This and the APR Blog. Maybe the security systems will deal with it, maybe not. Don’t be surprised if one or both suddenly go funny or vanish again.
Jul 262022
Jul 252022
Chicago police: Boy, 15, fatally stabbed on CTA Red Line train part of group trying to rob rider
This part, quoting Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan:
“At that point, the person who appears to be being robbed takes out a knife, stabs that person with the gun. When that person is leaving, they placed the gun somewhere and one of the other individuals in the group that was with that individual picks up that apparent weapon.”
English teachers across the land slap their foreheads. Darwin, on the other hand, nods in satisfaction, being *reasonably* sure that the 15-year-old future murderer probably has not yet reproduced.
The rest of the article goes on to describe what a dystopian nightmare public transit is. No thank you.
Jul 252022
Which I imagine was the point of the outing.
Jul 252022
Anyone who thinks that their job is safe from robots or AI is deluding themselves. A lot of people used to claim that the creative classes were safe from automation, but these “text to image” AI’s put that to the test. Is the art “good?” I dunno. But I do know that the vast bulk of commercial artwork, stuff used to advertise books or cars or beer or vacations or sammich shops, while adequate to get the job done, is hardly high art. I expect that soon the majority of this sort of art will be done by this sort of AI.This will be bad news for humans of all kinds even if the AI art is “meh.” Why? because artists gotta get paid, and churning out commercial art can do that… and now that entire cash stream may be gone. How do you go from an unknown artist to someone making bank with their paintings if there is no intervening step from “amateur” to “professional”?
My own science fiction stories? One thing that has held me back from trying to self publish is the lack of cover art. It may be that very soon I’ll simply be able to describe what I want and Google will spit out art that gets the job done. And of course, around about that time I’ll be able to feed my related stories into Google and tell it to crank out more, and suddenly I’ll go from a few thousand pages of stories about Zane and Sarah to a few billion. Hell, feed it all three seasons of “Star Trek,” and soon enough I’ll have a thousand seasons of the adventures of Kirk and Spock to pore through. Even if only one percent of one percent of that stuff is “good,” the sheer volume of the “good” AI-art will overwhelm the total productive output of mankind. The AI art will only get better, whereas humans have plateaued.
Imagen
Jul 242022
Dr. Van Joan, director of Diversity Inclusion and Equity for the Alphabet Mafia, has an amazing offer for you. @unclejimmyblaze pic.twitter.com/GuAthZCbVL
— Jason Whitlock (@WhitlockJason) December 7, 2021
Obviously this is satire. The problem is, the obviousness isn’t as obvious as it aught to be. It’s about one millisecond off from being full-on sincerity.
Jul 242022
I don’t remember this sort of impromptu street theater when I was last at Disney World in the late 1970’s. I have to admit to not being a slavish follower of Disney films; I haven’t seen “The Little Mermaid” or “Frozen” or a bunch of others, so I can’t place what movie this scene is replicating.
– – –
I’m not a fan of “theme parks.” My memories of them are filled with heat and humidity and waiting in really long lines in the burning sun. So I have to wonder: how far would Disney have to jack up their prices before attendance dropped in half? If the ticket prices were twice as high and you got half as many people, the economics for Disney – at least on the tickets, not so much on concessions and toys and junk – would work, and the attendees would be much happier. If it was three times as high? It would be a no-brainer for Disney. Maybe do one day a week as a special “low density day” to test the waters. How expensive would the tickets have to be to drop attendance by 90%?
Jul 242022
US records first two CHILD monkeypox cases: California toddler and an infant in D.C. were likely infected by ‘household contacts’ and both had contact with gay or bisexual men, CDC chief says
This, unlike Covid or Ebola, is a disease you have to work at to get. It could be *easily* stopped by simply exercising some self restraint. The danger is that the lack of self control will not only allow it to spread to other people similarly devoid of the willingness to behave like rational adults, but they will spread it to the uninvolved, as was the case with these children. And worse, by allowing the disease to spread far, FAR further than it should, it is given the opportunity to mutate into a very different form: airborne, perhaps, or far deadlier. Or both. Remember smallpox pandemics? Because I sure don’t. It was eradicated when I was a little kid. But I may live to see it come roaring back… not because this sort of thing “just happens” from time to time, but because entitled selfish jackwads couldn’t keep it in their pants for a few weeks.
For those who might find the title of this post “offensive:” imagine what the general populace will think – and what they will do – if unwise and easily controlled behavior leads monkeypox to mutate into a form that attacks the broader society. I’m offended at the notion of kids being given sexually transmitted diseases.
UPDATE: For frak’s sake, this is *exactly* what I’m talking about:
‘I literally screamed out loud in pain’: my two weeks of monkeypox hell
Attend:
When New York Pride festivities kicked off on 24 June, I was aware that monkeypox was an emerging issue – especially for gay men …
I had sex with several guys over the weekend.
Wow. What. A. Hero.
“I know that Fire Hot, but I poured gasoline on myself a lit a match anyway. I was shocked at how poor the American health care system is! It let me get burned!!!”
He describes where he first got the painful sores. I’ll give you two guesses. He then goes on to complain about the clinics, about the physicians, about the epidemic people and the government. Guess who he *doesn’t* blame.
If someone like me, who has worked in sexual health for a long time, had such a hard time navigating care, I can’t imagine other people doing it.
I was isolated, lonely and frustrated with how unfair the situation was.
Jul 222022
A little over a year ago I posted about a group of whackos, led by a particularly whacko whacko, planning on building a utopian ethnostate in the mountains. I suggested that they would turn out to be an endless source of entertainment; instead, they failed far too quickly for actual entertainment value. Never even got to the Donner Party stage. Sigh. But they managed to get themselves back into the news. This video lays it out, and boy howdy they seem like fun. The story, however, seems to be finally over.
Jul 212022
… that America’s politicians aren’t *uniquely* stupid.
Without even clicking on the video to watch it, you know *exactly* how the story is going to play out based just on the thumbnail image.
Jul 212022
… for getting robbed, vandalized, destroyed.
San Francisco restaurant owner says he has to clean off graffiti every day only to find his business covered in graffiti again the next day. The city then fines him for having graffiti.
Welcome to California. pic.twitter.com/JcMJLPT0LO
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 21, 2022
Black teens destroy white man's store after he asked them if they need help. They assumed that he wanted to check on them if they were stealing.
The social backlash eventually, is going to be legendary. pic.twitter.com/siDPBvHqPE
— iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) July 19, 2022
Just another typical day in San Francisco pic.twitter.com/ac4dynZOQq
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 17, 2022
And while not directly related, the cognitive dissonance on display here is *astounding,* and says a lot about the current state of society.
UNREAL. A dad says he’s gonna read from graphic books available to children in school and gets shut down by @oneclayschools board before he even starts because it might be against the law to read from these books in front of children.
These books are in school libraries. pic.twitter.com/PCJSMCttq5
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 12, 2022