disabled ppl we need to start lying to nosy people okay? you tell me i'm too young to need a cane and i will tell you point blank that maybe you should tell that to the guy who ran me over. you don't get an explanation of my health issues you get lies and depending on how much of an asshole i want to be that lie will be anything from a humble car crash to a 1 billion lions attack. mind yr business.
"i could never live like that" well maybe you'll have to because this happened overnight. yeah you heard me i was the most able bodied man in the world but then one morning bam i woke up disabled. yeah you could have that too. there's no cure either you'll just wake up one morning and now you have to live like me
Danny: *minding his buisness in the mall, and sipping on a cup of ectoplasm*
M'ari, walks up to him curiously: What are you drinking?
Danny, taken off gaurd by the random child: Uhh...
M'ari: Because it kinda looks like Uncle Jason's blood. Are you a vampire?
Danny: Yes.
M'ari: Oh. Did you get permission to drink that blood? If not that means you're a bad guy.
Danny: I got permission, only weird fruitloops don't get permission.
M'ari, nods seriously: That's good, cause then I'd have had to beat you up. And I like your star hoodie, and I wouldn't want to accidentally ruin it.
Danny: You a hero then?
M'ari: No, Daddy and Mommy are heros though, and that means I'll be a hero one day too.
Danny: Got your whole life figured out huh kid?
M'ari: *proudly nods*
Danny: So where are-
M'ari: Is your skin sparkly because you're a vampire?
Danny: Sparkly?
M'ari: Yeah! It looks like snow when its in the morning and its all glittery.
Danny, snorts: No thats because I have use ice powers.
M'ari: Really?!
Danny: *crouches down and puts his drink down. He holds out his palm, and it starts glowing blue before a glittering blue ice sculpture in the shape if a star materializes in his hand, followed by small ice droplets that turned it into a necklace.*
M'ari: Pretty!
Danny: Tell ya what, you tell me how to contact your parents to come get you, and you can have it.
M'ari: I know Daddy's phone number!
Danny: That'll work.
*one phone call with a panicked father later*
Dick: M'ari!
M'ari: Hi Daddy! Look the Mall Vampire made me a necklace! Hey will it melt?
Danny: Not unless I will it to kid.
Dick: You scared the stars out of me Princess! I turned around and you were just gone! You can't do that!
M'ari: But I was bored, and you walk away from Uncle Tim when you're bored.
Dick: Ah well thats different-
Danny: *snorts but tries to cover it by taking a sip of his drink*
Dick: Thank you for holding her attention long enough to contact me.
M'ari: The Mall Vampire is cool! He knows more about the stars and planets than Mommy does.
Dick: Mall Vampire?
Danny: *smiles at him, showing off his sharper canines*
Dick, pales: Right! Well Granpa is waiting for us M'ari! Thanks for the help sir, goodbye.
M'ari: By Mr. Mall Vampire. *waves excitedly over Dick's back*
Danny: *lazily waves back*
Bonus
???: Sorry I'm late I was- why do you have that look on your face?
Danny: What look?
???: The look that means "I know something others don't know and its going to be hilarious".
Danny: Its nothing bad, just had an interesting conversation with a really eccentric kid is all. It was funny, in hindsight.
???: Uhuh, sure. *squints suspiciously at him*
Danny: Anyway, forget about that, let's get the supplies I need before we go to dinner.
*3 Hours Later*
Tim: Why is M'ari running around talking about a Mall Vampire?
Kori: Dick lost her in the mall earlier today, and the person who found her was humoring her questions.
Tim: And Dick is freaking out because...?
Kori, huffing: The man was "extremely pale with glittery skin and dark hair" and he just happened to have sharp teeth, so Dick's freaking out about it.
Tim: Seriously?
Kori, fondly: Honestly, that man.
Barbra: Hey guys, sorry for arrivaving late, it took a while to find the right paint-
M'ari, squeals: Mall Vampire!
Danny: Hey kid.
Barbra: What?
Danny: This is the eccentric kid I told you about.
Barbra: Oh. Well uh, this is Danny, the cousin I told you abour. He's only in Gotham for a few months for a few art shows hes particpating in, so he's going to be staying with me.
Dick, paling: What?
Danny: Sorry for any inconvenience I might cause, but I look forward to getting to know you all. *smiles 'innocently', showing off his sharp teeth once more*
for the record im not technially 100% anti-AI, in the sense that its a broad category of tech being lumped under one umbrella term so it feels over-zealous to say i hate all of it all the time forever. but i also think trying to discuss what it actually IS good for is difficult right now when i cant take one step without something trying to convince me to use chatgpt to summarize my life and speed up my hobbies and turn my friends into chatbots and optimize my life into oblivion. i am certain there is nuance to the topic but can we stop cramming the square peg into the round hole before you start trying to sell me on the legitimate benefits of the square peg. please.
Neural Nets have existed for decades and are genuinely useful. It's a form of AI that recognizes patterns, and can do stuff like identify cancer cells, tell whether an egg is fertilized or not, detect fraud, and optimize routes.
Those are Expert Systems, tuned to do exactly one thing. If you (say) ask a medical expert system a question about financial law, it's useless. The autopilot that flies a 787 has no idea how to drive a truck on the freeway. A Coulter Counter is excellent at identifying lymphocytes in a blood sample but can't predict the next card in a blackjack game.
And so on.
The problem with so-called generalized AI (AGI) is that we don't have that yet. It doesn't exist. It MIGHT some day, but AGI has been "10 years away" since the 1980s. The goals keep moving as we learn more about how people and machines process data.
But the current crop of AI techbros have been selling generative Large Language Model AI (LLM) as AGI because generative systems do a good job of faking it. There's no actual thought going on, merely the illusion of thought via predicting the next word in a sentence accurately.
If you let a human toddler listen to 800 hours of YouTube car influencer videos, that toddler might end up sounding like a car influencer. They'd parrot horsepower numbers and 0 to 60 times, mention EV range and MSRP numbers.
But they wouldn't understand any of it.
That's ChatGPT.
And yeah, it's worse than useless because it doesn't even know when it's lying or hallucinating. It just babbles convincingly until you stop it.
But for techbros to make money selling that as "AI"? It's the perfect scam, especially if you don't understand how it works.
very funny to me that calories is legit just a measure of energy. you can convert it to joules. (4186 joules in one kcal). really drives home the absurdity of diet culture.