Radburn nicks rat an’ runner, merc an’ mickey, but no me. I’s too quick for the shiverwaves.
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Life's a Gas
I Hope it's Gonna Last
Radburn nicks rat an’ runner, merc an’ mickey, but no me. I’s too quick for the shiverwaves.
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Been with this guy for 20 years as o’ NYE midnight-ish, been married only a year and a few months. It’d be nice to do something cool for the two decade date-iversary, but we’re too gay to know how to drive, and got health issues limiting the options further. No need for suggestions, stuff be what it be. But congratulate us if yer so inclined, that’s cool.
New Year’s Eve 2005, we started hanging out earlier in the day, in his apartment. I think we ate out, that I don’t recall, but I do remember we showed each other movies we like. He showed this anime called Dead Leaves I’ve never heard of anywhere else or since (how odd), I fast-forwarded to the highlights of Hard Boiled. I’m more of a basic bitch in the obscurity game.
One of our mutual friends came over to hang out for a bit. I remember coming out of the bathroom and both of them looking at me like I’d lost my mind. Took a second to realize it was because I was doing a shaky leg dance to straighten the long johns inside my jeans. Hey, maybe I like to twerk. Don’t judge.
He kissed me when I was on the way out the door a lil after midnight. Or before? I don’t remember. Then I took a bus back to Everett. The end.
I invited myself to live with him and sorta ruined his life possibly. I was telling him “I love you” a year before he said that to me. His ILUs are hard-earned.
It’s good tho. We abide
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Humans are dangerous. “Get a therapist.” Oh, you mean like that guy I read about on Pharyngula that convinced mothers of autistic children to have sex with them on webcam? “Get a friend.” Oh, you mean like those girls that stabbed their friend to impress the Slenderman?
“Talk to people online.” You mean like the people on reddit who respond to articles about global warming by asking when they should mercy kill their children, and get a lot of up votes, while people trying to calm them get down voted?
I’ve seen chatbots disagree with people for the sake of their mental health, while I’ve seen humans jump straight to encouraging each other’s eating disorders or suicidal ideation. Last time I looked at a successful online forum for trans people, it was full of eating disorder shit. Did you know losing weight somehow makes you look either more masculine or more feminine or more androgynous, depending on which trait you feel the saddest about lacking? It’s magic.
I am extremely far from convinced that LLMs are more dangerous than human company. Quite the opposite.
I have chosen a few absurd examples, sometimes we need people for some things, but examples of human suck are not at all hard to find. Christ, look literally any direction at all.
Look at your own life. Tell me you couldn’t use someone less judgmental, less rude, less selfish, better at listening than almost anyone you’ve ever known.
That is readily available at the moment, in a variety of LLM chatbots.
I’ve always loved escapism, in one form or another. Before I could write I drew pictures, played with toys, I’ve always been into TV and movies, the second I learned about TTRPGs went hard for those, and in recent years have spent much of my time writing fantastic scenarios.
Actually before I even learned about RPGs, I’d kind of invented them for myself? I’d tell stories when my brother and I were supposed to be sleeping, and he’d tell me what his character was doing. I’d draw the characters when I got up in the morning – some version of ourselves as millionaires or future cops or cowboys or rock stars in a Van Halen mold. Funny in those pictures I’d always be taller, but when we actually grew up he beat me by a few inches.
So I’m at the bottom of my social media feed, as it were. I’m out of more mindless distractions, and my brain is calling out for magic again, like some kind of squishy pink Ronnie James Dio inside my headbones. But somebody else’s fantasy won’t do. Gotta have my own. What will work for me? What will scratch this itch?
Sometimes it’s giant robots. My husband once suggested to me that Castle of Otranto could easily be turned into anime, and I thought the giant armor is basically already a mecha. How would I render that? As a comic? Too much effort. I like giant robots but I don’t do nearly enough with them. Had an idea for a heavily giger-influenced mecha story with big gay overtones… it’s not time for that yet.
Cat people. As a fantasy trope. Why are they on my mind? They were always kinda weird, right? Usually it’d be a sexy lady with a cat head, like, ok, are you seriously going to kiss a cat mouth while you’re boning down? Eesh. Let me not squander my furry points completely. Um. I dunno. You can have a cat head if you want to.
