formerly /u/squirrelrampage on Reddit
It is very telling how much science backlash is rooted in the base desire of the rich and powerful to suppress any speech that contradicts them. It never was about (scientific) truth or facts, it was always about the power to impose their will on others and independent science challenges this totalitarian claim to power.
Since the first messenger who told Tigranes that Lucullus was coming had his head cut off for his pains, no one else would tell him anything, and so he sat in ignorance while the fires of war were blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him.
Plutarch, ~ 100 A.D.
Oh, it surely is a crappy AI prompt. The point I am making here is that Musk’s aesthetics are stuck in a past. A past when the various elements of the picture were still considered “cool” to a certain degree, but it’s all trite now.
For example, the anime girl in the picture is meant to depict a feature of the Grok LLM, a sexy anime girl chatbot which will slowly wear less and less clothing. Even under the most charitable interpretation, it is cheapest kind of titillation and is no way or form anything new and innovative. Yet Musk puts her in the front anyway. Pretty much every detail in that picture harks back to the past: Cyberpunk atmosphere? We got that for ages! Edgy SuperGrok with a gold chain and a cigar? The look of an R’nB star from (at least) a decade ago!
It’s all been done for a long time and it only shows how much Musk is stuck in a past when he considered himself cool and on the cutting edge of pop culture. Yet it all comes down to Musk displaying how much he is out of touch with current pop culture which has progressed further in the meantime.
It all makes sense if you assume that everything Musk does is intended to impress a 4chan nazi circa 2012.
The art is by Aïda Amer who works for Axios.
If you consider every action by MAGAists as the behavior of a cruel, schoolyard bully who will hurt you and then mock you for your inability to defend yourself, everyone of their actions makes sense.
The cruelty is the point.
It’s quite amazing how these people show their asses on LinkedIn and think it makes them look smart, instead of proving that they completely lost touch with reality. It fits the picture that one the very same day they laid of thousands, Microsoft also send out an invitation to hear them pitch genAI at GamesCom. That’s corpo brain on late stage capitalism.
I was once a fan of Nina Paley, because of her activism against copyright and even bought some of her merch. Then I found out that she is a capital-letters TERF.
You can find a “TERFy Archive” with all her transphobic writing on her website, she hosts a transphobic podcast with the subtitle “A TERF and a t-slur walk into a podcast studio” which she uses to promote the “autogynephilia” conspiracy theory, among so, so much more transphobia.
Paley would consider this comment of mine to be “censorship”. As usual with her type she wants to dish out, but doesn’t want to be criticized for it.
Fair point. I remember seeing some tweet or similar with said something in the vein of: “ChatGPT sounds like a middle manager on LinkedIn. No wonder, middle managers think that ChatGPT is intelligent.”
Worse, LinkedIn.
Lowering workers’ wages is exactly why he got a pay bump. Capitalism working as intended.
Also Mustelids, because Mustelids are hella cute and who can blame nature for wanting to create more cute things?!
The artist is RustyAtom, u/khynra on Reddit
For those who want some context: Theosophy has always been a huge part of the New Age movement and the founder of Theosophy, Madame Blavatsky, was a white supremacist. She taught her followers about a “Great White Brotherhood” (aka The Masters) who were racially superior to others. She was also convinced of the existence of superior “root races” (one of them being the Aryans) and various “sub-races”…
Unsurprisingly Theosophy would (for example) merge with the Völkisch movement in Germany (the precursor of the nazi party).
Theosophy with its belief in a secret underground realms, ancient high cultures, lost continents, superior alien races and so on and so forth, was one of the big influences on the late 20th century New Age movement.
Ah, well, better skip “Strange Days”, “12 Monkeys” and “Gattaca” then…
June 12th:
“I am pleased to confirm the 6th round of Iran US talks will be held in Muscat this Sunday the 15th,” Bad Albusaidi, the country’s foreign minister said on social media.
Israel struck Iran later the same day.
So why should Iran have any reason to believe that “talks” will stop Israel and the US?
While “tribadism” (old term for various lesbian sexual positions, including scissoring) has been known since antiquity, scissoring itself has only been distinguished from other lesbian sexual positions in several sexologist studies in the 70s. Its prevalence was heavily debated even back then, but there was little doubt about its existence before the emergence of modern porn.
Me? I am impartial, I am certainly not being paid by Big Dictionary!
*attempts to hide the old, dusty Oxford English Dictionary on the bookshelf
These people can help.