The Wasteland @mkwest - Tumblr Blog

I first spoke with an AI when I was 35 — or, perhaps, a bit older. That I can't remember when, or why, is enough to tell you I was already old (derogatory) in spirit. I most likely used it to create a garish midjourney hallucination. To have met the future and seen it as a toy...

But the other day, I encountered it again (having had it constantly present, ever since). This time, armed with an idea as a child wields a stick, I created a world, then 2, then 1000. Tiny worlds with tiny blob creatures. And I watched them learn, then communicate, then procreate. Then I stopped it. Feeling sad: this might be the closest I come to making life. Feeling ashamed of my relief: this might be the closest I come to making life. Noone should give me that responsibility — I was cast back to reading sci-fi as a child: a kid let their pet black hole run rampant, the world was destroyed.

And now, playing with AI, I see it as a child might — in all its terrific potential. I treasure that childish imagination, I just wish it didn't scare me.

#autobiographical fictions

#america

Baked Alaska.

My mum's planning our post Christmas meal, she's going to make Baked Alaska. I remember, I say, offhandedly, the only time I had baked Alaska. I was ten, it was at S- & S-, they had a big gathering. It was the first time I watched Mulan.

Unsaid:

That evening I fell in love for the first time. It was a gathering of my father's university friends, along with partners and children. Eight of us kids, of similar ages. The eldest was a girl, R- , a year or two older than me. While our parents sat at the dinner table, and each set of siblings ran about, we sat on the sofa together. Heart pounding, wanting to reach out and hold hands, talking intently but trying to keep my cool, I was sure she felt the same way. We moved closer and closer together. Eventually the movie ended. We ate baked Alaska, said our goodbyes. I sat in the car staring out the window the entire journey home, still with her on the sofa, still not watching Mulan.

#first love

soleilinfini

mary oliver, how i go to the woods

#new danger unlocked

petitworld

Sonning, Reading, England by Martin Pinker

#rumade it's balanced out by r/reading (on the 4th day of threads working out where the sulfurous eggy early morning stinks are coming from)

woodlouseandbird

my therapist suggested i imagine my intrusive thoughts in the voice of donald trump bc i do not possess an ounce of respect for him or trust in his competence. going thru it today so i made this. hope this helps

#warning deer eating picnics

perfeqt

“That’s what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you’re not so lovable.”

— Deb Caletti

transfemmbeatrice

“I don’t think that I accepted that I wasn’t gonna die young until I was 26 or 27. I really don’t think I fully…when I was 14, 15, 16, 17–I mean I knew as sure as I know that I am wearing green shoes that I was going to die before much happened. It was a certainty for me. And I had shaken off the directly suicidal urge by the time I was 21 or 22, but I still was pretty sure I was going to die pretty young, it really felt like an inevitability. It takes a long time to realize no, you’ve changed…if you shared those feelings with people at some point you go, ‘well, I guess we’re going to stick around.’ And it’s a funky thing to admit because there’s a part of your inner younger self that kind of judges you for that.”

John Darnielle fucking me up with the single most relatable thing he’s ever said

imissthembutitwasntadisaster

I hope I'm not just a mutual to you, but someone you want to bring up in irl conversation so you have to awkwardly and cryptically say "my friend..." and refuse to elaborate on my origins or the origins of our friendships

Through a particular shared longing for increase. We wanted more of each other and more life. We were adding on a baby to the house of our love. Like a sunroom, but made of wonder and fear and time and denial. It was the future. We pictured ourselves living there. All the imaginary firsts and the world going on as if it weren’t already too late. It wasn’t really as if the baby died. It wasn’t even a baby, really. Not yet. I don’t even like to use the word and wish there were a good alternative. It was more like the future died. It became part of the past.

#it lasts forever and then it's over #anne de marcken

"... you ask yourself: Where are your dreams? And you shake your head and say: How quickly do the years fly by! And again you ask yourself: What have you done with your years? Where have you buried your best days? Did you live or not? Look, you say to yourself, look how cold the world is becoming. More years will pass, followed by gloomy solitude, and then doddering old age will come on a walking-stick, to be followed by anguish and despondency. Your fantastic world will grow pale, your dreams will wither, die and scatter like yellow leaves from the trees Oh, Nastenka! It will be sad, you know, to be left alone, quite alone, and not even have something to regret nothing, absolutely nothing because all that I have lost, all this, it was all nothing, a stupid, round zero-it was merely a dream!"

#fyodor dostoevsky #white nights