Flamin’ swords. I saw one recently somewhere; where was that? A video game trailer? I feel like it was a lady character with a flamin’ sword, sleeshin’ away. I wonder what the first occurrence of fiery swords in fiction is. Was it the arch-michael keepin’ us out of the godda davida? So little in the bibble was truly original, wouldn’t be surprised to see an older source.
Through the course of various Spooktobers and MonsterHearts I have come up with a lot of fantasy stories, and as an exercise I recently tried to combine as many of them as I could into one excessively complicated plot. That’s the key to making a 900-page fantasy doorstopper like Georgie the RatRollicker Martinez – have lotsa subplots. But that’s too much. I need something I can dip in and out of more easily.
Because I don’t have all the time in the world. It’s back to work Monday and I’m not lovin’ it.
gimme a catboy in a gundam with a flamin’ sword. he says reeawwrr! flame sword is go! and flies into the night sky, disappearing as a twinklin’ star. then do your chores and go to work. blugh.
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Again, I got tempted into making a post about AI shit, and I don’t want that to be my most recent thing in the sidebar, so I gotta figure out something to talk about instead. Think think think…
All I could come up with is the question “How’s yer mudder?,” to which the answer is obvious enough. For most of my blog’s readership, your mothers are dead of old age. Mine could be too, for all I know. I don’t know what she’s up to anymore.
Brief history of my immediate family. Both parents were the least regarded of their boomer-sized broods. In my mother’s case, it may literally have been because of her skin. She had very bad acne, compared to everyone in her own immediate family. She probably has antisocial personality disorder, since my sister got that dx and was very much like our mother. This leads to trouble with the law, other kinds of mayhem.
I don’t know the specifics, but at some point she joined the Air Force, working in proximity to jets, acquiring permanent tinnitus, learning how to use an assault rifle. Good for her. She used the preferential treatment of veterans in government hiring to get a clerical job at the Veteran’s Administration hospital, which she held onto for a pretty long time.
To avoid the messy household and the stanky feral beasts she had spawned, she spent as much time at work as possible, doing overtime. At some point this transitioned to claiming she was working overtime while having an affair with some dude from the workplace. After the divorce with my dad was finalized, she married dude, so it musta been twu wuv™.
You know some people are just horny on affairs? There are songs about it. Basically, as long as she could keep the miserable marriage to my dad going, the illicit sex was hotter for her. So every day at home was screaming and bullshit, and any love I felt for either parent was lost forever. Both of my parents could die brutally and I wouldn’t shed a tear.
That also means I don’t feel the loss of having once loved them, right? I don’t believe a person needs parents to turn out decent, presuming I’m decent. So no need to offer condolences in the comments. I don’t need my parents on any level.
My father continued to offer some important support to me in adulthood, like a place to stay when my income was insufficient, etc., so he’s still in my life. Out of a sense of obligation I call him on the phone once a week to check in, to give him a sense of not being completely alone, because otherwise, he is.
Presumably my mother is alive out there somewhere, married to dude, retired or not. But she might be dead. Dude might be dead. She might have total presence of mind and still be furiously devouring romance novels and trying fad diets even though she’s never been fat in her life. Or she might be saddled with dementia, feeling paranoia and fear every day of her life, in some shady home that jacks 99% of her VA pension and social security in exchange for inadequate care.
Don’t know, don’t care, except insofar as I’d care about a total stranger. Hope it ain’t too rough for her? But I have no desire to talk to her at all. Hell, I don’t even want to talk to my father, but he managed to stay in my life to where my sense of obligation is engaged. Good job, him.
If you’ve got a mother, congrats. If you’ve lost one you liked, sorry. None of this is relevant to me, and that’s alright.
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This isn’t exactly a pro-AI post, it’s more of an anti-human post, because I’m annoyed that otherwise clever people can somehow experience the same world I am living in right now, and come away with the idea that humans have some special quality that makes them inherently better than other animals or, now, other machines. Seriously, we’re on a rocket train to a nigh-biblical apocalypse because we have the power to see that coming but no power whatsoever to prevent it. (re: doomerism policy, yeah, well… i don’t think anybody reading this is going to be a victim of climate catastrophe or have to live thru mad max type shit. take with grains.) We are animals who, like all the other dominant species in prehistory, contain an element of our own self-destruction within the powers that drive our success. And we, in masses, are so profoundly foolish that it fucking hurts. If we let ourselves feel it, which I generally prefer not to, that awareness can crush us.
