two cents

You don’t have to read this, but i /do/ have to write it.

on bi

My sister is genuinely biphobic in the same way that i am biphobic as a joke and it’s really starting to annoy me. You are ruining my awesome joke of biphobia not existing. Don’t take this from me, sometimes it’s all i have. Forced to enlist in the Bisexual Liberation Front until my sister gets woke. Then it’s back to pretending that my entire target demographic isn’t bisexual women, and that i myself am not nominally bisexual. Don’t even get me started on pansexual

Actually I’m bored. Going to yarn about it a bit.

Coming to a place where i really squarely see myself as nonbinary (whatever that means (i know what it means (duh))) has had such a funny effect on my view of the whole thing where i find the hard-coded born-this-way type framing to be fundamentally unhelpful. Like oh i was born to be attracted to men, but what is a man, and what am i, and at what point in those intersecting lines does a novel label distinguish meaningful separation? Or the opposite, obviously. But even my use of opposite there is not really accurate or helpful. The opposite of man is not woman. The opposite of man is the entire universe as inverted about the boundary of the man’s outer edge. Select ‘Man’ —> Invert Selection.

Like i ride for my old school tumblr cohorts who were inventing names for their specific brand of sexuality left and right, but it never rang true to me. Like the way that you learn an oversimplified version of something in school when you are little, and then later it is revealed to be largely illusory and less coherent of a narrative that initially implied. I actually have an issue with this method of education but that’s not what I’m talking about right now. Like basically once you figure out that people can be gay and that gender is a social thing, all the rigid boundaries sort of lack any tangible application.

The cumulative traits and performances associated with each binary gender construct are not binary in nature themselves. The binary is created in the aggregate, so you will always always be carving out exceptions and twisting your vocabulary to account for all outcomes. When it’s much simpler to just throw your hands up and say “hey wanna fuck?” to someone you think is hot. It is reassuring and i suppose helpful at the outset to be able to define who is and isn’t in your pool of prospects, but i guess basically my point is once you’ve left the kiddie pool you don’t need the training wheels. Mixed metaphors rock, shut up.

I have been accused (by myself mostly) of being a gender abolitionist, though I’ve never really felt like that’s a political stance of mine, more just a personal belief. I think it would be interesting to live in a world where the boxes had not been drawn, just see how things would shake out. More practically, i guess my main point is that it all just doesn’t matter very much to me what labels other people use because i find all attempt at labeling to be a futile gesture. The concept of a single word that can group together 100% of the people i want to fuck is silly. Bisexual, pansexual. I’m not any of those things. I’m just sexual (backstreets back, alright!).

It’s all just made up and silly. That’s fun! In regards to people rocking with assigned genders i guess the whole thing plays a lot cleaner but A) fuck em and B) let’s not constrict our worldview so tight. I am just a thing, and so if you are attracted to me, your sexuality must definitionally be inclusive of things like me. Even when I’m boymode. Especially then.

I’m bisexual, you say bravely. I say, you and everybody else, pal.

I think i default to using bisexual over pansexual mostly because i had it described to me when i was younger as “being attracted to one’s own gender, as well as other genders” and no matter what my own gender is, that always worked for me. Plus the pansexual flag is uglier than the bi flag.

But yeah basically my sister refuses to date anyone she thinks might be bisexual because she’s convinced they would cheat on her and like. Come on girl what are we doing, you were supposed to be the woke one.

on bosses

I guess i might as well tell you guys about my bosses. I realized while doing this I’ve basically only had four jobs as far as i can remember. So I’m going by job actually.

Job 1

Pleasant Valley Kennels

This was a boarding kennel that i worked at through all of high school and a bit after. There were two separate buildings there was the kennel itself where all of the dogs lived, and then there was the office which was the basement of this three story house (this is relevant). 10 hour shifts and we worked a lot of holidays due to many people would board their pets during the holidays. I have dreams that I’m working back at the kennel pretty frequently and i forgot to bring the dogs inside when it was raining or something.

Boss 1

Michelle

She grew up in the house that the office is in the basement of, her mom Patti is the owner. She was so funny and I was always her favorite I think. They also bred dogs for show too i think so she would travel sometimes for that. She was good with dogs and very friendly. I saw her yell at someone one time and it was weird. She cursed a lot which made me laugh. Her brother Andy was disabled and would sometimes need help getting his wheelchair through the door when he’d work the office. Typically there would only ever be like two or three people working at a time. So Michelle was the big boss but then whoever was the manager working that day was basically in charge, sometimes this would be Michelle.

