#schrodinger's time

[mirensiart]

So I'm like 25+ years old and barely 5feet tall, so like, I'm a "four is actually one of the older links but he's just so fucking short" truther cause people keep mistaking me for a high schooler when like, I already graduated college lmao

Anyway, miry 🤝🏻 four solidarity

[daily-sifloop]

More Fools Spicy?

Day 95: Jokes on you!

[tangibletechnomancy]

The reason I took interest in AI as an art medium is that I've always been interested in experimenting with novel and unconventional art media - I started incorporating power tools into a lot of my physical processes younger than most people were even allowed to breathe near them, and I took to digital art like a duck to water when it was the big, relatively new, controversial thing too, so really this just seems like the logical next step. More than that, it's exciting - it's not every day that we just invent an entirely new never-before-seen art medium! I have always been one to go fucking wild for that shit.

Which is, ironically, a huge part of why I almost reflexively recoil at how it's used in the corporate world: because the world of business, particularly the entertainment industry, has what often seems like less than zero interest in appreciating it as a novel medium.

And I often wonder how much less that would be the case - and, by extension, how much less vitriolic the discussion around it would be, and how many fewer well-meaning people would be falling for reactionary mythologies about where exactly the problems lie - if it hadn't reached the point of...at least an illusion of commercial viability, at exactly the moment it did.

See, the groundwork was laid in 2020, back during covid lockdowns, when we saw a massive spike in people relying on TV, games, books, movies, etc. to compensate for the lack of outdoor, physical, social entertainment. This was, seemingly, wonderful for the whole industry - but under late-stage capitalism, it was as much of a curse as it was a gift. When industries are run by people whose sole brain process is "line-go-up", tiny factors like "we're not going to be in lockdown forever" don't matter. CEOs got dollar signs in their eyes. Shareholders demanded not only perpetual growth, but perpetual growth at this rate or better. Even though everyone with an ounce of common sense was screaming "this is an aberration, this is not sustainable" - it didn't matter. The business bros refused to believe it. This was their new normal, they were determined to prove -

And they, predictably, failed to prove it.

So now the business bros are in a pickle. They're beholden to the shareholders to do everything within their power to maintain the infinite growth they promised, in a world with finite resources. In fact, by precedent, they're beholden to this by law. Fiduciary duty has been interpreted in court to mean that, given the choice between offering a better product and ensuring maximum returns for shareholders, the latter MUST be a higher priority; reinvesting too much in the business instead of trying to make the share value increase as much as possible, as fast as possible, can result in a lawsuit - that a board member or CEO can lose, and have lost before - because it's not acting in the best interest of shareholders. If that unsustainable explosive growth was promised forever, all the more so.

And now, 2-3-4 years on, that impossibility hangs like a sword of Damocles over the heads of these media company CEOs. The market is fully saturated; the number of new potential customers left to onboard is negligible. Some companies began trying to "solve" this "problem" by violating consumer privacy and charging per household member, which (also predictably) backfired because those of us who live in reality and not statsland were not exactly thrilled about the concept of being told we couldn't watch TV with our own families. Shareholders are getting antsy, because their (however predictably impossible) infinite lockdown-level profits...aren't coming, and someone's gotta make up for that, right? So they had already started enshittifying, making excuses for layoffs, for cutting employee pay, for duty creep, for increasing crunch, for lean-staffing, for tightening turnarounds-

And that was when we got the first iterations of AI image generation that were actually somewhat useful for things like rapid first drafts, moodboards, and conceptualizing.

Lo! A savior! It might as well have been the digital messiah to the business bros, and their eyes turned back into dollar signs. More than that, they were being promised that this...both was, and wasn't art at the same time. It was good enough for their final product, or if not it would be within a year or two, but it required no skill whatsoever to make! Soon, you could fire ALL your creatives and just have Susan from accounting write your scripts and make your concept art with all the effort that it takes to get lunch from a Star Trek replicator!

This is every bit as much bullshit as the promise of infinite lockdown-level growth, of course, but with shareholders clamoring for the money they were recklessly promised, executives are looking for anything, even the slightest glimmer of a new possibility, that just might work as a life raft from this sinking ship.

