The tone of voice that William Jackson Harper (Chidi) took in his reply absolutely makes the joke

I have a friend who uses snuff tobacco, and occasionally she’ll add some cocaine to it — she calls it “spicy snuff”

The idea of copyright is to protect the financial rights of creatives, thus incentivising people to make more stuff, right?

Well even before AI, it wasn’t doing its job very well on that front. The only ones with the power and money to be able to leverage copyright to protect their rights are those who are already so powerful that they don’t need those protections — big music labels and the like. Individual creatives were already being fucked over by the system long before AI.

If you haven’t read the article, I’d encourage you to give it a try. Or perhaps this one, which goes into depth on the intrinsic tensions within copyright law.

An extended story that I recently read (or rather, listened to) was “There is no Antiemetics Division”, by qntm. The channel J&V SCP archives have an excellent audiobook-style reading of it, if that’s your thing. It’s not especially scary (though it does have its moments), but stumbling across it really reignited my enjoyment of SCP.

When I was young, I learned about Rosa Parks in much the same way that children often learn about historic figures — as a hero who effected change through an isolated, grand act of defiance in the right place and the right time.

When I was a teenager, I learned that her act of resistance wasn’t spontaneous, but planned by civil rights activists. Months earlier, Claudette Colvin had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus months earlier, but this incident did not receive much attention. Leaders in the Civil Rights movement wanted to make the “most appealing” protesters the most seen, and Colvin was a pregnant teenager who did not have fair-skin, or “good hair” — so she very much wasn’t an ideal poster child. Rosa Parks was more respectable, which was why she was the one whose case was pushed — and the one whose name school children learned. This made me feel cynical due to the disenchantment of the story of a heroic, spontaneous act of resistance from an ordinary person that I had previously learned.

Years later, I got to see how activism actually works. I learned about all the work that goes into sustaining a movement, and I understood that spontaneous acts of heroic resistance don’t really exist — at least, not in the way I was taught. Even an unplanned, independent act of defiance doesn’t exist in isolation of the community of other oppressed people. And the acts that history tends to remember are all the more likely to have layers upon layers of social infrastructure supporting them. This reenchanted the story for me, but in a more authentic way. The machinery of change does not materialise on its own, but now I know about all the expertise and labour that goes into building and maintaining it, it’s all the more beautiful.

I wrote this comment to pay respects to Rosa Parks, and to all the activists whose names have been forgotten by history. I thank them for helping me to understand the impact that I can have on the world; I can’t imagine myself as the kind of bold person whose acts of resistance are remembered by history, but I know now that the most effective thing I can do is to dispense with grand narratives, and instead immerse myself in politically conscious communities. That’s a much nicer mode to exist in, because no matter my skills or ability level, there will always be ways that I can help.

As someone who grew up down the road from Barnsley, I often semi-affectionately describe it as a bit of a shithole. The poor socioeconomic conditions mean that growing up there makes you feel hopeless about your future. You internalise the idea that you either have to escape to somewhere with better prospects, or resign yourself to being left behind, like you’re the unpleasant gritty bits at the bottom of a drink.

I’d wager that this is why they’ve chosen Barnsley for this. It’s like the metropolitan equivalent of a wealthy bastard predating upon a desperate woman who can’t afford her bills. I’d wager that some of the local officials involved in this decision believe that AI is bad, but that some investment in the area is better than nothing. Unfortunately, I’m fairly sure that’s wrong. Rolling out AI into the areas they’re planning to will just increase workload for the already overstressed humans in those fields, which may be worsened if some of those lose their jobs due to the overpromised savings from the AI.

Yeah, it blew my mind.

The thing that did it for me is that I realised that if I tried to imagine an apple, then it wouldn’t have a colour before someone asked me what colour it was. Like, I was simultaneously imagining an apple that was deep red, like what the witch gave to Snow White. But I’m also imagining a green apple, like a granny smith. Or a pink and green one, like a Pink Lady.

Except that doesn’t make sense, because one apple can’t be three different colours simultaneously. I realised that I wasn’t so much visualising an apple, but more like accessing a database entry for apples. e.g.

Apples:

• Can be deep red
• Can be green
• can be pink and green
• can be other colours
• apples are on the first aisle in the big grocery store

Stuff like that.

Taking nudes is really difficult. I’ve never taken nudes per se, but recently I was trying to take some photos that included my body, whilst wearing some sexy clothing. That shit takes some skill.

One tip that I discovered is that using your phone’s regular camera rather than your front facing camera makes a big difference. To get this right, you ideally need to use a mirror so that you can see what’s on your screen as you’re getting the angles right. I found that positioning my phone higher and pointing it slightly downwards was best. Finding a way to securely position my phone to make this work was a bitch.

