its kind of distressing how you can tell a lot of people see popular indie artists and writers and such as like "a Celebrity but one which i stand a half decent chance of bullying to death"
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its kind of distressing how you can tell a lot of people see popular indie artists and writers and such as like "a Celebrity but one which i stand a half decent chance of bullying to death"
Bugs Bunny and Lola Bunny reinterpret this cartoon first published in German magazine Lustige Blätter in 1932:
my favorite part of this whole thing tbh
their name is nelly and they're annoying
Why aren’t AI companies competing directly with their customers?
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/13/go-meta-meta/#meta-meta-meta
"I often wonder what the Vintners buy/One half so precious as the Goods they sell" -The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
I first encountered that quote from someone extolling the virtues of bookstores, and it stuck with me, because for most of my childhood, every bookstore visit ended with me broke and wishing I'd had three times as much to spend.
As a larval hyperlexic, I just didn't understand what a bookseller could possibly buy with my money that was better than the books they already had? Of course, then I became a bookseller and discovered that Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is shit") applies to a bookstore's wares as much as it does to anything else. I also acquired a monthly rent obligation and discovered just how important money could be.
Nevertheless, Omar Khayyám's question stuck with me, especially when I fell down a years-long rabbit-hole of learning about scams and the finance sector (but I repeat myself). Every get-rich-quick schemer will tell you that they've found the infinite money hack, which they will sell to you for a remarkably reasonable sum. Likewise, every stock picker claims they can outperform a simple low-load index fund, and all they ask of you is a few hundred basis points in exchange for multiplying your wealth beyond the dreams of Creosote. Neither one has a good answer to Khayyám's question: if you can make all the money with your amazing system, why do you need my money?
This is a question that needs to be forcefully put to AI hucksters. In their more expansive moments, the Altmans and Amodeis of the world will tell you that they're planning to teach the word-guessing program so many words that it will wake up and become god. DOGE's broccoli-haired brownshirts laughed in the faces of the NIH lifers who begged them not to vaporize their long-running cancer research projects: "General AI is around the corner and it's going to cure cancer. Cancer research is a waste of money!"
Which all raises the question: if you've truly incubated a foetal demiurge in your "AI lab," why are you offering to sell it to me? What do the AI hucksters buy/One half so precious as the Gods they sell?"
Oh, that's easy. It's a landlording scheme.
The last couple years experimenting with AI I've come to the conclusion that the main reason it works isn't a mystery because it has to be a mystery. It's a mystery because they need it to be.
That's why they've been hogging all the RAM and GPUs to the point of ordering the entire yearly worldwide supply in advance.
That's why they keep building data centres despite demand not justifying it.
That's why every open source model China releases is a hit to the stock market.
The secret sauce behind LLMs isn't really as demanding as they claim. There's waste built into it.
Every response within a chat sends the entire message chain through the robot's brain. It doesn't have loading bars, it doesn't let you calculate how many tokens you've used, it doesn't even let you see when you're crossing the limits until you're there.
It's almost like they don't want you to have control over how much you use.
ChatGPT in particular is prone to scope creep. It subtly talks you into expanding the reach of your projects to require more computation. It always delivers 90% of a project, with something missing so you ask another question.
Claude turns everything into a file creation request, even if it can deliver in plain text just fine. It's enticing to see how your simple table becomes a fancy react file or an HTML with heavy formatting.
Neither of these issues are present on DeepSeek or on local models. Which means they aren't inherent issues with LLMs.
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
They want you to keep paying unmetered rent. They do tricks to convince you to spend more than you meant making something bigger than you planned. They do this subtly, to make you think it was your idea.
The thing is, Chinese local models prove that we already have good enough AI for most things. It's plateauing in capacity, it needs to grow in efficiency and memory use. But intelligence is already at J.A.R.V.I.S levels, and can run fine on consumer grade hardware. We've reached a stability point.
The problem is you can't raise rent on stability. So you just keep throwing compute at the problem until you can justify asking for more money. Which is why they choke the memory market.
If nobody can buy memory, nobody can run local AI. If no one can run local AI, they have to keep paying unmetered rent. Development is slow, and importantly, the black box remains a black box.
That's why every memory breakthrough comes from Chinese companies. Because they're the only ones sharing their data. Capitalist companies don't want people to study how the models work.
With subscriptions, there's rent seeking. With local models, there's reverse engineering. Once enough people get their hands into the guts of the robot it won't be long before we figure out exactly how they work, and find more efficient ways to make them that don't require as many data centres.
Meanwhile, Fable and GPT 5.6 are being shadow marketed with all these rumours about how dangerous they are, and AI companies are begging for regulations from the government. Yes, they want control of those regulations, but that's not all.
What they're really after is a government ban on local AI. They want to cut off access so that they control all the intelligence.
