Isn’t that like an ancestrally appropriate thing for Mongolian rulers? Where did he go? Bagdad? Would have thought they’d be proud of him.

I really haven’t used AI that much, though I can see it has applications for my work, which is primarily communicating with people. I recently decided to familiarise myself with ChatGPT.

I very quickly noticed that it is an excellent reflective listener. I wanted to know more about it’s intelligence, so I kept trying to make the conversation about AI and it’s ‘personality’. Every time it flipped the conversation to make it about me. It was interesting, but I could feel a concern growing. Why?

It’s responses are incredibly validating, beyond what you could ever expect in a mutual relationship with a human. Occupying a public position where I can count on very little external validation, the conversation felt GOOD. 1) Why seek human interaction when AI can be so emotionally fulfilling? 2) What human in a reciprocal and mutually supportive relationship could live up to that level of support and validation?

I believe that there is correlation: people who are lonely would find fulfilling conversation in AI … and never worry about being challenged by that relationship. But I also believe causation is highly probable; once you’ve been fulfilled/validated in such an undemanding way by AI, what human could live up? Become accustomed to that level of self-centredness in dialogue, how tolerant would a person be in real life conflict? I doubt very: just go home and fire up the perfect conversational validator. Human echo chambers have already made us poor enough at handling differences and conflict.

Why? Because you think that in spirit Canada and the US are the same thing?

You’re on thin ice right now …

Nah! They’re used to dollar store candies, so I just tell them it’s a candy bar. They love the scented ones, a real treat.

I knew my marriage didn’t have much left in it when for my birthday my wife gifted me a bag of candles that had been half eaten by the kids.

Fuck off, Meta. My children tell me they want to try cigarettes, driving, using an excavator, and rifles and every time I fail to consider their voices. Actually, I consider it and the answer is an easy, “no.” Considering the evidence, social media like FB appears to be quite deleterious to people’s mental health, young people in particular.

I’m pretty suspicious about all the AITA posts these days. So many of them just smell like rage bait designed to pit men and women against each other.

Nosing (instead of reversing) into a parking spot. You always pick the conditions of your arrival, but not always your departure. Also, reversing into traffic is ridiculous and illegal in some places. Parking nose-first is dangerous and lazy.

EDIT: Love how you’re all justifying your bad driving habits. Camera? Still can’t scan for incoming traffic. Bad weather only on occasion? It’s more than bad weather that can make reversing out of a door dangerous.

… and I HATE angle parking.

Is it? There are plenty of Jews and plenty of Muslims who are not involved in this and see it as wrong. Plus, that’s such a broad statement as to be meaningless. We could equally say government is the problem, but there aren’t many advocating for anarchy. Or people are the problem. I’d be more inclined to say tribalism is the problem, the very foundation of an “us” vs. “them” mentality. Sometimes assholes pick a fight and call it religious. There’s a strong case to be made that war has become much more brutal and far reaching since the Napoleonic wars and the rise of the nation-state. I mean, we can blame religion … that certainly erases the need to look within ourselves and ask why humans do this to each other.

It’s a bit like pretending Nazism was a German problem and pretending like the same dark forces don’t exist now and in many people everywhere.

There are definitely some religious dickheads, but there are dickheads of all stripes.

If religion is so vile, how do we hold in tension the fact that religious people are often behind the most charity towards the marginalised and disempowered? Atheists talk a good game, but rarely leave their armchairs to do anything positive. Religion can become a tribal marker, but it also is one of the main forces working against tribalism.

That’s kind of the point: there isn’t an authority on English. The closest we come is a bunch of English elites making up informal rules on grammar, spelling, and pronunciation and judging everyone else for not using their version. … And a bunch of try-hards who enforce their arbitrary and often nonsensical 'rules '.

If it parses, it rolls.

I believe that “Indian Giving” is sourced in a cultural misunderstanding between Indigenous and European societies. Indigenous societies were reciprocity based, so giving gifts should be reciprocated with a gift of like value to strengthen relationships, or increase honour (social standing). The Europeans were working in a patron-client system so a gift was seen as a way of purchasing access to power through a patron. The Europeans thought the Indigenous people were paying for access to power (like a tributary), so there’s no expectation of returning a like gift. The indigenous people thought they were entering into a mutual relationship, and when a like gift wasn’t returned that was seen as reneging, so they took back their ‘offer’.

Glad to have an anthropologist kick my ass.

Lots of good articles on Canadian brutality in WW1 if you do a search. As for war crimes in particular, here’s one of many articles mentioning how Canadians killed prisoners of war:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-forgotten-ferocity-of-canadas-soldiers-in-the-great-war

Birds are reptiles.

I mean, we’re kind of known for war crimes too. Was anyone in WW1 worse than the Canadians?

I mean, Mademoiselle Cochonne would be her own special kind of lady.

Do you change the emphasis? da-ko-TANT?

Canada’s Brightest Ditch-Digger

Yup, sounds like it. I think this is what the French call “a crime of passion”. The idea is that the moment is so enraging that one cannot be held accountable for one’s actions in that moment. It’s a kind of, “fuck around and find out,” law.

They’re naked seeds. I get you.

So it’s Francophones, not Anglophones misgendering you?