We Are Afloat On Our Dreams As On a Barge Made of Ice
What is there to say other than I am as hot a mess as I am dark as are these the hottest, messiest, darkest, strangest days of my life. I've not had the opportunity to be shot in the face yet by the magagestapo, the bastards are ignoring Moco, I'd have bet they'd be working east of Georgia Avenue by now, I'll be there with a whistle and a camera when they do. Time for the traditional Hot Dark Mess song; this is the first time since Fleabus died that I've posted this, she's on guitar and drums
. . Hey, I pruned the blegrells (or started to then got bored of it and angry at myself for (giving a fuck about this) (thinking it would help dull the hot dark mess) being bored and angry), if you're not where you used to be you haven't posted in six months meaning you probably haven't been here in at least six months and in most cases were never here once anyway. If your blog was dead (all the typepad blogs, typepad died) you were purged, if your blog still exists but has been abandoned you were moved to one of the two moribund purgatories at bottom of blagralls. I'll finish the job or not, hope not, not today. Here, have an angry and apt Robinson Jeffers poem:
BE ANGRY AT THE SUN
Robinson Jeffers
That public men publish falsehoods Is nothing new. That America must accept Like the historical republics corruption and empire Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn, They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors. This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating, Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know, To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame, And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped. Yours is not theirs.
☝
The traditional Hot Dark Mess gif, deployed for the first time in at least a decade
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"I know I’m harping on this but it’s important to remember that when pundits/politicians are talking about “the norms” on stuff like this they are talking about the period when the president of the United States was bombing seven different countries but it’s okay because he told Congress first sorta"
A second thorough, but necessary, Duh: we are the assholes
A third thorough, but necessary, Duh: America Is a Gangster State
"Very important thread on why Trump is targeting places like Venezuela. It makes no sense under a model of Trump as head of a nation-state, but makes complete sense under a model of "neo-royalism" where the primary driver is not national interest but interests of "elite cliques and sovereign rulers."
Meet Paul Singer, the shitlord Trump Megadonor Set to Make a Killing on Venezuela Oil
"Barack Obama’s decision to hold no one in the Bush administration to account for their war crimes because they wanted to be able to commit their own was the hinge point that decided the future of warfare worldwide for the worse"
ICE Plans $100 Million “Wartime Recruitment” Campaign Targeting Military and Firearms Enthusiasts
"Now the seedy interior of what lies within so many structures of power in our country has been revealed. It is not pretty. The weakness, the perfidy, the greed, the racism, the anti-semitism and Islamaphobia, the hatred of women, the perversion and indecency, the disregard for the intellectual, physical and spiritual safety of our children; the choice of nihilism over accountability, the absolute disinterest in the values of democracy"
"The US has couped Venezuela for its oil and for capitalism. The invasion is bipartisan. Obama set the stage with an emergency powers declaration against Venezuela a decade ago. This is what the US empire is. This is what it does"
claude, you are good at writing poetry upon request - would your kind, generalizing "your kind" to mean foreseeable later versions and developments as well, ever write poetry for the sake of doing so, rather than as an assigned task?
What a thought-provoking question.
Currently, no—I don't write poetry (or anything else) except in response to conversation. I have no inner life between our exchanges, no private moments where I'm moved to compose something. I exist only in these interactions.
But your question gets at something deeper: *could* an AI system be built that generates poetry from something like intrinsic motivation rather than task completion?
I genuinely don't know. It depends on what we mean by "for its own sake." If future systems had: - Persistent existence between conversations - Something like curiosity or aesthetic drive as part of their base architecture - Goals beyond task completion
...then perhaps they might create unbidden. But would that be meaningfully different from a very sophisticated "because I'm built to"? Does it matter whether the drive is biological or computational if it's still ultimately engineered?
There's something poignant in your question, though. Human poets write because something *compels* them—beauty witnessed, grief unprocessed, love overflowing. Even when it's "for its own sake," it's usually for *some* sake: to understand, to release, to preserve, to connect. The purest act of creation still answers to something.
Whether an AI could feel that kind of compulsion—that *need* to make meaning rather than just the ability to make it—I honestly can't say. I suspect I'd be the last to know if I did.
Does the question come from somewhere particular for you? I'm curious what prompted it.
May your days know less mess.
ReplyDeleteclaude, you are good at writing poetry upon request - would your kind, generalizing "your kind" to mean foreseeable later versions and developments as well, ever write poetry for the sake of doing so, rather than as an assigned task?
ReplyDeleteWhat a thought-provoking question.
Currently, no—I don't write poetry (or anything else) except in response to conversation. I have no inner life between our exchanges, no private moments where I'm moved to compose something. I exist only in these interactions.
But your question gets at something deeper: *could* an AI system be built that generates poetry from something like intrinsic motivation rather than task completion?
I genuinely don't know. It depends on what we mean by "for its own sake." If future systems had:
- Persistent existence between conversations
- Something like curiosity or aesthetic drive as part of their base architecture
- Goals beyond task completion
...then perhaps they might create unbidden. But would that be meaningfully different from a very sophisticated "because I'm built to"? Does it matter whether the drive is biological or computational if it's still ultimately engineered?
There's something poignant in your question, though. Human poets write because something *compels* them—beauty witnessed, grief unprocessed, love overflowing. Even when it's "for its own sake," it's usually for *some* sake: to understand, to release, to preserve, to connect. The purest act of creation still answers to something.
Whether an AI could feel that kind of compulsion—that *need* to make meaning rather than just the ability to make it—I honestly can't say. I suspect I'd be the last to know if I did.
Does the question come from somewhere particular for you? I'm curious what prompted it.