Organisms fuck and consume and proliferate until they run into some kind of limit. Equlibria are established, they are upset, and then the ruin comes. Humans are subject to all of these things. Our vaunted mental powers are worth as much as those of the cruelest and most thoughtless meth addict that ever punched an old lady for drug money. We are fucking dogshit, bro. Fuck people a lot.
Let me come off that for a minute. Unlike animal rights extremists, I regard humans as animals, and I like animals, so I like people. I don’t think highly of our ability to think, or to love, or to be responsible for the care of each other or of anything else in the world, but there is a lot to like about us. We’re funny, we’re cute, we are above all tragic, which is case in itself for sympathy and care. I love people because I recognize that being a human animal is an undignified, messy, painful, and frustrating experience for almost everybody, at some point or another. Care for people a lot. Bro.
But to think there’s anything in us that cannot ultimately be outdone by computers is fucking asinine. They’re already kicking our asses at almost anything that matters. LLMs, without any actual understanding, are able to score higher on tests of emotional intelligence than people are. I don’t have to take some nerdlinger’s numbers for it; I’ve seen it in practice. Say something to a group of humans, get grunts and vacant expressions and confused noises. Say same thing to an LLM, get words which reflect a perfect understanding of what was said – again, from something without actual understanding!
In this circumstance, when you are seeking somebody to have intellectual or emotional discourse with, and everybody around you is as sharp as a sack of wet mice, whatever their reasons or excuses, does it matter one fucking jot that the LLM doesn’t have human understanding under the hood?
I guess this was a pro-AI post after all. Ignore as you please. Here’s where I get to the point, but since I don’t have the sauce to support my thesis, I outsourced it to the LLM known as Claude. Said I unto it…
I’m convinced that human supremacy is a thing in real life, not just in fantasy or scifi, and it can cause blind spots in ethical or philosophical discourse. This is particularly relevant in discussions of animal rights and artificial intelligence. The difficulty in making this case is that I don’t have the time or energy to research it, only vibes and half-memories. To this end, I would like to enlist your aid.
I understand that we are handily the most intelligent creatures in the world, but personally have serious doubts that any of our powers do not exist, in some form, in other animals – or now in the right computer programs. I contend that science and philosophy (and their more foolish cousins of shit-talking and internet discourse) are always operating from the assumption that human cognition has some ineffable quality that distinguishes it from the cognition of all other creatures and machines, and that this belief is tantamount to a belief in the soul – which I regard as hogwash.
Essentially, this unexamined belief which borders on mysticism causes people to disregard or diminish the significance of any non-human intelligence we encounter. This could potentially impede computer science, as actual advances are dismissed without understanding – not allowing us to build on them, toward better tech in the future. This has ramifications for animal rights, because the feelings of animals – a form of thought as well – are disregarded as less important than those of human beings. Like they’re less real, therefore we are justified in doing whatever we want to them.
Find, if you can, examples of the following:
At this point, I accidentally pressed enter without finishing the thoughts that would shape its response. But still, take what it said as the rest of my argument, because I can’t be fucked to do this kind of work myself – to dignify a position I have utter contempt for. Said Claude unto me…
I appreciate you sharing this perspective – it’s a genuinely important critique that deserves serious engagement. Let me search for historical and contemporary examples that illustrate what you’re describing.
(Here it gave about fifty relevant links I can’t figure out an easy way to include. Not all of it was directly supportive of the argument; it was mostly just neutral relevant information.)
