alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
I actually used to hate it! Like, actually despise it! Yellow was too bright, too loud, discordant, unruly, and clashed with everything. Nothing like what I wanted in my life, nothing I wanted to be.
When I first moved away from home, everything I owned was black. Jet back. As black as I could get. Smooth, cool, sleek, discrete, calm, unassuming. Flexible, cohesive, agreeable black. Fashionable black.
I had a really, really bad time. Unrelated to the decor. It was my first year out of a toxic place I'd grown used to my whole life, my first year acknowledging a mental illness I'd believed to be normal, my first year fending for myself with very little money or sleep or companionship.
I'd grown up on instant white rice and unseasoned ground beef. One day I realized that everything I'd been raised on tasted like cardboard. While out on an assignment, I passed a tent with a woman selling spices, and bought myself some turmeric. I went home and tried making curry with it. It was so yellow.
Another time, my professor took us out to a modern art gallery. I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but when we got there, the whole building had been painted bright sunshine yellow.
The artist's theme was "happiness".
What it is. How we make it. How to share it.
All bright, lovely yellow.
The house I grew up in was beige. The walls were white. The appliances were post 9/11 stainless steel. My job was to be quiet, compliant, presentable and agreeable.
Black goes with everything. Black is neutral. Black is quiet, reserved, elegant and mysterious.
Yellow is warm. Yellow does what it wants. Yellow tastes sweet and spicy and hot and cool, like a summer breeze, like sunflower petals, powdery like dust on a long dirt road and soothing like well-worn linen.
I still like the look of black. I like the look of most colors. But I like the way that Yellow makes me feel.
HOLY SHIT GUYS, I WAS INSPIRED BY THIS POST TO TRY MAKE THE SONG AND YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE THE SCREAM I SCRUMPT WHEN I DRAGGED THE TRAINING AUDIO OVER THE BACKING TRACK AND IT LINED UP PERFECTLY
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.
There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.
Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.
I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.
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I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
jbbartram-illu
2087
baratheonpilled
dededos