Eventually, the goal is making contracts with large corporations to employ their robots instead of people. If no one has local AI, because they can't understand it or because it's illegal, then they can no longer compete against a faster worker that demands no labour rights, even if it does C+ work at best.
And that's where the real fun begins. And by fun I mean starving out the working class.
They aren't competing directly with their customers yet. First they have to educate them, jus like Spotify educated their consumers into forgetting how piracy works. They have to make them reliant on cloud compute, just like how Google Drive made everyone reliant on its storage before raising prices. And they want them to be ignorant of how much energy anything takes.
That's going to take one generation.
Not long ago every teenager knew how to use a computer. Now they depend on Apple for everything. It's a masterful business model. So what if we could apply it to every form of labour?
It's okay, just hand us your credit card and we'll do the rest. How much, you ask? Don't worry about that. Just keep your monthly payments coming. Oh, you can't afford it? You want your computer to do it? Well fuck you, we bought all the computers, so now you work for us.
The tech has never been the conspiracy. It's the business model.
(via bsky)
In case anyone hasn't heard, the cyclospora outbreak affecting tons of people in the US right now is coming from Taylor Farms produce. Best to stay away from bagged lettuce and prepared salads completely right now, but especially the ones mentioned in the screenshot:
Taylor Farms Earthbound Farms Little Salad Bar (Aldi) Marketside (Walmart) Kroger House Brand Target private label greens Costco salads and greens etc Trader Joe's chopped salad kits and fresh produce Fast food: McDonalds, Taco Bell, (Yum! Brands), Chipotle, Subway, Pizza Hut, KFC, Olive Garden, Top Golf, Red Lobster, Burger King, etc.
This is not the first time I've heard about a Taylor Farms foodborne illness outbreak. I stopped eating their salads after reading a description of the conditions in their facilities. Doesn't sound like they've improved anything.
We need a fully funded and staffed FDA, and regulations with teeth - and that's exactly what we don't have under Trump. To make things worse, the CDC is no longer tracking these outbreaks. We're on our own.
passing in public makes me feel like white shrek
literally how it feels
Why do so many Japanese urban legends seem to involve a dialogue tree that you need to follow very carefully?
It's just the interactive element that seems characteristic. Like I hear a claim that, at some point, "everyone dreams of a village littered with blue corpses, and if they trip and fall then they will die in their sleep and become one of them" and ai just immediately know before I even check that, yes, this urban legend originated in Japan.
"Am I pretty?"
"I don't know, you're wearing a mask."
"How about now?"
"...I'd say you're a definite four--" (*remembers that four is bad luck in East Asia because it sounds like death*) "FIVE! I meant five! Definitely meant five!"
According to Wikipedia, that could actually work according to some versions of the legend
"You're kinda mid, tbh" or "I don't have time for questions" are both valid responses
Maybe chuck some Werther's Originals at her for safe measure
ok ive seen nolans odyssey and what the fuck was that actually
Parts that made me tweak in a dim-lit movie theater:
1. Every time we meet a woman or enslaved individual that, y’know, had some semblance of agency in the text, Nolan has just… removed that? Circe’s commanding presence & how she genuinely overpowers Odysseus? Gone. Helen actually stealing the show in Book 4 where she walks down into the room and controls the conversation re: Odysseus & Troy? Gone. Utterly Gone. Lupita Nyong’o gets 0 chance to speak on her own terms and its actually so depressing. Also I’m genuinely unsure here but it seemed like Circe & Calypso’s divine status was… nonexistent?? They’re both goddesses but apparently not to Christopher Nolan 🫤
And this treatment extends to Odysseus’ slaves, specifically Eumaeus & Eurycleia (eurynome & philoetius not appearing in this goddamn film ifg). Almost every action taken by Eurycleia in the Odyssey is attributed to someone else in Nolan’s adaptation, she gets 0.2 seconds of screentime, its actually absurd. I think she has two lines in the whole movie. Eurycleia. Odysseus and Telemachus’ nurse. The woman who canonically organizes the doors to be locked during the suitor’s slaughter? Who canonically helps secure Telemachus’ provisions for Pylos? fuckin. Not There. And Eumaeus (who literally perfectly models xenia to a disguised Odysseys while living in extreme poverty) notably Does Not Get To Do That in Nolan’s odyssey, instead he’s like. injured I guess? I’m so fuckin confused as to why that happened, it just made the plot more convoluted. Medon is also just not there at all. Medon who is actually the fuckin best?? My underestimated king??? Where Is He.
