To be clear, I’m talking about leadership. It’d be a bit like celebrating J.K. Rowling for her advocacy against spousal abuse, meanwhile, she’s still dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into nazi anti-trans groups. More of a broken clock situation than a slippery slope.

I think it would be different if the provocateurs in question weren’t, like, religious zealots or whatever. I have little confidence their aim is to move the needle in a direction I’d like it to go.

I’ve argued with plenty of do-nothing dip shits about Just Stop Oil who are concerned solely with getting to work on time and, apparently, the plexiglass in front of famous paintings. But the difference is, Just Stop Oil is a cause I can get behind. I’m not worried that supporting them would also lead to mandatory chastity cages, you know?

I mean, I will admit the first steam list I saw, I thought “This seems bad. Can’t imagine missing any of these titles, though.”

[edit] I actually forgot to mention this: The “right way” to do, like, CSAM counter-terrorism on the level of whatever is happening now will virtually always incense a bunch of libertarians—it’s not really avoidable.

Free market baby. If VISA decides it will lose money processing payments for hentai games it’s their prerogative to not process them.

You’re so right, and I’m obviously happy when things like this happen. Thank you, VISA. Thank you, Mastercard. Thank you, Capital One. Thank you, American Express. Praise be to God, guns, and government. Amen.

…By yourself?

The problem is that government even has the power to do those things.

How would you stop them from doing this?

you can’t solve government problems with more government,

Not when you aren’t in power. This is your fundamental flaw: You complain about the world, oh how you have complaints, but you have no will to power, no vision.

Plant a fig tree; it will benefit your grandchildren.

It’s easier to start a competing company than it is to start a competing government.

Not when Trump’s government refuses to do anything about all the slapp suits PayPal levies against you for treading on their financial turf.

You need a powerful standing army for the latter,

Corporations, without oversight, just become warlords with their own standing armies. You’re not getting out of this one through the low effort of simply buying a different brand of latte, man, I’m sorry.

Your cynicism can’t defeat me, man. I am God’s holy warrior. I crush weak pessimism like yours beneath the weight of my iron will.

How is it you think private companies will be more easily coercible when Trump’s cronies are the private sector?

To the point of marriage?

What is stopping the government from just commandeering PayPal’s records?

you can pressure these companies to change their mind again. Try doing that to your own government,

Jesus christ.

Okay, buddy, I’m giving you homework: you need to attend 10 city halls and 5 protests by the end of this year.

So don’t let them.

Basically nothing works if no one cares about their community. One of the reasons Trump is in power right now is because of a deep seated American apathy for, like… everything.

Trump, et. al., are dismantling USPS, but I like USPS. It’s bad that they’re doing that.

This is like shitting your pants to ward off bears.

Funny, I kind of remember Spiders better than the first one. I think they just really creeped me out. :p

I fibbed a little. I’m actually reading the fourth one right now. I do really like the short story it opens with, though.

Porn can be art, but typically it isn’t, …

This is a very strict world view you have.

Art comes from the conscious. Porn comes from the conscious. What distinction are you talking about?

‘Erotica’ is either another word for the same thing, or it’s the “high brow” version women can clink their wine glasses over. I don’t understand what trap has been laid before me.

“you must understand what art is” but now are reluctant to talk about it, …

What I am deliberately avoiding, The Riddler, is a stupid debate over some exact definition whereby you claim this thing doesn’t count, and then I say “the word ‘is’ in this context means,” and then you ironically call me pedantic, and we waste 14 hours intellectually jerking off.

Like, it’s way easier to just say that you are one of the vampire’s familiars trying to trick me with lies. Like, uh … like a lawyer. You know.

I think using AI in that area cheats no-one out of anything,

I will note, this is not an argument in favor of AI. This is just clinical “given up” disease. I think they call that cynicism.

I mean, I personally wouldn’t lose anything; I don’t watch Marvel. You don’t think they’re funny, though? I’m not gonna say I like them, but I’ve almost always laughed.

Where am I?!
Who are you?!
Why am I so full of diarrhea?!

I had dinner last night, but I didn’t like it that much. Can you change my memories of the whole situation?

I am being serious. Vampires are the aristocratic monster.

Odd that someone really into AI is also some kind of sexual puritan. Why can’t porn be art? You say “typically,” but these are coward’s words. What are your feelings?

The new Superman was made for money. Does this invalidate it somehow?

How does the song go…

“All you read and wear or see and
Hear on tv is a product begging for your
Fat-ass dirty dollar
Shut up and buy”

(you’re the one who contends that visual media made without emotion is morally deficient)

Correction! I think your lack of social awareness is morally deficient. AI is just… annoying.

What is it you people like saying? AI is just the tool? Yeah.

I await your clarification on what art is …

I can’t because you’re looking for me to show you which pixels indicate something is worthy of being graced by the title. There’s no such thing. That was never my problem with it.

If you were really trying to understand, I think you’d recognize I’ve actually explained pretty thoroughly several times already.

that’s the same as use of photography.

Do you mean to imply that if someone took a photograph and pretended to have painted it, that this wouldn’t piss a lot of people off? I think it would.

Interesting how this doesn’t seem to be much of an issue here in the year 2025. I wonder if there are forces at play which prevent this mass photography/painting confusion from materializing.

do you respond differently to the brush strokes because one is a photo …

I might. I dunno.

I’d respond very differently if I knew one of these brush strokes was just the most statistically probable in an infinite series of possible lines—kind of loses its flavor.

It seems like you’re shifting away from the point of discussion, which was whether AI output can be art

Okay, this was 15 hours ago, so I don’t remember who did what exactly, but I do know I was soapboxing, so yeah, we’re gonna cover a lot of bases.

The actual question of whether it’s art is simple: It’s not. It can be used in art, but unto itself, it’s just novel spectacle. Art comes from the conscious.

If it were art, it still wouldn’t be your art. It would be the robot’s art.

It also seems like this discussion is taking a toll on you.

I did have a nap, thanks.

This is just demon tech. Like the demons in Frieren. They say words like “hello” and “thank you” in my holy tongue to manipulate, but they know not what any of my words mean. The words “I love you” serve no purpose other than to stop me from ending its life with the power button.

This proposition is refuted by hyperrealistic paintings

And these are… common? These are clogging up google search results with their hyperrealistic spam? You realize that photography is the loser in this exchange, right? Hyperrealistic paintings are so much cooler than a machine that takes hyperrealistic photos.

How can you say what the output of that workflow communicates or doesn’t communicate without seeing it?

I’ve seen plenty.

Is every note carefully chosen in a piece of music?

Are you… being serious?

Look, I’ve been a musician longer than I’ve been any other kind of artist, and yes, I pick all of my notes. That’s the fun part, actually. There is a lot of deliberation over where they should go.

This is what I mean about you people not understanding the artistic process. Music is a language. People in a jam session are speaking words and phrases to each other. There are grammar rules to this language that work one way but in way another not.

If you’re using an LLM, then your jam partners aren’t speaking to you, they’re speaking to a robot. You may as well not even be there. And uh… I dunno, that just seems really fucking lonely.

I mean, they can do that, but this is on the level of showing me a cool anime they saw.