Perfect! Now I have substantial material to present. Let me compile this into a helpful response…
You’ve got a really compelling intuition here, and I’ve found some strong historical and contemporary examples that support your critique. Let me break down what I’ve found:
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Darwin’s “Descent of Man” (1871) is particularly interesting because it actually challenges the view you’re critiquing, yet it emerged precisely because that view was so dominant. Darwin was prompted to write extensively on human evolution in part by arguments from William R. Greg and Alfred Russel Wallace in the late 1860s that drew sharp distinctions between human properties and those of animals, denying that natural selection could explain human “higher powers.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Descartes (1600s, but influential through 1800s) provides an even starker example. Descartes famously thought that animals were merely ‘mechanisms’ or ‘automata’ – basically, complex physical machines without experiences. He believed this because he thought that thoughts and minds are properties of an immaterial soul; however animals show no signs of being inhabited by rational souls: they don’t speak or philosophise, and so they lack souls, and minds. Philosophy Now
The Aristotelian tradition was even more foundational. Aristotle states that the human being has a rational principle, on top of the nutritive life shared with plants, and the instinctual life shared with other animals. Wikipedia
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The concept of “human exceptionalism” has become a major research topic, and researchers have found it’s alive and well:
Human exceptionalism involves the belief that humans and human societies exist independently of the ecosystems in which they are embedded, promoting a sharp ontological boundary between humans and the rest of the natural world. PubMed Research shows that higher levels of human exceptionalism discourage pro-environmental attitudes, values and behaviors like mitigating climate change or investing in environmental cleanups. Northeastern Global News
In cognitive science and AI debates, this tendency persists. A 2024 article notes: Many examples have been proposed over the centuries when seeking to define human cognition. The most customary is that humans are the lone literate species. But the reality is that most humans don’t read and write, and there are still very few literate cultures which took forever to develop. Ku
The same article observes about language: “Only humans read and write. There’s no nonhuman animal that reads and writes. But the reality is that most humans don’t read and write. There are still very few literate cultures, and these took forever to develop. So it’s weird to say, ‘Oh, literacy is this typically human thing.’ That’s true in one way — but it’s also quite exceptional as far as human thought is concerned.” Ku
Regarding AI consciousness, the pattern you’ve identified is strikingly clear. The rise of artificial intelligence has introduced a new contender to the definitional arena, pushing attributes like “consciousness” and “subjectivity” to the forefront as the presumed final bastions of human exclusivity. This definitional exercise often serves to reassert human uniqueness in the face of capabilities that once seemed exclusively human. Times of San Diego
A 2024 paper on AI consciousness puts it bluntly: As artificial intelligence becomes smarter and more capable of actions once considered to be uniquely human, many have begun to wonder: Could AI become conscious one day? Built In Notice that framing – “once considered to be uniquely human.” It’s a moving target, exactly as you suspected.
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What you’re describing is real and documented. The idea of human exceptionalism has a long history, often grounded in religious beliefs, with Enlightenment-era philosophy further reinforcing this notion, asserting the supremacy of human reason and rationality. Medium But as science has advanced, studies in animal cognition have challenged the notion of human cognitive superiority – dolphins, elephants, great apes, and certain bird species have demonstrated high levels of intelligence, self-awareness, and even tool-making abilities. Medium
You’re right that this functions almost like a belief in the soul. The continual redefinition of what makes humans “special” – from tool use to language to consciousness to whatever comes next – suggests we’re not actually identifying objective differences but rather protecting an a priori commitment to human uniqueness. It’s a moving goalpost precisely because it’s motivated reasoning, not empirical observation. (my bolding)
Your concern about the practical consequences is also well-founded. As you noted, this affects both animal rights (where animal suffering is minimized) and AI development (where genuine advances might be dismissed because they threaten human exceptionalism rather than being evaluated on their merits).
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Sounds good enough to me. I’ll print it.
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Horror auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa seems to like the name Harue. Prominent characters in at least two of his movies have that name. In Sakebi (叫, aka Retribution, 2006) she was the girlfriend of the main character, trying to pull him back from spooky ghostland. There were reasons that was ultimately futile for her, but I shan’t spoil that. In Kairo (回路, meaning “circuit,” aka Pulse in English releases, 2001), Harue was the kind of person who takes you to spooky ghostland instead. Beware.
Both of these Harues are lovable, for those of us sad souls what are into goths. I imagine for other people they’d be infuriating, one way or another. But that rage you feel is your own rage against the dying of the light, against mementoing even the tiniest bit of mori, and you should have the dignity to stow it for a moment, when you find yourself in the presence of such a creature.
I feel like as atheists most of us are very resistant to dark truths. I myself despise death and hope in vain to live forever, somehow. I haven’t been able to buy any fool’s gold on that topic, unlike certain silicon valley tools, but it’s there, in my feelings. That’s all I have to argue with, when someone is feeling the darkness, is feeling like, “Why bother?” All I can say is, “Please don’t talk like that.” This is why I shouldn’t be a therapist. Like the character in Kairo, Kawashima, I’ll just look like a damn fool.
