The present is a gift the past gives the future.

I had my suspicions that this card game (compile: main 1) used undisclosed AI art for it's cards, but in actuality, the artist was specifically asked to evoke AI art as shorthand for the game's premise. first time ive personally seen something intentionally try & capture the vibe

It's a head to head card game where you're playing as two artificial intelligences gaining consciousness and competing to shape reality in the image of your "protocols" that are shown here, i do enjoy how the artwork evokes the extremely broad abstract ideas of the protocols while having that "name one object in this image" vibe that AI art often has. i dunno, i think we're in the future, new images and aesthetics are being fostered. thoughts?

The sceptic in me thinks "trying to homage AI images" could make for a good cover, but I think it's certainly possible to take the averaging out of an Image Generator's vibes and use them as a springboard for something more.

As a total aside I got back into drawing just a few years ago partly because of these Image Generators cropping and being played with. It came very much from a mindset of "well if computers can make pictures then I can definitely make pictures".

I remember doodling this image late last year because another friend of mine was spinning up literally 100s upon 100s of AI images of the same few rabbit characters.

One of the things you very quickly learn as an adult who's prepared to take kids' opinions on media seriously is that you're never too young to be a pretentious hater. Obviously your average six-year-old possesses neither the vocabulary nor the analytic framework to criticise a film as derivative or failing to commit to its own thematic premise, but sometimes these are very clearly the criticisms they're grasping for!

(Sometimes it's actually kind of impressive. Like, buddy, you've seen a dozen movies in your entire life and already you're dismissing this one as derivative slop. You're right, of course, but how the hell did you arrive at that conclusion?)

Pattern recognition evolution memes comes to mind.

Interactions that probably happened in California at least once

He was going to ask if you wanted to watch Megalopolis

How the heck do you guys focus enough to listen to more than 30 seconds of the same song? It gets so repetitive!

i usually get the vibe of a song from the first couple beats then throw my phone under a pillow to smother the noise

i simply look at the title and genre, and then derive the actual song using dialectics

I only read the sheet music. The translation to an auditory medium only corrupts it.

Almost 44 minutes, one song.

My memories of stuff the other guys do are there, I don't completely black out, but it's kinda like trying to remember what happened in a dream. Like I was there, I was "me" at the time, but it's slipping away & it stops feeling like me eventually. I can remember what I did if I really try, but it takes effort. 8 hours ago feels about as impersonal as like, those memories where im getting beaten as a kid.

i dont know if its getting worse because im noticing it for the first time, or because the other guys have gotten more confident after being noticed. i'm at the precipice of something, i'm gonna fall off, i need to speak with someone before it happens.

the worst evidence so far was realizing that amber was capable of having good normal non-depressive non-manic days without me. things won't be going my way this time

I think my biggest "OH this is really happening" moment was going to bed with an Alter fronting and then waking up with that same Alter fronting. Very disorienting.

Wishing ya'll well.

I enjoyed watching The Big Short with CJ so much that I said “let’s watch another finance drama movie!” and started up The Wolf of Wall Street, and had to stop 40m in. It leans so hard into the misogynistic sexual excess and drugs and money thing, and it feels like it invites you to leer at it in enjoyment while also condemning it in a superior way.

And, well, heck yes I wanted to leer in enjoyment! I want to look at a new workplace’s glass elevator being christened by two people fucking in it. I like the parade of hookers. I like watching the insane parties. There’s a reason I made it 40m in. I’m extremely in touch with my affinity for this kind of crude excess and know it’s not uncommon.

Before watching, I skimmed the Wikipedia page for it and read this won a bunch of awards and is ‘considered a good film’. I think this is a shame. The movie seems like a dirty little trick: the equivalent of the story of the artist who paints a naked woman because he’d like to see one, puts a mirror in her hand, and titles it ‘Vanity’ to feign a moral.

Oh, wow, this is a great take/analogy.

I kind of liked Wolf of Wall Street, but it was far from my favorite Martin Scorsese film. I do think to my mind it's quite difficult to depict the allure of excess without reveling in it a little bit. If there was no satisfaction to be derived from this lifestyle then so many fairly sharp people wouldn't be drawn to it.

My favorite part had to be early on in the film, when they're passing around the pamphlets to train fellow stockbrokers. The veritable Wolf is giving a speech specifically invoking Ahab when and the pamphlet as their harpoon for customers.

What fascinated me the most about this particular line was that I've read Moby Dick, and Ahab is not exactly the sort of fellow I would really recommend emulating on any kind of way. He is a very angry and miserable fellow. It clicked then though, the Wolf is doing the same thing to Ahab that people watching glamorous edits of all the excess depicted in the film (without the inevitable downfall) are doing. They are seeing awful and miserable people and picking them as a figures worth emulating by only looking at some small admirable core of them.

With Ahab it is his will.

With Wolf it is his charisma.

While I think AI as a tutor tool has plenty of useful applications, people talking about it 'transforming education' just show their complete lack of educational experience every time they do. We have google! And books! The barrier to student learning, for many years now, has not been their ability to find knowledge, to discover the correct answer. Its that learning is hard and often boring and also confusing and they dont want to do it; and a human being in front of them both motivates them and is someone who can understand their errors and guide them on fixing it.

You sit a 14 year old in front of an AI tutor and tell it to 'teach' them and they will turn it off and play video games more than half the time - its pretty much the same as telling them to study the textbook. That is the binding constraint on education.

Give it another few years and they'll just trick the AI into making a game for them from scratch.

Rene Magritte: The Glass Key (1959)

Being a very poor painter, Magritte's works seldom resembled what he intended them to. This attempt at a glass key ended up looking like a rock in a mountain landscape.

Other mispainted works included his attempt at a self portrait, which looked like a slice of ham with an eyeball; his painting "Heartstrings" which resembled a cloud in a glass; and perhaps his most famous failure, "This is Not a Pipe," which sadly very clearly showed a pipe.

Possibly my favorite Jack Kirby panel ever

Need more unhinged color palettes in media. This clashes so good.

Hate it when this happens.

Saddest thing ever is reading an academic paper about a threatened or declining species where you can tell the author is really trying to come up with ways the animal could hypothetically be useful to humans in a desperate attempt to get someone to care. Nobody gives a shit about the animals that “don’t affect” us and it seriously breaks my heart

“No I can’t come out tonight I’m sobbing about this entomologist’s heartfelt plea for someone to care about an endangered moth”

This is how I learn there's a moth whose tiny caterpillars live exclusively off the old shells of dead tortoises.

[Image description: text from a section titled On Being Endangered: An Afterthought that says:

Realizing that a species is imperiled has broad connotations, given that it tells us something about the plight of nature itself. It reminds us of the need to implement conservation measures and to protect the region of which the species is a part. But aside form the broader picture, species have intrinsic worth and are deserving of preservation. Surely an oddity such as C. vicinella cannot simply be allowed to vanish.

We should speak up on behalf of this little moth, not only because by so doing we would bolster conservation efforts now underway in Florida, [highlighting begins] but because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing. [end highlighting]

But is quaintness all that can be said on behalf of this moth? Does this insect not have hidden value beyond its overt appeal? Does not its silk and glue add, potentially, to its worth? Could these products not be unique in ways that could ultimately prove applicable?

End image description]

because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing

I was so inspired by this I made it into a piece of art for a final in one of my courses for storytelling in conservation

I hope they’re doing well.