Kinetic Krap

28 they/them, states, shadows of the past will not darken my future

[taylorswift]

Tonight all these lives converge here The mosaics of laughter and cocktails of tears Where fraternal souls sing identical things And it’s beautiful  It’s rapturous. It is frightening. ____

I can’t tell you how proud I am to share this with you, an album that just feels so right. A forever thank you goes out to my mentors and friends Max and Shellback for helping me paint this self portrait.

If you thought the big show was wild, perhaps you should come and take a look behind the curtain… 

The Life of a Showgirl is out now.

https://taylor.lnk.to/TSTheLifeofaShowgirl

Album Producers: Max Martin, Shellback and Taylor Swift

📸: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott 

[substitious-bastard]

stuck in the time loop but i just use it as a free day off. im not even trying to get out. i am teaching myself to knit. i am crocheting. i am cooking. not even doing anything crazy. just escaping capitalism for a week. day 375 and im not sure what lesson it's trying to teach but i've taught myself to handmake lace so all is well

[bloodbending]

can’t believe tiktok is actually getting banned, twitter is infested with bots and brainworm-infested musk bots, facebook is king of QAnon, instagram caught the plague from facebook and is dying a slow death in real time… and as the dust settles… only Miss Tumblr is left standing… failing upwards once again

[afloweroutofstone]

[candyredterezii]

[maxdowt]

Tea party

[purplepokili]

fae court

[catrinecat]

The council to decide your fate

[catboybiologist]

Woah woah woah okay I just noticed something about YouTube and idk if it's old news but I just noticed it, it seems new, and it explains a lot, one sec need a screenshot

[catboybiologist]

So.

Have you been on Facebook recently? Probably not. Because it's unusable. Dead internet theory has become dead internet reality there, and it's uncanny. AI generated images are commented on and have interaction generated with AI generated comments on blank bot accounts. If there's human interaction somewhere in the mix, it's hard to find. There's enormous amounts of vapid statements that are all same-y, and all have that distinct AI cadence to them.

I noticed that something similar seemed to be happening with YouTube. In ye olden days, YouTube comments were notorious for being moronic as hell. But it's different now. Where once home grown stupidity roamed freely, there were now grammatically correct, but extremely valid statements that often repeated similar sentence structures and even seem like mad libs. YouTube comments are filled with "this reminds me of [noun]" "I liked the moment when [thing that happened in video]" "this makes me feel [emotion][emoji]" etc etc etc. Just kind of shallow observations about the videos.

I don't pay much attention to YouTube comments at all, but based on the glances I saw, I just kinda assumed YouTube was going the way of Facebook, and the bots were taking over. This is a change that's happened within the past year or so, so I assumed that the recent AI boom just resulted in more bots than YouTube can handle and didn't pay attention.

Today I noticed something though. I was listening to some music that isn't easy to find on my usual streaming service, and I briefly noticed the comment box.

It's prompting me, a human, to write a comment in one of those formats. Idk how long this has been there, but this is the first time I've noticed this little prompt, giving me a prewritten sentence structures to work with. So idk how long this has been there, or if this is all old news.

So YouTube is prompting very specific, yet very dumb comments. Interesting. Already has implications for the death of organic human interaction online, but eh, not that big a deal.

But the KINDS of sentences that they're promoting are definitely of note. Because from what I can tell, they're prompting users to generate content tags en masse to train AI.

"This reminds me of other media" -> helps decide what ads to provide on these kinds of videos

"This makes me feel emotion" -> genre tag for recommendation algorithms

"I liked the part where things happened" -> engagement analytics, and also providing written descriptions for moments in the video to train video recognition.

And of course, lots of the training done isn't reducible to direct "this type of comment trains this", but ends up a lot more black boxy. Google also explicit asks you to tag things sometimes, but that gets FAR less engagement than making people think they're just leaving their innocent little thoughts around.

Now, Google is no stranger to this. They've been doing this with recaptcha for... Probably approaching a decade at this point. But it was interesting to notice what seems like the newest iteration of this. This almost strikes me as a creepier, more insidious iteration of a dead internet- one where humans are still ultimately generating interaction and comments, but at the unknown service of a machine.

[rockergiirl]

youtube also recently unveiled new AI "features" for youtubers, now you can get AI generated video ideas which are partially based on the videos you actually make, and with their own AI generated thumbnails!

and even creepier, they added a feature for youtubers to reply to comments with AI generated replies, being obviously trained on your previous replies

source

[catboybiologist]

God damn. Mask off dead internet. That's honestly wild, and is probably a huge reason why they've added these types of comment prompts in the first place.

[catboybiologist]

This is a genuine example of mass social engineering too- recruiting people en masse to do labor for you (training large statistical models) by making it seem like their idea.

