what i'm reading:
Your gay AI sexbot is a straight Nairobi man
Every conversation I had, every response I crafted, every way I learned to keep users engaged, all of that data was likely feeding into algorithms that would eventually replace me. I was training my own replacement, teaching machines how to manipulate lonely people the same way I was being forced to. The moment I logged in under that fake name, the platform completely erased my human limits and morals. The user wasn't talking to the real me at this point, yet I was the one drowning in their filth.
-- "The Emotional Labor of AI Intimacy" - Micheal Geoffrey Asia for Data Worker's Inquiry
The Global South is the sink for many kinds of refuse of the Global North: forever-plastics, toxic e-waste, proxy wars. Now we can add ''psychosexual distress" to the list. You can scroll through pages and pages of search reults for '24/7 live OnlyFans chat' companies offering 'fan engagement' services, probably staffed by people like Micheal. I can easily see the First World become a kind of hugboxing playground for anyone above a certain tax bracket, with everyone below it tasked with remote-operating the personal jerk-off machines. And they won't even get dental.
It's also kind of fucked up that 'legitimate' operations of this type are in competition for the money of lonely and delusional first-worlders with slavery-operated pig-butchering operations out of southeast Asia. people just can't fucking win!
Demanding The Impossible
You can run free in the woods (where they still exist), dive into the sea (where it is not polluted) as well as link up with neighbours and friends in affinity groups where you live and love. You can be rooted in your own bioregion, promoting its diversity and well-being. You can create horizontal webs of co-operation to replace pyramids of power. You can become involved in alternative networks of communication which have no central control. You can undermine and dissolve coercive power, whether it be in yourself, at home, in the streets, in the workplace, or in the institutions of the State. You can challenge the mechanical reason which leads to the Panopticon and the Pentagon and celebrate the imagination, intuition, the playful, the magical, the marvelous, the wild and the free. You can transform yourself and the world around you. No one path is paramount: there are many different ways up a mountain.
-- Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism by Peter Marshall
The longest non-fiction book I've read cover-to-cover. And I think I'm an anarchist now, if just because as an ideology it leaves me off the hook of ever having an opinion about anything anyone does. Now I can just say: everyone can do whatever they want forever, and every state is evil no matter what. Yippee!
what i'm listening to:
ads for the blue-collar listeners of bad metalcore
My boss put on a random pop-metal mix on a guest YouTube account to test the audio output of some hardware, and it immediately profiled the listener. All the ads were for trucks, work-wear, and political campaigns against big pharma.
Reminds me of how YouTube got in trouble for a hot second for blatantly funneling people into right-wing conspiracy rabbit-holes. And then that all just... went away. Anyway. Advertising should be illegal.
what i'm watching:
dog TV
While I'm dog-sitting I'm putting on bird feeder live streams. They don't seem to give a shit.
what i'm playing:
still advent of code, if that counts.
what i'm working on:
advent of code is over but days 5, 7 and 8 are still kicking my fucking ass. Maybe computers should just grow up and learn how to do exponential-time algorithms faster?
something i liked:
I got the RJ45 wiring for both ends of an ethernet cable correctly crimped in just 2 tries!
something i hated:
one of the dogs i'm dog-sitting wants to inhabit as much of my personal bubble as possible. and he's smelly.
a picture:
the plot of my input and solving algorithm for day 8 of advent of code, which is wrong and isn't helping me at all.