idk what to put here

"If I was watching a video essay and I was like, damn, this is the best fucking video essay I've ever seen, I'm having such a good time watching this video. And then someone said to me, 'do you know that parts of this video were written with a large language learning model?' Immediately I would be like, 'oh, I have no interested in this anymore. This is not a communication. This is a piece of productivity software that I have been fooled into thinking is good. And I don't appreciate that. I would much rather go watch an imperfect, jagged, rough creation from an actual person than this thing that exists basically to boost the ego of the person who made it. (...) Why are you making a creative project? Are you making it because you love making it or are you making it because you like the idea of you making it?"

because I think it gets at the core issue of how gen AI "creations" are mainly a way to get the dopamine hit that comes with putting something out into the world and getting reactions from it, while avoiding any of the work that would come into creating it. and the main issue with that, which he also gets into, is that it doesn't make you better at anything other than using AI, which puts you in a vicious cycle. it doesn't free you, it traps you into looking for the validation of adopting the aesthetic of artistry without making art.

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An earlier depiction (c. 2020) of Apollo as a girl clad in a simple tunic and playing with other children. Figures are smiling and the image is brightly colored, indicating a celebratory outlook toward knowledge of the future.

My relationship to him and his content was vague positive feelings about nerdy videos he made probably like two decades ago now. I hadn't really kept up since

Then the knitting video came out and I noticed that from being in knitting circles. Some suspected that he and his team had used AI in the making of it - since some of it read like a summary of a particular page that talks about nalbinding and knitting - and some of the things they said about knitting was actually only true for nalbinding

And so I mentally reclassified him as someone who sounds knowledgeable on topics that I don't know about, and misses the important parts on topics I do know about so probably not a good source on anything really

And then recently a video came out that was in such a GPT cadence that people thought he was actually reading back part of the prompt. He admits to using AI, but says that the particular line wasn't actually in the script. He just talks like ChatGPT now

I'm still trying to find nuance in my responses to AI slop. One of my questions to myself (that I don't actually think I'm going to spend the time to answer) is: "Was his work always slop and I only just noticed because slop has specific tells now?" Or in other words, is this a case of me developing better bullshit discernment with age?

The other is that holy shit LLMs are just perfect for increasing atomisation. He clearly had decent communication skills at some point in his life in order to get where he is. But now he's talking like the stochastic parrot and not noticing how weird and offputting that is

And lastly, I think there's a certain type of person, millennial especially, particularly poised to fall into an LLM hole. They're using the LLM to do work, not as a therapist so I wouldn't call it AI psychosis.

Others have talked about how LLMs give incompetent people the feeling of competence - but I don't think this is the case I'm seeing either. I'm seeing people who definitely had competence and expertise, but moved into more management/coordination roles. And suddenly LLMs give them the same dopamine rush of actually doing and making again. Instead of talking to people and explaining the work they talk to a machine. And it has a similar feedback loop to gambling. They still need to engage their expertise to check and refine output, so it's not just consistent rewards. But it does have that gambling cadence of just one more punt/prompt and you'll get the reward

And as a result they're just kind of grumpy and defensive when pulled away from the LLM. They're worse at collaborating with and communicating with people. Because effective management and collaboration is hard, people are also likely to give you imperfect work that you need to check. And it's so much like watching someone with a gambling addiction (including the belief that they're smart enough to not be like the other people)

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"Tutorial" on how to draw an OC with dwarfism (well, some of it).

Boring tired disclaimer: Keep in mind that this is an introductory "drawing" "tutorial" and has some generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. Which happens to be true for everything in general.

You are heavily encouraged to do your own research because this does not contain everything you should know before making a character with any type of dwarfism.

Consider supporting me on ko-fi if you find this to be helpful.

Of course that sweater looks weird on me, I’m a horse, not a human! I can barely get my hooves through the sleeves, and it bunches up over my withers and doesn’t reach my fetlocks, and there’s no accounting for my hindquarters. Or my forequarters either

One of the chapters I can't stop thinking about is the one about Anne the Kelpie. It's kind of impressive how well it illustrates the different kind of love people have for animals. And how someone that loves an animal isn't necessarily an animal lover. If that makes sense.

When Senshi calls out Anne what he says is "Don't worry Anne's Harmless" but she isn't, she's a wild animal.