[wickedlittlecritta]

i've been reading a lot of books about urban naturalism recently, and the one big thing they all talk about is how you HAVE to stop seeing nature as something that happens somewhere else. nature is not just charismatic megafauna and state parks and mountain ranges. nature is that abandoned lot that's growing native milkweed in it. nature is the murder of crows that lives in your block. nature is the moss growing on your roof and the dandelions growing in the sidewalk cracks and the song birds at your neighbor's birdfeeder. and you should care about it! you should notice it! that's YOUR nature!

[depsidase]

[atombombtom]

As I grow older I feel my capacity to understand that Miss Piggy is not a real person reached a peak in my adolescence and is now on a steady decline. I watched a Wendy Williams interview and there's this part that's like "can we get a ring cam!" and Miss Piggy shows her bling and I'm just like fuck she's so iconic. Miss Piggy who are you wearing? Miss Piggy have you ever considered running for office??

[atombombtom]

Like literally every time I see Miss Piggy there's a period where I need to readjust to the fact that it's not a person, and I feel that period is getting longer and longer with every instance

[atombombtom]

now all my Youtube recommendations are filled with Miss Piggy interviews. I’m not complaining. Miss Piggy what’s your secret to ageing so graciously

[bigscaryd]

It's not just the audience; professional journalists, hosts, and actors report it is legitimately difficult to not see the Muppet as a person, and it is, in fact, incredibly easy to interview or act with them once the performer gets properly set up.

[redwaltz]

Like that one time they couldn't figure out why Kermit's audio was so garbage... then realized they'd put the mic on him instead of the performer.

[brunhiddensmusings]

this has been a very longstanding issue - before the muppet show was even a thing some muppets appeared in commercials, such as rolf the dog they had a continual problem where when people directing/shooting the dogfood commercial would give dirrection to rolf that they would be speaking to the muppet, to which rolf REPEATEDLY had to tell them ‘i cant hear you, you have to talk to him’ and point at the performer underneath him rolf is one of the most embarrassing muppets to need this direction as the performer is this, damn, obvious when not on camera

‘sir, i am a bathroom mat, the man you need to talk to is back there’

[petranaradulovic]

I did an interview with Gonzo one time, and when I got into the Zoom call, it was the actor on screen trying to figure out his audio. And then once he did, he went like “OKAY!” and then just like dove to the floor and it was Gonzo and there was never a moment when I doubted that the dude was just Gonzo’s tech guy 

[ariaste]

I have met a muppet-like puppet in real life and when I tell you that my brain was hacked FUCKING INSTANTLY..... It was a person, I swear it was a person. I asked it for a hug (no i was not 5 years old, i was like 28 at this time). i genuinely don't know what came over me, it was just. It was a person???? Witchcraft

[draconym]

A couple years ago, I was invited to the birthday party of one of my former preschool students. I decided to bring my teaching puppet (a big rat) along because I knew several other kids from that class would be there, and she was always a huge hit with them.

They were, of course, very excited to see her. But what surprised me was that after the kids ran off to play in the sprinkler, the parents around me struck up conversation with the puppet. They continued for at least fifteen minutes, asking her questions like, "how long have you been teaching?" and "eaten out of any good dumpsters lately?" until one dad exclaimed "why have I been talking to a rat puppet this whole time!"

[twinklemelo]

we stan one muppet. and its janice

[sua-sponte-deactivated20200331]

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

[is-the-post-reliable]

RATING: RELIABLE

you can listen to the clip of the 1954 interview here and find him on wikipedia here

[misericordiia]

wild how anyone can get ozempic but you need extensive therapy and permission to start hrt

[misericordiia]

its almost like society values thinness more than happiness and individuality. interesting.

[anxietyproblem]

[triple-ennui]

Sometimes I think The X-Files is such a timeless and relevant show I forget it takes place in the 90s, and then I see a scene where Scully buys a whole bag of groceries for $11.14 and pays with a check

[claypigeonpottery]

I gotta say, this is one of my favourite mugs. the green might turn out more black than expected, it was a mix of a few things and ...who knows. I can't wait for this to get out of the kiln

[iamnotlanuk]

My old person trait is that I think a website should work in a web browser and not try to open an app

[lesbianmarrow]

part of what delights me about the goncharov joke is the inconsistencies. because it’s not an actual movie, different people are imagining different versions of it. some posts claim katya dies, others claim she fakes her death and survives. some ppl say there was real passion between goncharov and katya, others say it was a loveless marriage. the outlines of the film are the same, but the details are different. i like to think that they’re all true. somehow, impossibly, everyone’s posts are accurate, even when they directly contradict each other. goncharov is large, it contains multitudes. 

[firstfullmoon]

Alex Dimitrov, from “Living in Time” [ID in ALT]