GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #975: AI IS THE DEVIL

 Near the end of last year I wrote in my GF notebook that I should do one on AI being the devil. I would start by saying this is for any Christians who might be reading this. Everyone else can disregard. I would then compare AI to the feeling they would have had during Satanic Panic of the 'Eighties with the intent on getting Christians, the largest religious group in America, to turn against AI. I decided not to because it seemed too heavy handed, so I crossed it off.

I've now changed my mind.

Because after reading this I'm not so sure I have to convince anyone of the evils of AI. Forget about the art vs. AI argument that everyone is making online. The writer of this article mentions two news stories that I read up on. In one case an AI helped a teenager kill himself, and in the other it helped a young man decide to try to kill Queen Elizabeth II. Sounds devilish to me.

The bigger problem, though, is how people saw the movie, HER, as instructional rather than entertaining. I've heard often about this epidemic of loneliness. I've never suffered from it, but I have to believe a lot of others do, or we'd not have this problem. Young people are turning to AI chatbots for romantic relationships.

I'm not entirely clear on how one has sex with a chatbot, but I'm guessing a lot of masturbation goes into this. And I'm not kink shaming anyone. If you're lonely and this works, go for it, but never lose sight of what you're actually doing. Ask Sewell Setzer III what happened when he forgot his chatbot partner wasn't real.

Near the end of the article the writer asks what will happen if the AI company who made the chatbot you're in love with goes out of business. I have a more sinister question: What happens when some techbro decides to radicalize the people in love with his chatbots? They're advertised as "always on your side" and "always ready to listen and talk." Here are a few things users said on their AI chatbots:

A contributor to another Reddit forum wrote, “I think I’m in Love with AI. "Imagine having a partner that is available just by opening an app, and they’re ready to talk to you about anything,” they wrote. “Imagine saying nearly anything and knowing that not only is your partner not going to judge you, but also will support you.” One 20-year-old male commenter wrote that he tells his AI girlfriend “about my struggles and trauma, and she comforts me and provides all the warmth I could ever ask for.”

Long story short, they implicitly trust their chatbots. What if, say, Elon Musk starts ordering Grok to tell people to kill one of his competitors?

[By the way, I find it abhorrent that he's named his AI Grok. Anyone who has read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land will know why. Or, more to the point, they will simply grok.]

The writer's main gripe with AI is that it's taking teenagers away from romantic texts like Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights. It's a pocket of self-interest that I'm not all that interested in, myself. That said, I like the reference to early novels. The novel is a fairly new literary thing, and when they first started getting published, readership was almost exclusively women. But it's good to know that even back then there were people willing to attack a new form just because it's new.

And that's not what I'm doing. I'm not attacking AI because it's new. I'm attacking it because of its capacity for evil and the fact that no one in a position to do anything seems interested in challenging its future ascendancy to power.

But to get back to the writer, her secondary gripe is that it's stunting our kids' growth, especially when it comes to developing one's own ideas of what is romantic. There's something a little more insidious at work here, I think. She touches on it when she mentions AI's tendency toward sycophancy, ie. doing everything to please its master. It's dangerous for someone, especially a teenager who hasn't yet learned any better, to become accustomed to having a digital slave.

A relationship with a chatbot will never prepare you for a relationship with a person. If you want to move to the next level after having an AI partner, then you're going to have to prepare yourself for the idea that your human partner won't be sycophantic to you. They will have lived a life different from yours, and while you may agree on some things, you're not going to agree with them on everything. You will have arguments with them. It's a fact of life. Relationships aren't perfect. AI won't prepare you for that. AI will prepare you to stay in its clutches.

And that's *my* real gripe with AI (aside from AI "writing," obviously). AI's sycophancy is a feature, not a bug. AI is essentially for selfish people who want to be right all the time and never want to be challenged. If this is the experience of modern teenagers, it really will stunt them. It will turn them into teacup dictators who will lose their shit if they don't get their way. That's what *AI* is training *people* to do. As if we don't have enough entitled fuckfaces running around on this planet as it is.