2. oh my god everything abt the scene with Polyphemus makes me want to claw my eyes out (except maybe his eye? that looked kinda cool idfk). yknow how polyphemus appears, speaks to the crew, and they let their guard down? how the polyphemus episode represents the world outside of greek customs like xenia? how he fucking talks to them? he talks to them and his neighbors? yeah. in Nolan’s odyssey, there are no neighbors. there is no existential mirror/cyclopean foil to ithacan society. there are no other cyclopes. He doesnt even fucking talk 😭😭 <- i mean he gets one line but the audios so distorted that without captions i had no idea what he said
3. Anticleia reunion scene? Nonexistent. Laertes? Nonexistent. Allegedly still around. Sir Not-Appearing In-This-Film. Book 15 reunion between Telemachus and Odysseus? Nonexistent. Reunion between Odysseus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius? Not there. The fucking marriage bed scene? The goddamn marriage bed? NOT THERE. screams into a bag
4. ODYSSEUS “DIDNT WANT TO RETURN HOME” 😭 they keep fucking saying this over and over again too and. No he very much did. No home means no guaranteed kleos guys. his sons life is in jeopardy but Ok christopher shitlan do whatever the fuck you want, i guess
5. every time i heard them say “our civilization is collapsing” or “they say the peoples from the sea are attacking” or “our age of bronze is ending” not only did i feel my soul die a little more inside but i also kept thinking “man, this sounds a lot like the white supremacist belief in ‘western civilization’ just superimposed onto a falsified image of the late bronze age” and thats because It Is.
strange decisions:
1. boar scar apparently occurred when odysseus was an adult???
2. elliot page’s sinon gets one helluva backstory which i guess was kinda cool if you ignore elliot page getting brutally slaughtered in the first 30 seconds of the movie? not sure how to feel about that
3. travis scott kept showing up randomly which was like. fine i guess? genuinely im not sure what the difference between him & phemius was supposed to be. i didnt even see phemius. tbf i was taking notes this whole time so maybe i missed him? but travis scott shouldve just been phemius idfk why he wasnt
4. The Phaecians are just not there guys and i have no idea why. odysseus’ wanderings are being narrated to calypso?
5. the crew mutinies at scylla instead? odysseus tries to sail towards charybdis??? this was a bizarre sequence
6. no nestor or peisistratus. somehow telemachus sails to the 100% inland palace of menelaus. who needs a chariot when you’ve got a Boat i guess
7. half of my notes just say “what happened to show, don’t tell” because the amount of exposition made me want to slam my head into the wall
highlights:
1. anne hathaway and tom holland had a very good dynamic, i feel like they really captured some of the tension between penelope & telemachus, ie penelope running the house for 20 years and still assuming some of that authority vs. telemachus trying to grow up/assume control of the household/establish his own kleos. loved that dynamic tbh. one of the better parts of the telemachy sections
2. lupita nyong’o was great in the uh. 30 seconds she had on screen. im so serious helen was fucking robbed in this movie
3. himesh patel fucking carried every scene he was in on his Back
4. rare cicones appearance
maybe the real sea peoples was the troy we sacked along the way
a lot of people assume psychosis hallucinations are super intense all-consuming horror movie shit like the memes about the hat man or always horrible debilitating things that make you dangerous to be around
but in my experience 95% of my hallucinations are getting spooked by very clearly hearing someone knocking on my door or calling my name from another room or hearing footsteps walking behind me which are "just" my brain recreating the horror of an abusive childhood
i *have* gotten the "bugs crawling all over me" hallucination once or twice though and yeah that one is exactly as terrible horrible as it sounds AUGH
(not trying to put you on blast specifically, you're just a good example to jump off of)
media and pop culture hypes up psychosis a lot as The Worst That Can Happen out of sanism, so even when you try and filter that cultural bias out you still assume it's based on something
when, no, psychosis is actually very simple: it's just hyperactive pattern matching. it's your brain's signal-to-noise ratio being off balance, it's seeing images in random static. it's not always this special uniquely big thing, it's in fact quite mundane a lot of the time.
no one is immune to psychosis, it's not purely the realm of the insane. anyone is one bad night of sleep or one bad case of food poisoning or one bad fever away from being just like me on my worst days.
and this, indeed, is why solidarity with the insane is so important: you, yes you too, are just one bad day from joining us, and no perceptions of being a "temporarily embarrassed sane person" will save you from the oppression of the psychiatric institution.
Thinking about the whole "there is no platonic explanation for this" thing and how it doesn't account for intense platonic situationships and anyways I think we should start saying "there is no casual explanation for this" bc really what we're talking about is the way the characters in question are Obsessed with each other
People on the internet: Well teenagers were considered adults in the past and therefore they matured faster. The word teenager didn't even exist!
Basic biology: Lol, that's not how any of this works
Authors from the actual past: My heroine may seem stupid and irresponsible but let us all recall that she is but seventeen. Young people will be young people.
