Blog

the dastardly curve has harmed me once more

some pet portraits from june!

what the fuck

that thing is eldritch

acquired a dark mode version just to see what it’d look like. oh my god. this map is gorgeous

However, I do think this case is great example of what happens when smart people decide they can use these systems “responsibly.”

Let’s put aside the plagiarism and the energy use for a second (not that these don’t matter, but they’re not relevant to my point at the moment) and pretend these systems were made with entirely properly obtained info and ran on only solar, but otherwise were entirely the same. If you’re a person, you might think “okay, I’m going to only use this to come up with ideas for my next paper: I’m going to do all the research myself and the writing, I’m just gonna brainstorm topics.”

The thing is, even if you’re trying to limit use to just “brainstorming” the chatbot isn’t going to limit itself to just brainstorming. You might ask it “what should I write about involving Greek history” and it may suggest “the plague of Athens” but it’s also going to suggest some “basic info” on the plague of Athens that you might end up picking up and deciding your topic is. It’s going to provide you with “research.” And even if you decide to check that research yourself, that’s still setting you down a specific path you might not have picked organically.

And speaking of double checking its “research”, fact checking is a time heavy process. Not only now do you have to read the original text the bot provided, but you also have to compare it line by line with the summary the bot provided. That’s more time than it would have taken to just read the article by itself. And with any time heavy task, people are going to get lazy. And in original research being lazy might mean skimming a paper or an abstract, chatbots allow you to be lazy without looking at the article at all.

And soon enough, despite telling yourself you were only going to use it for brainstorming, you have offloaded topic generation, research and eventually even drafting because that’s what these bots are intended to do. They are not meant to serve as research tools or help brainstorm or serve as a bouncing off board: they are built to encourage maximum engagement. And that means if you go at them with the best of ethical intentions, they are built to tempt you to use them as much as possible, regardless of whatever line you drew in the sand for yourself.

Being in close contact with people who give a shit and are also witnessing the descent of our country into fascism and ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT is actually mad refreshing in contrast to the pointless noise that is the internet.

You'll make such fast friends if you:

show up

say "where do you need me"

do what they say

have a good attitude

Done. Easy. Volunteering is awesome and will put you right in the lap of the best people in your area. They're the helpers, they're the people Mr. Rogers told you about!

Doing an easy task like potting trees for a community garden or helping at a food bank will also connect you to people who are doing more, like immigrant support or things that tackle more urgent, dangerous issues going on. So you can scale up your involvement easily by just showing up repeatedly.

Or don't scale it up-- maybe you stop at helping at the food bank and you're stacking cans for a few hours. You're feeding your neighbors. That's a load-bearing part of any revolution. (I use that word optimistically.) The people you meet will be the people you lean on when shit gets worse.

AND VICE VERSA, prove that you are someone to lean ON by showing up and helping. Offer things to people. Your skills may be helpful. Already, just because we've done local volunteering, we have made at least 5 or 6 new friends, got a potential firewood connection, and WELL-PAID EMPLOYMENT (??? OMG)

(and free lunches and snacks and fruit trees) And it's healing as fuck to have people genuinely tell you, in the flesh, to your face, "I'm so glad you showed up today. I appreciate you so much. This would have been harder without you." That shit makes you feel AWESOME and REAL and PURPOSEFUL

I am NOT letting you leave this in the tags prev it is so true. Non binary people cant pass because there is no way to pass for us. Passing as ANY GENDER is getting misgendered because it means others assuming we're binary people, and we're not.

One of the first feelings of dysphoria I got was the feeling of "everyone else will perceive me as a binary gender first and there is nothing I can do about it" and I wanted to stop existing at all, to stop having a body and stop being perceived so no one would dictate my identity for me.

Non binary people arent taken seriously on our own oppression, in talking about trans issues we're an afterthought, because if they cant categorize us then they refuse to talk about us. Binary people, cis and trans, get annoyed when we add onto a conversation with our non binary perspective, when we ask to be included in their talks about trans liberation and fighting against gender essentialism. We complain too much and we're too weird and too cringe, we cant use terms like transfem and transmasc without everyone assuming we're basically binary trans people, and binary trans people are so busy pitting transfem and transmasc as opposites while also saying "oh but we include non binary people!" No you dont, your inclusion is only for monogender enben whose gender is static and aligned with the binary. Because talking about only the existance of transfem and transmasc as two opposite exclusive sides is exorsexist as hell.

And dont get me started on how we dont fucking have LANGUAGE, there are so many languages that have no pronouns or neutral words to refer to people, existing in your native country means being misgendered.