If you’re using your backward facing camera, then you’ll probably need to set your phone to take the image on a timer. Alternatively some smart watches can be used to trigger the photograph without you having to get up from your sexy pose to press the button on your phone (which risks knocking your phone out of position). Alternatively, once you’ve found the right angle and pose, you can try taking a video of you posing and then extracting frames from that video later.

The experience left me with a greater level of respect for people who take good nudes.

I’m younger than you (born 1995), but I share some of your feelings. The internet today is so different from how I remember it as a kid. I am immensely grateful that I got to experience some of that period of rapid change.

The fact that you, a human, asked this question, and got a variety of human replies is why I would say no.

I know that the dead internet theory doesn’t say that all internet activity is bots, but certainly the internet that I experience, there is abundant humanity.

However, I am a nerd who inhabits quite niche spaces, so my experience is far from the typical. Having the knowledge and stubbornness to find spaces like this puts me in a kind of bubble, where it’s hard for me to gauge whether we’re actually at the point of “dead internet”.

In all likelihood, my answer is “no”, because I need it to be. I love the internet. I grew up online, and as a very lonely child, the internet was a key part of my identity formation. As an adult, the internet is how I access community and learning. As grim as things are, I think I’m a utopian at heart.

Like I say, I realise that my online experience is far from what most people experience, and I do find it sad that most people probably do experience a much deader internet than I do. But the reason why I’m here, putting time and care into comments like this is because this is one of the ways that I am trying to keep the internet alive. “Dead” is a binary, which suggests the battle is already over. I believe the internet is dying, for sure, but I can’t reconcile the notion of a dead internet with all the vibrant communities of people who are making stuff they care about, in defiance of the slop economy.

This is a dangerous way of thinking. It’s not far off from the logic that Israelis use to justify the killing of children, who they argue are predisposed to become terrorists.

There is nothing intrinsic to IDF soldiers that make them capable of perpetrating a genocide. The vitriol that fuels them is built up over years of sociocultural conditioning, and no-one is immune to that. It’s important that we recognise this if we want to avoid creating a world with more people who think like this.

This administration often reminds me of “The Narcissist’s Prayer”:

"That didn’t happen.

And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.

And if it was, that’s not a big deal.

And if it is, that’s not my fault.

And if it was, I didn’t mean it.

And if I did, you deserved it."

I like Riesling, so I’m gonna have to go with slate

I’m intrigued by solo TTRPGs. Is there a particular one you can recommend?

Glad you’re still with us!

I like the vibe of the meme, but it’s a tad ahistorical.

For example, I was recently reading about how the wide farthingale skirt of the 16th and 17th centuries really pissed men off. In modern feminist thought, we often hear women talk about “taking up more space” — well the farthingale was a literal way of doing that.

Of course, fashion trends like this are inextricable from the power of wealth and patriarchy, but the same could be said for the ways in which we struggle against those same power systems today. It surprised me to read of this because I think I used to think about historic fashion as an inconvenient thing that was forced onto women, but it’s far more complex.

In short, if you’re striving to be weird, you’re not doing a thing that was denied to generations of women before you, but in fact building upon a long tradition of fighting for self expression in a world that tries to suppress this. I wrote this comment because I actually find this framing to be even more empowering. It makes me want to be even weirder, to honour the people who came before me who fought to give me this kind of freedom I have.

The freedom we have nowadays comes with many constraints and caveats, but thinking of myself as being the latest in a long line of weird women who refuse to conform makes me think about the people who will come after me. Maybe 100 years from now, historians will be looking at memes like this, or written accounts of women scoffing at men who say shit like “you know, you would be pretty if you didn’t ruin yourself with [short hair / dyed hair / piercings / alternative fashion / black lipstick]”

I remember seeing a post of yours elsewhere where you mentioned about difficulty mustering the energy and mental strength to go out beyond your home (possibly linked to your parents being quite overprotective? I may be remembering wrong). Regardless of the specifics, I think that factors like that can worsen relations between family members. My brother and I don’t get on well when we’re living in the same house, for instance. That’s made worse by my mom being a difficult person to live with.

But I think you’re right also, that there is a significant component of the grass being greener on the other side. I know plenty of people who are only children, who wish they had siblings, and people with siblings who wish they were an only child.

I’ve not tried one before, but something that always sticks out to me is that a few years ago, when we were roadtripping around North Finland, every single AirBnB we stayed in had a SAD light or sunrise alarm clock (these were AirBnBs where it was someone’s home, not a dedicated holiday rental). That speaks volumes to me, in much the same way that seeing all those places store vodka in their freezer was something I used when arguing with my housemates that we should also.

In that case, the finished product would be of pretty mediocre quality, in my case. That’s because most of my projects are things that I actively want to learn, and I tend to be overambitious when setting aims. Despite this though, even when I completely botch it up, I struggle to think of a time where I have regret my endeavour. I like the learning

No. The main reason I do projects is for the learning. Any useful items I produce as part of the process are just happy side effects.