Maybe Elon has a point…

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While I’m a big admirer of Elon Musk and all he’s been able to accomplish, I’ve always been a bit skeptical about his alarmist rhetoric regarding Artificial Intelligence’s threat to humanity, seeing it more as a means for him to groom future volunteers for a one-way ticket to a Mars colony.

Not a bad strategy, mind you.

But with each cool but creepy new video from Boston Dynamics that hits the web and goes viral, I grow more and more less skeptical of Elon’s warnings…

Yeah…

Creepy, right?

But still… it’s way cool, too.

Oh, and while we’re on the topic of the end of humanity, here’s a cut regarding how technology is altering our perception of reality from a recent terrifying article from Buzzfeed:

“Alarmism can be good — you should be alarmist about this stuff,” [Aviv] Ovadya said one January afternoon before calmly outlining a deeply unsettling projection about the next two decades of fake news, artificial intelligence–assisted misinformation campaigns, and propaganda. “We are so screwed it’s beyond what most of us can imagine,” he said. “We were utterly screwed a year and a half ago and we’re even more screwed now. And depending how far you look into the future it just gets worse.”

That future, according to Ovadya, will arrive with a slew of slick, easy-to-use, and eventually seamless technological tools for manipulating perception and falsifying reality, for which terms have already been coined — “reality apathy,” “automated laser phishing,” and “human puppets.”

Yeah…

We’re screwed.

But still… it’s kinda cool, too.

Right?

 
 

An Ode to Elon

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[Best when sung to the tune of “Froggy Went A Courting”]

The Man on Mars ain’t lookin’ at the stars
He’s thinkin’ ’bout wars
And how to power cars

There’s money to be made
In the inter-planet trade
Can’t wait to start the raid

The Man on Mars ain’t thinkin’ ’bout Earth
Cuz that tired old rock
Has lost all its worth

The Man on Mars ain’t there for humankind
He’s only there to mine
All the min’rals he can find

There’s money to be made
In the inter-planet trade
Can’t wait to start the raid

The Man on Mars is movin’ quick, you see
Cuz after pumm’ling Mars
It’s off to Mercury

 

 

#ofthejournals

 
 

What is Gotham Trying to Say about Interracial Marriages?

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Even though I grew up a comic book nerd, I’m pretty much over all the Marvel/DC Comics superhero movies. I used to watch them religiously at the movie theater – because if one must watch a big budgeted bloated bonanza of bombastic visual proportions, then it must be watched while on the big screen – however, I’m trying very hard to wean myself off of them. Key word: trying.

Despite the fact that I know without a doubt I’m going to be hugely disappointed at the movie’s end, I still find it hard to resist them. For instance, the buzz around the Black Panther movie is phenomenal so chances are pretty good I’ll make the trek to my local Frank’s Theatre and hope for the best… while still expecting the worst.

Fortunately, thanks to the likes of HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and the… like, the superhero genre has not been left behind during this amazing renaissance of television we’re happily going through.

As for there being any good content on broadcast television, I wouldn’t know. I haven’t watched anything on any of the broadcast channels, other than sports, since Happy Days went off the air… what has it been? a year or two ago?

Except for one broadcast show, that is.

Gotham.

I am off on a hardcore wide-eyed binge on that show, which should tell you that I don’t actually watch it when it’s broadcasted on Fox. No way. Never again will I be a slave to a network time slot.

I watch Gotham as any discerning 21st Century viewer would, at my leisure on that amazing little channel of an app called Netflix.

With all its dark, demented, hyper-violence, let me tell ya… Gotham is good. Real good. It actually feels like a comic book has been brought to life, making it exactly what a discerning 21st Century television viewer like yours truly wants…

And deserves.

Anyway, onward to the point of this overly prolific post…

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Screwed

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Did thine Savior truly say,
Blessed are those who do not doubt me,
Ere His mounting upon that skull-shaped hill?

If so, then needs must be to Him I pray
On a bended and shaky knee
Begging for Him to bless me, still.

For, while I have no doubt today
That the Son of God is He,
Tomorrow, without a doubt, I will.
 

#ofthejournals

Now that I’ve the Time

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A couple days ago, I wrote a painfully long post called The Irrepressible Nature of Irony.

I mean, dude*, it is a massive monster of a missive.

I mean, wow.

Anyway, as a mea culpa, of sorts, for torturing you with such interminablely tedious twaddle, I left a footnote that reads:

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Piddling Over An Abstraction

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Have you got five minutes to spare?

No?

No time, you say?

Okay, if you had the time, what would you do with it?

Take your time and think.

I’m in no rush for I, personally, have all the time in the world.

Please stop looking at your watch phone.

Try to judge time’s movement without mechanics.

When was the last time you considered what time even means?

Or time as more than a deadline?

Is a five-minute wait a waste of time for you?

Depends on the situation, you say?

Why?

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The Irrepressible Nature of Irony*

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Or, Nothing Is As It Appears To Be

If you were to do a search on my site for the word “irony” — and why would you? — but, if you were to, of the ten results you would receive, the first three would have the word “irony” in their heading, so it’s easy to see why they would be pulled up in the search; but as far as the other seven, it’s been so long since they were written that I have no clue why they were pulled in with the results, except for maybe the eighth one: it’s a post about Radiohead allowing fans to pay whatever they want for their latest release at the time. There’s probably a decent amount of irony to be found in that one.

Anyway, of the first three positively ironic posts pulled in the search, they are:

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