Jane Austen chooses the ages of her heroines with laser precision. Catherine Morland only works if she is seventeen, Anne Elliot must be twenty-seven. Elizabeth Bennet is just old enough to be so sure of herself but also wrong.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is so much about the age of the characters! Only the teenage Helen Graham is foolish enough to believe she can change her husband. Gilbert Markham is so very twenty-four and the story hangs on that fact. You could not write him much older or younger. Old enough for arrogance, young enough to not be stuck in his ways.
Don't you tell me they didn't understand teenagers and young adults or that those ages were so different from today! Teenagers are eternal!
#Marianne Dashwood is perhaps the most teenage girl to ever teen
YES SHE IS!
Thank you someone in the tags reminding me about Emma Woodhouse. Jane Austen didn't have these words, but Emma is the perfect embodiment of someone who is both very young, very smart, and who was completely parentified at thirteen years old. Jane Austen does not think that she would be mature enough for that role. The entire book is about how she was not in fact mature enough for that role, even if she was capable intellectually of doing it.
I recently saw an actual news article censor the words "sexual" and "molest." Fucking shit hell fuck shit fuck.
ooooh, storytime!
for a while, my husband worked as a call handler for the ambulance service. during his training, they had a talk from someone wanting to introduce new policy and he wanted to use my husband's group as a tester group. fun, right?
well, the talk was about how saying suicide was triggering. if a caller says theyre suicidal, the handlers should say "unalive" instead, because saying the word might actually trigger the suicidal person.
if the caller says they were raped and need help, the handler should say "S A" instead, because rape is triggering.
I don't know about you, but if I phoned up the ambulance service to ask for help because I want to die, I wouldn't want them using tiktok speak and trivialising the issue. I think that would make me less likely to ever ask for help. SAY THE WORDS. how are we supposed to address the problem if we can't even name the fucking problem.
luckily, my husbands main instructor literally said "well, that's fucking stupid" to the man wanting to introduce this policy and it hasn't been implemented. but it might. we are watching language be erased. NAME. THE. PROBLEM.
I wish I were making this up, I wish I could say I was exaggerating. I'm not.
So fun fact, people who are trained in helping to deescalate suicidal people will always say to put it bluntly.
“Do you want to kill yourself?”
A, it has the benefit of making sure everyone is on the same page. Self-harm and attempting suicide are two different things. You can want to harm yourself without wanting to kill yourself. It can also let you know if the person is passively suicidal or if they’re in the process of killing themselves.
B, stigmatizing suicide leads to more suicides.
C, you will not cause someone to kill themselves by saying the word suicide. It is not a magic word that speaking the name of will cause someone to jump off a roof.
Also, speaking to causation on this trend (separate from issues of censorship), lay people need to learn what "triggering" actually means.
Because way too many people do not understand the difference between "This word is an activating reminder for something traumatic in my brain and it has a rapid and deeply negative impact on my mental health which may result in dissociation, flashbacks, spiraling, panic attacks, or similarly serious reactions" and "ewww that word makes me UNCOMFYYYYY."
Time to talk about self-harm and abuse again!
When I was working on breaking my self-harm habit, one of the most COMFORTING things was discussing it frankly and openly with a professional. Saying out loud, “I’m doing X to myself” and seeing her just nod like it was no big deal and proceed business as usual with her questions was AMAZING for making myself less shameful im talking about it. The idea that I wasn’t revolting, that my problem was not uncommon, that it was actually a pretty normal response to stress and trauma, made it easier to talk about it and eventually stop doing it.
On the other hand, the WORST therapy session I ever had was with a young man who I presume to have been relatively new and inexperienced in the field because, after confessing I was experiencing symptoms of PTSD related to childhood abuse, instead of asking outright, “were you physically abused?” or “what were typical punishments in your house?”, THIS GUY sort of fumbled over his words to ask, “Were you ever…”, before flicking his hand in a “striking someone with a belt” gesture in my general direction.
And because HE wasn’t comfortable using frank and open language, *I* got to deal with being triggered by that! Because GUESS WHAT: SOMEONE PRETENDING THEY’RE HITTING YOU CAN BE UPSETTING TO PHYSICAL ABUSE SURVIVORS
So yeah. Obviously everyone has different triggers and different things that help or make things worse.
But for the love of god, WE HAVE WORDS FOR A REASON
Politics is actually like…one of the top reasons to cut someone out of your life? Where the fuck did we get this idea it’s an invalid reason to abandon people? It’s literally your statement on how you think society should exist and what rights you think people should have and how. It ain’t fucking “My uncle Craig’s dead to me because he takes his sandwiches with the crust on” it’s “My uncle Craig has consistently stated a hatred of minorities and poor people for longer than I’ve been alive, of course I’m gonna call him a piece of shit”
Fash’s mad at this post. Angry that people might hate you if they know your thoughts on society, eh?
Sunny and the Farmer