Tag: weird ideas

How I Would Win The Second Russian Civil War — Bring Back The Tsar

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Please actively ignore this. I don’t know anything about anything, but I just have to get this out of my system. Thanks.

Ok, so, if I had about 25,000 troops, here’s how I would topple Putin. We know that Prigozhin and the Wagner Group controls the general Rostov-on-Don area while some of his forces are making their way to Moscow. Well, I would consolidate what I had in in Rostov and then start to expand from there. For me, the key thing would be to have a ready access to more men.

Also, I would think up some sort of ideology that might get people’s juices flowing. So, I dunno, I would say that if I took over Russia, I would bring back the Tsar or something. That’s the thing about modern Russia, as far as I can tell, it continues to struggle with it’s collective sense of self.

Bringing back a Tsar would definitely give Russians something to fight for again. He might even call his group The Whites or some such, to evoke what happened in the first Russia Civil War.

Anyway. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Of AI….& Tik-Tok Reading Our Fucking Minds?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It hasn’t happened that much recently, but Tik-Tok continues to seem to have a very…eerie…ability to pin down exact elements of my internal monologue. It’s all very curious. I’ve kind of learned to shut up about it, though, because mentioning my fears on this subject causes people to look at me funny.

But Tik-Tok continues to figure me out on such a specific manner — seemingly in real time — that there are two solutions to the issue. One, Tik-Tok has really good AI to the point that it can figure what’s going on in my mind simply from analyzing my usage…or it can fucking read not just my mind, but everyone’s mind!

I don’t think Tik-Tok is reading my mind, but I do think that however it’s figuring out what’s going on in my mind should be regulated — hopefully out of existence. What is the spookiest about what Tik-Tok does is the near-real time nature of it.

If what was going on was a general figuring out of me as a person, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. What is alarming is I think about something really hard and….then with 24 hours I get pushed some obscure thing on Tik-Tok that makes very clear reference to what I was thinking about.

Very strange. Very odd.

But absolutely no one listens to me. And if they did listen to me, they would think I had lost my mind. So, no. Like I said, I don’t think Tik-Tok can read my mind….but something…..strange…is going on.

What, though?

Funeral Movie Death Match

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I watched “This Is Where I Leave You” and all I could think was, “Man, this movie has really bad background music compared to The Big Chill.” The movie itself was pretty good. I didn’t roll my eyes too much. I did skip through some parts, but that says more about me than the movie.

But I will note — spoilers — that it would have been more interesting if the wife had slept with the “good brother” and they were forced to keep it a secret. This prospect happened in the third act and THAT would be have taken things to the nexxt level.

But, whatever. I’m just pleased I managed to get through a movie — any money. I’m so spoiled when it comes to storytelly that just the act of finishing a movie is a big deal for me. I usually get upset and don’t finish a story if it doesn’t meet my own very — very strict — requirements.

Suits, Software and Schmucks: The Path to Hollywood’s ‘Her’ Future

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Hollywood is fucking doomed. While we may have to go through a civil war (Reds) or revolution (Blues) between now and then, it definitely seems as though within 10 years even Hollywood suits will be replaced by a Her-like AI.

Let me say that again in a different way — it could be that through a combination of Her and Simone all recorded entertainment will be generated by AI. People will develop parasocial relationships not with Tay-Tay or a this or that Hollywood heartthrob — but with a simulation generated on-the-fly by their very own Her-type digital assistant.

The path to this (dystopian?) future won’t be a straight line, but that’s definitely where macrotrends seems to be taking us in the medium-to-long term. Hollywood is so, so very fucked.

Two things to keep in mind.

One, the transitional phase of all of this will be a new Feudal system for Hollywood where there will be three types of people — suits, software and schmucks. Writers, directors and actors will be seen as quaint and moot soon enough — unless they join together and demand specific, hard-fast carveouts for those jobs.

I just don’t see that happening because things are moving too fast.

The other issue to think about is — Broadway may see a real resurgence. It could be that the revolution may not be televised — because it will be performed live on the stage. People who want “real” actors will turn to having parasocial relationships with Broadway and Westend, (and local theatre) stars rather than some computer-generated bullshit.

I can’t predict the future, but it’s definitely something to think about, something to worry about. The future may see a very, very dramatic change in how we interact with entertainment.

Heads Up: A Constitutional Convention In The Near Future Is Inevitable

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m always wrong. Always. But I love to pontificate about the future.And, as such, think it’s safe to say that one way or another, the United States is going to careen into a historic, existential crisis a lot sooner than you might think. For once, I’m not taking about the choice between autocracy or civil war.

This time, I’m talking about how we’re probably going to have a Constitutional Convention before the end of the decade, no matter what. And because of how the delegates to the convention would be selected, it’s inevitable that barring a Blue Revolution, that any such convention would be used to turn the United States into “Magadoina.”

Remember, the FIRST Constitutional Convention accidently on purpose went rouge. There’s every reason to believe that if the bonkers far Right people who want a such a convention so bad get their wish that the same thing will happen. And that the GOOD eventuality, with the bad version of this scenario being Trump gets re-elected and he gets into his ding-dong head that he wants a Constitutional Convention so he can staple onto the Constitution some MAGA “Enabling Acts.”

Or, put another way, the rest of this decade is going to be nuts. We’re coming to the endgame of the long-term historic forces tearing the country apart. Either we’re going to be all Red, or all Blue. And the process of deciding that particular situation is going to probably end the lives of a few billion people across the globe one way or another.

But, like I said, I’m always, always wrong. We’ll just muddle through, right? Right?

