. After birth: hormones out of whack for months, maybe longer. Perimenopause: can fuck up everything. Like literally everything. Osteoporosis is also hormonal. Post menopause: supposedly things get better, but they don't have to.

And I feel like we're left pretty alone dealing with all of it. And we know so little about it that we're left wondering why suddenly nothing works anymore. So we flail about and feel terrible about our sudden inability to cope with life, when it's in fact our bodies screwing with us. Again.

This was not Sith against Jedi. This was not light against dark or good against evil; it had nothing to do with duty or philosophy, religion or morals. It was Anakin against Obi-Wan. Personally. Just the two of them, and the damage they had done to each other.