eh, woke cops is a liberal fantasy, to be sure. Brooklyn 99 was put in an awkward spot in 2020 and did its best to try and talk about them. I do think it was made with the best of intentions, and the cop stuff is mostly like, a parody of cop stuff tropes, rather than a fetishization of the cops themselves (like, say, Law and Order.) Maybe it doesn’t excuse it totally, but it is really worse than say, Parks and Rec’s cheery depiction of depiction of politics (especially when it goes national)?

Part of what convinces me of it’s earnestness is how focused it was on representation. Theres a story about how when Stefanie Beatriz found out Melissa Fumero got the part of Amy, she was convinced well, that was it, they cast the Latina woman. I forget if they made the part of Rosa for her or they liked her so much they just cast her as it, but like, the cast being so diverse stands out compared to some of the more whiter casts on this very list. (and Im not knocking any show on this list, honestly. I liked them all except for The Office, which I never watched, and whatever LN is)

As far as I am aware, crypto and NFTs are worth nothing. We might see the Federal gov prop it up for a little longer, given how much the industry contributed to Trumps war chest in 2024, but I don’t expect it be actually worth anything.

I was using “Block chain” as a generalized term for what could be called “the NFT” bubble which absolutely was a thing in 2021, kick started by that Beeple auction and continuing until… roughly Dan Olson’s ‘Line Go Up’ video. Bitcoin had obviously existed long before this. But the under tones were that crypto idiots were pitching was that it would replace all regulatory bodies with web3 block chain technology. They wanted to put all records, including Banking and property records (obviously) but also things like medical, employment and educational records as well, including educational and employment accreditation earned. There are a lot of dimensions to this (that are all extremely dystopian), but I feel confident calling that a tech bubble, with the exact same paradigm shift mentality that underpins the thought process underpinning AI right now.

I’m of two minds about this. On one hand, I do think it will burst. It reminds of the ludicrous claims made about the last two few VC tech bubble trends, like VR and Blockchain. The hype wasn’t that it was a useful technology. It was that these were the new paradigm shifts. These will change how society fundamentally functions. Obviously they didn’t. Obviously those bubbles burst.

Part of the reason, I think, is that the current round of venture capitalists made their fortunes on the internet itself. It was the paradigm shift, and it toppled the way people had done things for a hundred years in a way that can’t really be described to anyone who didn’t live through it. It colonized and conquered every space humans went, and became ubiquitous. Retail stores found themselves under siege by amazon. Video stores found themselves obsoleted by streaming platforms, cable TV and movie theaters fought for relevance. It made some men richer than God. A computer in the palm of your hand, allowing you access to the totality of human knowledge and the collective of human communication. It was like the fucking ansible.

Those structures have calcified now, and the internet is at its limit for integration. So tech bros latch on to ever more destructive technologies named after ever more dystopian sci fi, figuring that throwing a billion at any random project is worth it if pans out once again, and it becomes the next paradigm shift. The problem is that all the projects they try to elevate are mostly just ways to disrupt existing industries and reform them under their control without worker protections. Uber operated at a loss for 15 years just to turn taxi driving into indentured servitude. Mark Zuckerberg was obsessed with VR because his primary competitors owned a hardware platform (so Google owns Android, Apple Iphone etc) and he needed FB to have one too. Being a tech bro, the reason he pitched as meeting software was to undermine commercial real estate. NFTs were an attempt to disrupt central banking. AI is an attempt by Silicon Valley to cut highly paid tech workers from the payroll.

Sorry, this post got away from me. This is the part that has a bubble timer on it, I believe. LLMs produce garbage code, and garbage art. It has inflicted immediate, incalculable harm on people real lives. Eventually, I believe (if the current world order survives anyway) lawmakers will clamp down on it.

I don’t think the VCs care much about the infinite incalculable loss. But there’s this idea that (I think) Robert Evans introduced me to. He noted that Fascists love the infinite lie machine. Fascist governments classically controlled the media, and Russia has demonstrated what a wonderful weapon of war LLMs really are. That alone terrifies me. Its worth something to the worst people, and who knows what might happen if say, Peter Thiel wants to continue underwriting it so that way he can, say, direct fascist uprisings against governments that try to regulate him, or I don’t know, portray striking workers as domestic terrorists.

It certainly is a problem to be sure. but it was like that before Mangadex.

There are a lot of sketchier sites out there. If you want to read something, there is somewhere out there hosting it. Mangadex was great in that it was really quite a cool public service but capitalism doesnt let us have shit things, much less nice things. It hurts too, because for every Shonen boy who tries really hard and makes Jump a ton of money, there are a hundred manga that are never translated officially and a thousand more never translated at all, and Ill be totally honest, I could not give less of a shit about Demon Slayer or JJK. Some titles only have english fan bases because of manga pirates.

But isnt a world with more genuine art we make ourselves a good thing? I don’t think anything of stealing from a corporation as stealing. Its reclaimation

If its someone I know who is putting in labor to make a living… like isnt that the point?

ACAB includes doctor phil

Then use a different word. “AI” and “reasoning” makes people think of Skynet, which is what the weird tech bros want the lay person to think of. LLMs do not “think”, but that’s not to say I might not be persuaded of their utility. But thats not the way they are being marketed.