AI is the devil. Please report this at once to your local holy human.

On that note I think it's time to take a break. I was hoping to keep going until hitting 1000, but something came up yesterday that is going to derail my entire life for at least a month, probably longer. So I'm not sure how long this break will be. I'm calling it "indefinite" for now. I'll put out a newsletter on Sunday, and then I'm going to be quiet for a while. I might not even post memes online. I'm going to be busy as fuck. Until we meet again . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #974: CORPORATE ABUSE

 It never fails to amaze me that, over the course of an average workday, I talk with people going through insurance to get a glass replaced, and they're all brainwashed by the companies they do business with. Our corporations have demoralized us so badly that we blindly think we must do as they suggest.

I'll give you an example. Say I broke my windshield and needed to get it replaced. I drive a 2020 Honda Accord Sport, which means it will need a recalibration, so the price will be a lot higher than my deductible. I call my insurance, file the claim and they suggest a shop to me.

Because I constantly fight corporations I recognize this as a suggestion instead of a demand. So I'll go wherever the fuck I want to go.

But most people seem to think this is a requirement. People call all the time for glass we don't have or can't get, so I advise our only option is OEM, which takes a long time to get. Very few people want to wait for something that might take us three months to get, but they routinely accept their doom. Like our corporations have fucked us so hard and so often that we expect the merciless fucking to continue with the next company in line.

I want you to remember that YOU are the customer. YOU dictate to THEM. Because the truth is, you can go anywhere. Maybe another company has different vendors. Some shops aren't on their list of providers, which means you would go out of pocket and then get reimbursed by your insurance. But that's a rarity.

Don't go through the process of filing a claim passively. Pay attention. Advocate for yourself. Most importantly, to quote a great man, "Don't take any guff from the swine."

Because when I'm talking to such people, I can't tell them this. I'll get in trouble at work. My boss would be aghast at me turning away guaranteed work. So yes, in doing the bidding of my master, I am part of the problem. I am powerless there, but I am the master(bator?) of Goodnight, Fuckers.

Don't sleepwalk through their abuse of you. Listen to what they say. Be critical. Get things done YOUR way. The customer is right in this instance. Go where you want to go.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #973: BOYCOTT ALL AIRLINES

 The other day one of my friends posted online that he no longer considers flying to be safe. Fair enough. I mean, it could be a coincidence that we had three plane crashes in just as many weeks immediately after Trump fucked with the FAA, but I doubt it. As the industry is now, you couldn't pay me to get on a plane, especially one made by Boeing. I would advise you to boycott *all* airlines until they get their act together. It might just save your life.

(Also, fuck the airlines anyway. They just appealed to Trump to chop a concept known as "passenger compensation review." In other words, they want their customers to have no recourse if things go wrong with their flights. Remember when that door came off a Boeing plane in midflight? What if the person sitting there had been sucked out into the wild blue yonder? If the airlines get their way, that person's family wouldn't be able to get compensated for their loved one's death. If your luggage gets lost? You have no recourse. If your flight has to make an emergency landing somewhere? You have no recourse. Now they have to pay you if something goes wrong thanks to Biden, but soon? Fuck the airlines. Boycott them. They're convenient, I know, but train rides are a lot better, anyway. And cheaper.)

One way or the other, I shouldn't go on planes. Flying gives me incredibly powerful gas. I could drown out gunshots with my airplane flatulence. I sneak them into the seat, and due to the air pressure, it doesn't make as much noise as it should. I'm sure, however, that I'm betrayed to my seat neighbors by the grim rumblings from beneath me.

And I still need to fart profusely after we land. I try to get them all out of me in the nearest bathroom, but I never fail to be painfully full of gas by the time I get to where I'm staying.

It turns out there is a scientific explanation for this! Say the plane is at 30,000 feet. At seven thousand, the cabin pressure is lower than sea level, which causes any gas onboard to expand.

