#coch text

Some people might be fuming and frothing at the mouth already, but the verdict is out.

What I don’t see is why people find it so difficult to accept this fact. After all, they’re quick to admit that TikTok makes you stupid—a claim backed by studies, by the way.

Part of it is that “stupid” can be rather a strong word for some people. It feels permanent and stigmatizing. If I were to be a bit nicer with my words, I’d say ChatGPT harms your cognitive fitness. It dulls your ability to read, analyze (LLMs are not reasoning machines), and form coherent thoughts. I also find the “instant gratification” element of it rather concerning, but this might be a topic for another day. The point is that just as never working out reduces your physical fitness, not exercising your brain and generating answers and content hurts your cognitive fitness. It really shouldn’t be difficult to see why. If I skip leg days, my quad muscles would eventually grow weaker and smaller.

Here is where most people say, “Oh, I’m not against AI! In fact, AI can be awesome if you use it the right way blah blah blah!”

You know what? I’m not going to say it. Someone has to say that what they call AI—which I think is a greatest misnomer—right now kinda sucks for the planet and every living thing on it. The only instance where I think ChatGPT can be sort of helpful is when someone is trying to code. Even this is despised by many mid-level and senior developers who have to deal with bullcrap put out by ChatGPT that their juniors keep turning in. Another possible application of this crap machine is when you have to write a groveling email to someone you don’t care about.

The problem is that none of these cute perks justify products that guzzle energy like some biblical monster. It’s not worth burning up the planet that’s already past boiling point just so some people can code easily—debatable—or write bunch of insincere emails or whatever “smart application” of ChatGPT that people are arguing for.

ChatGPT harms the planet. It also makes you stupid.

There is a culture that tries to scaremonger everyone, especially younger people, to accept and use AI products like ChatGPT. Despite knowing 99 harms it does, people cling onto the hope that there is one upside. I think a significant number of people know consciously or unconsciously, that stuff like ChatGPT is not all that good. But the wider social culture pressures them to “stay open” to “new technological innovations.” Not doing so makes you “fall behind.”

By the way, I always found statements like “blah-blah is here to stay” ridiculous. Facial recognition exists but that doesn’t mean we should agree to governments making it mandatory for all citizens. Likewise, we don’t have to accept ChatGPT as it is now.

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I find myself often thinking about how lucky I was to experience the “old internet.” This isn’t to say that things were perfect back then, but anyone who’s old enough to remember how things were in the early 2010’s would agree to some extent that the online space has gotten worse over the years. It’s not just about people being “more genuine”—people have been faking it since the LiveJournal days—or everything being about money—capitalism has been capitalism-ing since day one—but about the pure quantity of shit online. Yes, there were content farms and low-effort memes in the past as well as toxic internet dramas, but there is so much slop now, especially with AI. You can’t even browse through pinterest or enjoy animal photos without questioning if it’s some AI shit. And I’m not sorry if some people like their animal photos fake and generated, but I like seeing genuine photos of pets or wild animals. Once I realize that the image of a cat punching his human is generated, the allure is gone for me.

Hi, I’m back.

As some of you would know, the fucker* of a president in South Korea threw a coup.**

*Please understand that I like using concise language. “Incompetent, abominable, murderous dictator wannabe” is rather too long, so I would propose using “fucker” instead.

**Some of you might use the phrase “South Korean martial law,” but please understand that the phrase used by the official Korean press—and quite a lot of foreign presses too, actually—as of today is coup d’etat.

So instead of enjoying my time working on shuake comics and Silmarillion art, I’m constantly checking news and going to protests to pull the fucker down instead.

I’m still working on commercial and personal projects, so there will be art in the future, but this is how things are. I hope I can draw some holiday comics though as I can’t let a little fucking megalomaniac interfere with my art practice.

Anyway, if you feel bummed out by lack of comics, you can quietly say, “Fuck you Yoon Suck Yeol. Give me back my shuake/Tolkien artist.”

A recent OC doodle

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The freelance project I’ve been involved in just got pulled without any warning, so I’m unexpectedly free (and jobless) now. Clearly, it’s not a pleasant thing to suddenly have your source of income vanish, especially in this economy. Still, I kind of feel relieved too. I’ve been working without any legit break since 2021. I guess I had Chuseok and New Year breaks, but those are really short and for 2023 and 2024 I didn’t even get those. It’s not like I worked seven days out of a week, but it wasn’t an awesomely balanced life for sure.

I also hated working on the most recent project (this one Korean romance fantasy novel) so much that I’d go to sleep Sunday night feeling depressed that I’d have to look at that thing again next morning. I mean, some might find it weird that someone might find a novel so stressful, but it was such an… unpleasant work. At times, I found myself wondering how the publishers hoped to sell it to the NA market considering the novel’s rather blatant sexist contents and parts which were, well, slightly racist. And believe me, I’m not the most sensitive reader, so if I find something misogynistic, it is really problematic. If anyone wants an example of how this work was problematic, uh, the author often used attempted sexual assault as a way to show just how attractive and enticing the female protagonist was. And no, this was not an adult title but for general audiences.

That said, I’d really love to go back to teaching in uni. I used to teach drawing and comics before I was drawing commercial art and translating romance fantasy work. Not everyone likes teaching, but I always enjoyed working with students and see them go from nervous to confidently presenting their work at the end of the semester exhibition.

It feels like everyone and their great aunt is playing Metaphor except me.

I’ve never felt so much fomo in my life.

To be honest though I wasn’t too hyped when it was first announced or when the characters are revealed but then they showed this.

Now I want the game so bad…

The monster designs in general look awesome. I’ve always liked Atlus monsters which is why I like Megaten series as well.

But ho there’s a catch. If I want to get this game, I have to either get a new PC (expensive) or PS (not as expensive as new gaming PC but still steep). For your information, my current PC is from 2016 and my graphics card is GTX 960. Mind that GTX series is well into its four digit numbers now. My PC also has been exploited for years by me running everything from games to graphics program to Blender rendering. Metaphor might not be of as high end graphic as some AAA games, but I think it might just end my poor dying 8-year-old PC. But then if I want to get a new PC which I think is ultimately a smarter choice than buying PS since I’d need a new PC anyway, Imma have to pay out like $1,800 (I know I can build it for cheaper but I’m not going to use this thing just to play games).

Oh that’s very kind of you to say. I often feel like I don’t have the sweetest opinions though (maybe as sweet as mango habanero? :P).

But I’m glad whatever I did boosted your day!

Here’s my Hogwarts Legacy OC.

And here are some impressions of the game. I like it fine by the way.

Here are HL friends in Persona style btw.

Thanks for supporting my zine!