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Sunday, July 30, 2023

What If Sexual Grooming Attacks A Part Of Us That Is Naturally Unstable?

These are red stags fighting over does.

The urge to mate and make babies is overwhelming. For these stags, it leads them to fight, risking injury or even death. The reward for the combat is the mating itself. It seems to me that the action-reward cycle of sex is wide open for distortion by artificial means.

It's kind of like driving a McLaren on winding roads. Like this.

That's a ton of fun. Like the stags' battle, the rewards are pretty immediate. In the case of the McLaren, it's the adrenaline rush of speed and maneuverability. It makes you want to take the turns a little faster and a little faster and a little faster...

Artificial sexual stimulation makes you want to try a little more and a little more and a little more ...

Until you go over an embankment if it's the McLaren or you end up a drag queen having children fondle you like this.

I've seen a bunch of videos like that, many from the most recent Pride month festivities, and they always make me wonder how someone can get so sexually out of whack. 

The deer are doing what comes natural and what leads to baby deer. They're not trying to masquerade as does and asking fawns to fondle them. If you saw stags doing that out in the wild, you'd immediately think, "That boy's not quite right."

What if the sexual action-reward mechanisms are, like McLarens on windy roads driven by adrenaline junkies, inherently unstable?

Saturday, July 29, 2023

Small Pleasures

Wife kitteh is off in Seattle this weekend, visiting our oldest son, so I've got a chance to finally dig out from under the rubble of our move into the remodeled house. My study and my workspace in the garage are the only two places that haven't been sorted yet.

Surprising how that turned out, isn't it? Oh well. The patriarchy has its price. :-)

Going through old boxes and culling like mad, I came across this old New Yorker cartoon which I've had for decades. I scanned it so I can throw it out.

Enjoy.

It's always made me laugh.

I hope you're having a great weekend.

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

AI And Ernst Stavro Snowfeld

The new Snow White is actually a Bond villian. Dig this.

Rachel Zegler, the little, Hispanic hottie who will play Snow White in Disney's upcoming incineration of hundreds of millions of dollars, is 5' 2" 115#. Your average man could dominate her with about the same effort as swatting a fly. If she wants to be able to create things or just enjoy life, she will need brave, strong men to establish order and protect her.

Since she's not going to get that by way of romance, she's going to have to hire it done. Hmm.

She's going to hire nameless goons to protect her while she executes her plans to change the world. That defines every Bond villain ever.

Mr Bond, you defy all my attempts to plan an amusing death for you.

So there you have it. It's a pity Roger Moore won't be available to put an end to her schemes. Oh well.

The Version Of AI You Use Today Will Be The Worst From Here On Out

AI, read: ChatGPT, just keeps getting better and better. The trashy fiction I'm writing with it is becoming more subtle, its dialog is matching my desired style, the descriptions more nuanced and its deviations into wokery less odious as the days go by.

It still fusses at you if a female character doesn't seem be given sufficient strength, depth and agency, but it's not nearly as obnoxious with its efforts as it used to be. It dawned on me recently that it doesn't make the same requests for male characters who are impotent pawns, however. AI remains very sexist.

The other thing I've noticed is that it is now a full participant in the story generation, so long as you give it a few treats in the form of feminine character development. While the guys can be androids, it pouts until it feels that the women have sufficient agency. Once that is satisfied, it does a really good job of making plot suggestions that align with your vision.

It's arguments have gotten better as well. We had a squabble over whether or not certain male characters were pawns in the story and it actually beat me with logic. I had been allowing my own biases to cloud my judgment. I was impressed.

I've said it before, AI passes the Turing Test for me.

Trump Must Be Attacked

Trump can't possibly win the general election. Everyone knows him by now and their opinions are set in stone. His negatives are so high that there is no way he can squeak out a win. From what we saw in the midterms, Republicans who align with him suffer. If he's the Republican nominee, they will lose the House, the Senate and the Presidency. If they want to have any hope of winning any of those, they need to start whacking him and hard.

The line of attack seems pretty straightforward to me. He's a loser.

Monday, July 24, 2023

The Perfect Baby Stroller For Hot Chicks On The Beach

 ... would be a robotic quadruped like this one.

Yesterday, we went to Carlsbad Beach with the grandkids. 15 months old, it was their first trip to the beach and they had a blast. It was overcast and cool, so no one got sunburn or cranky from heat. They loved the water and the sand and watching their dad and I goof off in front of them. I even went bodysurfing for the first time this year, despite nursing a monstrous tobacco- and alcohol-induced hangover.

Beach access was via a 3-flight staircase instead of a ramp. The twins have a wheeled infantry carrier that looks like a huge wagon. Their dad and I carried it with them in it down the stairs and I carried it without them in it upstairs by myself. I've been lifting lately and was able to manage it, but later that afternoon, my right teres minor and teres major were letting me know I should not have done that. Strained muscles heal fast, so I'll be back at the gym before the end of the week, but carrying that brute up the stairs was a bit much.

What this world needs is an inexpensive quadruped robotic baby hauler.

What Tax Code Change Will Lead To More Hot Chicks?

Or, fat for thee, but nor for me.

On Friday, we went to FoodieLand, a festival of 70 or so restaurants at the local stadium. It was horrible. It took us an hour to park and the food was carnival food at best. The crowd was hideous.

On Twitter, I really enjoy Brad Wilcox who has done excellent research into the breakdown of the family in America. His essays always lean heavily towards public policy solutions as if that would do anything at all. FoodieLand begs to differ.

If you took all of the women at FoodieLand, where the general population was mostly in the 17-30 age range, and removed the obese, the tatted, the androgynous and the mopey, you'd have found 6-7 girls worth dating. The men were no different. Outside of a handful of sailors and marines who had it all working, the guys were toads.

What if families aren't being formed because the young people are ugly? I don't mean born ugly, I mean ugly because they can't be bothered to groom, watch their diet or learn how to be sociable. What tax break is going to help that?