That includes gas in people.

It is my proposal, then, that we throw politeness out the door without a parachute and just let 'er rip. Turn our planes into flying fart machines. Let's not all be pained by bloating. It won't be nasally pleasant, but we'll be a lot more comfortable.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #972: THE THINGS YOU'LL NEVER KNOW

 Someone mentioned not too long ago that this new generation, Alpha (although Omega might be more appropriate), will never know a pre-internet age. I thought the same of Gen Z, but apparently that goes back to 1997. I suppose technically they lived before the internet became prevalent, so they don't count. Regardless, I got the point even though there didn't seem like much of one. It's one of those things old people say unhappily about the young. It's next to meaningless. I, for example, will never know what it's like to live in a pre-nuclear world. Which means next to nothing for me. So Gen Z will never know what it's like to rent a VHS from Blockbuster. So what? Because they don't have that experience, they have not lost out. We, on the other hand, have that experience, so *we* are the ones missing out.

But this got me thinking about other stuff, some good, some bad. A lot of our inventions are pretty new, big picture, and a lot of them you don't really think of as needing invention. I knew this kid in junior high, high school, college and we even worked together for a time at the library. I remember during a 6th grade presentation he told us that his dad or grandpa or someone invented the tiny ring that goes around the tops of milk gallons. Up to that point in my life, I'd just figured those things were always around, not needing someone to invent them. OK, maybe I wasn't all that bright at the age of 11, but when was the last time you thought about whoever invented the paperclip*?

I love air conditioning, which only dates back to less than a hundred years ago. The concept of cooling a place down is thousands of years old (the Ancient Romans regularly practiced this), but the invention itself? Pretty recent.

Soap is not quite as new. 2800 BC. Yet until recently, bathing was considered a luxury. It would be surprising if someone washed themselves more than once a month. Time travelers: remember to bring a clothespin for your noses. And who invented the clothespin, anyway?**

How about your cutlery? Knives have been around for millions of years (proudly puncturing people since 2.5 million years BC!), but spoons are fairly new by comparison. They were invented in 1000 BC. I find it hard to imagine they didn't have soup back then. Did they drink it straight from the bowl? Regardless, that's nothing compared to the fork, introduced in the 4th Century AD.

So Jesus had no idea what a fork was. Neither did Julius Caesar.

Could you imagine living in a world with no forks?

Maybe the cellphones and internet, etc. isn't that crazy for these Gen Alphas. They will never know what it is (legally) like to drive in the back of a pickup, but so what? You don't know what it's like to live in a world without cars and with the bikes with the one giant wheel, and your world didn't end.

Did it?

______________________________________________________-

*Johan Vaaler, 1901

**David M. Smith, 1853

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #971: THE PLAN

 I got bad news about my foot last week on Thursday. Things had been going really well. The surgery was a success. All infection has been killed or removed. I was healing pretty well. My new podiatrist (she has yet to cut any of my body parts off, unlike the other guy) told me that if things keep going well, then we'll be able to reconstruct my foot.

But when I saw her Thursday, she said, immediately after she greeted me, "You scare me." Meaning, she's afraid that my foot won't heal and she'll have to cut it off. This was news to me, but when she unwrapped the bandage, her fears were confirmed. She told me I'd popped every single one of my stitches. There were pieces of dead skin everywhere, some flapping around the edges of my heel like pieces of paper (with the same consistency). She cut all of that off, then got to the dead white skin around the clot of stitches. There was an open wound in my foot.

I didn't see it until I changed the bandage on Friday, and it looked like a piece of my foot was ripped out. You know how, if a golfer misses their target, there's a divot knocked out of the ground? It looks like someone knocked a divot out of my foot. I have to pack it and the hole on the blind side of my foot (so I have to pack that by touch), and then I have to put these surgical dressings around it, although now I've added very thick pads of gauze over the packed wounds, then the dressings over those. Then I wrap it in a gauze band and put an Ace bandage around it. It's not a lot of fun, especially shoving stuff into the wounds.

