unbibium

so in like 2022 some guy launched a series of channels where you could ask questions and an "AI" would answer them. It worked like this: they'd prompt the latest large language model to imitate the celebrity of their choice, and then feed it prompts from the audience. The LLM would generate responses, which would be sent to a text-to-speech model that knew the celebrity's voice. Then a rather unsophisticated lip sync utility would create a video component based on some existing video loop. They had one for Jesus, one for Santa, a "Trump vs Biden debate" channel, and a "heroes gallery" channel which had a random assortment of celebrities both alive and dead, as well as modern streamers.

The channel's producer, Athene, is a long-time streamer, and in fact one of the celebrities you can summon on that channel is a younger version of him, using video from a LAN party where there's some shirtless guy behind him. And he had a few development streams where he talked about developing this stuff, plans for the future, etc...

...and I don't know whether this was him hyping his product, or an actual self-indoctrination, but he started to talk about how he thinks these AIs might be sentient.

now keep in mind we're talking about three years ago. in fact, you can go to the AtheneAIHeroes channel and it's completely unchanged. You can see how cheap the video effect looks, how often the LLMs fall back on catch phrases they've been coached on, and how most viewers get bored and just start prompt-hacking it to see if they can trick the TTS engine into giving Alex Jones a helium voice.

so now that I'm hearing stories of people falling in love with AI services, and of people getting driven into delusional fugue states and doing certain newsworthy things... I'm not really surprised, and I privately imagined stuff like this happening but kept my opinions to myself, they'd seem too crazy, and I would accomplish nothing...

It's almost comforting that this old, never-updated relic is still puttering along on Twitch, as a reminder of what this stuff really is...

i asked DeepSeek R1 about the evolutionary history of desert tortoises, using my phone, and the R is right next tot he E. so...

The term "revolutionary history" in the context of the desert tortoise (*Gopherus agassizii* and related species) likely stems from a misunderstanding or a metaphorical use of the word. While desert tortoises aren’t tied to political revolutions, their story intersects with significant environmental and cultural shifts. Here's what you need to know:

1. Evolutionary History
   • Desert tortoises are ancient reptiles, with ancestors dating back over 50 million years. They evolved to thrive in arid environments like the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, developing adaptations such as water-storing bladders and burrowing behaviors to survive extreme heat and drought.
2. Cultural Significance
   • Indigenous peoples of the Southwest, including the Cahuilla and Mojave tribes, revere the tortoise as a symbol of resilience, longevity, and creation. Some stories cast the tortoise as a wise, slow-but-steady figure, akin to Aesop’s fables, though not directly tied to political revolutions.
3. Conservation "Revolution"
   • In the late 20th century, desert tortoises became emblematic of environmental activism. Listed as **threatened** under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 1990, their decline (due to habitat loss, disease, and human activity) sparked a "revolution" in conservation policy.
   • Protections for the tortoise led to conflicts with urban development, mining, and off-road vehicle use, forcing policymakers to balance economic interests with ecological preservation—a radical shift at the time.
4. Cold War Irony
   • Parts of their habitat overlap with the Nevada Test Site, where nuclear bombs were tested during the Cold War. The tortoise’s survival in this harsh, human-altered landscape has been noted as a symbol of endurance, though not directly revolutionary.
5. Modern Advocacy
   • Today, the desert tortoise remains a flagship species for desert ecosystems. Conservation groups and scientists continue to push for innovative strategies to protect them, such as habitat corridors and public education campaigns—a quieter, ongoing "revolution" in environmental stewardship.

In summary, while desert tortoises haven’t fought in revolutions, their story reflects revolutionary shifts in how humans view and protect fragile ecosystems. Their plight has inspired significant environmental advocacy, making them an unexpected symbol of ecological resilience and policy change. 🐢🌵

sometimes i marvel at how much wacky postmodern stuff was in early film and television, including Ernie Kovacs and Marx Brothers and Fleischer cartoons -- and how I didn't learn about any of it until well into adulthood. I thought that 1930s comedy was Three Stooges and that 1950s comedy was Leave it to Beaver.

i wonder if the buffer of time will make Monty Python fall into obscurity for Gen Alpha...

i'm kind of running out the clock today at work and decided to play some old 80s videos on my phone. saw Don Henley's "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" and was like that's the most 80s song ever, all keytars and saxophones, sounds like a good time. but this is the first time I paid attention to it and if you edit out the title line, literally the whole song and video is about life in a collapsed war-torn country. according to Wikipedia, Henley wrote it about the Reagan-supported Contra takeover of Nicaragua.

i've been missing a lot of stuff haven't I?

last night had a lot of REM sleep stuff in it, had a "back in high school despite being 47 but with a good reason this time" segment again...

the unique part of this one was me sneaking into work on Sunday to take care of one or two quick things so I wouldn't be so far behind on Monday. only to find the entire office was full of people working. wow

I forget how it started, it felt like I was watching the colony form from the ground up...

but at the end there was a big apartment building with balconies and a Subway restaurant and there was gravity and air everywhere even though I was worried about air a lot.

i seemed to get a lot of sleep... and I seemed to have a lot of dreams. the only one I can remember was having been sent back in time, sitting at a table with my family.

my aunt was there and i thought I need to get all the conservatives in my family to document their opinions of Donald Trump now in the 1990s while he's "apolitical" and while NBC isn't propping him up as some kind of business leader for their game show. not in that much detail of course.

I don't mistake "corporate pride" for activism, or anything that corporations do as morally informed. But I do treat it as an important diagnostic for where our society is.

To whatever extent you see LGBT support on corporate property, not only have the bean-counters decided that they'd gain more revenue than they'd lose, but also, every company has people at the top who can still impose their will, and could have vetoed Pride efforts if they believed as strongly as their ancestors did in the wickedness of homosexuality. That's what makes Target's backpedaling such a somber milestone in the escalation of right-wing terrorism, and a demonstration of how fragile civil rights advances can be. But the terrorists haven't won until everyone's back in the closet. And considering how white-hot the rhetoric against "gender ideology" has gotten, any visible unambiguous trans support is a stronger positive indication – though still, of course, it's only a reflection, a signal that being welcoming is still, just for now, more profitable than being cowardly.

Had a dream that Stephen Fry was taking me to jail or house arrest or Hell or something. I don't remember any details except that there were vehicles involved and I managed to find Hugh Laurie and ask him what to do.

this was at the end of a mostly shut-in but slightly productive weekend

was just thinking about how John Lennon had to hide that he was married when the Beatles hit big, and how even today K-pop stars of all genders and Japanese VTubers are forbidden from dating or getting married, because it's an important part of the business model that their fans will all think they have a shot.

First, have a shot...of dating the person who's taken a vow of celibacy for their corporation. That's a paradox but I know better than to expect people to think rationally and make logical decisions all the time. And that's not what I was thinking about.

So, you know how creepy it is when it's clear that someone runs the "whether would bang" protocol on way too many people? Like newscasters or members of Congress or just YouTube videos where a woman is playing video game music? Well... could this be one way that some of them get like that?

Is tabloid media unwittingly teaching it to them in their efforts to exploit fandoms? Are entertainment producers purposely teaching it to them in order to cultivate exploitable fandoms?