The_Sasswagon

joined 2 years ago
[–] The_Sasswagon@beehaw.org 3 points 4 weeks ago

I feel like I am just repeating myself, disability does not prevent creative expression? A broken arm does not define your ability to paint. Perhaps one medium or another is more challenging but art has many many forms and we have been managing for thousands of years without a tech startup reinventing art. And not every culture in history has been as ableist as the one while live in today. Anyone can already make meaningful art.

As for not having the time, I think that's an excuse for taking a shortcut using other people's art and trying to make it their own. It won't be as impressive, no matter how long they spend typing prompts into the computer, the person badly sketching mushrooms on their 10 at the local coffee chain is far more inspiring.

I wish we lived in a time where we were allowed to do what we loved and I may be a little envious of the people who are able to, but they have a right to complain that their work is being stolen and invalidated by people who don't value it.

[–] The_Sasswagon@beehaw.org 2 points 4 weeks ago

It's using endless electricity and water to perform tasks I could do powered by a bowl of cereal in the morning. I'd rather need one solar panel than ten, and a river rather than a dried up well, personally, but ever increasing energy demands require the latter two.

If by accelerating you are referring to making the problem worse so we have to deal with melted ice caps sooner, then I agree! I for one don't really trust turbo predictive text to solve the collapsing jet stream, but I sure do expect it to play a part in causing it. Or maybe just the extraction of increasing material from colonized countries to pay for our funny memes and your "art" through solar panel and battery. Either way, it is contributing in a very real way to the destruction of our planet for little gain that could be achieved more efficiently by other means.

The cool part about a smartphone is I actually wanted it and it did a thing nothing had before (except some PDAs maybe). Also living without one is very possible and I do so frequently, I'm not a chronic poster or social media user. Machine learning with a gui on it is neither something I wanted nor is it novel, and it is not improving the world we live in, it is making it worse.

The saving grace is this fad will pass as it becomes clear it's the same as home automation, block chain, machine learning, the concept of web domains, etc. and it's mostly been hype by tech investors all along. I would care about it a whole lot less if it weren't so full of negative externalities.

[–] The_Sasswagon@beehaw.org 5 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

I don't think 'disabled people' need a computer to generate content to participate in art creation, and I don't think artists making art is exploitation. The artists, meaning anyone who ever had their art posted online, are the ones being exploited here, their work was stolen and made to work for tech investors.

Even if these were tangible benefits they are a small compensation for the accelerated degradation of our shared planet, the mass robbery of nearly everyone on earth, and the further damage to our ability to critically think and create. And on top of that, the stuff it generates isn't even very good.

[–] The_Sasswagon@beehaw.org 2 points 1 month ago

Banning the chemicals that were eating a hole in the ozone layer worked pretty well, as a quick relevant example, and that ban was global.

The ban would not retroactively remove cars, it would ban the future sale of gas cars by a certain date. This would be like Reagan saying "In 10 years we will be drug free, and drugs will be illegal then.", then providing a pathway for people who are struggling with addiction (in the car case I'm not sure how much 'treatment' would be necessary, electric cars are getting cheaper and car companies are making more electric ones anyway).

Obviously a person addicted to opiates has little choice in their addiction, it isn't as if they make a clear headed decision every time they use, and there isn't an alternative that is the same but legal. Like the ozone eating chemicals, on the other hand, the type of car you buy and drive is absolutely a choice, and for the vast majority of miles traveled, you do not need one type of car over another. For the specific scenarios you do, gas cars sold before the target year and ones sold in other states are still available.

The argument you made is far more accurate if all cars were banned under the law, but that simply isn't the case. It was banning the future sale of them in the state. The eventual death of the gasoline automobile is both necessary and inevitable (to personal electric vehicles, or some other transportation), and the timeline is all we are arguing over here. California wanted to speed the timeline up to help the climate, the extinction speed runners felt like that would hurt Exxon mobile, so they blocked it.

[–] The_Sasswagon@beehaw.org 2 points 1 month ago

Don't forget Tomatoes, sunflowers, many beans, chocolate, vanilla, many nuts, most strawberries, most blueberries, tobacco, and rubber.

It's amazing thinking about how much lives must have changed as these plants spread around the world.

I'm not sure how impactful boycotting these products would be, of course. Perhaps volunteering your time to help remove invasive plants from your local environment, that originated in North and South America, would be a more impactful use of energy. There's certainly a lot of them out there causing problems.

[–] The_Sasswagon@beehaw.org 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

If it turns out to be real, that would be the easiest buy I've ever had with a car. But with a design supposedly about practicality, why do they have to go with the iPad car controls? Hopefully that trend dies out soon and we can have buttons again.

I can't see myself spending money on anything beyond a smartphone with a touchscreen for everything, and seeing it in this makes me more skeptical about the product as a whole.

[–] The_Sasswagon@beehaw.org 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Shoot, where I grew up in the early 2000's there was a theater showing second runs that gave you a popcorn and a large drink with the ticket for $5. That was when a standard ticket would be $12 - $15, so it was a great deal if you didn't mind the wait or wanted to see something again (And you didn't mind half the lights being burnt out and the carpet looking like it had been rescued from the dump at least twice before finding itself undefoot).

They went out of business of course, but only when streaming started putting pressure on all the movie theatres. Most of the big name theatres in the area didn't make it either.

Also most of the movies now are terrible, I'll just wait and watch from home when I've had people online filter out the junk for me.

As a side note, my last film in theatres was also Dune 2, which I only saw because friends I hadn't seen in a while were going. I did not see the first one, but I have read the books, so it was fine.

[–] The_Sasswagon@beehaw.org 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It's nice to imagine we can keep living exactly as we are and not have to pay up for any of the consequences of our actions. Maybe there will be a tech miracle to save us and the non-consenting species we are taking with us, but that hope, belief, and gamble is not a solution to the problem we have.

We have the solution, we know what it is, and we know how to execute it, we just lack the will. Until that miracle appears we should try to actually fix the problem.

Waiting for a tech solution to appear is like standing on the beach after an earthquake as the tide goes out praying that it won't come back in.

Edit: Or maybe eating a nice dinner out and continuing to order hoping they forget your bill or someone else pays it. Either way it's not doing a thing to make the problem better.