Saw this TikTok (about 5 laws the OP would like to see to make capitalism better) on a break today, and I appreciate a lot about it!
I’m still on team “let’s make capitalism safer and better” rather than team “let’s throw out the whole capitalism.”
Food service and the living wage
Saw this video from the D&D people on Instagram and it reminded me of one of my soapboxes: that everyone deserves to be paid enough to live on, no matter how humble their job is.
“If you work a job, then you outta make a living” is how the country song puts it (I’ll have to link that one too). I’ve got other thoughts about disability and UBI, but as an absolute baseline I’m comfortable with that; and we, as a society, still do not reach it. The bar is under the ground and we’re still somehow not clearing it.
Mens sana in corpore.
I had a small realization just now.
I think part of the reason that I view my body as separate from me (my brain, mind, consciousness, soul, whatever you want to call it) is that my body is starting to break down, and I view that as a personal betrayal.
Just TAB things, I guess. (Temporarily Able-bodied)
Letters to my loved ones: Vocation and Avocation
Honestly, I think this sign is a perfect illustration of Vocation and Avocation! Like, there’s a whole sermon in just one image.
Not every activity or skill has value under capitalism, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t *have value*! We can and should do both kinds of things. (And we should have time to do both. 8 hours of rest, 8 hours of work, 8 hours for what we will.)
Heart and Brain, on Cheerful Nihilism
I saw this comic today, and just wanted to share.
Word of the day: AI Hallucination
Recently, via this Ask Historians reddit thread, I discovered the term Hallucination in the context of Artificial Intelligence.
I’ve known about this concept for a while; neural-net machine translation will often produce “better English,” at the cost of…yanno….accuracy. But all anyone ever sees is how clear and not-clunky the English sentence is! They ooh and aah over how magical the new tech is; but the problem of “did this actually translate CORRECTLY” has not gone away with the new technology. It’s still as present as it ever was. And the pretty English outputs make us more likely to trust the imperfect tech; the old “your purple cabbage grandmother” outputs gave us an appropriate amount of distrust for the machine.
That’s a suitable analogy for the rest of AI. It can be pretty. It’s not bad. But don’t think of it as the same kind of reliable as human-produced content; it’s not even the same kind of unreliable as human-produced content. That’s the part that worries me most.
April 2023: Found this TikTok about spaghetti photos and how they’re likely shaped by the biased data (the only photos going into the engine are likely of toddlers making a cute mess). As she says, “AI is an Ask The Audience robot, and the Audience is the general Internet-using public.”
Friendships and Relationships
Years ago, I read this essay on the Atlantic about people who overtly prioritize their platonic friendships over their romantic partnerships.
I no longer have access to read it, but it was in my browser tabs, and I still think about it occasionally.
As a person who is intentionally solo (no cohabitant) at this stage of my life, I’m trying to mainly strengthen my friendships; even if some of those are also romantic or sexual, my overarching goal is to just build up my connections with the people who are in my life. And I don’t need to be fucking them, or living with them, to do that.
What books have you read that changed your mind about something?
A friend asked this question today, and here’s my answer to him:
Ishmael, The Story of B, Demian, and The Mists of Avalon
All at age 15
They broke the Church’s influence over my mind and began a decade long process of losing my faith.
Free public bathrooms
Major cities should have free public bathrooms, I don’t care if they have to pay janitors to clean every hour, or have an attendant stationed there all the time, or what. It’s just the right thing to do, and a putative use of our tax dollars that benefits *everyone*.
Short opinion time: health care and work
Lifting this directly from a Twitterer:
https://twitter.com/Harlequinclrty/status/1613305819919175680?s=20&t=Eov8siRY7KjEsfNAk1XglQ
It is a scam to tie healthcare access to the ability to work. Obamacare made some small steps towards uncoupling the two, but did not go far enough. (Which is fine. I’m an incrementalist, I can wait while people die for lack of access to care because the alternative is zero changes ever.)
Emilybook 