Stinkylittletoad - Just A Little Guy (gn)

Me, sewing without my glasses on: why can’t I fucking see anything

[guy who hasnt drawn in a few weeks voice] yeah the world is horrible and life is agony

art will save you, being unreasonably passionate about something niche will save you, letting past sources of joy show you the way back to yourself will save you, earnestness over composure will save you, the natural world will save you, caring for something bigger than yourself will save you, daring to be seen will save you, kindness not as a whim but a principle will save you, appreciation as a practice will save you, daring to try something new will save you, grounding will save you, love will save you, one good nights sleep will save you

ed zitron, a tech beat reporter, wrote an article about a recent paper that came out from goldman-sachs calling AI, in nicer terms, a grift. it is a really interesting article; hearing criticism from people who are not ignorant of the tech and have no reason to mince words is refreshing. it also brings up points and asks the right questions:

if AI is going to be a trillion dollar investment, what trillion dollar problem is it solving?

what does it mean when people say that AI will "get better"? what does that look like and how would it even be achieved? the article makes a point to debunk talking points about how all tech is misunderstood at first by pointing out that the tech it gets compared to the most, the internet and smartphones, were both created over the course of decades with roadmaps and clear goals. AI does not have this.

the american power grid straight up cannot handle the load required to run AI because it has not been meaningfully developed in decades. how are they going to overcome this hurdle (they aren't)?

people who are losing their jobs to this tech aren't being "replaced". they're just getting a taste of how little their managers care about their craft and how little they think of their consumer base. ai is not capable of replacing humans and there's no indication they ever will because...

all of these models use the same training data so now they're all giving the same wrong answers in the same voice. without massive and i mean EXPONENTIALLY MASSIVE troves of data to work with, they are pretty much as a standstill for any innovation they're imagining in their heads

'asleep in the valley,' arthur rimbaud, 1871, tr. paul schmidt.

It is admittedly quite funny that Solas in Veilguard is significantly less complex and interesting than in Inquisition. And yet. Widely agreed to be the most complex and interesting thing in Veilguard.

My beloved

taking out the complexity

I have this hypothesis that at some point quite late in the writing process of Veilguard someone came in and pushed for the moral complexity to be taken out of the game. Because there are several plot lines which seem like they were potentially intended to be more complex than they ultimately were:

Isseya and the griffons. When I first played this I assumed that the punchline would be that she stole the griffons because she didn't trust the wardens with them after what happened - then deciding what to do about her would have raised interesting questions about war, sacrifice, the greater good etc. But instead there was this reveal that she was planning on blighting them, which makes no sense at all and feels shoe-horned in just to make it clear that she is Evil and Wrong.

Ivenci feels to me like they were originally intended to articulate the very reasonable point that it's not good for Antiva to be ruled by a group of unelected assassins - thus setting up an interesting chance to reflect on the nature of the Crows and the necessity of working with groups who do harmful things. But instead the Crows have to be the good guys so Ivenci is made into this weirdly cartoonish villain to make it clear that they are Evil and Wrong.

Relatedly, Lucanis' plot line feels like it was supposed to culminate with a reflection on his relationship with the Crows and the abuse he suffered, probably with the option to turn down being the First Talon and maybe even leave the Crows. But because the Crows have become the good guys this never happens and hence his whole arc feels quite inconclusive.

As this post points out, it feels like Emmrich's lich choice was intended to be darker and for the lich route to be genuinely a selfish option, but instead it's become this somewhat toothless 'dilemma' where both options are right and you never have to feel bad about your decision.

The initial ritual feels like it was a set-up for Rook to unintentionally do terrible harm while trying to stop the world from being destroyed, thus offering the opportunity to reflect on the dilemma that Solas faced in making the Veil and to understand the moral complexity of his situation. There is apparently even cut dialogue from the regret prison on this topic. But instead no one ever blames Rook and Rook is not allowed to blame themself at all, because they have to be The Hero in an uncomplicated way.

I don't know; it just seems to me that there are all these fossils of a more interesting game in there and they've been sort of clumsily written-over because some exec etc wanted the game to be less challenging or targeted at a younger audience or something.

Solavellan wedding pt2

pt1