A Question of Degree

I have many reasons why I will not use those tools, going from lack of accuracy, lack of ethics, and a higher waste of energy.

But my main reason is this:

I will do things the hard way. I will learn how to do things the hard way.

Because AI is a subscription. And when the world is dependant on AI, they will raise the price of that subscription.

And when the company I work for decides that paying for AI is too expensive for their bottom line, they will remove it.

This is the most beautiful scientific diagram I've ever seen.

Goodmorning to the Anthropic Claude AI training scraper that suddenly decided to request 660 thousand pages (exactly the number I had remaining on the starter plan) and brought Pikiwedia down. 

Sudden switch from diverse user agents like chrome, safari, messenger preview to Just Claudebot. I'm not even mad though, this is maybe the funniest thing possible, because I've inadvertently poisoned their training data with thousands of fucked up articles with normal urls. 

Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.

Stratt was a historian. She wasn't just pirating for the sake of entertainment for the astronauts, she was doing a full historical backup of the planet. Who knows how much knowledge and communications ability, how much art and culture and history, how much niche knowledge of how to make specific pieces of modern technology or modern medicines, was lost as the wars for resources isolated everyone, as the death tolls led to the deaths of specialized trade workers and scientists, as the power grids failing across the planet (or cut off, potentially) led to all the cloud servers going dark. Stratt was facing methods of combating extinction and she did her best to ensure that if/when the Hail Mary worked, it would send back not just the hope of the future in the solution to the astrophage, but the restoration of history and culture and knowledge.

however i don't think i've seen people talk about the fact that these "techno-optimists" who are so looking forward to a "techno-utopia" never reference, cite, or allude to star trek, which is the single most influential techno-optimistic piece of media ever created.

and i mean, it's obvious why. star trek isn't just about exploring the stars, discovering new planets, creating cyborgs and computers and all kinds of futuristic technologies.

star trek is about about eliminating scarcity so that everyone can thrive. star trek is about a multicultural future of peace and prosperity for all. star trek is about infinite diversity in infinite combinations. star trek is about finding new life forms who look at the world completely differently than we do and learning from them. star trek is about a globalism that is rooted in humanism and peace. star trek is about providing role models for people (especially kids) who have never seen those who look like them in scifi, igniting their imaginations, and helping them think, "wow, there will be people like me in the future! even if i'm black, a woman, blind, trans, queer, not from the u.s.a., etc.!"

these guys HATE all of those things, and star trek is so explicitly about them that they can't even misunderstand it, misappropriate, or misuse it. so we get palantir, m*sk talking about how much he loves hitchhiker's guide, and j.d. vance naming his venture capital company after one of the rings from lotr. but we don't see anyone naming their robot data or their talking computer after majel barrett or talking about how star trek inspired them to get where they are now. because it didn't inspire them. because its vision was not the one they latched onto.

you also don't hear them citing, say, carl sagan. or hedy lamarr or ada lovelace or rosalind franklin. or any of the other stem-y people who were also deeply humanist and who profoundly love our little blue planet. they only care about stories they can believe are about white dudes accomplishing things through a domination mindset and being oh so special. they're obsessed with jung and campbell and their bullshit ideas about ~hero's journeys~ and anything they can twist to be about their misogynist, racist, ableist, queerphobic, imperialist agenda.

it's well made, well shot, well directed, the music is interesting, the costumes are both thoughtful and subtly period accurate, the sex scenes are intentional and, again, accurate to what hooking up when you're like 18 actually feels like...the actors are of course attractive but they look like real people. the characters are varied and well fleshed out, the acting is really, really strong

so many shows and films shoot and then slot in whatever music kind of fits or could be licenced in the budget after time, but you can tell that the scenes in hr were shot with that specific music in mind. and the same intentional approach runs through the whole thing