We live in a collapsing empire, it’s the last days of Rome
But everything moves much faster on the modern age. We might be around to build what comes next, and it’s the perfect time to start building the groundwork
Or you might be able to build a commune. That’s my plan, I’m saving everything for a chunk of land and to invite people as I build it out. The world might be terrible, but you can build a bubble of good things around you
There’s no closing Pandora’s box at this point, but honestly I don’t know if it even really matters
I think AI is a tiny fraction of the true problem. Slop is just a symptom of late stage capitalism. It always goes back to that.
COVID moved everything online, and billionaires and corporations have enshitified the walled gardens they’ve managed to lock people into. YouTube is full of slop because they were happy to take the short term ad money. Hollywood is full of slop because Disney bought every franchise with good IP, and no one wants to take a risk. AAA gaming is slop because Microsoft, EA, and Ubisoft bought all the big studios and doesn’t want to take risks.
It’s all slop because integrity and pride in your work is the enemy of slop factories. You have few individuals creating to create because if you can’t monitise your work immediately, you can’t survive
Also, you have a huge wave of anti intellectualism. People don’t know how to critically examine media anymore - before AI, clickbait and short form videos of reddit posts over gameplay were already taking over. Disinfo and misinfo was everywhere, echo chambers and the algorithms were already doing far worse to us then AI
I think if we can fix society, AI won’t be a problem. AI isn’t bad, corporations - large amalgamations of people that humans don’t actually control - they’re the threat
AI is only bad because its powerful at a back time. I might be ok with not allowing it as a service… Maybe if you want AI for something, you use it through an expert with the understanding to set it up for you.
But regulation scares me, because right now lobbyists would write the whole thing
The problem is it’s slop. I feel nothing but disappointment watching most media these days, it’s just so lazy and soulless
Yes, AI turbo charges slop production, but what has made me laugh the hardest over the past few years is AI being chaotic and interacting with real people. I love that a fake anime girl can play Minecraft with a bunch of people, suddenly decide to set everything on fire and cry for help, or hunt down a player for a perceived slight.
I love that another creator designs AI prompts on the spot and puts them and the viewers through challenges.
I love that someone made an escape room game where you must pacify an unhinged AI while trying to accomplish tasks
Some AI art is surreal and incredible, and people use AI with intent, passing a single picture through many different AI stacks with manual configuration
There was even a movie script “written entirely by AI”, but in reality it was a writer guiding an AI through creating a screenplay. It was about a writer who uses AI, then discovers it’s a far better writer than he could ever be, and the existential crisis he faces as he passes off the AI’s work as his own
But then you have something like Star wars, where the new trilogy was so lacking in soul and writing that I still feel loss when I watch any star wars media. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch the last movie, I eventually watched someone rewrite the trilogy scene by scene to fix it instead
AI slop is definitely a huge problem, but the real problem is societal. We have a grifting economy, everyone is so scared and desperate they’re just trying to exploit a system to “get theirs” while they can. You can’t make art like that, you can’t even make useful things like that
Creation requires soul, but just like you can hang a paint can and spin a canvas to create beautiful patterns, the artists who do it make hundreds, unsure of how it will turn out, and burn all but the one that speaks to them. If they released all of them, they’d just be kitche slop
AI is the same way - you can use AI to create very quickly, but if you don’t inject something into the process you’ve just made slop
And corporations want you to learn to love the slop
I reject that framing. It’s a loaded question, it’s loser bullshit and I won’t have it
I’m not saying vote every election. I’m saying win every election.
How do you win? Not by betting on the lesser evil. You do it by putting in the work to have a candidate you believe in. You do it by starting today, so that when the election comes your vote will not be a compromise.
You should feel proud of each and every vote. And yes, you should vote every time… But now is not the time for voting, it’s time to campaign
So quit with the defeatist bullshit and pitch in. You’ll feel less pessimistic when you’re surrounded by winners who work for a better tomorrow
I didn’t say “no”
I said it’s loser talk. It’s weak. Just like the Democrats. Which is why they’re the enemy - they’re in the way, and if we don’t sweep out the Schumers and Jefferies the DNC will continue to collaborate with the Nazis against populist progressive candidates
You can’t adopt their framing. Not maga’s framing, or the DNC framing. Reject it, just like I reject your premise that voting is just harm reduction.
If you want to win, you can’t talk like that. You can’t bet on “safe” candidates. You can’t settle for “not a Nazi”. You have to demand more, you have to have fire and speak of hope for the future
You’re missing my point entirely.
That’s loser talk. That’s how you lose elections. That’s how Trump won, twice. It barely got Biden in the door, because Trump was currently in office
You don’t have to be the less bad choice. You have to be the good choice. You have to stand for something. You have to have a message. You have to fight. You have to make enemies.
