I've suspected some cover art I've seen for books has been AI (but I can't always reliably tell). Kind of gross that some of it probably is.

Sadly, as much as I see people against gen AI online, people in real life aren't (at least where I'm at). They're gobbling up the slop.

I don't even want to imagine what things will look like in twenty years, when the kids who grew up with this thinks this is the new normal.

Going forward, either you embrace gen AI, or you stick to media produced roughly before 2022 (or before 2019 to virtually avoid it totally). For writing, I'm not sure how the future will look for those who care. At least you can go see live performances of music, for instance, or even watch someone paint something.

For now, maybe writers will ban together and create trusted groups of human made stuff. If we're lucky, maybe AI slop for the most part will be contained to corporations. Indie publishers could become the place for human made stuff. Assuming the corporations don't find a way to drown out the indie publishers. But even if indie publishers take off in this direction, for how long will the people actually interested in art/writing free of gen AI care?

Curious to see Nintendo's numbers in comparison.

And yeah, those prices are insane. At a certain point, just pay for a PC and have access to whatever you want. Plus, you don't have to pay an additional fee for online features. It doesn't have to be the best gaming rig ever, especially for most people. And recoup the money spent on a gaming rig by escaping the closed eco system. Wait for good sales on PC games or turn to the high seas.

And honestly, outside of Nintendo, I haven't seen a console exclusive game on Xbox or PS5 that I've wanted to play in years.

Those prices though. People can still game without consoles, and with the way they're destroying the economy, it seems people are realizing they can ditch the consoles for other options.

This. It's the poor kids who this targets the most in the first place. Equal access to uncensored media is absolutely essential for any society that isn't a fascist paradise.

It's not just libraries either. People need to reject censorship across the board. Why the hell is George Carlin's 'Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television' still relevant to this day?

Finally near finishing Young Justice. The last season is all over the place in terms of quality and stories I actually care about. Very unsteady show, but I generally like it when it focuses on the original cast.

Been rewatching Dollhouse (2009) and it's better than I remember it. Some of those early episodes though, especially that Whedon self-insert that brags about being an untouchable creep 🤢. But after that so far it's been good (not looking forward to watching the terrible finale all over again though).

Night Court's still great, imho. Hopefully you'll like it just as much on the rewatch!

Endless Blue Beneath - Shannon K. English

It was not good, unfortunately. Some cool mermaid vibes, but holy hell that ending. Imagine someone committing genocide telling someone who hadn't done anything wrong to 'be better.' Not to mention, it's mostly just miserable the entire time, the main character is insufferable and repeats her thoughts about her brother all the time, and then the love interest was a choice. For what little time was dedicated to her in the first place.

Not sure what I'll read next.

At the very least, everyone should be entitled to at least one free name change as an adult. But children and teenagers need to have the right to their own names, too. There's already a history of children taking their parents to court in order to get a name change when the name is absolutely insane (but we all know that would be rejected for a trans kid sadly).

This.

I know people want to think this is the problem, but people paid for cable, which was all of this. High prices, ads, and lower quality experience as they started cutting and/or speeding up shows to fit extra ads in. And on top of that, people then paid for premium channels like HBO just to access some sort of quality. And cancelling could be a nightmare.

What's really killed the TV experience is shorter episode counts and less seasons. TV works as long form story telling, and a popular show gets everyone talking and speculating about it, but this can't occur with short episode counts and cancelling things within one-two seasons before they can build up their audience.

Then there's cancelling shows without giving them a proper finale, which leads to not wanting to get invested in TV in the first place, and is effectively worthless for a streaming platform because few people want to watch something without a proper finale. To be fair, this has been a problem since time immemorial for TV, but is far more noticeable when it's easy to rewatch and binge.

Add on top of that decreasing attention spans, and social media like TikTok and Youtube inevitably bleeds away your audience.

Sure, people whine and complain about price hikes. But do they actually cancel? I've rarely seen people actually care enough to do something. Obviously a place like this is biased towards dropping these services, but the average consumer doesn't care. And sadly, these price hikes are generally based around the idea that they'll lose some people, but the price hike for the shumcks that will continue to use it at higher prices will ultimately make them more money than trying to retain the customers who weren't paying. When that no longer becomes the case, you'll see them offer some 'buy a year' deal for cheaper price nonsense or something. Eventually, they'll create a 'value' bundle for all streaming services in one. And when that's too expensive, don't worry, they've got your back because they'll shave a few dollars a month off your bill if you sign a two year contract.

Surprising no one, another show is cancelled, lol. At least it made it to a 'season 3.' Hopefully it has a proper finale, and the change in showrunner doesn't shoot it in the foot.

Unfortunate for fans of the show. Honestly, it felt more like a Kingpin epilogue than anything else to me.

But aside from that episode, the continuation did nothing for me personally.

Because generative AI has been built off the backs of everyone, whether they consented or not. Because AI companies (Nvidia, Facebook, pick a company) have pirated enough material to keep any individual in jail for life, and yet they have no consequences and can profit off everything.

If generative AI can not be used for commercial purposes, it also cripples the ability to replace artists, writers, etc., with an AI that stole all their work in the first place and is regurgitating it. Generative AI isn't the issue, and it won't go away (I wish it would, but the world doesn't work that way). It's the way it's being used. Take the profit out of it, and we can all (to some degree) benefit from it. Take the profit out of it, and stop them from hoarding and destroying books/knowledge, destroying the environment, destroying your economy.

I'm sure people more well-read into generative AI can give a better example than a layman who is tired of billionaires and trillionaires doing whatever they like with no consequence, destroying our environment, our jobs, our economy, and now our souls along the way.

2026 is so depressing, lol. I've noticed this with some (non-gaming) Korean media, where the writing feels very AI (and I'm kind of suspecting a lot of it is considering East Asia's quick embrasure of it).

All of this is easy to legislate (not necessarily fix because people will just lie and face no consequence if they're rich). Ban generative AI for commercial purposes.

Anything with art, being that games, illustration, even writing feels tainted these days. Those of us who don't want gen AI are going to have to find ways to form our own communities (and hope we can trust the majority of people in them).

On the bright side, I'm suddenly feeling okay with not getting to play a lot of the Switch 2 games.