The older I get, the more I feel like Chief O’Brien.

In, like, every way.

Somewhere, the one remaining user of Temple OS just woke up in a cold sweat.

I’ve been using Mint and Pop!_OS on two different machines for a few years.

Neither has really required much from me as the user, although I have needed to use the terminal once on each of them.

Personally, I really like the way Pop does window tiling and workspaces.

Teaching people to be compassionate out of a promise of reward was always a terrible idea. No society has ever really rewarded kindness.

We should be teaching young people that compassion is an act of rebellion against uncaring systems and always has been.

Geez, NYT, how’s the boot taste?

I have no doubt they’d try.

But, other people in his party will try to fill the void too, and none of them or his kids have the horrid charisma that he does.

If he lives that long.

Despite all the shitty AI pictures of him with abs, the guy is still old as fuck and in terrible health.

https://youtu.be/YDgTRY9vGCM?si=2pZw0h02sAO7pk9R

Yes.

I was the director of a very small summer camp in a former career. For some background info, the camp mainly served kids from some rather infamous inner-city neighborhoods. This was one of the very few black owned summer camps in the country. 99% of these kids were black or brown; I am vampiricly pale white and ginger.

And so, I found myself at a conference representing this camp…. Mostly to beg, coerce, and shame wealthy people there into giving us money (we sure as shit weren’t making money off the families of our kids; most couldn’t pay, but going to camp was safer than any week at home in the city).

On day 2 of the conference I get a text. It’s from the secretary of some high powered individual from Focus on the Family whose name I have long forgotten. He wants to have lunch with me to discuss an “opportunity.”

What the hell, right? Their money’s just as green as everyone else’s. Maybe I can charm the guy into cutting us a check.

So, I say yes and we meet at the fanciest restaurant in the hotel this conference was in.

Friends, I’m not one to believe in possession but something was straight up evil about this man from the moment I sat down. I mean I felt like I was eating with a fucking demon.

The “opportunity,” by the way, was to essentially fuck over the community our camp was for and convince our board to sell the land to his organization. This land was the same space some of the families of our community had been enslaved on. It was hallowed ground.

I ordered the most expensive dish I could find, waited for the food to come, told him to go fuck himself, and then went back to my hotel room and took a shower to get the feeling of being around that…… Thing off me.

I really don’t know how to describe it. It was like sitting across from some kind of hungry emptiness in the form of an old man.

I don’t know what I talked to, but I do wonder if that mother fucker was human.

Plenty of lawyers, at least some of them talented, will offer to defend him for free.

It could make their career.

That’s what I mean by “cold.” More “past the point of emotion.”

Passionate violence is a different thing. Like you say, it looks very logical and planned. Casual.

I’m probably reading into things here, but then again we all are.

I saw cold hate in his posture when he did the deed. This is someone who lost their beloved to an algorithm.

And, yeah, he could be one of literally several million people that way.

Pressure cooker sales to the moon!

For work, I teach philosophy.

The impact there has been overwhelmingly negative. Plagiarism is more common, student writing is worse, and I need to continually explain to people at an AI essay just isn’t their work.

Then there’s the way admin seem to be in love with it, since many of them are convinced that every student needs to use the LLMs in order to find a career after graduation. I also think some of the administrators I know have essentially automated their own jobs. Everything they write sounds like GPT.

As for my personal life, I don’t use AI for anything. It feels gross to give anything I’d use it for over to someone else’s computer.

I have #5. It’s called spite when it’s the only one of these that you have.

My aunt.

It’s not her politics (they’re awful, but she at least keeps them quiet). It’s more that she’s a combination of excessively chatty and dull.

She will talk about absolutely nothing for hours on end.

Do you know if the doctrine he’s been taken in by is religious or secular in nature?

I ask because I could recommend some books you could get him that just might get the kid to think a little harder about things.

For context, I teach philosophy and religion for some community colleges and have been looking for ways to get these Gen Z alt right boys to quit the propaganda.

While a lot of them seem to be lost causes, there are some who can be challenged to read outside their sphere, so long as what I give them isn’t too overtly “other.”

Depending on what he’s into, there might be some authors who know how to talk to an oppositional reader.

Nah, I reckon we’re better off for Kant not procreating. That guy gets worse the more you look into him.

I’d say that you could replace quite a few high level academic administrators for these same reasons.

They already behave like AI; but AI would be cheaper, more efficient, and wouldn’t change every 2 years.

And I mean that as an insult to admin, not a compliment to AI.