So where are we now? Well, we're exiting the "fucking around" phase and entering "finding out". According to anecdotes I've read, companies are, allegedly, already hiring prompt engineers (or "prompters" - can't give them a job title that implies there's skill or thought involved, now can we, that just might imply they deserve enough money to survive!)...and most of them not only lack the skill to manually post-process their works, but don't even know how (or perhaps aren't given access) to fully use the software they specialize in, being blissfully unaware of (or perhaps not able/allowed to use) features such as inpainting or img2img. It has been observed many times that LLMs are being used to flood once-reputable information outlets with hallucinated garbage. I can verify - as can nearly everyone who was online in the aftermath of the Glasgow Willy Wonka Dashcon Experience - that the results are often outright comically bad.

To anyone who was paying attention to anything other than please-line-go-up-faster-please-line-go-please (or buying so heavily into reactionary mythologies about why AI can be dangerous in industry that they bought the tech companies' false promises too and just thought it was a bad thing), this was entirely predictable. Unfortunately for everyone in the blast radius, common sense has never been an executive's strong suit when so much money is on the line.

Much like CGI before it, what we have here is a whole new medium that is seldom being treated as a new medium with its own unique strengths, but more often being used as a replacement for more expensive labor, no matter how bad the result may be - nor, for that matter, how unjust it may be that the labor is so much cheaper.

And it's all because of timing. It's all because it came about in the perfect moment to look like a life raft in a moment of late-stage capitalist panic. Any port in a storm, after all - even if that port is a non-Euclidean labyrinth of soggy, rotten botshit garbage.

Any port in a storm, right? ...right?

All images generated using Simple Stable, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

[o-hora-o]

I like to think they share hyperfixation on mythologies and have chit chats from time to time

[ghostofthepresent]

"wow haha so That's why you sound so old-" "i will get qiao ling to evict you."

[visceravalentines]

hoffman knew strahm would never trust him and that he'd never get into the coffin willingly and he banked on this

and

hoffman hoped with his last shred of faith that strahm would listen to him and get in the coffin of his own volition and in doing so, validate his entire existence

and

hoffman was ready to drug strahm and push him into the coffin if he had to, if he got the chance, so he could keep him and keep him alive

and

hoffman was prepared to cram himself into that coffin with strahm and breathe his air and press against his conscious or unconscious body to save them both and for no other reason

and

hoffman was prepared to let the walls smash him to pulp if it meant strahm made the right choice and he didn't have to put up with all this anymore

are all statements that can and do coexist in my head at all times forever and that's fine

[gumi-writes]

touchstarved + reductress articles

bonus (art by todayis-snowy):

[francesderwent]

cohabitation is Schrodinger’s commitment: while you’re just living together the commitment is both real and counterfeit at the same time. no matter if someone says that they’re committed to you and that you’re the one and that the relationship is moving towards marriage and kids…when you open the box you might find a marriage, or you might find a string of lies and abandonment. and you cannot know until you know.

[fiftypiercings]

married joongdok but not in a conventional way because dokja returns home at 3 in the morning, fucking wasted, probably smelling like incompetence and regrets. an intoxicated migraine brewing up while he's trying his best to reach the kitchen for a glass of water in the dark but then there's joonghyuk standing ominously in the path with a knife and lighter in his hands, the trashcan's on fire and cell block tango is playing somewhere in the background.

[vro0m]

Breaking : Stella thinks he's Jesus Christ and can perform miracles

[bibiana112]

It's always "Is the cat in the box dead?" "Is the cat in the box alive?" and never "How was the catbox? Was the catbox fun?"

[schrodingersstone]

Eeeeeh, it's complicated. We can't really... explain all too much for a lot of reasons, many out of our control, but we don't have any ulterior motives or ill will to you or anyone. I understand saying that might make us more suspicious, but I mean what I say and I say what I mean.

Anyways, to change topic, what are you doing in this neck of the woods? Intended figuratively, but could also be literal 'cause I'm not all too sure where we are.

N: Can't exactly go back empty handed, especially in the rogue department.

N: Junebug n' 'Dile would tie me to a tree in my sleep and leave me there.

[tinithebini]

Two guys for the price of one! What a deal! (one of them is severely traumatized and burdened with the impossible weight of the apocalypse) ((actually they both are, very badly))

[finifugue]

Lando Norris starting on pole with twelve world championships behind him. That's what sex appeal is

[dailyhatchetfield]

day 106 - bi4bicons

[sir-adamus]

in the last scene, everyone gets something to say except Tifa - the only sound she makes at all are these tearful sobs. she's devastated over losing Aerith

when Nanaki senses Aerith's presence, Tifa looks up for a second, then just... drops her head back onto her arms in the most defeated way

someone give this poor woman a hug, fucking hell