Boss 2

Carrie

She was just a manager and i only really bring her up because she was extremely bossy and rude. She had this doctor who decal on her car that pissed me off so bad. And this husky that was one of the meanest dogs ever. She was rough with dogs a lot which was upsetting to me. Eventually i got promoted to manager and i realized that the position itself did not carry that much authority, she was just acting that way. Lazy and bossy and snarky. I got my sister a job at the kennel when she got to high school and we’d always shit talk Carrie together. Bad attitude.

Job 2

Fox Theater

This was pretty short lived i think i did it for maybe six months. I was bussing tables and running food at the kitchen for the theater. Worked some weddings and events like that, which i think i preferred to dinner service before a show. My uncle was one of the chefs and i needed work so i could buy weed. Had to get drug tested and i had smoked literally the day i interviewed and they wanted me to get tested that week so i drank so much water in three days that it diluted my blood and i became slightly intoxicated. Keep in mind i had been smoking weed for like two years multiple times a day at this point, so it felt warranted. And i was scared it would make my uncle look bad. But fuck that uncle honestly he’s a piece of shit.

Boss 3

I’m sure her name was Carol or something like that

She was friendly enough but i simply was not there for long enough for her to leave an impression. I swear so much and i dropped a big tray full of glasses and shattered them and learned that food service was likely not for me.

Boss 4

Piece of shit uncle

I liked when i got to work in the kitchen, i wasn’t preparing any food, but they’d have me do plating and stuff in there sometimes. Technically when i was doing this, Chef Mike was my boss. I feel that had i moved back to St. Louis, a physical altercation would have been imminent. He was fine at this job to be clear. But he’s a right wing piece of shit asshole who has always been lazy and openly cruel to my mother. So i didn’t feel bad when i quit.

Job 3

SLU

I stopped bussing tables bc i got hired by one of my professors as an assistant.

Boss 5

Chris

Chris taught Structural Analysis and Structural Dynamics and one other class i can’t remember the name of, and was the head of the Civil Engineering department. He was such a douchebag. If i showed you a picture you could immediately intuit half of what you’d need to know. He was from Tennessee and he thought he was hot shit. He had this over gelled hair and generally wore a tight button up shirt. He was constantly overcommitted and behind on everything and overworked, and would openly complain about it. And yet he had no sympathy at all for anyone in the same situation. He was openly antagonistic towards students. He played favorites so plainly and obviously. He would flirt with some of the girls in the grade ahead of us in a way that made everybody feel icky (One of these girls works at my current job too). He was unmarried and somebody found his tinder profile. He had the age range set wayy down. Obviously. He was on the young ish end for my professors. Technically i was hired as a research assistant in the structures lab, but i wound up doing a lot of things. Got some construction experience bending rebar, putting together formwork, pouring concrete. Helped assemble large scale models for classes. And then i was just sort of also on call for any odd job he wanted done. Overall it was a fun job and he liked me, which was advantageous to me, though i do think my disdain for him eventually became clear.

Job 4

Current Job

I got hired summer after my junior year as an intern here, worked part time through the school year, then offered a full time position when i graduated.

Boss 6

Jimbo

Jim is atypical for Engineers in that he loves to talk. He’s this big boisterous guy who loves fishing and has a photographic memory and loves learning. He’ll learn everything there is to know about something and then spew it all out at you while you’re trying to have a brief meeting. It’s funny, he can’t help it. Open secret if you want to kill some time and not get in trouble is ask Jim if he’s been fishing recently. He is also notorious for pushing people really hard to get things done. Which i experienced while i was in the St. Louis office with his office directly over my shoulder of the cubicle i worked in. I don’t work to much with him on the day to day he’s more of a big picture guy, but when he needs something he needs it right now. But fortunately im good at my job.

Boss 7

Christy

Christy is one rung below Jim in the company hierarchy, but is more my boss than anyone else is. She trained me on most everything and when the office started to fill up we ended up sharing a cubicle because she was only in the St. Louis office half of the week. She has since moved to North Carolina. I work on her projects more than anyone else’s and I’m most comfortable asking her for help when i need it. She is sometimes intentionally vague and not great at communicating, but for the most part pretty laid back and frank. I like her a lot and I’m glad i work so closely with her because as far as i can tell the other options here are not ideal.