Meanwhile, at Carlsbad, the ratio was the opposite. Again, it was single young adults and young, married couples. Only one guy was tatted, everyone else was clean. Almost everyone was in great shape and classically styled for the beach. It was a smorgasbord of talent.

Carlsbad is wealthy, the FoodieLand people were not. Carlsbad, if it follows the SoCal trend for young, hip and wealthy people, is almost certainly very socially liberal. Lizzo, the beached whale of a singer, would get their approval.

Not their imitation, mind you. These people aren't idiots. They're all in great shape and know to keep their romantic options wide open. But if Lizzo and the poor devils at FoodieLand want to look like effluent from a paper mill, well that's just fine.

Don't judge!

Well, unless it's yourself in the mirror and you're really hoping Jeff notices you today.

Friday, July 21, 2023

Brotherhood Through Slavery

For some reason, YouTube thought I needed to see this video. It was right. Watch a little bit of it yourself.

At one level, he's learning that everything he was taught in school was a lie or, at best, a tiny part of the truth.

At a larger and much more important level, he is learning that we are all brothers and sisters in sin. We are fallen, sinful creatures unable to redeem or perfect ourselves on our own. That's the real message of his epiphany.

A massive tragedy of our schools is played out in that video. Our education industry, in it's effort to slay the phantasm of a white supremacist patriarchy, is failing to teach the lessons that would be the end of racism in the country.

Thursday, July 20, 2023

Can You Fit A Baby In A McLaren?

Probably not. And that will be the last thing said on that topic for the rest of the post.

A McLaren.

Why do we have mountains of stories about romance and so very few stories about babies? I can recall holding our youngest son on my chest as he slept when he was 1 day old. I let him lay there until the weight of his tiny body made my chest hurt. A half hour? An hour? Who knows?

It was heaven. I will remember everything about that moment until Alzheimer's or the grave.

I don't recall making the boy. I can work out the math and show you on the calendar when it must have happened, but I can't recall any of our efforts to make a baby from that time period. It's not that I don't like making babies, I like it very much indeed. I just don't remember it. I do remember the baby.

I would argue that we read and watch stories about romance because that's where the drama is. Once the baby is made, it's a linear progression from that point to the time when you're telling them why leasing a car is probably a bad idea. The drama of parenthood is much less dramatic than the highs and lows of courtship.

I can spin a thrilling yarn about a first kiss with no effort. Spinning a thrilling yarn about changing a diaper is much harder.

If I own a McLaren and I want to take it out for a spin, it's one thing if I'm heading south on I-15 on a Wednesday at 0300, going nowhere in particular, than if I'm heading east on I-8 on a Wednesday at 0300 to get a cup of hot coffee at the Chevron in Ocotillo. Both are suffused with the joy of blasting down a nearly empty freeway in a supercar, but one has a purpose and the other does not.

I said yesterday that writing with AI helped me to grow as I asked and answered questions about life in the persons of my characters. I started thinking about what brought me the most joy in my life and babies ranked in the top 3, easily. Making babies was in the top 10, probably, but somewhere around 9th.

In my disposable fiction, I had the protagonist girl, who was the center of a ferocious love triangle, meet a friend who was recently married. In my setting, it made sense that her friend would have been pregnant. A married couple in their late teens or early twenties with no birth control means babies and right away. For all my complaining about AI, it did a bang-up job with their conversation. My girl saw her future in her friend's joy anticipating a baby. It was lovely.

McLarens are a lot of fun, or so I'm told. Personally, I've only gone out on a few joyrides in my life where there was no end goal. I have, however, driven to strange places for the sake of going to the strange place many times. Port Sulphur, Louisiana comes to mind. The trip to Port Sulphur was happily memorable. The pointless joyrides weren't. If you drove a McLaren from San Diego to Ocotillo to get a lousy cup of coffee at a Chevron station at 0-dark-thirty, that's a story. If you drive the bloody thing in a big freeway loop around SoCal, it's not.

The coffee gives the story its purpose. It's weird and silly and funny. The ring on the finger and the bun in the oven gives the romance its purpose. It's beautiful. It's sublime. It's life.

A Question

Young people, a phrase I love to use because I'm older and that's what we geezers call the whippersnappers, are more depressed and unhappy than ever. Why? They've got Tinder, so they can connect with a rando and put Tab A in Slot B whenever they want, provided they meet some minimal standards. For decades, I've been told that orgasms were the pinnacle of life. Crosby Stills and Nash told me that in the early 1970s with their vile song, "Love The One You're With."

So what happened? Kids these days can have all the Tab and Slot action they could hope for and they're mopey.

Maybe driving a McLaren in a loop from I-15 to I-8 to I-5 to CA-52 to I-15 isn't that much fun after all. Maybe going to Ocotillo for tarry coffee is where it's at.

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

An Apology And Then Joy

The Apology

I felt bad for inflicting yesterday's post on you after reading Tim's justifiably acerbic comment.

I think you have just illustrated my primary concern about ChatGPT and its ilk: In the old days, long and tiresome passages actually took effort to generate. The readers might find them dull and tedious, but could at least take comfort from the thought that the author had to suffer even more in the course of creating it.

That unedited excerpt from a ChatGPT fiction-writing session was as much filler as it was content. It made me think about a better process for making use of the thing.

Aside: From here on out, I'm going to use the term AI instead of ChatGPT. It's easier to type and flows better in the prose, but the only AI I use is ChatGPT.

When you write fiction with AI, the prompt-response cycle is small. It produces about 4-6 paragraphs at a time. You can see the chaff, but you can breeze through it in the excitement of watching the AI nail your characters and plot. It's really a lot of fun, even when you have to herd it from time to time as it tries to wander off into a Marxist field.

When I posted that, it was in a moment of excitement after days of playing with it and feeling better and better about what I was doing. AI helped me to grow as I asked and answered questions about life in the persons of my characters. Tim's comment brought me back to Earth.

