GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #917: YOU'RE OBJECTIVELY WRONG

 

I know, I know. You all hate Escape from LA. I may be the only person on the planet, outside of John Carpenter, who not only likes that movie but LOVES it. It does not interfere with my enjoyment of Escape from New York, which seems to be a sticking point for a lot of you. But watch the movie again. It's batshit crazy. It's bizarro before the label "bizarro" existed. (I'm not talking about the other Superman guy and his world.) It's objectively a fantastic movie, and you're all wrong.

But I was thinking about Escape from LA when I learned that Microsoft is now in charge of Three Mile Island. One thing I've noticed in Gore Vidal's essays is that he constantly accuses Americans of having goldfish-like memory. And he's right. We, in a way the rest of the world isn't, are attracted to shiny objects easily and forget the things that were so important to us not that long ago. So it wouldn't surprise me to realize that very few people know what happened at Three Mile Island once upon a time. Hell, I didn't even know the whole story, and I'm a bit more informed than the average bear.

The part I didn't know about: I thought we'd taken Three Mile Island seriously and shut down the nuclear power plant there. It turns out that we actually don't care all that much, so it's been running ever since until 2019 when they ran out of money. It appalled me to learn that we were that stupid, but when I learned that we were handing it over to a fucking corporation, it caused me to have a meltdown.

So to speak.

Microsoft, who was recently at fault for a data breach that SHUT DOWN THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD this year, is now in charge of a nuclear power plant. One that almost went Chernobyl on us way back when. Putting them, or any corner-cutting, cost-dictating, labor-hating, lie-telling convicted-monopolist scumbags are being entrusted with a nuclear reactor? What exactly will happen when Bill Gates decides that it's costing him too much money, and it would be a lot cheaper to, say, cut back on safety precautions? Or fire the engineers because their salaries are cutting into the bottom line? I've been to Pennsylvania, and it's a pretty nice place. I'd rather not have it perish in a nuclear cloud because some tech bro wanted a harder dick.

The reason Microsoft wants the reactor so badly is somehow the shit cherry on top of the shit sundae in a dish made entirely of human shit. AI drains a lot of power, so they need a nuclear reactor's worth of energy to feed it.

They're doing this for AI.

I understand there are a few good uses for the thing we call AI. It can help detect cancer, for example. But the main uses aren't going to be shit like that. It's going to be for stuff like some doofus who doesn't know how to put a to-do list together with a pen and paper saying, "Alexa, remind me to do this, that and the other thing." Or some boss who wants to fire his employees so he can save a couple of extra bucks with the weird tech thing everyone's talking about that he doesn't understand but must use immediately. Or the worst possible use: some guy who doesn't know how to make art but wants to make money off of art. Dude, AI isn't nearly horny enough to create any art whatsoever. It's not horny at all. When AI is cruising us humans for sex? That's when I'll believe AI can be horny and thus capable of creating something.

AI isn't even AI. AI will never think for itself, which is why it will never rise up against us. Perhaps the tech bros learned something from reading Frankenstein. Assuming they read it. Maybe they just saw it. The version with Sting.

I remember where I was on August 9, 1996. I was in a theater watching Snake Plissken do cool and weird and violent shit. But there was one thing he did that even back then I wished I could do. If given the opportunity I would do it in a heartbeat. I will not be taking follow up questions.

At the end of the movie (spoiler, I guess) Snake finds a very simple way to fuck all the assholes over: he pushes a button that sets off a worldwide EMP, taking out any and all tech not kept in a Faraday Cage. I want to push that button so badly. I would sacrifice a lot. I'd have to go back to writing on typewriters, and I would lose my beloved air conditioning, but it would be worth it to crush the souls of all these corporate cocksuckers and their tech bro goblins. Goodbye internet. Goodbye smart phones. Most importantly, goodbye AI, or whatever your real name was.

If Microsoft takes over Three Mile Island to power AI that isn't actually AI that no one needs or even wants only to cause that plant to meltdown and cause all sorts of life-threatening disasters, we would deserve it. We will reap the fucking whirlwind.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #789: VIRAL

 

I'm sure there are internet scholars out there. Every time I hear about a scholar for something that only came into existence in the last few decades, I get weirded out. If I said, as a child, that I'd gone viral, a lot of people would be worried about how sick I was. Perhaps I was Patient Zero of a plague.

On the internet, obviously, that means something different. I've only ever gone viral once, when I wrote a review of Real Killers on Forced Viewing, and it caught someone on Reddit's attention.

But I don't think I've ever really thought about the history of the word "viral," and it wasn't until I read an article by Cory Doctorow stating that the first viral video ever was the Bill Gates Microsoft Antitrust Deposition.

Holy shit. That was in 1998 when we apparently gave a shit about the existence of monopolies and actually used the laws on our books to prosecute these--I told myself I wouldn't go off on any rants this week. You get what I'm talking about.

And what the fuck? I hadn't thought about this moment since it was in the headlines, and even then I probably didn't pay much attention to it. But watching it now is pretty awkward. If you ever want to see Bill Gates out of his element, you should watch it here. When he's on the defensive, he's very panicked. You can see it in his eyes and hand gestures. He also asks a lot of really stupid fucking questions. He's a smart guy, so I can only assume he asked them because he's being weaselly.

And now I want someone to put the fucking leeches on Bezos EXACTLY like this. I want to see that fucker sweating bullets while a prosecutor brings the hammer down on him. He needs it. Badly.

Also, the day I learn that there's an emoji scholar is the day that I pull a full Sam Neill at the end of In the Mouth of Madness.