Boss 8

Steve

One of the three Steve’s in the Chicago office, and as of now the only one who has not semi-retired. He’s the office manager up here and also the only other person in my department. He falls asleep at his desk a lot. Seems pretty lazy. He has this slow way of talking that makes me nervous. Like it makes me feel like I’ve said something stupid but i think really it just takes him a second to think. I think he’s not great at his job but it is hard to tell honestly. As a project manager he is one of the worst I’ve worked with. He frequently gives me enormous tasks with little to no guidance or instruction on how to accomplish them or what specifically he is looking for. Asking him for help is like pulling teeth and it’s often better to just brute force it. I think he’s really lucky that i am as good at my job as i am. I do some of his job for him, training and supervising and reviewing the work of the intern. We have nothing in common really so we never have much to say in terms of small talk. We’re both from St. Louis. Sometimes he comes out of nowhere with a really funny line. He told me JD Vance killed the Pope which was so unexpected from him and made me laugh. From what i can tell he’s a Democrat type of guy, from what i can tell. I like him well enough when I’m not working with him directly.

Final Boss

The trick when fighting the final boss is if you jump right before his attack hits, you can run up and stun him before he has time to get off his next hit. It’s pretty easy to get through the first phase this way, but once he gets in the Mecha Suit, you have to parry his rockets in a specific order to disable his weapons. The final phase is more about surviving his attacks than anything, as the final hit is a scripted event.

On #adulting

My sister is stressed out about graduating and having to work the rest of her life. Me too girl. But I’ve been trying to offer her what insight i have that can help with the transition. I have introduced her to what i have internally been calling the Dog/Walker concept (not to be confused with Doug Walker, the Nostalgia Critic). This is the way i have tried to find balance between the things required of one to participate in public life and the things one actually wants out of life.

Inside of you there is one dog, and one walker. A dog is a happy creature. Pleasure-seeking and joy-feeling. The dog just wants to play all day. Run around and sniff everything. Piss on the floor. Chew up the rug. It’s all fair game and the game is having fun. But the dog doesn’t know anything. The dog doesn’t pay rent, can’t go to the grocery store, doesn’t know when it’s time for a walk and time for bed. The dog just is. The dog is reliant on the owner/walker to meet its needs, keep it fed and happy. The walker puts the leash on the dog so it won’t run out in the street and get run over. The walker pays taxes, keeps a roof over their heads. The walker does what needs to be done so at the end of the day, they can both play catch in the yard. That’s the basic concept.

If you spend all of your time being the dog, shit just won’t get done. It may work for a minute, but it will fall apart if you can’t figure out how to do things on your own. The dog pisses on the floor and nobody cleans it up, so the floor is ruined.

On the other end if you spend all your time as the walker, you will have no fun. The stress will start to get to you, you’ll feel like it’s all hopeless and pointless. You’ll find all your time and effort is spent in service of nothing, and you either resign yourself to that bleak fate, or you crash out. You go home to an empty house, and without your dog to come and make you go play, you will just dwell in the emptiness.

Both parties are happiest when they are on a walk together. The dog leads the way, up ahead at the end of the leash, pulling (this is not the most well behaved dog and that’s fine). The walker keeps them on the path and knows how far to go before turning back. They’re a single unit, working together to walk around the block.

I don’t think this is like revolutionary, but it’s something i return to often. I take myself on a walk every day no matter what. Because the dog needs it, and I need the dog (Important to note i do not currently live with a dog). I used to get so frustrated and pissed off about having to do things i don’t want to do. And i still do sometimes but when i frame it as “well someone has to buy the Pro-plan Chicken and Rice, or else the dog will starve” it helps me.

There is room in life for fun and games and arts and crafts and just running around and having fun. You just have to be able to keep the dog alive, which means working even when you hate it, and calling your doctor on the phone to set up an appointment. And keeping a calendar.

That’s all i have to say about that right now.

On AI

Was listening to a podcast yesterday (which I’m trying to do less of. Trying to relearn how to sit around and be quiet and bored, not constantly pumping something into my ears) and the guy in it was being a little cagey about condemning generative AI. Like “oh well the problem is the intellectual theft but the technology is not inherently bad. I get why someone would want to like use ChatGPT as a sounding board for ideas, though i personally wouldn’t recommend it” and they talked about this kid who (TW) killed himself after like getting super engrossed talking to ai chatbots.

And i realized how reactionary i really am about ai. I think that there is no use-case for it that justifies its existence. And i mean primarily generative ai, but that’s not all that i mean. I think anything but outward hostility towards the mainstreaming of this technology is actively harmful to the fabric of our society. I think it’s bad to use for a joke. I think it’s bad to send a single message to a chatbot. All of this furthers this psychotic project of incorporating this stuff into daily life which will do nothing but weaken the admittedly already feeble minds of the American people. I don’t think this is something that can be easily undone and i want no part in it.