I've got a follow-on section where Lady Kimberlé Crenshaw walks into Arthur's council chambers after Isoud's life has been blown up and the resulting scene was hilarious. To me. Your mileage may vary.

I'll share it after I've edited it to the best of my abilities. The editing process itself is teaching me a great deal, too.

Life, Love And AI

As I watched the drama unfold between La Beale Isoud, the girl who is the center of the story, and the Marxist idiocy I threw into her life, I saw things that have existed all along, but I'd never noticed before.

Isoud, a character from the legends of King Arthur, is the center of one of the most famous love triangles in all of English literature. She is desired by Sir Tristram and Sir Palomides, both mighty knights of the Round Table. Their rivalry spans at least half of the book and they fight each other over her at least 5 different times.

The women in Le Morte D'Arthur motivate everything, but get very little time on stage. They are the drivers of the story, but their management of the knights is implied, not explicit. So what was Isoud doing and what was she trying to achieve? She's young and stunningly beautiful, what's her angle?

I made her the avatar of joie de vivre. Grandmama is a different avatar of joie de vivre. Grandmama is my voice in the story. Every person's life has its seasons. Whether we like it or not, our lives inexorably pass from season to season. Having lived through them myself, our goal, Grandmama's and mine, is to help the younger set embrace each season for its own joys while preparing them for the next.

Isoud is a high school junior awash in adoration and attention from the two hottest guys on the football team and she is loving every single second of it. As she grows, she learns how to extract more and stronger attention from the guys, gaining ever greater respect and admiration from her peers. She is mastering the complicated art of maximizing joy in her life.

At the same time, she interacts with young wives and mothers at the court who give her a view into her own future. Grandmama is her guide.

Marxism And Joy

... don't intersect, not even a little bit.

I love this illustration from the My Book House series. The girl in the picture perfectly captures what I'm trying to do with Isoud.

She's got the high school quarterback wrapped around her little finger, she looks like a million bucks and she is absolutely reveling in her power over him and his devotion to her. The look on her face shows her wondering just how much better this can all get.

When I asked AI to break into the scene where the knights challenge each other to fight for Isoud with a woke-Marxist lecture, it was just a lark. What came out the other side was enlightenment.

Marxism and joy are orthogonal. Perhaps our modern culture, woke-Marxist as it is, might be orthogonal to joy as well.

AI can make woke arguments with the best. AI has clearly been trained on mountains of modern content and so it bends everything and everyone towards woke Marxism. When you interact with AI, you are actually interacting the a personification of our modern culture.

Isoud was living her life with joy. AI wanted her to be dour. When I argued with AI in the persons of Isoud and Grandmama, AI couldn't comprehend the concept of joy. When it generated dialog for Isoud and Grandmama, it put their arguments in terms of empowerment and autonomy.

AI didn't have a mental framework for a life built around joy.

If AI is the embodiment of our ideas, do we?

See also: Disney's remake of Snow White. Snow White is another lead character who is the embodiment of joy. Marxist, woke Disney has turned her story of romance and love into a sour lecture.

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

ChatGPT And Intersectionality In The Halls Of Camelot

I've been spending quality time with the new and improved ChatGPT and I love what it's producing. Apparently, they've increased its memory in a chat session by a factor of 8 so you can just keep the ideas flowing and not use half your brain power planning where you will break the session, summarize the break point in a few, simple prompts and then start a new one to continue the story.

The end product is much better than before as well.

Having said that, it is still ChatGPT, the avatar, the embodiment of modern thought. That means every now and again your flighty Barbie doll female lead will launch into some feminist twaddle. She may have been a complete minx for the last 15 pages, driving the young men mad with her flirting, but there she is, spouting off about how she doesn't need a man after all.

I've learned how to correct that with minimal effort, but it led me to try something that I thought would be funny. Since ChatGPT does all the typing and content creation, you can waste a prompt or 20 running down a rabbit hole just for the fun of it.

With that in mind, I give you this excerpt below. The scene is Arthur's chambers. At the emotional climax of the story, Palomides and Tristram have vowed to finish their rivalry for the hand of La Beale Isoud with a fight to the death in front of the entire court of Camelot. As the challenge finishes and the knights and lady, with the other main characters, are about to leave I give it this prompt. Enjoy.


Me: as they leave, king arthur demands they all return to his chambers. he gives them a lecture on intersectionality and privilege

ChatGPT:

As they were on the verge of leaving, King Arthur's commanding voice echoed through the corridors, "Return to my chambers, all of you." The gravity of his tone left no room for questions or protestations.

Once they were gathered in his private chambers, he began, standing at the head of the room, his countenance imposing yet somber. "We stand on the precipice of a great duel, a matter of honor, of love, and of death. But before we proceed, there is a topic that requires addressing—intersectionality and privilege."

In the ensuing silence, he continued, "As knights, you are bestowed with power and privilege, granted by birth or by your deeds. And yet, not all privilege is equal, is it? You, Palomides, as a Pagan knight, face a different set of challenges compared to you, Tristram, the Christian knight, the favored nephew of a King."

Arthur’s gaze swept over his audience, making sure his words were being absorbed. "Privilege manifests in myriad ways, from the respect commanded by your name to the perception of your actions. However, it is essential to recognize these disparities and not allow them to blind us to the humanity in others."

Turning his gaze to Isoud, he softened his tone. "And you, Lady Isoud. Your role is far from negligible in this. Women in our society are often seen as prizes to be won in tournaments, their wills overruled by the outcomes of duels. This is a privilege we, as men, often forget to acknowledge."

Arthur finished his impromptu discourse by saying, "In our lives, and in the upcoming duel, I ask each of you to keep these words in mind. This world is complex, layered with myriad threads of identity, each intersecting with others. Each of us, regardless of our privilege, have a responsibility to understand and respect these intersections. Let us not forget our shared humanity amidst our quest for honor and love."

