erin (she/her)

S’what I said

The Jungle was a book exposing the nightmares of the industrial revolution, especially in the meat packing industry.

Atlas Shrugged is the conservative wet dream of “what if the rich people that totally do all the work and hold everything together got tired of the poors being so whiny and ungrateful and stopped.” It’s an-cap fan fiction.

Way to entirely miss the point. Are you suggesting that the simplest form of an artform isn’t part of it? Apply that to literally every other artform. By your logic, jamming on basic chords on a ukulele in my living room isn’t music, and a kids stick figure drawing of their family isn’t art. You’re so concerned about being “correct” that you missed being right. Go back and actually read my comment for its meaning, not the pedantry. If this is how you engage with media, I understand why you would compare AI art and photography.

Photography has far more depth, complexity, and creativity as an artform and comparing it to AI both misunderstands the process and does it a huge disservice. Even before lining up the shot, the photographer must choose the right focus length, exposure, and a number of other technical settings, then must choose a subject, perhaps modify the composition, and have the right timing.

Photography can be as simple as pointing a phone camera for a well timed moment or snapping a once in a lifetime shot with an expensive lens. AI art takes orders of magnitude less creativity or training to do well, because it’s stealing the work of people that have already learned the composition techniques and have done the legwork, which is just being shoddily regurgitated by the plagiarism machine.

There is a difference between studying techniques, ideology, history, and mediums to be able to use a style created by another artist in your own creative works, and putting all the creative end products into the ideas blender and churning out a product with no creativity and no intentionality to the application of the process. What’s the end game? At what point does human creativity become redundant and AI starts eating its own slop? Do human artists need to keep creating depictions of meaning or value or whatever else they find important to endlessly feed into the machine so it can duplicate them, missing any of the metaphor, subtext, and soul present in the original? At what point is it obvious that workers are having their labor stolen by the tech bro Soylent Green idea machine to enrich them at the expense of whoever’s life work they seemed to be slop worthy of regurgitation.

AI can be an excellent shortcut or a great tool, and help us make our work easier and products better, but it is not a creator of original creative works, and cannot be validated at the same level as human artists. I, for one, would like to see a future where artists don’t just exist to feed into their machine betters.

I own two cats, and they both have bells. They haven’t killed any wildlife since then. Cats are not native animals in Europe, they are very much invasive and devastated local populations of birds and small mammals.

Trolling, intentionally obtuse, or just dumb? Because as we all know, cats never kill anything but pests. Native animals would never become endangered because of domesticated cats. At least put a bell on them or something so they don’t kill the wildlife.

On the contrary, since growing my nails out my nails have been way more clean. There is an awkward period between no nails and long nails where stuff gets caught underneath, but once you grow them out (only two weeks or so), they’re perfectly clean because there’s just more space underneath and nowhere for gunk to get caught as the angle is wider.

(Classic guitar players have long nails)

I feel no need to be protected in my day to day life. My partner provides love, companionship, empathy, and a listening ear. Sure, some women might care about protection and toughness or whatever you’re on about, but attraction varies from person to person. Most other women I know want to be heard and loved. People are allowed to want to fuck “fragile” men. They can be hot without needing to be “manly.” You’re putting so much stock in traditional gender norms, not realizing that it’s not women that actually care about those. It’s the men that are trying to be that. Some women will, of course, but women aren’t a monolith. Want an example? Timothy Chalamet is very commonly considered to be an extremely attractive actor, and he’s far more androgynous and “fragile,” as you put it, than your traditional masculine ideal. Just as many women might be attracted to any number of different appearances, because people are different! The days of needing a strong man to support us frail women are over. Your insecurities and ideas of masculinity are clouding your judgment.

To answer your question succinctly: No, they aren’t fragile looking, they’re just slim. No, they don’t look “dehumanized,” they look like people. The dehumanization happens in industry, not with their faces. I know people that look similar. Some women find them hot, and want to fuck them, and idolize them, because they are hot! They’re very attractive people, if that aesthetic is what you’re into! If your only metric is how likely they are to win a fight, sure, they probably aren’t at the top of the scale, but the vast majority of people DON’T CARE.

They told you to look into therapy because you have an unhealthy idea of what women are attracted to and what masculinity should be. They called you insecure because you sound insecure (why do women like the weak little boys and not big manly men :(( they look so frail and weak, don’t women know they can’t protect them??). Whether or not that’s how you’re actually thinking, it’s how it comes across. Instead of realizing that some people do like strong men, you took it to a place of jealousy and defensiveness.

TLDR: Different strokes for different folks. Don’t obsess over people you don’t find attractive still being attractive to others, as it isn’t good for your mental health and isn’t a good look.

My main point being: Gender is a social construct, and doesn’t fit the complex reality of lived human experience. Let people define their gender in their own terms, for those that desire a label, and otherwise abolish it.

Whether or not the statement is recursive, it is a basis. I see no valid reason to define it more rigorously. I identify as a woman, therefore I am. I identify as bisexual, therefore I am. Those are labels for nebulous social constructs, and don’t need to be rigorous definitions. Any basis beyond “because I say so” would be inherently exclusionary. The entire debate over what defines a woman or a man is a pointless affair which harms transgender people and gender nonconforming cisgender people alike. I believe we should be abolishing gender, not trying to establish a basis for what makes someone woman or man enough. It’s all made up.

In a philosophical sense of the strict definition, you’re correct. I see no good reason to use our language like that though, as it would inevitably hurt trans people. I choose to instead use gender as an identifier assigned by each individual, as it’s our colloquial definition and less harmful to trans people. In my opinion, if someone identifies as a woman, she is a woman, regardless of external perception.

And yes, I also agree that gender would be better abolished and relegated to a vibes-based, self-identified label for people that want it.

External perception should not be a qualifier of gender. Passing shouldn’t be required for a trans person to be a member of their gender, much as a feminine presenting man is still a man and a masculine presenting woman is still a woman, unless they say otherwise. Because it’s all made up anyways, we can allow the definition to be as flexible as gender itself is.

But yes, gender is often performative, but rather than defining that in the terms of the audience, define it in terms of the cast.

They called you a douchebag because your response was snippy and rude. “Click your own link” sounds condescending and arrogant.

That’s not what the definition has changed to. Women can be women without identifying with that traditional role. A woman is someone who identifies as a woman. I am a woman, and I certainly don’t identify with the role of a traditional woman.

That doesn’t say he was flawless, it said they couldn’t find anything to attack him on, which is true. They liked the whole “blowing up brown people with missiles” thing. That comment isn’t unilateral praise of Obama, it’s an explanation of why Republicans couldn’t find dirt they could use on him, because the dirt that was there was on their faces too.

I never got into Tarkov, but I love Arma and Squad. To each their own.

Okay but I enjoy realistic milsim games. You don’t have to play them. Weird take.