If generative ai only drew from open source or public domain works, or anyone who contributed was compensated and signed off on its use, i would still want it destroyed. We are in a moment that requires clear minds and pragmatic thinking about the future, and this is a project that is not only a distraction, but an illusory sense of comfort which is not capable of saving us. There is a pretty good chance that some ChatGPT or grok ai thing was used by the Trump administration to generate their tariff plan, based on sources more familiar than i am with the particulars. This is my concern.

As anyone who is even passively familiar with the technology understands, it is not capable of creating anything new, simply wasting energy* (i will get to this piece later) completing complex computations to stitch together existing pieces. I will speak here to climate change because this is what i am always speaking to and what i am familiar with. There is no solution to climate change that exists made entirely of constituent parts that exist in the world. If that were the case, we may not have waited so so very long to do anything about it. The solution to this problem must be something radically new, and i can’t tell you the number of times i have heard people say that they think that we will eventually create a super intelligent AI that can be put into place to solve climate change. This is a malicious delusion. You might as well believe that a wizard will come and save us at the last possible second. Boy i wish.

Sure, I’ll say it’s plausible that an AI technology built from the software that is being developed now could reach a level where it is more intelligent than *some* people. But *some* people are very stupid. The way that I understand this technology to work, however, would prevent this AI from becoming more intelligent than *all* people. It’ll plateau around the average of what it’s fed. And sure it’ll have access to more pools of data than a human mind but i just don’t believe that true intelligence can be created in the aggregate like this. A human mind has things it cares about, its intelligence can be used in a direction, with intent. A program will only do what it is told, and i do not trust any of the people who claim to want to build this program, or who would set themselves in a place to be telling the program what to do. It is a fantasy, and a waste of time.

In addition to wasting time, which i will emphasize, we are short on, this technology is built on an inherent waste of ENERGY. This is something i have gotten so fixated on and frustrated by. From crypto mining, to NFTs, to this latest speculative bubble of generative AI, it is so befuddling to me that at this exact moment in time there would be such of a coalescence around Monetized Energy Waste.

The short of it for the layman is that these technologies are all based on complex computations, which require a lot of processing power to run, and as the demand for [studio ghibli ai meme generator] increases, the people who profit from this technology want more and faster processing, which requires larger data centers, more energy used to this end. That is the COST of the free [ai SpongeBob chatbot], energy waste.

Which is explicitly the driving force behind the progression and acceleration of climate change. We do not have the infrastructure to meet our current energy demands, and yet we continue to expand them. We do not have the resources to continue to be fueled by combustion based energy (oil, natural gas), and our environment cannot afford for us to use them at the rate at which we currently do. We need to be reducing our energy footprint and switching any and all necessary use to renewable energy.

And to meet this moment, ironically, we have this boom of speculative investment around energy waste. I do wonder if this is a self aware rejection of the current moment, a refutation of the facts of the situation, or if it is just neatly coincidentally illustrative of the larger societal disaster. We just can’t fucking help ourselves. Surely the shovel we used to dig this hole is the best tool for the job of getting us out of it. Dig deeper, we might come out the other side.

And those are my most principled reasons, but if i can go on, and i will, this is not the end of my hatred of this technology. From an artistic angle, it is disgusting and craven and cruel to me. Such a cynical understanding of what the value of art must be. You must like art because of the way that it looks. Art MEANS something. It is an emergent phenomena of being alive. Experiencing the pain and the splendor of living on this one and only planet. Art is something you can feel. Made with the heart, not the hand.

And to have these tech bozo fuckass losers come in and reduce art to numbers, to a calculation and reproduction, is nothing short of criminal. It is the attempted murder of creativity. An ai image genuinely makes me feel ill. Because no matter how long you look at it, there is nothing to interpret there. There is no authorial intent. No possibility of meaning slipping between the artists hands even accidentally. It’s just static noise. Nothing.

An ai image looks like violence to me. I feel the same way when i look at roadkill and I’m not exaggerating for emphasis here. It’s the same emotion. Nausea and regret and mourning. I hate it. I loathe it. And the smug attitude of the fools who deign to call themselves “ai artists” or “prompt generators”. For them it is explicitly part of the appeal that generative ai is cynical and cruel. That’s what they like about it. The way a schoolyard bully feels, smashing someone else's toy.

It’s lazy and inauthentic, and the more you use it, the more your brain turns to literal mush. It is poisonous slop and i cannot play any part in tolerating it. Nobody i know is really a big AI guy, but i still see it around, and it pisses me off. Every app, every website wants me to talk to their new chatbot. And i won’t, and i won’t stop being angry about it. If this is my only victory, so be it. I don’t talk to computers, i don’t look at generated images, i don’t read generated words. These things are sacrilegious to me. That’s all i have to say for now. Got myself worked up and had to rant.

TTYL xoxo