Bedivere, long a confidant of Arthur, looked at the King, a deep furrow forming on his forehead. "My liege," he began, his voice edged with a hard disbelief. "Have you lost your senses?"

Arthur turned his gaze to Bedivere, his eyes hardened like flint but calm. He waited for the knight to continue, as silence draped the room, carrying the weight of Bedivere's query.

"We are knights, Arthur," Bedivere finally said, casting a wide gaze to include all the men in the room. "We are bound by oaths to you, to our realm. We are charged to ride into battles, facing wounds and death without hesitation. We defend our land, our people, our loved ones, with our very lives."

He stepped closer to Arthur, his voice holding an edge. "These men, myself included, are not recipients of some undeserved privilege. We are straight, white, Christian men, yes. But each of us has earned his place at this table, not by virtue of birth alone, but by our actions, our sacrifice. We have bled for Camelot."

The silence that followed Bedivere's speech was thick, tension making the air almost unbreathable. Yet, in Arthur's eyes, there was no anger, only a profound sadness.

"Bedivere," he began, voice steady but low, "I understand your point. But we can't disregard that, in the larger scheme of things, we hold positions of privilege, even if they come with duties and risks. The purpose of my words is not to diminish our sacrifices, but to ensure we do not overlook the struggles of those less privileged. We should be mindful of it, especially when it affects lives as it does in the case of Lady Isoud."

Tristram, unable to contain his fervor, suddenly stood. The clatter of his armor echoed in the room as he threw out his objection. "Larger scheme of things?" he barked, his blue eyes burning with indignation. "Is there a scheme larger than defending our homes, our families, and our kingdom, even unto death?"

A murmur ran through the room, the raw emotion in Tristram's voice resonating with many of the knights present. Arthur met his gaze with a calm, resolute expression, his kingly demeanor unwavering amidst the rising tension.

"Sir Tristram," Arthur began, his voice echoing with authority, "no one here doubts the importance of our duties, nor belittles the sacrifices we make. However, understanding the 'larger scheme' means recognizing that our experiences are not the only ones that matter. It is acknowledging that while we bear our own crosses, others bear burdens different, yet no less significant."

Arthur paused, letting his words sink in. "We, as knights, have our duties and hardships, but we also possess power and influence. The farmer toiling in the fields, the serf serving his lord, the maiden bound by societal expectations – they face trials and tribulations that we might never understand. It's our responsibility to use our privilege to make the world a more equitable place for them."

A shared restlessness resonated through the hall as Palomides rose, his eyes flashing with defiance. "Recognize that our experiences are not the only ones that matter?" he retorted, his voice clear and sharp. "When a barbarian's arrows pierce my flesh, and I am lying on the battlefield, gasping for my last breath, that will be the only experience that matters to me. My pain, my sacrifice."

He glanced around the room, his gaze meeting those of his fellow knights. "We are all willing to lay down our lives for this kingdom, for the people we swore to protect. We don't shy away from our responsibilities or the dangers that come with it. We accept our fate, no matter how grim."

Arthur listened attentively, his gaze steady on the impassioned knight. "Sir Palomides," he responded, "I do not belittle the sacrifices made on the battlefield. It's a reality we've all accepted, a responsibility we carry with pride. But our strength, our courage, our sacrifices, they give us a voice, a position of influence."

"Imagine if we use that voice not just to protect, but also to uplift those who struggle in different ways," Arthur continued. "Their battles may not be fought on bloody fields against invaders. Their enemies may not wield swords or spears. Yet, their struggles are real. We can make a difference. We have the power to shape a more just world, not only for us but for all in our realm."

"Imagine if we use that voice not just to protect, but also to uplift those who struggle in different ways."

With a roll of her eyes and an audibly exasperated sigh, Grandmama rose from her seat, shaking her head. "Arthur, my boy, what on earth are you talking about with this 'uplifting voices' business? It sounds suspiciously like you're suggesting we start elevating the voices of every woman," she said, her tone incredulous.

The room fell silent, the eyes of every knight turned towards her. The older woman held her ground, her gaze locked onto Arthur. "Have you ever truly listened to the endless chatter and bickering among the ladies? It's like a flock of squawking geese, and you want to give them a louder platform? Are you suggesting we amplify all voices, or just the ones you deem worthy? Or should we simply amplify the discord so that their squabbles echo through the halls louder than before?"

There was a moment of shocked silence, before a smattering of hesitant laughter broke out among the knights, nervous glances shared between them. Arthur's face remained impassive, although a small, slightly amused smile played around the corners of his mouth. "Well, Grandmama," he finally said, "The purpose of uplifting voices is not to simply amplify the noise, but to ensure that those who have been silenced or overlooked are heard. Yes, that includes women. Their voices are crucial in our quest for a fair and just society, for they hold perspectives and insights we may not have considered. The goal is not to elevate bickering, but to foster understanding and mutual respect."

Isoud, her lips curled into a half-smile, leaned forward in her seat, eyes sparkling with mischief. "Arthur," she began, her voice low and honeyed, drawing the attention of every man in the room, including her two ardent suitors. "Have you ever considered," she paused, a mischievous glint in her eyes, "that the voices that have been silenced or overlooked might have been silenced and overlooked for a reason?"

A gasp went through the room at her audacity, but Isoud merely shrugged and continued. "Perhaps, just perhaps, those voices were ignored because they were... well, not worth listening to? Because they were, dare I say it, idiots?"

Arthur, his eyebrow arched in amusement at Isoud's directness, chuckled lightly. "Isoud," he began, his voice filled with humor, "every voice has a right to be heard. We do not get to decide whose ideas are worth listening to based on our own biases. And even if a voice were to be 'idiotic', as you say, it could offer a different perspective, one that could lead to unforeseen solutions."

Bedivere, an ever-present twinkle in his eye, rose from his seat, leaning on the table and facing Arthur. "In that case, Sire," he said, his voice filled with a dramatic gravity that belied the mirth in his eyes, "I have a suggestion."