Marcille immediately reacts positively about it thinking it's cute she accepts the treat Senshi has for her. And hers and Chilchuck's reaction to Senshi wanting to cross the river on her back is more surprise while Laios immediately realizes how bad of an idea it is.

But Laios is the animal monster lover so how come when he finally is faced with a "docile" monster he doesn't react positively like the others? Marcille even calls him a monster. That's because Laios loves monsters, and Senshi loves Anne.

I've seen this attitude around me several times, where people love a specific animal but what they love is their idea of that animal, they don't really know them because they don't love the animal part of them.

It becomes a "this one is special because I love them" that can quickly become an issue for the animal as much as it is for the person. It's something unfortunate I see time and time again irl.

Anne wasn't wicked, Anne wasn't mean, Anne didn't trick him. Anne was a wild animal and Senshi loved her as Anne but not as a kelpie.

She acted on instinct, maybe she did love Senshi in the way kelpies can love, but animals are still animals and must be respected and treated as such. Climbing on top of Anne's back was the equivalent of putting your arm inside a alligator's mouth, the mouth is gonna close because that's what they're designed to do.

The real life equivalent I see the most of "I love this animal but I don't love the animal part of them" is with dogs. If you insist on loving an animal without acknowledging they ARE an animal they might hurt you, you might hurt them, it will only end in grief.

The best way you can love an animal is by understanding they're an animal.

That is all to say I don't mean that the love Senshi felt for Anne wasn't real or that it's all his fault. He couldn't have known with the information he had and unfortunately it came down to the worst outcome.

He doesn't say he'll stop using it.

He thinks that his continued use of it as a critic gives his criticism more weight with AI C-suite Dudes, rather than realizing that his willingness to use AI despite being aware of its flaws is a statement in and of itself: AI doesn't need to change because even people who know it's bad will use it anyway.

I personally hate any kind morality thought policing. I'm not Catholic or religious and I do not feel guilty over my thoughts. You are not an inherently evil person because you saw two athletes in an interview and went "Hmmm...... what if...." The Feds are not going to come banging down your door because you wrote about one band member dicking down the other and sent it to your friend.

Wondering about other people's lives is very human. Being nosy about their personal lives is very normal. People have been writing fiction about other people's lives since the dawn of time. Some people even manage to write New York Times Bestselling Books that are "historical fiction" or "alternate reality." It does not make you inherently bad to be curious about the details of someone's personal life. That's being human. Being nosy is kind of fun.

The problem, however, comes with the ways in which people engage with it, and involve the real people in this. Harassing an musician's real girlfriend because it doesn't fit into the RPF ship. Showing up at real sporting events holding signs about how certain teammates should kiss. Trying to get actors to sign art of them fucking their coworker. Flooding social media with comments using the celebrity's full name and speculation. There's a line, there's a fourth wall, and there's fandom etiquette.

I hate the question of "Is RPF ethical" because it feels like morality thought policing. Post your fics on locked accounts, censor someone's name when you tweet about it, blow up your groupchat with hundreds of "DID YOU SEE THE WAY THEY LOOKED AT EACH OTHER??" texts. It's not inherently evil to wonder what other people are doing when they're out of the spotlight. Kill the cop in your mind.

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"

On top of this they don't have sexual organs. This is the one that really fucked everyone up. The ancient Greeks said mad shit, one old timey English(?) guy spent years dissecting thousands and thousands of eels and never found their sexual organs.

Anyway, what happens is, when they're done fucking around in europe they say "right. Time for fuck!" and then fuck off out into the ocean and spend months swimming across the god damn Atlantic to over near the Americas. Then their digestive systems fully dissolve and THEN they develop sexual organs.

Why? You ask? Why do these sentient noodles swim half way accross the god damn world to fuck? Well the answer is easy really.

Pangaea.

Yea. Turns out when they first started off, all the contenants were right beside each other so it wasn't that far a trip. Over millions of years as the contenants spread out they just kinda went 'wow, it feels like this trip gets a little bit longer every time'. They weren't wrong and they sure as shit didn't stop.

So, yea, turns out that not only are the slippy guys in the Themes the same as the slippy guys the Mediterranean, but they're also statistically older than you and at the end of their life they fuck off over the ocean for about 5000 miles so they can loose their guts to grow dicks and pussys.

@trickstertime ??? the way this is actually all fucking ture???