I don’t have negative sentiments towards A.I. I have negative sentiments towards the uses it’s being put towards.

There are places where A.I can be super exciting and useful; namely places where the ability to quickly and accurately process large amounts of data can be critically life saving, ie) air traffic control, language translation, emergency response preparedness, etc…

But right now it’s being used to paint shitty pictures so that companies don’t have to pay actual artists.

If I had a choice, I’d say no AI in the arts; save it for the data processing applications and leave the art to the humans.

Advertising isn’t the problem. And before I get my balls cut off, I’ll back away slowly while explaining myself…

We’ve always paid for ads. Back in the old days you paid for a cable subscription and got to watch ads every 15 minutes. That’s not a new phenomenon. Hell, television was designed around the advertising break. The entire one hour series 5 part script model was created with the “cut to ad break” in mind. You think about your CSI:Miami “sunglasses of justice” stinger, or your fourth ad-break plot-twist as the Romulan war bird uncloaks and the music dun-dun-duns into a commercial for cheese-its…

That’s not a problem in and of itself. In fact I kind of miss it when shows were written that way. Heck, Tubi and Pluto TV do it and no one complains about that. And if Netflix wants to add those back into their free tier, more power to 'em.

But advertising is not about getting served a few commercials every fifteen minutes anymore. It’s literally in front of the content, within the content, etc… It’s not about “hey look, it’s an ad break, let’s go refill our 7-up and take a piss”, it’s inlaid with the content, as well as taking up as much, if not MORE time than the actual content itself. and THAT’S part one of the problem.

Part two is the fact that if you’re going to make more money by making me pay for your service AND watch advertisements, you better damn well be giving at least some of that new money to other creatives that are MAKING those advertisements. Make a commercial with actors and actresses; pay them. Hire a writer to create ad-copy, just like we used to do. But if you’re going to charge me AND make me watch lazy shit you made with A.I. slop, than THAT is where I’ll happily take my ship and head onto the high seas.

I’d be perfectly happy to sit through two or three traditional advertisements every fifteen minutes just like we did in the old days. But what I WON’T stand for is watching five minutes of lazy A.I. ads after every five minutes of actual content and be expected to PAY for the service on top of that.

For that matter, why is it called “getting corn-holed” instead of “getting maize-holed”

Hardwired? No.

Victims of a decades long plot to erode civic education and demonize critical thinking in order to render a population of stupid voters? Yes.

Why does it look like they all just gathered in some dude’s garage?

I keep expecting to spot a snap-on tools pinup calendar hung up on the wall in the background.

Guns can be reloaded.

• Silent Hu ter 3

• Mass Effect Legendary edition. (Yes you said no compilations, so if I have to choose one it would of course be 2)

• Rimworld

• Kerbal Space Program (with a USB stick full of mods that I smuggled in up my butt)

• Fallout 4 (with a second USB stick full of mods smuggled in up my butt)

Why didn’t I put them on the same USB stick? You’re guess is as good as mine…

Can’t pardon yourself from a bullet…

Yes. But in 99.9 percent of cases, it also happens to be plural, so my eternal hope is that if it can be grasped as “If there’s as ‘s’, use ‘fewer’”, maybe more people would get it.

Can I be the guy that’s known around town for pointing out that in the given context, it’s actually “fewer users”

And yeah yeah, I know about evolution of language and common usage, and all that crap. But it really does just boil down to the fact that fewer sounds more elegant when the object is plural. ie: “There are usually fewer unexpected costs associated with new home ownership”, vs “There is usually less unexpected cost associated with new home ownership” (Both are correct in their given context)

It’s about how language rolls off the tongue. If we lose that we might as well grunt at each other draw pictographs with our own feces.

/end of rant.

I miss the prevalence of manual transmissions. Every one of my old first beater cars were manuals. But it seems that they’ve been phased out for the most part and it sucks. Driving Automatics isn’t really driving (I’ll die on that hill).

In answer to your question, no, it’s not unreasonably hard to get the hang of as long as you accept the fact that you’re going to stall it a few times at first and don’t get embarrassed about it, you’ll pick it up pretty quick.

In my experience, the people who struggle are the people who are too tense to learn because they’re afraid of looking like a fool for stalling it while they’re learning. Accept the fact that it’ll happen, and you’ll be able to relax and learn in no time.

The only thing that has kept circling my brain for the last half a year has been the scene in Demolition Man when Wesley Snipes says:

“Please just kill this guy already…”

Why is the ICC not on something European like Proton Mail?

• 90’s Trek is my go too comfort food. Especially TNG and Voyager. Less so Enterprise. And I never got into DS9 at all (fight me). When I’m looking for a random episode to watch in the background, it’s usually one of those.

• Comedy-wise, Community, Night Court (the original), The IT Crowd, The Office, Futurama, all fill the same role as Star Trek above.

• Less often, but still on a pretty regular rotation, 80’s shows like Quantum Leap, Simon & Simon, MacGuyver, Knight Rider. Just dumb shows where they have a one hour adventure and then have a new one the next week; where you don’t have to stress about watching every damn episode because the entire season is one big plotline.

I don’t necessarily look around like I’m being followed. But it took me a very long time to be comfortable listening to music or having headphones on while walking, or in public at all.

The idea of not being able to hear my surroundings and be ready to react to something is still really weird to me. It takes all of my mental effort to put it to the back of my brain while walking my dog.

It’s not even necessarily worrying about someone with malicious intent. It could be not being able to sense another walker coming up behind me. Or two kids playing catch and a ball going astray towards my face. Just the idea of not having situational awareness at all times freaks me out.

I use Cromite. It’s a more hardened fork of Bromite. Which itself is a hardened fork of Chromium.

The only thing I’ve found so far is that it likes to block the discussion threads on some websites. But other than that I’ve had no issues whatsoever.

100% agree. I was just pointing out that the whole situation is not as black and white as people on both sides want it to be.

Am I allowed to have more than one?

The games I go back to when I want to just have some peace of mind would be Rimworld and Crusader Kings 2 (specifically the Game of Thrones mod).

Perfect example of the causation fallacy.

If one were to look at that map out of context, once could say that if the temperature is too cold or too hot, murder rates increase.

We all know of course it’s a map of economic disparity, and a whole host of other societal concerns contributing. But without the context of any of those things, we’re liable to think that correlation equals causation.

It’s an important lesson.

I feel like that’s sarcasm? But yes, I legitimately feel that our system, where the only person who has any “theoretical” power to make unilateral decisions without parliament is some old guy who is content to just stay out of it, is better.

Imagine an America where they could tell Trump. “Okay, you’re king. Here…we’ll even put you on our money. Now go live overseas and fuck off”