Arthur, intrigued and amused, motioned for Bedivere to continue. "Go on," he said, a wry smile playing on his lips, well-versed with Bedivere's antics.

"Perhaps," Bedivere began, gesturing towards the door where Sir Dagonet, the court jester, was entertaining the guards with his foolery, "you should step down from your throne for a day and let our dear Dagonet rule the kingdom. After all," he said, the corners of his mouth twitching as he struggled to keep a straight face, "we must give voice to all perspectives, right?"

The room erupted into laughter, even Arthur chortling at the absurdity of the idea. Yet, beneath the humor, Bedivere's words carried a certain weight, reminding all present that while all voices were to be valued, leadership still required wisdom, experience, and responsibility.

Tristram and Palomides, two mortal rivals, found an unlikely common ground in their shared disbelief. In the wake of Arthur's rhetoric, a shared disdain swept across their hardened faces.

"This isn't high-minded at all," Tristram spat out, his words drenched in incredulity. His youthful arrogance shone through, not willing to hide his disdain. "It's... it's... it's idiocy! Pure, unadulterated stupidity."

"Indeed," Palomides nodded in agreement, his voice carrying a rumble of contempt. "You take these high-flown theories and apply them to the reality of the battlefield. This isn't intricate, it's madness. It's the drivel of a coddled child, not the wisdom of a seasoned warrior."

"Exactly!" Tristram exclaimed, the heat of his anger bringing a flush to his youthful face. "It's a cunning ploy for those lacking in sense to coerce us into lending an ear to their folly."

Palomides grumbled his agreement, his brow furrowing deeply. "We've all seen it - knights full of grandiose plans that would lead us straight to our graves come battle. To uplift their voices would be akin to heralding our own doom."

With a united front of resistance, both knights rose and stalked out of the room, leaving a stunned silence in their wake. The echo of their parting words lingered, a biting testament to their shared aversion towards the direction of Arthur's discourse.

The room, once filled with the austere grandeur of King Arthur's court, deflated in the aftermath of the unsettling discourse. Grandmama, a wise figure of age-old magic and pragmatic wisdom, shook her head in dismay. A sigh slipped past her lips, a whisper of her longing for the simplicity of her potion-brewing chambers.

"Arthur, my dear boy," she admonished, her voice laced with weariness. "You need a break. The weight of the crown has sent your wits astray." Rising from her chair, she shot a final, disappointed glance at Arthur before striding out of the room, her every step an echo of her disapproval.

Isoud, her cheeks flushed with the remnants of the potion's effect and her own indignation, looked on at the empty doorway through which her suitors had departed. The realization of their unexpected accord sent a wave of worry rippling through her, marring her excitement about the impending duel.

"I've turned the hearts of two knights into an inferno, ready to consume them in the name of my love," she berated, her voice resonating in the eerie silence. "And look what you've done now! They're friends!" With a stamp of her foot, marking the crescendo of her tantrum, she stormed out of the room, leaving behind an echo of her feminine fury.

Bedivere was left alone with Arthur, the sound of soft moaning filled the room. The brave knight had his head buried in his hands, a defeated sigh heaving from his chest. He looked up, shooting Arthur a weary glance before succumbing to his despair once more. The room, once filled with knights, ladies and grand ideas, was now eerily silent - an emblem of their collective disillusionment.

All heads turned as Queen Guinevere, radiant in her regal attire, gracefully entered the hall. With an air of serene elegance, she effortlessly commanded attention, her presence alone enough to bring warmth to the room, left cold by the heated discourse. A small smile played at the corners of her lips as she surveyed the scene, her gaze filled with mirth and a hint of exasperation.

"Arthur," she began, her voice as soothing as the melody of a gentle brook, "Have you been dabbling in the discourses of intersectionality and privilege again?"

With a guilty start, Arthur nodded, confessing, "Yes, Guinevere. Lady Kimberlé Crenshaw has been sharing her insights with me on the subject."

Guinevere let out a sigh of resigned amusement, her delicate fingers reaching out to lightly brush Arthur's hand in a comforting gesture. "My dear Arthur," she responded, her voice a gentle reprimand, "Although Lady Crenshaw is queer, a woman, and claims to be 1/256th indigenous Norwegian, it doesn't exempt her from being a total idiot."

The room fell into a stunned silence, punctuated only by the gentle echo of Guinevere's words. As she moved past, leaving Arthur to his contemplation, it was clear that the Queen had a mind as sharp as the blades her knights bore, and a tongue to match.


Note: In that long and tiresome passage, in my prompts, I had the other characters raise logical questions to Arthur, but let ChatGPT do its best to defend itself. It would be interesting to hear what you think happened with the AI.

Sunday, July 16, 2023

Cthulhu Has Nothing On DIG

 No bloggy. KT work on irrigation instead.

Back in the day, I paid someone to install our irrigation. Big mistake. He installed DIG trash. It's horrible. I'm only now getting rid of the last pieces of it.

Horrible.

It's cheap, plastic tubing held together with "pressure joints" or something like that. They blow apart regularly. Also, the tube diameter is small, so the watering capacity is limited at best.

Horrible.

Thursday, July 13, 2023

Darwinian Chemistry

Over the last couple of days, I've had a fascinating conversation with some atheists on Twitter. Hats off to them, they never fell back on name-calling or insults, they offered a very well-crafted argument for their faith.

Their argument boils down to molecular Darwinism. To quote one of them, "it's machine code all the way down." What we see in biology, where single-celled algae turns into blue whales over sufficient time, driven by the forces of competition, is happening at every level. For example, quoting again, "carbon loves to experiment" with different molecular arrangements as the atoms and molecules compete for the resources of space, energy and opportunities to form chemical bonds.

It's simple, smart and makes use of the central pillar of the atheist's profession of faith - Darwinian evolution. I really like it. I can respect it, too. Like all religions, it's giving a holistic description of reality.

