I think that the AI industry is particularly harmful to writers, journalists, actors, artists, and others. This is not because AI produces better pieces of work, but rather due to misanthropic viewpoints of particularly toxic and powerful individuals at the top of the tech industry hierarchy pushing AI as the next big thing due to their general misunderstanding or outright dislike of the general public.

I'm a writer and my work is increasingly making me use AI to do things. I'm 98% sure I'm just training this thing to replace me at this point, and am planning accordingly.

In the UK a few years back, Boris Johnson refused to show up to a debate on climate change, so Channel 4 replaced him with a slowly melting block of ice.

It annoyed him so much he tried to privatise the entire TV station lol.

I started reading up on him and apparently he said this:

I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful), or that he’s America’s Hitler.

That fact that he thinks Trump could be Hitler and is still prepared to get behind him for his own gain tells me all I need to know about the principles of the man.

I have two, one is actually complicated and one was so obtuse that I never would have figured it out in a million years:

Actually complicated: I still don't know how it happened, but somehow an update on Arch filled the boot partition with junk files, which then caused the kernel update to fail because of no disk space, which then kind of tanked the whole system. It took ages, but with a boot disk and chroot-ing back into the boot partition I eventually managed to untangle it all. I was determined to see it through and not reinstall.

Ridiculous: One day when using Ubuntu, the entire system went upside-down. As in, everything was working perfectly fine, but literally the screen was upside-down. After much Googling I had no luck figuring it out, then I accidentally found the solution - I'd plugged a PS4 controller into the USB on the laptop to charge it, and for some reason Ubuntu interpreted the gyroscope on the controller as "rotate the screen display" so when I moved it, the screen spun round. I only figured it out by accident when I plugged it back it and it spun back to normal lol.

If it counts, definitely the Steam Deck. With that and emulators, it's like having almost every game I've ever owned in one portable machine.

I used to make animations for YouTube, which weren't monetized because I hate ads, and one day they copyright struck me for some very provably public domain music, but the way they did it was to insert ads into my video without my consent so they could monetize them to send the money to the scammer who flagged me. So I just deleted my entire account, fuck them.

Proposed solution:

• Make sign that says "please keep this area tidy." Send to supervisor for approval.

• Wait 5 minutes

• Make sign that says "please keep this space tidy." Also send for approval.

• Wait for supervisor to ask why 2 different signs were sent for approval.

• Say you'll look into it

• Do nothing for 2 hours

• Put up a sign that says "Keep this area tidy. Thanks!" Maybe add some clipart for spice.

• Tell supervisor "turns out there was a mixup with the drafts but I went ahead and took care of it."

If done properly that could probably kill half a day or more.

My favourite Paul Ryan moment was when he said Rage Against The Machine was one of his favourite bands, and then Tom Morello wrote a lengthy article in response about how much of a jackass he is.

Like imagine naming your favourite band and then they go super far out of their way to tell you specifically to go fuck yourself lol.

Ironically, I read about three lines of this article before I got a full-screen popup and then a paywall then closed the tab. And it's going to get worse apparently.

Fun fact! In 2002 the US passed a law allowing themselves to invade the Hague in case any high-ranking US officials ended up on trial there.

Which I'm sure they passed in the year between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq just by coincidence, and they weren't expecting any shady shit to go down at all.

IMO this is why it's super important that the Republicans, especially Trump, don't win the next election (even more so than usual.) There are already literal nazis outside Disney Land, the absolute last thing anyone needs is some dickhead pardoning the Proud Boys and emboldening the far right even further.

The UK likes to go the other way by talking up a ridiculous goal and then immediately failing it, like "Our goal is to produce zero CO2 and become the global leader in renewables by 2025” and then immediately open a new coal mine.