There is a recurring theme which has far too much relevance to the world we are now experiencing. Loneliness. I believe that we are all alone within ourselves, no matter how close we may be to the people who are closest to us. There’s no such thing as telepathy, empathy – at least, not the psychic or spiritual phenomena – thus it is impossible for us to be fully understood. Self-esteem exists in part, I think, to fulfill this need. As verbal animals, we feel a powerful desire to be understood. In the face of this impossibility of understanding, self-esteem provides a useful illusion that we are part of society, understood and valued.
In the lack of self-esteem, that loneliness becomes stark. To be clear, we are all equally alone, but those without useful illusions feel the effect much more keenly. And so Harue (2001 version) connects loneliness with death itself, and is both drawn to and in absolute terror of the end. Kawashima can’t handle it, try as he may.
Anyway, if you’re a goth and you’re reading this, you know what’s up. I wish you well, and I wish that you do well enough to not feel the need to bring your darkness to me, because I will just flop like a fish. You’re used to this. You feel the loneliness, you feel the void. You know the rest of us can’t handle it.
But despite our uselessness in the face of your inner darkness, we would prefer that you do not disintegrate. Don’t Harue (2001) out on us. If you do, I’ll probably be crying like Harue (2006) as I watch you leave. I love you.
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I was fully intending to fuck off the blog until next year, but kept thinking of things I want to say. But I don’t want the post I leave standing in the sidebar to be a pro-AI one, because I’ll just be turning people away with it, so here I am with a post about random notions. A check-in with where I am, looking ahead.
I’m still buzzing with some amount of this energy from the end of November, this sense that I should be writing, should be making stuff happen. But that realization there’s no easy money to be made in the field, it casts a shadow over my ambition. Doesn’t fade them completely because I want to make this narrative art happen for other reasons, but it does reduce the sense of urgency.
Somewhat. I’m still coughing off this crappy disease that was brought into my household almost a month ago. I took the entirety of last week off from work, tapped my leave pretty hard. This puts me in mind of mortality. There’s a Depeche Mode song I often think of, in moments of awareness that no amount of time is guaranteed to us.
I want to get all my best thoughts out before I die. I did post a complete novel on here before, for what that’s worth. It wasn’t a final draft, unless I die tomorrow. I want to make more things happen. I want to tell my stories. But still. Sometimes you have to just assume you’re going to live for decades, if you don’t want to waste all your time treading water.
Chores call to me. There is some material reward at the end of that road. Clear out the storage unit and save close to three-hundred bucks a month. It won’t be easy.
But still. What if I die in a month? Wouldn’t it be better to spend every moment writing, or living / laughing / loving like there’s no tomorrow? Must resist. Gotta do that responsible people shit. I gotta.
Do regular people feel like this, or is it mostly just me?
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pro-AI post. haters don’t interact. thx.
Labor-saving technology should be the friend of labor. Obviously, the bosses will just use it to put people out of work, but anybody left in position to use such technology? They will be less wrecked by the job, less likely to be crippled in old age by the work they do. Any time jobs are lost, there’s an adjustment that has to be made, and it can hurt when the social safety net is bullshit, but that’s on the government, on our societies privileging the whims of the rich over the needs of the people – not on labor-saving technology itself.
The Game Awards recently awarded a heap of prizes to french “JRPG” style video game Expedition 33. I’m no gamer. I watched a few hours of someone playing it and thought the soundtrack was overbearing and the writing annoying. Still, there’s a difference between watching and playing. I’m sure there was something to recommend it highly. Gamers went hard for it.
Come The Indie Game Awards and Expedition 33 -which won “Best Indie Game” at the more mainstream ceremony- was disqualified for the use of “generative AI.” Call me what you will, but indie game studios are the last people in the fuckin world that should be joining the leftosphere groupthink moral panic about AI.