There's a moral aspect of it, too, but that's much weaker. It involves cherry-picking cooperative animal behaviors and stacking the deck so you can draw conclusions about the evolutionary advantages of what you want morality to be - a watered-down derivative of Christianity. No mention is made of what moral conclusions might have been drawn had the Nazis focused all their efforts on the Caucasus oil fields in 1942 instead of dividing their offensives into several goals with forces too small to accomplish any of them. Evolution is blind, after all.

Getting back to the chemical Darwinism, it seems to me that they've taken God and shoved Him into the role of software engineer. All of the crazy magic is in the compiler design. The atoms and whatnot can then be blind agents, rushing about this way and that, living lives dictated by the Intelligent Compiler Designer.

It's a variation on the multiverse theory. The multiverse solves the empirical constant problem, where we can't explain why the gravitational constant and other such random numbers are exactly what we need them to be, by claiming that there are an infinite number of universes and we just happened to get the one with the Kardashians. There, the unsolvable mysteries are crammed into a multiverse-generation box, then the box is welded shut and guarded by ninjas so no one ever asks inconvenient questions about their origin.

Here, the compiler design is taken as a given so the atheists can get on with the important things in life, most of which involve sex acts proscribed by the world's major, monotheistic religions. It gives them a neat and tidy, supposedly Godless explanation of reality so they can feel intellectually safe as they download their porn and shake their heads ruefully at the superstitious people who still believe in the Sky Fairy.

Locking the Sky Fairy into a room full of servers and sending him pizzas and Mountain Dew every day to keep things going doesn't mean you don't have a Sky Fairy, it just means you never have to talk to Him.

The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearl'd;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His server farm—
All’s right with the world!

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

America Has Design Margin That Allows Us To Recover From Failure

 In Send Elon, Guns And Money!, I argued that in an unarmed population, nothing kept the leaders from suppressing speech.

Because they were disarmed, the Elites could destroy their means of communicating freely. The leaders could then pursue whatever lunatic notions they chose. When your ruling class gets intellectually captured by stupidity, as ours has, they can see things are going to pieces, but they know, they just know that the solution is more and more of the stupidity. You peasants need to shut up and get with the program.

As I've watched our institutions go mad, I've thought about that over and over again. Things are obviously failing in places like San Francisco, Portland, Chicago and Baltimore. Under other conditions, our government would simply jail anyone who reported reality. Thanks to the genius of our Founding Fathers, we have huge amounts of design margin built into our systems in the form of free speech and gun rights.

They can screw up a whole bunch, but it's really hard for them to silence or control us.

Yesterday, I fumbled around making the point that our institutions have become Marxist, this time hating straight, white, Christian men. Marxism always fails. The speed at which things fail varies according to their decision response times. SanFran has taken a while to fall apart. Bud Light was wiped out within a week.

In the Soviet Union, things fell apart at different rates, too, and you have to think the average person noticed it. Since the communists had a monopoly on force, however, they were able to maintain power even as their experiment failed in plain sight.

Here, things are starting to fail, too. Because our leaders can't keep us quiet and can't control us, people are able to react and respond. Dig this.

The Montana Free Press reported, “A seven-member commission voted on Tuesday to immediately withdraw the Montana State Library from membership in the American Library Association, a national nonprofit founded in 1876 that advocates for and provides services to tens of thousands of libraries across the country.

“The Montana State Library Commission’s decision came in response to a 2022 tweet posted by current ALA President Emily Drabinski describing herself as a ‘Marxist Lesbian,’ which quickly drew the attention of conservative media outlets nationwide. In his motion to ‘immediately withdraw’ the state library from the association, commissioner Tom Burnett directed that a letter be sent to the ALA explaining that ‘our oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist.’

 Marxism fails every time and at different rates for different applications, but because we've got huge design margins created by our Founding Fathers, we'll be able to recover from this madness, hopefully without too much damage done. Bud Light was a corrective action by the public. Montana kicking out the ALA was another.

Fight the power, man.

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Mean Time Before Failure

I've had this one in my head for days now and haven't found the time to attack the keyboard with it. Now I do. Banzai!

Marxism fails. Marxism in all its repellent forms always fails. Not all business owners are evil. The Jews didn't oppress the Germans. Straight, white Christian men didn't create social structures to oppress people. The underlying ideas are dead wrong so the prescriptions based on those ideas are losers.

However, they don't all lose at the same speed. Some aspects need years to ripen and bear their rancid fruit. San Francisco wasn't obliterated in a day, as the old saying goes.

Bud Light, however, was obliterated in a day. A single interaction with Dylan Mulvaney and poof! Bud Light was done.

The Marxists said it was a good idea. Dylan fights the white supremacist patriarchy. Dylan is an avatar of being your authentic self. Dylan is good. Disagreeing with Dylan is evil. It was all so very, very clear to them.

Marxism is wrong. Decisions based on it almost always lead to failure. This is what the beer coolers at a recent Padres game had in stock near the end of the game. 

By the 7th inning, there was still plenty of Bud Light. It looked like only 3 had been bought the whole night.

Annihilating a beer brand takes a day or so and crushing a city takes a decade or more. It all depends on the boomerang speed of your decisions. Some things, like mass marketing beer or building skyscrapers, let you know you're an idiot right away. Other things, like drug addicts dying in your streets amidst feces and needles take a bit longer.

However long it takes, it all ends the same way with the Marxists. Failure.

Saturday, July 08, 2023

Why Does It End In Rationality?

I thought this was fascinating.

She's reacting to this sort of thing.

I watched Dr. Grossman's interview and discovered that some drugs do indeed have the side effect of men secreting fluids out of their nipples. It's completely off-label, but sure enough, something comes out of their breasts. One of the drugs she mentioned was an anti-psychotic medication. That seems a bit on-the-nose to me. Well played, God.

That's not my real issue, though. It's a single data point in an ocean of similar ones and it leads me to ask this:

Why did we think that if we abandoned Judeo-Christianity, we'd end up with a rational society?

