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.