A Democrat will win the next election, no matter what. But in 2028? It very likely will be 4 more years of fascism if all we can muster is “well, it’s our guy or another fascist”
The only way to stop this is to get populist progressive candidates in office. In every office, in every election.
The Overton window needs to be moved left, or this never ends.
Quit with the loser talk and get involved with local elections. Go join your local DSA or phone bank with progressive victory. Help pave the way for a good candidate
No they fucking haven’t.
The uniparty thing started with like Clinton… Throughout our history, we had choices. Very meaningful ones. Maybe not the ones we wanted, but we had different courses for the county. It was always towards something
Click through some of these. This was the first rise of a fascist movement in the US, one that went on to influence Germany.
Did we hold the line and insist everything is fine? Fuck no, if you click back you’ll the Republicans held everything, the other two candidates had zero chance. Click forward and you get the largest wave of progressivism in our history, it took generations to tear down those safety nets, and they’re still not completely gone
That’s where we are now. Harm reduction doesn’t win, movements win.
I’m not sure you get the problem here
You can talk to an llm at any moment of any day. They will engage with you endlessly. They’re becoming the front end for search, and at some point might become the primary interface for your device
It’s a huge problem if they manage to make it a propoganda tool, and that’s the goal here
I literally do that. With real world customers, and real world payments and real world consequences running through the system, all the time.
I live in fear.
It’s a tool, our job is to collect tools in our toolbox and use them appropriately
TDD is great for when you want a really, really tight interface - whether it’s your exposed surface to customers or you’ve got a lot of people working on something, it makes sense to write the standard and code to it, instead of documenting after the fact
Otherwise… Well, in practice it’s an idiot proof methodology. That’s useful, but it is a lot of work
I think they removed the graphics of it, but not the effects when you have them in you party
I think you’re kind of comparing apples to oranges, we’re pretty fucked over here right now
I’d call him a progressive. He has socialist ideals, but he’s operating as a populist - he can’t get out there and say “we’re going to do free healthcare” because we’re not there right now
It seems to me that he’ll be as left-wing as the moment allows, but what he’s actually pushing for is pretty tame IMO
I don’t think you understand.
Socialism isn’t on the table. We’re so incredibly far from that. Let me know when the revolution is coming and I’ll be there for it… Until then we very real issues that we can make a bit better. Not good - we’re totally fucked - but we can make things less horrible
There’s a genocide in progress. We’re going to go through a depression. We can tea party the Democrats to be more progressive… There’s no time to build up something new
I can’t impress on you enough how many people are going to die
You spelled “take” wrong
It matters because the party isn’t the people, it’s infrastructure. It’s buildings, it’s support staff, it’s mailing lists and payment processors
It’s getting a special (often unfair) place on the ballot in all 50 states. It’s 50 (often flawed) primary processes that follow local laws
And it’s a banner. Not one people like, but it’s one banner. A banner that theoretically stands for democracy and the common man
The left is not organized. Do we rally behind a fresh, ideologically pure banner? Which one? How long to work out which group is the best? How long until we can build up that infrastructure?
Fuck that. Winning is what matters.
The people are on our side for now, there’s so much anger and energy. How long until they adjust to the new normal and go back to refusing to believe in a better world?
We have a chance right now. The next 18 months. In one sweep we can take a tattered banner and get in control - before people get cold feet. While they’re still just screaming for someone to stop Trump.
We can use the momentum to unfuck our democracy once we take control, but we can’t get distracted. There’s no room for purity or lofty ideals. We have to take what is offered and exploit every opportunity. We have to use the system against itself.
We have to win. Now. Or we all die
Why? The party is dead. They’re just holding onto their seats
Take the seats, you take it all. Keep the infrastructure of the party, keep the name recognition and the data they have, and replace the members
It’s happening already - Hoggs funneled money into Mumdani’s primary even as they try to ratfuck him out…
You don’t understand. They never stopped, they aren’t distracting from Gaza… They needed another war to keep Netanyahu in power
Thank you, I appreciate that… Fuck, now I’m doing it!
Thank you for your apology… Wait, you’re doing it again!!!
What a healthy conversation. I’m not used to it, it’s making me uncomfortable.
Fuck you no reason in particular!
I have, but it just hasn’t left much of an impact
I think centralization is one of the core evils. I’ve been thinking of the inca model for a while
I think you can decentralize things, and in exchange for slower progress you can build something better
Why can’t we do things locally? So what if it’s complicated and messy? You can do great works without falling to the race to the bottom. Why can’t we do everything smaller?
I think it’s possible. Communities can network into a greater whole, and I think that’s so much better than what we’re doing now