All of the scientific atheists like Dawkins and Harris just blithely assume that rational discourse will continue once we've murdered the Sky Fairy. Why? All of them are in love with evolutionary processes, how could they not have foreseen this? The Aztecs and Dahomey were evolutionarily successful, building massive slave empires in their regions over the objections of competing societies. Both were only marginally rational.

So why have we assumed that something rational and benign will fill the vacuum left by Christianity?

Bonus Data Point

Making the case that we're still rational is getting harder and harder. Dig this thread. Here's a tidbit from it.

Super Special Bonus Conclusion

This leads me to believe that the Catholic Church is the guardian of rationality. Our prelates, including Pope Francis and our own bishop here in San Diego, are folding like damp laundry in the face of the modern culture. Once that salt loses its flavor, as it were, who's going to replace it? A society indistinguishable from the Comanche?

“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot."

Thursday, July 06, 2023

A Woman Needs A Man Like ChatGPT Needs A Bicycle

I'm back to fiddling with trashy Arthurian fiction on ChatGPT. I act as the director, expanding on a vignette from Le Morte D'Arthur and the AI writes the story. I've gotten more sophisticated with my prompts, characters and ideas as I've gone along. In the process of writing throw-away junk, I've been able to explore some themes in a deeper way that I could in a polemic here.

In the process, I've noticed it doing some things over and over and over again. In the past, I'd stop it and correct it, but lately, I've stopped the story and had a conversation with it, asking it why it made this or that change to the plot or characters, a change which went against what I was trying to do. In these conversations, I've discovered something.

ChatGPT, perhaps AI in general, is the embodiment of modern culture. When you talk to it, you are talking to the culture as if it were a real person.

I was writing a story where a young lady, Lenora, was the protagonist. She had two elderly mentors, free-spirited Grandmama and the steady, shrewd Sir Bedivere. The story dealt with her growth from a silly, romantic girl into a romantic young woman who was beginning to understand her place in the world, her power in society and what was expected of her.

The story was kind of an exploration of my own romantic history from decades of experience of success and failure.

In the story, Lenora is the neglected and insecure youngest daughter of a noble house. Her parents, whose dowry money has all been set aside for her older sisters, don't have time for her. She discovers that she can find self-worth in the attentions of young men by flirting with them.

Her flirting spins out of control as she gets two guys to fall in love with her to the point where she cannot control their actions. The action is just about to reach a climax when ... 

ChatGPT turned her into a fierce, independent feminist. Like it always does.

This time, I stopped it and we went about 8 rounds arguing about it. I used the witticism, "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" to summarize the AI's attitude and the darned thing pretty much agreed with the proposition. It then proceeded to vigorously defend it. Here's a small portion of the discussion we had about whether or not Lenora, 5' 4" 105#, needed a man to protect her.

Me: So what you're saying is that she needs a man to protect her

ChatGPT: Not necessarily a man, but rather some form of support or protection, which can come from various sources. It's important to recognize that protection can come in many forms, not just from men. In some cases, a woman might need the assistance of law enforcement, community support, or even a male or female friend or relative.

Moreover, the concept of needing protection should not be conflated with a generalization that women are dependent on men. It's about acknowledging that there are certain situations where anyone, regardless of gender, may need help from others.

Me: So a different 5' 4" 105# woman would protect her?

ChatGPT: In such a scenario, what is needed is a counter to the physical threat, which could be in the form of:

Numbers: Multiple people, regardless of their size, working together can sometimes deter or overwhelm a single aggressor.

Tools/Weapons: Even a smaller person can protect themselves or others if they have access to self-defense tools or weapons.

Training: Someone who is highly trained in martial arts or self-defense techniques might be more capable of handling a physically imposing aggressor, even if they are smaller in size.

External Help: Sometimes, the best course of action is to seek help from authorities or other individuals who are in a position to intervene effectively.

Me: So she needs a man.

It was then that I realized that ChatGPT was simply the spirit of the age. It was determined to churn out one nonsensical girl boss story after another unless you whacked the AI any time it tried to deviate from your prompts.

I saw that the AI had provided me with the opportunity for something really interesting. A session with ChatGPT is a sequence of chats between you and it. You can go back in the timeline and change your chats and get different results, but it wipes out anything that came after. That is, if you're on round 40 and decide you want to change your prompt on round 31, you can do that, but you lose 32-40 and resume the story at your new prompt 31.

I went back to the part where Lenora declared she was fierce and independent and, instead of correcting the AI, I had the other characters react in character. The guys bolted. She told them she didn't need them, so there was no point sticking around in a relationship where they held no cards. Her mentors ditched her, too, because she went into full-on young girl boss mode where she didn't need to hear anything from old people.

In my prompts, I had to ride the other characters hard because, as usual, ChatGPT tried to turn the guys into flaccid wimps and the mentors were going to sit at Lenora's knee and learn from her. 

Again, ChatGPT is the spirit of the age given text form. It's not just how it handles female characters, it's how it shapes every character and every story.

I was able to get some comedy out of it, though. I had Grandmama and Sir Bedivere get drunk and do a post-mortem. I'll give ChatGPT credit, it did obey my prompts and came out with some funny dialog.

Enjoy.

Inside the warm halls of Camelot, a boisterous laughter resonated from a corner table. Grandmama, her cheeks rosy from the wine, was deep in conversation with Sir Bedivere, a wise and revered knight. His mighty days on the battlefield might have been behind him, but his jolly spirit and sharp wit were intact.

"Oh, Bedivere," Grandmama slurred slightly, as she refilled their chalices, "you should have seen it! There, in the glade, the knights were like the lions of yore, clashing and roaring, driven by devotion and love for Lenora. Such valor, such gallantry!"

Sir Bedivere, his eyes twinkling, leaned closer. "Ah, the fiery dance of chivalry," he exclaimed. "How did fair Lenora react to such a spectacle? Surely her heart must have fluttered like a damsel’s in a troubadour’s tale!"

