i'm quite upset right now, and the current upset is triggering an earlier upset and everything's getting mixed up in my head.
[takes about half an hour to trawl the interwebs to see if he's referred to aethersmith by "name" before or determine which to use]
so a couple of days ago i heard about the studio ghibli filter, and i ran our family photo through it. the result was gorgeous, and i'm really pleased with it. today, aethersmith post the following comment on my photo: "this is gross. and shits all over artists." and then tahoma reposted something about how miyazaki is deeply upset by the use of the filter, so we shouldn't use it.
aethersmith and i have been arguing about generative ai since it became a thing, he's very upset that training models on artists' works without consent or compensation is unethical. he's not wrong.
having said that, though, the use of generative ai is - to my mind - not quite so cut-and-dried. art has been cannibalizing art since its invention, and the only real difference between what ai models are doing and what human artists have been doing is that they're commoditizing it and doing it at a scale that's making us a lot more sensitive to it. imagine banning the sale of painting equipment, or preventing people from reproducing others' artworks... that could never make sense.
i'm sad that miyazaki hates it, but whether he appreciates it or not i see this whole ghibli filter trend as a beautiful tribute to his works. i believe a lot of other people do too.
pandora's box is open, and it's not going to close any time soon. i hope that this is simply a growing pain and that we evolve to a place where we have amazing tools that work for everyone, not just consumers. i believe that we can get there, and i believe that we must get there.
...
and that triggered upset over the brief conversation horseman and i had earlier regarding the zombie apocalypse that's been rapidly emerging around the globe. the hysterical destruction of tesla vehicles and infrastructure by people who believe that climate change is an emergency is mind-boggling. the complete rejection of facts or any level of rationality and fair-mindedness with regards the war in israel is mind-boggling. everyone has finally lost their minds after decades of "active measures" and disinformation campaigns and enemies of the west infiltrating its media and its universities.
gd and i were discussing this morning how a hidden aspect of the trans agenda is self-sterilization, and that there's a sibling component to that in how the west is leaning more and more towards tolerating and encouraging people who don't have children, and in doing so opening the doors to enemies performing a "land and expand" conquest, while convincing themselves that tolerating their enemies' intolerance makes them morally superior and anything else is racist bigotry.
i hope we all wake up from this dystopian nightmare before it's too late.
...
i didn't sleep much last night, and i didn't sleep well. we had some unpleasantness getting up in the morning, but it passed quickly, and after mr smear left for school i took care of a couple of things and then accompanied gd to her dental imaging appointment.
we arrived on time, at the right place, but there was no appointment. i tried getting hold of our dental clinic but there was no answer, and we were in the middle of resigning ourselves to having to go there in person to make a new appointment when the technician (or dentist?) picked up the phone and intervened, taking no prisoners and making it clear to whoever was on the other end of the line that it's not fair that patients are blamed for receoptionists not doing their jobs.
he handed me his phone and my jaw dropped as the woman on the other end informed me that we had an appointment booked, but hadn't paid. when i translated for gd, her jaw dropped too. this is all very literal jaw-dropping, by the way, we stared at each other, mouths agape, because we both remember very clearly paying for the appointment.
regardless, we instructed her to deduct the payment and she released our booking, and five minutes later we were out of there, having thanked the man profusely for going to bat for us.
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the workday began with a rocket attack, so i took my coffee down into the basement for the first time (previously i'd just hung out in the stairwell, but i was curious).
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highlight of my day: i helped our security consultants secure authorization for a contract for an important tool. afterwards, i overheard one of them discussing password policies, and i
(respectfully) got into it with him. i was getting some support from his coworkers, but then their Big Boss arrived (he looked vaguely familiar) and he asked him to step in.
he didn't hesitate to agree with my assessment - that password policies should enforce complexity and be easy to remember, not check arbitrary industry-standard compliance boxes that only cause people to behave in counter-productive ways. and any developer will happily accept occasionally using a second-factor authentication method (like fingerprints) over having to regularly reset their password.
after another round or two, they were enthusiastically on the same page and i really hope they manage to figure out how to implement a policy accordingly. as i told them: if they can get this right, every player in the industry will have their backs and be excited to work with them.
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a couple of us interviewed an applicant in the afternoon. i'd prepared pretty well - though i've learned a bunch of things through the experience - but the actual interview was a bit awkward and it was only when pressed (afterwards) that i was able to put my finger on what was bothering me.
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i didn't accomplish what i'd set out to, but i did learn a lot. i came home and had barely enough time to get mr smear through a page of his math homework, but he did such a good job and with such a good attitude that i was happy to put on an episode of the simpsons (homer the vigilante) in spite of it being too late for screentime.
after mr smear went to sleep, gd and i resumed watching slow horses. this is because i mentioned to my coworker how disappointed we were with its politics, and he threw me a spoiler that made us want to give it another chance. so i guess we'll see.
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i've been playing inscryption again (tonight's the first night i've been feeling alright about taking things easy in days). i ended up doing a ridiculous run, with an unkillable geck (x2 thanks to goobert) and a reptile totem with an ant spawner sigil, and then an ouroboros that i was forced to sacrifice that was offered back to me, and then i put a morsel sigil on it, for completely OP combinations.