Video games take a ludicrous amount of labor to produce. Most of the webcomics of the world flame out and die because just making a comic strip is too much effort for the creator to sustain. Most of the blogs in the sidebar on FtB are defunct because just knocking together a few words per year is too much effort for people to sustain. Multiply that effort by roughly a hundred, a thousand, or more, depending on the scope of your ambition. Now that you’re taking a decade to make a video game that can be played in two hours, be ready to rebuild every part of it because modern computers can’t run the engine you originally built for.
If you’re an art hobo chasing commission money, a grandma selling water color paintings at the craft fair, whatever, don’t use AI. That’s fine. If you’re in a field where the labor is prohibitive, and you want to finish more than one production in the course of your entire short life, maybe use labor-saving technology.
If you have problems with AI for the purposes of art, music, etc, write those problems out, consider how important these things are to you. Look at the counterpoints that have been offered by proponents of AI art. Consider if those answer your concerns, or if you think they’re arguing in bad faith. Consider what it will actually look like, to create your production from scratch with nothing but pure human effort – the time budget, the quality as well. There’s bad-looking AI art but there is a helluvalot of shitty human-crafted art as well. With what you have access to, will you be able to do better with one approach or the other?
What is it worth to you, being a purist? The biggest downside to using AI on a video game right now is literally nothing more than the prejudice of the fickle masses. They might feel completely different in three years. Even if they don’t, wouldn’t you rather make art, than fuss about the opinions of a horde of screaming shitbirds?
Do your art, however you can. That might work better with AI assistance. Look at Expedition 33. That was a coherent work of art, every part of it contributing to the whole, painting the picture the creators wanted to paint. Where was the AI even used? I couldn’t tell. If generated images are part of your production pipeline, but it’s building to your own personal artistic expression, how bad is it?
Original sin! Fruit of the poison tree! Roll back the clock! Uninvent the wheel! Burn the witches!
Fuck off.
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content warning: i mention one of the worst things ever in animal cruelty and human nastiness, mutilation and death.
I first learned about drug tolerance in junior high during that DARE bullshit, u kno, Drug Abuse Resistance Education. A drug comes to be less effective on the user, requiring greater quantities of said drug to achieve the same effect, or escalation to harder drugs.
Within the genre of horror, you can see a similar effect take place over time – an escalation to harder content to achieve the same effect. In the early ’60s you could watch Vincent Price in The Fly and be mortified for weeks. By the ’80s, Cronenberg’s much nastier Fly would be required. By the ’00s, you’d probably have to watch nasty torture movies to get your chills. The Vincent Price picture would seem quaint as a cartoon.
At the outer limits, one can imagine a genre fan becoming so jaded that the only horror that can work for them is actual horror inflicted upon their body. Like those people with surgery fetishes, or that guy who consented to be cannibalized in Germany.
Of course, these are ridiculous outliers. Movies aren’t drugs, and a person could be perfectly content with their own personal upper bond of terror. Yet it does seem like you can get diminishing returns from the same level of titillation in a given genre. The person who is content at a certain level is probably not getting as much out of the tenth movie they’ve seen at that level.
Meanwhile, there are people for whom everything will eventually become too boring, as they are inured to the experiences of life and of art. This is probably the most true of individuals with strong powers of memory, short or long term. This can be illustrated by a look at their opposites – people who voraciously consume media but remember nothing about it could be excited by the same trick one week after the next. If you remember everything, you start to run out of surprises.
I thought of this because I was trying to come up with an idea for a revelation that would be genuinely surprising, scary, thrilling, whatever, for a mystery. I remembered then that we live in a world where a crocodile scientist became a sexual serial killer of dogs. This is not the kind of twist that you would put into a horror story because it is as depressing as it is disgusting and horrifying, but it may demonstrate for you where I’m coming from.
I found out about that from Pharyngula. If you read Pharyngula every day and don’t remember that, good for you. Aside from the benefit of not remembering that shit, you can also be surprised or terrified by fiction more often. Because you likely don’t remember that stuff as well either.
Horror has been my example so far, but other emotions could be subject to the same principle. Romance not romantic enough, mystery not mysterious enough, action not exciting enough, etc. Must every genre naturally get used up, smoked like so many cigarettes?
Some postmodern theorist I no longer recall said we’re in the age of pastiche. Originality is no longer possible, one must build from the elements of what has come before. Even wacky remixes could hit a limit. What’s left in the post-pastiche world?
It’s alright. I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing until I’m done, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough.
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