Still Dreaming

During the months between Christmas and Easter, I develop Seasonal Affective Disorder on top of my Dysthymia.  The worst manifestation of this is the nightmares. The details change, but the theme remains: everyone is mad at me for something beyond my control.  

Sleep is usually a refuge for me.  It's an escape from a world that sees me as a failure.  Part of my waking routine is to remind myself of all the ways that I did not fail.  I usually refer to it as "waking up slow".  I probably picked up that term from one of my minions (speaking of ways in which I did not fail). 

During the Christmas/Easter gap, though, that routine becomes harder.  It's difficult to remember I'm loved when I'm waking from a nightmare that tells me otherwise, night after night.  It's a long dark haul from Santa's visit to the Bunny's.

Recent events and the current political climate have shaken my resolve, I won't lie to you.  My pie-in-the-sky dream of winning Publisher's Clearing House is over.  PCH is gone.  Sometimes I pick up a lottery ticket, keeping that dream alive.  I know it's unlikely but I freely admit to needing that crutch.  

My faith in the Founders' checks and balances has been shaken badly by partisanship, which shows us exactly why the Founders were opposed to political parties.  But the party currently in power is experiencing a schism and elections are coming. There's hope still. The American Dream ain't dead.

Easter is almost here. Spring has already sprung.  And I'm still dreaming. 

Artificial Intelligence

 I joke about my aversion to AI.  I say things like "I've seen Terminator".  That's an extreme take on the situation.  It's unlikely that things will ever reach that point.  But I said the same thing about Donald Trump doing the very things he is now doing.  Make of that what you will.

Anyway, my aversion to AI is based more on the misuse of the tool and the environmental impact.  We aren't curing cancer, we're making cute little cartoons of ourselves and videos of Barbie committing arson.  We already have tools to do those things!  Tools that do not autonomously commit plagiarism and taint ground water! 

When AI gets a prompt, say "write a children's book, with illustrations, about divorce", what it does is look through its database and steal bits and pieces of copyrighted works and smush them together.  And I'm not even going to get into the data-mining it does on the prompter.  It can lead to misinformation because AI does not fact check.  

Not to mention that the purported author has poured none of their blood, sweat, and tears into the work.  Literally or otherwise.  This applies to all art forms and homework.  

The processors generate a lot of heat and are usually water-cooled.  The water picks up contaminants and is then released, thus sharing them with the world.  If it is possible to use a closed system for cooling - some sources say it is not - the companies that operate the AI don't use them.  Because they cost more.  We're tainting our water supply so we can giggle at bunnies on a trampoline. 

I freely admit to being something of a Luddite.  I worry that we humans depend on it too much. And it's hard to detect the line between Photoshop and "make a picture of Aunt Suzie in Rome".  One has, after all, grown from the other.  But art is a uniquely human thing.  Better to use this technology for science.  Creating an affordable closed system for cooling the processors would be an excellent start. Then march into the battle against incurable disease.  

Snow and ICE

I'm one of the many people living in the path of Winter Storm Fern.  That name makes me picture the little girl from Charlotte's Web merged with Old Man Winter.  Which is funny.  The rest of it, not so much. Most of the worrying I see people doing has to do with snow.  How many inches of snow are we getting?  Get the plows out onto the roads.  

I'm concerned about power outages.  I have food that doesn't need cooked.  I have means of communication with the outside world, at least for a while. I have plenty to do, even after the computer battery dies, given my plethora of books and Barbies.  But the temperature outside is 19F.  Without my furnace, it would get really cold in here really fast. That scares me.

Oh, I've got places I can go (provided they have power).  I've got a million blankets I can pile on the bed and burrow into.  I've got ointments and ibuprofen for my aching joints.  But I do not do well with temperature extremes and these are forecast to stick around for at least a week.  I'd rather have six feet of snow.  

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Also on my mind is ICE.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  We've all seen the news, so I won't rehash it here.  Except to summarize the problem: This agency, which did its job within the law during previous administrations, has become a threat to life and liberty.  I've been quite vocal for the past year, educating people about Due Process and how it is not just for citizens and/or legal immigrants.  The Constitution is clear.

This is not just my opinion, as I've been told.  The Supreme Court has spoken on the subject.  Besides, it's just plain common sense.  Due Process is how they find out if you're in the country legally.  

I have at least one family member who has taken to keeping their birth certificate on them at all times.  Proof of citizenship.  I worry that ICE will not let them show the paper, or will declare it a forgery.  (Show us your papers, you runaway slave.)  I worry that if they reach for the papers, they'll get killed. (We thought they were going for a gun.) 

I also have family members who defend ICE's overreach. I blocked one of them on FB because I am many things, but I am not "clueless" or "stupid". The most ridiculous is the fact that I've explained Due Process repeatedly to a veteran, a man that took an oath to defend the Constitution.