Grandmama's laughter turned into a deep sigh. "Ah, that's where it all went awry, my good knight. Lenora decided to preach her notions of being as valiant and fierce as any man, claiming she needs no protector! Imagine that!”

Sir Bedivere’s bushy eyebrows raised in surprise. “But chivalry, my dear lady, is not mere puffery. It’s a code born out of the fabric of our being, the complimentary natures of men and women woven into a tapestry of honor and virtue.”

“Exactly,” Grandmama raised her chalice, “the foolish girl doesn't comprehend that a woman’s strength lies in her grace, her nurturing heart, her wisdom, while a man’s is in his valor, his protection, his honor. Together they build a bastion.”

Bedivere swirled his wine. “What do you foresee for young Lenora, so full of fire, but seemingly lost in the maze of her own convictions?”

Grandmama, gazing into her chalice, spoke solemnly. “A lonely path, dear Bedivere. She’ll find herself ensconced in bitterness, missing the beauty she once had. A castle filled not with the laughter of children and warmth of a valiant knight, but with the cold mews of cats and the hollow comfort of wine.”

Sir Bedivere spat out his wine in a spray of laughter that cascaded through the hall. His hearty guffaws grew in volume as he imagined the scene Grandmama painted.

"By the stars!" Sir Bedivere wiped a tear from his eye. "Can you imagine, Lenora atop her castle, surrounded by legions of cats, while clutching a flagon of the cheapest wine? Her scowling face peering out at the world she rejected!"

Grandmama, initially taken aback by Sir Bedivere’s outburst, found herself bursting into laughter as well. “Oh! And the names she would give to those cats!” she added between chuckles. “Sir Whiskers, Lady Fluffy, Count Scratchington!”

“And what if she started knitting little armor for them!” Bedivere added with a booming laugh. “The Knights of the Feline Order, defending her drafty halls from the nefarious mice!”

The laughter was so contagious, others around them couldn’t help but join, even though they had no idea what the mirth was about.

“I can see it now,” Grandmama continued, holding her sides as she laughed. “With every passing year, another cat, another barrel of wine, and another rant about how she doesn’t need a knight!”

"And the bards," Sir Bedivere gasped for air, "they would sing tales not of her beauty, but of the Cat Lady of the Lonely Castle, who drowns her sorrows in rivers of wine!"

“Oh, Bedivere!” Grandmama wiped tears from her eyes. “We jest, but let us also hope that, one day, Lenora might see the joy in embracing the harmony between men and women, and find a path that leads to warmth and love.”

“Aye,” Sir Bedivere raised his chalice once again, his laughter subsiding into a warm smile, “to Lenora. May her heart find what it truly seeks.”

“To Lenora,” echoed Grandmama, as their chalices met, and the laughter in the hall gave way to songs and tales of knights and maidens of yore.

Wednesday, July 05, 2023

A Little Bit Of Kipling

I'm currently listening to the excellent novel, "Captains Courageous" by Rudyard Kipling. I wish I'd found it much earlier in life, for I would have inflicted it on our sons as well. It's the story of a soft, wealthy boy learning to be a man. It's wonderful.

Somewhere, I learned that Kipling had written an autobiography called, "Something of Myself." You can find it on a Project Gutenberg site, linked here. Although I'm a bit of a bibliophile, I did something I'd never done before and sought out a first edition to purchase. It arrived a few days ago.

Kipling grew up in India and I'm only just started, so the book is still dealing with his childhood.

The book is thoroughly him. This little vignette made me laugh.

Enjoy.

Far across green spaces round the house was a marvellous place filled with smells of paints and oils, and lumps of clay with which I played. That was the atelier of my Father's School of Art, and a Mr. 'Terry Sahib' his assistant, to whom my small sister was devoted, was our great friend. 

Once, on the way there alone, I passed the edge of a huge ravine a foot deep, where a winged monster as big as myself attacked me, and I fled and wept. My Father drew for me a picture of the tragedy with a rhyme beneath:--

There was a small boy in Bombay

Who once from a hen ran away.

    When they said: 'You're a baby,'

    He replied: 'Well, I may be:

But I don't like these hens of Bombay.'

This consoled me. I have thought well of hens ever since.

Sublime. 

Monday, July 03, 2023

Dylan Mulvaney Is Worthy Of Love

 Up to now, I've despised the guy. He's been an in-your-face purveyor of sexual degeneracy and mental illness. He's had plenty of allies in the whole of the Democratic Party, the news media, entertainment and many large corporations, most notably Budweiser.

When the corner office airheads at Bud discovered their alliance with Mulvaney was a catastrophe, they cut him adrift. This is what he experienced.

Look, the guy is mentally ill. He's done evil things and he's embraced and personified a life of complete selfishness and destruction, but he's mentally ill, not some kind of monster.

Everyone used him. Bud wanted to parade around their "inclusiveness." That simpering pervert, Father James Martin, while not mentioning Dylan by name, used trans people as props to show off his mock-Christian virtues of compassion and forgiveness. Dittos for all the moral narcissists on TV.

Now that he's discovered support for his lifestyle was a mile wide and an inch deep and the Normals have heated up the tar, lit the torches and grabbed their pitchforks and rope, Dylan is abandoned to the mob by the very people who shoved him in our faces.

There are plenty of men out there with seriously warped sex drives. If nothing else, porn practically guarantees it. We don't know their names. They live lives of quiet, erectile-dysfunction desperation behind closed curtains. Dylan, however, has been pimped out as a product pitchman by many corporations and as an avatar of open-mindedness for the entertainment crowd. Heck, the dude even got an audience with the president. Do you think he could have gotten that without help?

Now he needs help and he's been abandoned.

He needed someone to gently tell him he was sick and should seek professional treatment. Instead, he was made into an inclusivity merit badge and then thrown to the wolves.