EnsignRedshirt [he/him]

Google is probably mad that AI is doing a better job of ruining the Internet than they are

Elon Musk has the right idea, honestly. Just put the chips directly into our brains instead of trying to sneak monitoring devices into every home appliance like we’re in an outlandish parody of a Cold War spy film.

I’m not opposed to an electric toothbrush, but that should be the end of it. We did it! We made sci-fi toothbrushes! Let’s pat ourselves on the back for achieving the pinnacle of teeth-cleaning technology, not piss in God’s face by demanding that it also have a WiFi connection and an app and a subscription service.

You cannot convince me that there is any reason to put a computer in a toothbrush. The fact that we have electric toothbrushes at all is borderline absurd.

I just don’t even know how you would argue that they aren’t making art. What purer form of artistic endeavor could you name than a child being creative for its own sake? Things like technical skill, novelty, complexity, etc. are qualities that art has, but they have nothing to do with the definition itself. If a child creates something with artistic intent, that’s art. Arguing otherwise is navel-gazing prescriptivism, the same basic argument as Roman statue fetishism and just as tedious.

The only categorical difference between a child’s painting and a professional illustration is that the latter has value as a commodity. If that’s how art is being defined here then we can dismiss this opinion as deeply unserious.