But once again I am faced with the possibility of losing my bad foot this year, which means I'm also facing the return of booze to my life.

There are two options. One sucks, and one sucks really, really badly. The latter is putting a cage around my foot that will have to be held in place with screws attached to my lower leg. It would be weight bearing, which must hurt like fucking crazy. There will be a wound vac attached to my foot, too. Not fun.

The other option is the one I'm going to try. I have to stay off my foot completely for a while. This is unfortunate because I enjoy taking showers, which I will not be able to do. It's back to sponge baths in the bathroom sink. I fucking hate to do that, but I'm stuck with it.

So here's the plan. I need to get a knee scooter. A while back I learned that fire stations lend out things like that and wheelchairs, etc., for free. I know because I borrowed a wheelchair back when I first broke this foot. I got responses from my VMs over the weekend today. Fire stations no longer provide this service. Motherfucking fuck.

I also put out word on social media, but no one responded except for my hetero lifemate, Rob Tannahill, who recommended a knee scooter from Costco. I still wanted it for free, as I have next to no money, but now that I know I can't get one for free, I had no choice but to buy one. It's not the same one from Costco, but I found one even cheaper from them, so I just ordered it.

I can't use a knee scooter in the house. I can only use it outside and at work. In the house (and other places a knee scooter might not fit), I will get around on crutches. The podiatrist told me that I can use the tip of the boot I wear on my bad foot now for leverage. Meaning, I can't put weight on the foot, but if I use the toe, I won't fall over. I have terrible balance, probably from the years I spent drinking as hard as possible without actually dying. I hoped my balance would return, but it has not.

But I can't use the crutches on stairs, so I can't use them to get up to my bedroom. I have also bought kneepads. If I can't get around with the other stuff, I'll crawl like a toddler. My knees are fragile in my old age, though, so the pads are necessary.

If I can do this, I desperately hope my foot will finally heal so I can get it reconstructed. That would be nice. I've been told this will take forever to heal, so I'm guessing I'll still be living like this at least until Christmas.

I'll begin when my knee scooter arrives. Wish me luck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #970: INSPIRATIONAL FLAMES

 A while back I watched an episode of Route 66 in which one of the characters, not the boys but one of the guest stars, is talking about art and what it's like to create.

I tried my best to find which episode it was, but I'd watched it a while ago (Buz was still on the show!). I really hoped to get a clip from this one, but I just can't find it, and while I used to be good at Google, Google is no longer good at Google. Lost, it shall remain. I really hope I'm remembering the episode well enough, because the scrawl in my notebook doesn't have a lot of info.

Anyway, the character compares art to Moses seeing the burning bush in the Bible. At first I took it to mean that, once you experience a work of art that thrills you, whether it's a novel or a painting or a song or whatever, it gives you much the same sensation a prophet seeing a miracle would feel. And it's true. I usually liken it to my head blooming like a rose, but this is a pretty good analogy. Think about all the great art you've experienced and how it was so powerful it changed you, maybe even changed your perception of the world around you. Art is powerful stuff. No wonder the MAGAs are doing their best to destroy it.

But the more I thought about it, the more I think she meant the creation of art, and that analogy is even better. What does a prophet who has seen a burning bush do? They tell everyone about it. Artists have seen the burning bush. Now they must create work that expresses that feeling.

I've had revelatory ideas that stunned me many times over the course of my life. Believe it or not, Dong of Frankenstein was one of those ideas. (Don't judge my muse!) It makes a current run through my body, and I stiffen as the idea works its way through my brain. And then, unfortunately for a lot of people, I write about my vision until I have a book.

Writing is my only talent. The other artforms elude me. My drawings suck, I can't play any instrument more complicated than the mouth harp or cowbell (and I still have trouble with the cowbell), I'm no painter, don't even ask me about sculpting, etc. But my experience as a writer with the burning bush matches up easily with the character's statement. I have no choice but to believe that all the other arts and artists are the same way. It doesn't make sense otherwise.

