Doomed to be an artist and doomed to be niche.

Nice constellation of the almost full moon🌔and Jupiter this evening. Jupiter has 92 moons!! And is the gatekeeper of our solar system, preventing impact from ☄️ comets etc.

Catherine O’Hara was a hilarious, gorgeous, and older woman. Three things a lot of women grew up thinking didn’t mix, but they did. They all did. RIP you Canadian treasure

Canadian treasure! But yes a treasure

Catherine O’Hara got us through the pandemic. In our darkest hour Moira Rose lit up the day

Brilliant news

Really enjoyed Midsummer Night’s Dream at #theglobe - A comedy transformed into a class tragedy about agency under authoritarianism, with Bottom as the lead

Thank you for reposting, Katherine. ❤️

7/7

7. #AI doesn’t make any money and probably will never make any money. $525 billion has already been lost on AI industries. So this is not about profit for investors, it’s about something else.

That’s my diatribe on why AI is about ushering in tech fascism. May it fail and fail spectacularly.

6/7

6. by pushing the idea that humans can be replaced by #AI, the likelihood of a recession rises, an excellent atmosphere to push through undemocratic legislation and undermine labour laws. undermining the perceived agency of the majority is something that billionaires are very invested in doing

5/7

the more people use AI, the more their critical skills and their ability to be creative will atrophy, also useful for fascism. System 2 thinking is difficult to motivate ourselves to do and needs practice.

4/7

4. its obsession with plagiarising/undermining intellectual property and art is useful because content is engaging, but artists are problematic and tend to be dissidents. But the more difficult it becomes for people to live off of their creativity, the more helpful that is for tech fascism.

3/7

3. ⁠ the fact that it’s made it so difficult to tell who is human and who constantly lowers the bar on our relationship with privacy. So it is feasible that eventually we would happily give away our DNA in order to verify our identities. This would’ve been unthinkable before AI.

2/7

2. it is environmentally unsustainable - a pro for apocalyptic accelerationist tech bros. Many “preppers” have bought land in New Zealand expecting there to be an oncoming climate disaster that they themselves are protected from through owning clean drinking water and building bunkers.

Thread - 1/7

7 reasons #AI is a tool of global domination and tech fascism.

1. Constant hallucinations which are factually incorrect but subtly interwoven with correct information, requiring expertise to spot. As a routinely used research tool, it undermines facts/truth - helpful for fascism.

What the Roman Empire tells us about AI GABBO, Vespasian and other instances of Manufactured Demand

Wrote a little thing on my substack about Mary Beard and Roman Emperors and AI.

performingquiet.substack.com/p/what-the-r...

What would John Berger do? In June I made a score for an audience-generated version of The Future Show at the John Berger conference at the University of Potsdam.

Wrote about John Berger and The Future Show on my (kind of) brand new substack... open.substack.com/pub/performi...

The Copyright and AI consultation - how to respond as an illustrator – The AOI The Copyright and Artificial Intelligence consultation was published by in December 2024, and we are encouraging illustrators to submit a response to the consultation to demonstrate the negative affec...

Who’s been putting off filling in that government consultation on AI then? Because you took one look and realised that fucking thing was designed SPECIFICALLY to put you off?

Don’t worry, there are three online guides to help you:

The Association of Illustrators
theaoi.com/news/the-cop...

You’ve got the next hour to fill this in if you can. The questions are definitely phrased in a way to discourage you from finishing the survey, but finish it anyway. Our human voices should be heard, not stolen.

Last chance to respond to the government’s consultation on AI’s threat to creatives and copyright. Here’s a handy guide to filling it in from @writersguildgb.bsky.social.

As promised, here are the slides I shared with students to convince them to NOT use chatGPT and other artificial stupidity.

TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. 🪄

“I use antlers in all of my decorating.” Is there any better lyric in film?

BBC radio drama is in grave danger. Without it we may lose the next generation of writing talent Hundreds of hours of original plays have been cut from the corporation’s programming in recent years. If the trend continues, a valuable training ground for writers will be lost

An important piece in today’s Observer from Katie Hims on why cuts to audio drama are so damaging - to writers, audiences and the wider cultural ecosystem in the UK

We continue to campaign to Save Audio Drama at the BBC #SADatTheBBC

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Some people are celebrities as a result of absolute privilege. Some are celebrities as a result of absolute hardship. Some are celebrities as a result of incredibly hard work/virtuosic skill. Liza Minelli is all three. #Legend
#LoveLiza

Incredibly honest moment: one of the most useful cookbooks I have ever bought is Tim Anderson’s Microwave Cooking. Not necessarily for the recipes but for the paradigm shift it offers a cook in terms of how they think of their microwave. It isn’t just for reheating, it’s a tool.

Not exaggerating when I say I would like a personal, handwritten apology from every pundit who barfed out a dozen "the left wants to change the way you talk!" op-eds based on non-mandatory guidelines in obscure PDFs.

Anyone else feel like “Feed the Birds” in Mary Poppins is the moment you realise your nanny is a radical anarchist who wants to take down capitalism with her cool chimney sweep artist f-buddy? And does the beauty of that realisation make anyone else cry?

Let’s not trade wisdom for knowledge.

Grow up

Art reclassified as content and they think people who make it are arrogant, pretentious and make them feel boring. They also think (rightly) that artists are a danger to totalitarianism.

Most people don’t want all this AI. But the government is kowtowing to billionaires, who are not most people.