they return as the prophecy foretold

you've heard of "quiet quitting," now I'd like to introduce you to the next level, The French Work Ethic:

nuh uh that's mine now

thinking about that time i (an art major) was hanging out with a guy (an engineering major) in college and the conversation got onto the topic of what art is and i said i have a rock solid, completely non-subjective definition that i go by, which he was very interested to hear. so i told him, "art is the product of human expression" and he did NOT like to hear that because that definition did not distinguish between different mediums of expression or quality or purpose of the art. and i told him that beyond that point there is no way to avoid subjectivity in the definition, and that there is no objective way to decide what forms of expressions qualify as art beyond its core purpose -- human expression. he let the conversation die after that

for the record, this conversation happened in the oughts, long before generative AI ever hit the scene, but i was careful to specify the human element in art because at the time i was recently aware of a group of elephants that had been trained to paint images of themselves for the delight of tourists. i knew from the details of this story that the behavior was highly irregular for elephants and they had to be coached to creating any shapes or patterns recognizable to the human eye. most of the paintings were aimless scribbles with a few elephant forms after some time and insistent prodding from the trainer, and i recognized that these paintings were not elephant art, but human art that used a live elephant (plus acrylic paint, brush, and canvas) as a medium

you either get it or you gont