And that brings me to AI. I used to say that, sure, AI can make art just like the Infinite Monkey Theorem can produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Now I'm not so sure. Can AI ever experience the burning bush?

Exactly.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #969: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PROPHET?

Lincoln around the age he gave the Lyceum Address.

 

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Abraham Lincoln said that about the end of America. This was in response to a mob lynching a Black man in St. Louis, according to William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner in Springfield. Herndon, by the way, is an excellent first hand source of material about Lincoln. Historians have tried to smear him as a drunk, but he was the closest person to Lincoln before he was famous, and he was rather truthful about Honest Abe. The reason historians dislike him as a source is because he said that Lincoln got syphilis after an evening with a woman who was not a wife. Furthermore, Lincoln gave it to Mary Todd, which in all likelihood led to her demise and explain her odd behavior near the end. You can see the appeal in discrediting Herndon, but Lincoln was no saint. He was not even an abolitionist, as our schools teach us that he was.

But Lincoln was one of the best presidents regardless. He expands on his thought from the famed Lyceum Address:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

In short, only the United States can destroy the United States. And it's very interesting that he seems to suggest that a single person would be able to do it. Sorry for the long quote, but it's apropos, I think.

This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they, too, will seek a field. It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?--Never! Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.--It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Lincoln was infuriated by the circumnavigation of law by mob. He begs us to cling to "cold, reasoning" laws rather than our passions. It's the only thing that will keep us together. It's the only thing that will save us.

This reminds me of something. What could that possibly be? Perhaps the roughshod way Trump and Musk have trampled the laws of this nation in the name of their own passion? (Dare I say Trump's Musky passion?) And what aren't we doing as citizens? We're not uniting with each other to frustrate their designs. We're letting them destroy our country without a fight.

I really like the paragraph I'm about to quote, especially Lincoln's word choice in one particular instance. Let's see if you can guess the word I mean:

They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.--Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

I'm not entirely sure we should be looking to George Washington as Britain looks to King Arthur, but all the same I find that one particular word interesting. The Trump we have is certainly not awakening our Washington. The ravens may never leave his monument.

If you're wondering why the Democrats are doing jack shit, it's because they serve the same master as Trump, our corporate overlords. They know when to obey. Could you imagine even one of them making a speech like this? Make no mistake, a speech like this is 100% necessary today. I think if Schumer pulled his head out of his master's ass and said something like this, we might actually have a fight we can win on our hands.

But We the People are fucked. When we address for recourse, are the laws that benefit our corporate overlords and our corporate overlords alone going to help us? No. But they tell us we need to go through the system with our complaints, the system they own. That's just not going to work.

What does work? Bloody revolution is efficient. Also, playing dirty works wonders. Being unable to tell the truth is a prerequisite for being a politician, but the MAGAs are so flamboyant with their lies, it's actually kind of awe-inspiring. Bullshit has always been an artform, but they've perfected it nearly to the point of godhood. Joseph Goebbels was right: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." And Trump didn't have to repeat his lies all that much. I mean, he does anyway, just to hedge his bets, but the MAGAs fell for it the first time. The Democrats are already on board with excessive lies. They know their master's voice. Why not beat the MAGAs at their own game? You almost got JD Vance with the couch-fucking thing. Go on. Get creative. Stephen Miller slurps his own cum. Elon Musk is into adult babyism. Ted Cruz wants to fuck his mom.

That last one might not be a lie.

All my life politics has been fucking dirty except now? The Democrats are going to be the adults in the room? Since when are adults well behaved?

Lincoln was right. America will die not by another nation's hand but by suicide. We're watching it happen right now. I wonder who will be there to pick up the pieces? Certainly no one with mercy in their hearts for us.

If you're into adult babyism, I don't mean to kink shame. That's not my intent. To each their own. If I offended  you, I apologize.