The Hollywood Studios Have The High Ground At The Moment

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I feel kind of sorry for the major Hollywood trade unions. It definitely seems like they’re kind of fucked. I say this because I’m using ChatGPT and Bing to develop my first novel and the potential is definitely there. I say this because I sometimes have to fight with these LLMs and remind them that *I* am the fucking writer.

In the not-too-distant future, Hollywood will look like this: well paid Suits, ok paid programmers and…interns who are “prompt engineers.” And even the idea of a prompt engineer is will seem quaint when, soon enough, we reach a Her-type future in which people have digital assistants who know everything about them to the point that there will be no need for a “prompt engineers” in the first place.

With that in mind, all the Suits have to do is just cool their heels and snort coke off hooker assholes until AI advances to the point that that they end writing as Hollywood professional, period. The way things are going, the WGA (and SAG?) strike would only have to last 18 months before AI makes writing in Hollywood very very very moot.

I say this as a writer who loves writing, is writing a novel and wishes to be a screenwriter in Hollywood one day. But just like you can’t go to Windows on The World to eat anymore, the day may come when….being a professional writer or actor or director in Hollywood is just a quaint memory…..

Burn, Reddit, Burn

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I got no beef with Reddit. Live long and prosper, you Usenet knock off. But I do think it’s telling that if both Twitter and Reddit implode that my personal vision for a service that uses updated Usenet UX / UI concepts becomes something more viable.

If I was smart enough — which I’m not — I would somehow figure out a way to use AI to design my dream platform that is based on Groups and allows for pull page posts and robust threading.

And…yet…that moment has passed. It’s just not viable anymore. We’re now in the age of XR, crypto and AI. Lulz. No one gives a shit about something as quaint and prosaic as a social media platform…based on a 30 year old concept no one cares about anymore.

Anyway. I do wish there was something a bit more like Usenet out there to use. I think by the time Reddit came around I was just too old to be willing to wade into its many subcultures. And I was so weened on Usenet back in the day that neither Twitter nor Reddit really appealed to me.

I’m old and I hate it.

Godspeed, Reddit. I hope you figure out all your API bullshit.

Did An Space Alien Land In A Backyard in Las Vegas?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If you searched for the answer to that question and found yourself here, sorry –I’m very lazy and I’m just going to give you an off the cuff answer to that question. If you want a journalistic-level inquiry, “do your own research” via Twitter and Tik-Tok.

Ok, here’s the thing, some dudes in the Las Vegas area claim that an 8 foot tall alien crashed his ship — or something — in their backyard. There’s some confusing, grainy video footage of the event, but — surprise! — no actual clear footage of the “alien.”

I only even talk about this because one, UFOs are having a “moment” and two, the mainstream reaction has been almost non-existent. This leads you to wonder what the reaction would be if there was real, honest-to-God “hard First Contact” that was irrefutable.

I’m coming to believing that rather than some sort of huge panic, that we would just shrug. It wouldn’t be until shit started blowing up that anyone would care. People just don’t have the necessary bandwidth process something as profound as First Contact.

As such, if actually happened, people wouldn’t care — that much.

Space nerds like me, of course, would be stunned that the biggest event in human history besides the birth of Jesus and the European discovery of the New World had just happened.

I don’t know. It’s all very curious. Does make you wonder if maybe something “wonderful” might be about to happen in a rather unexpected, spectacular manner sooner rather than later.

Of Usenet News & LLM Datasets

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The last I checked, Google has a nearly-complete archive of Usenet from its founding until at least around 2000 when everything went to shit there because of porn spam. It would be dumb for Google not to include Usenet in any Large Language Model dataset.

You would have to tweak it some, of course, but there are about 20 years of high quality words to use to train your LLM to be found with any Usenet archive. A lot of is outdated and full of vitral, but there is also a lot of human interaction and humanity to be found there, as well.

This is so much the case that if you were to include Usenet archive information in your LLM training dataset, you would probably endup with a very human-like LLM. I don’t know, maybe Google is already using their Usenet archive. Usenet was very popular back in the day.

Given how many Usenet servers there were at one point, I’m sure if you were working on an open source LLM that you could probably find a few million words to train your open source LLM by scooping up all the archived Usenet posts you could find.

Or not, what do I know. But it is an intriguing use for all those words that are now just forgotten Internet history. For everyone except for me, of course. 🙂

Little Green Men, Or: MAGA Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know if I should laugh or cry at how MAGA (and the far Left RFK, Jr) are using the news of credible evidence of UFOs to tout their bonkers conspiracy theories. It’s very, very fucking annoying.

Has no one learned the idea that correlation is not causation?

Just because things are similar, or seem to be acting in conjunction with each other, doesn’t mean the fuckinig are!

But this crazy, bonkers rhetoric on the part of professional idiots has gotten me thinking — what if Hard First Contact came? What would be the political reaction?

It seems to me that after the shock wore off, the center-Left would be interested in finding out more about the ETs, while the center-Right would grow hysterical and probably eventually want to either blow them up or convert them to some sort of weird interstellar Christianity.

I wish I was kidding.

But America is sooooo fucking divided and growing more so every day that there simply is no way that anything — ANYTHING — will force us to get our act together.

That’s why late 2024, early 2025 COULD be a rather monumental moment in time. I’m always — always — wrong, so, lulz, we may just muddle through things like we always do…..but I am worried.

It seems like either a full-blown descent into fascist autocracy is going ot happen as part of the 2024 – 2025 timeframe, or we have a civil war (Reds)/ revolution (Blues.).

At the moment, I think we’re probably just going to slide peacefully into autocracy and that will be that. If we’re lucky. And it will probably all be so subtle that we don’t even realize it.