It’s nice to imagine we can keep living exactly as we are and not have to pay up for any of the consequences of our actions. Maybe there will be a tech miracle to save us and the non-consenting species we are taking with us, but that hope, belief, and gamble is not a solution to the problem we have.

We have the solution, we know what it is, and we know how to execute it, we just lack the will. Until that miracle appears we should try to actually fix the problem.

Waiting for a tech solution to appear is like standing on the beach after an earthquake as the tide goes out praying that it won’t come back in.

Edit: Or maybe eating a nice dinner out and continuing to order hoping they forget your bill or someone else pays it. Either way it’s not doing a thing to make the problem better.

These are great examples of that part of art AI can not capture.

The first was painted by a donkeys tail in the presence of a legal witness, sent to exhibition under a false name, and when it began to be recognized at the time by critics and media, the artist said “aha! You literally like art that a donkey can make, your taste is terrible and so is popular art”.

The second is a physical can of the artists feces (I don’t know if anyone has opened the can to be sure), this time with no explicit agenda. What did the artist mean by this, was it another criticism of art critics, was it a criticism of the commodification of art, or something else entirely?

The last was made as the artist tried to find a religious experience derived from art. He said with this piece he did. I don’t find it particularly compelling, but 100 years ago this rethinking of what art can be was revolutionary enough for Stalin to send him to the camps.

If you only value art for consumption, yes these are exactly the same as me sitting at the computer pressing generate for a few hours. If any of the context is included in your enjoyment of the art, there is no comparison.

I enjoy art for the human aspects, the hundreds of musicians performing a single piece together, the incredible talent and skill on display in a photorealistic painting of a person who died hundreds of years ago, or the incredible mind and life of a person writing a moving essay. I don’t usually enjoy art for the sake of the object or product.

AI generated material robs that intangible spirit, floods the world with meaningless content, and as a consequence makes it more challenging to find art. Even when you sort through the muck and see that photorealistic painting, you aren’t imagining the monk who painted it, you’re looking at the hands thinking I don’t know if this is real or not.

Fortunately that’s mainly online for now, you can still go to a concert or museum to confidently see art, you can opt out of the AI content experience. But this sale symbolizes a further erosion of that separation. It seems inevitable that there will be AI “concerts” and “exhibitions” which will physically take space and money from actual artists and further challenge finding enjoyment from art and artists for people like me.

I understand others enjoy art differently, as a consumable product for example, and those people may not be as bothered by AI content. I do hope those people understand that it does impact other people around them and that the generated material is coming at a cost, if not to them, to those people (and the environment, and the artists).

I’m pretty sure Seattle has an ordinance making changing a park to something else very challenging to impossible. Technically golf courses are parks, though I’d argue terrible ones, making it a much smaller lift to turn them into better (actual) parks and let the golfers go out of town.

I’d just recommend against NVIDIA GPUs if you don’t want to tinker, I’m sure it’s not as bad as it was back when I had NVIDIA cards, but faffing around trying to get NVIDIA drivers to play nice was the bane of my existence (and where I was forced to learn the most about Linux).

Oh and the screen tearing was a nuisance too that went away as soon as I got an AMD card.

Looks like you got lots of great advice on the OS. Good luck, and enjoy whatever you end up doing!

It’s a really good video. He did a very good job putting words to my thoughts too, I’ve struggled to say why I don’t like AI beyond “it’s not very good at things”, but as he touches on in the video, that is only one small part.

I was also very surprised by the 3% statistic, I think I watch nearly everything from my subscriptions, the recommended is either completely useless from whatever the algorithm has decided I want or showing me videos I intentionally didn’t watch.

I went and followed him on Mastodon, and in that thread learned you can just add a channel to an RSS feed by using the link to their channel. I’m sure that’s old news to some, but as I already use an RSS app, I’m going to start switching over I think.

I just finished watching the series for the first time the other day. I started out a little skeptical it would have aged well and there’s a few moments that reminded me it came out in the early 90s, but wow what a fantastic show. And what a time to be watching it, some of those newscast episodes hit close to home.

I think it’ll be on my rewatch list too now.

Depending on where you are sweet potatoes are often grown as an ornamental vine but the tubers are literally what you eat. You can grow them in the ground or in pots (I recommend pots so it’s easier to harvest, ymmv). Tomatos, blueberries, herbs, sunflowers, and strawberries are probably pretty easy to get away with too as long as you keep them organized looking.

If you don’t have an HOA and you live in its native range, central north america, the sunchoke is a crazy good source of food. Honestly too crazy, once you start growing it, it’ll be there forever and it’ll try to take over everything, but you’ll have the food there buried waiting for you year round. You can also grow it in pots, just be careful with the tubers and the soil, they will seriously spread out of control.

That’s what I figured too.

If only it was just teenagers, physically grown ass men and women do this too. Have had some I thought were good friends cut me off from talking to them “because I didn’t have an iPhone”.

You aren’t kidding, I have spent the last five days banging my head against cruciball 11 with the vanilla Peglin. Feels like a lot of rng and less about choices as it goes on.

Dicey dungeons is a blast! I have such a hard time with the engineer, I’m sure there’s a trick but haven’t quite sussed it out.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 again after a long hiatus after my raid static disbanded. Only a little bit into the new expac but it’s been great! I think the new daily system has done a good job of getting me to come back with a clear list of things to do and compelling rewards.

I’ve also been playing Peglin, trying to work through the cruciball. Really fun/frustrating/satisfying game.

I’m prepping for my next BG3 playthrough by playing through divinity original sin 1 and probably 2 after. I’ve never played either and I’m really enjoying the challenge so far. I’ve really been into that genre since BG launched, we will see how long it lasts!

Vault hunters is a blast, it’s almost a completely different game set inside Minecraft. I got playing it when they updated the early game and only just put it down for a bit to play baulders gate.
I especially like making farms for a materials that the mod asks for, even if it’s not necessary yet. Just infinite amounts of nearly everything one could want.

I’m pretty hyped, I love the communication from them! I’ve still got so much to do from icebrood and EoD, time to dive back in I guess!

My only worry about the sky scale is how they talk about buffing its movement, it sounds fun but it’s also already the most powerful mount. Hard to imagine a use for our bunny or raptor if we’re zipping over queensdale on our dragon. Guess it matters less if everyone’s got it, no more leaving new folks out.