Haha, new phone, who dis

Wouldn’t go so far as calling it a work of art, but I remember this one time in 9th or 10th grade when our Plastic Arts (technically a general overview of art history and practical exercises for techniques, practically it was just painting whatever, in various shapes and sizes) teacher had us paint religious iconography on slabs of wood. Saints, to be more specific.

I won’t touch upon how utterly pissed my mother was at having to hunt down an ~A4 sized plank within a week (this was before the prevalence of Hyperstores). The thing just came out looking… wrong… It was supposed to be St. George, I believe, and it came out looking like an emaciated and woefully distraught Gandalf the Grey with a spotlight shining in from behind.

I remember this one being extra-bad because, besides basically having had no real training in painting throughout grade school, the subject matter in itself spoke nothing to me. I wasn’t absolutely horrible, as I used to do a lot of sketching and developed a relatively neat hand by that time, but I was thoroughly within the “exorcise your trauma through drawing biomechanical mutilations” phase of my artistic development, let’s call it.

It was also the first time when being creative felt like a horrid chore.

Edit: there is no evidence of said work, because I threw it away the instant I got home. As an agnostic, I get the feeling both God and St. George would have agreed with me…

Hey, riiight! Remember aliens?! Feels like a lifetime ago!

If you’re talking about AGI, potentially any form of art would be at its grasp, maybe even some which may not necessarily look like art to us.

If you’re talking about the generative models of today, they are incapable of producing art, because they are incapable of emotional intent and expression.

Even Warhol was driven by disdain, and the ironically arty bit was how sort of stripped of art his art was as a result of his disdain.

Yes! Yuzna is so underrated…

I sure miss the days when my propaganda was firm and well-rounded…

Looks like the blob lady from Faust: Love of The Damned was there.

That does make some sense, but the whole idea of privatising the distribution of life-sustaining gasses while it isn’t strictly needed gives me the creeps.

As per your example, there’s still air at high altitude, and the body does just fine in adjusting to the variation; would not have a problem with medical uses for people who have cardiopulmonary issues, to be clear.

It feels like putting the pot on the burner and starting it up at Low, y’know?

This may be the most Freemium thing I’ve ever seen in real life…

I wonder how long it’ll be before they’ll start selling bottled purified air, or something. I could even envision metered filters as a mandatory installation for every enclosed space.

I think humanity has grown restless due to the granularisation of work. It is no longer necessary to develop an overall understanding of an entire domain for most jobs, as they’re based on the assembly line principle - learn to screw that bolt on tight enough, and your job is done. Nevermind the rest of the car, not your assignment.

I suspect this leaves a lot of cognitive bandwidth essentially unused, so the brain naturally seeks to fill it up with whatever else is at hand.

In addition, this has also somewhat stolen the satisfaction of understanding the context of our work, of seeing that it’s not just wasted time, essentially. Work/production/creation/generation/transformation used to be far more significant parts of both our lives as well as our overall fulfilment, so we’re now basically overclocked PCs left running Minesweeper at 100%, which yearn for meaning and something to fill up all of that available compute potential. And there’s cognitive junk food a-plenty, but just like junk food, it rarely satisfies long-term.

This, I think, also spreads ripples across other aspects of our lives - I’m thinking here especially about the seeming death of nuance in general discourse as one of the main such repercussions, so it’s yet another existential cascade failure.

I mostly say this and the above solely on an anecdotal basis, but it is a pretty large basis, considering it consists of roughly 80% of all previous coworkers and professional acquaintances in over a decade, both domestic and otherwise.

“OMG, is that real cashmere?!”

Oh, great… That phone’s lucky I appreciate it, otherwise it’d go straight in the bin…

Someone call me an ambulance. Tell them I don’t want to be revived.

The Face Stapler, A Musical

To be fair, I think research on mammoth cloning started a good while ago and, if scientific research is anything like a start-up (spitballing here, I have no clue), doing a massive reorientation mid-process ends up costing more in the long term.

Still MFW we’re cloning woolly mammoths on a boiling planet. Lol. Lmao, even.

Right?! I didn’t even think twice about it, like of course he’d add an “x” to whatever he makes next! I mean, what’s he got left, “y” and “z,” and neither has any of that edgy zing.

Yep, that’s exactly it! Dexerto has apparently existed as a general social outlet for a while, from what I’ve gathered. General media coverage.

Completely unrelated to Mulch’s new thing.

Upon reading the title again, I now realise Dexerto were just reporting on it… Woo, 420 no-scope!

Gonna leave the original up, let’s all laugh at that guy!

Was it intentionally named after the Italian word for “desert” (deserto) because he expects it to be a dried up wasteland, or was it just a coincidence?