More stray thoughts

Just a few that crossed my mind

I’ve heard a description of certain people of being “impervious to art”, and all I can do is agree. It has me thinking about the wealthy rushing towards AI shitting out crappy pictures, music and writing so they don’t have to pay for anyone or have anything produced that’s remotely subversive. I know it’s part of the human spirit to express ourselves creatively, but we’re in late-stage capitalism, and the point of pretty much everything is to increase shareholders’ wealth as much as possible, at the expense of everything else. Add to the mix the growing prevalence of authoritarian regimes internationally, and the general contempt that the right has towards art (unless it’s to teach a specific moral lesson), and it’s a very real possibility is that so much existing cultural production will just be deleted or destroyed at the push of a button, especially if it’s deemed degenerate, too “woke”, or just insufficiently profitable.

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I still haven’t bothered to add Facebook or Threads back to my phone, and have generally not felt motivated to check either site outside of work hours. I kind of like this arrangement because I’m less tempted to get lost in an endless scroll, but maybe it’s just because I don’t want the constant reminders of just how shitty everything is in the world. I actually lose interest when my feed is nothing but posts about the current state of the world, and everything that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing to make things worse. Sometimes I just want to nap rather than do anything else.

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