Castle Magus

A rant on John Scalzi's blog about supposedly "legitimate" businesses who are using genAI for business communications. And also about the myriad scammers/fraudsters out there using genAI for scams/fraud.

Just for shits and giggles (and because people in the comments under the article were also doing it [EDIT] at least until Mr. Scalzi asked them to stop [/EDIT]), I just put into Google a prompt (yes, not a search, but a straight up prompt) of "Give me a good, angry rant about why it's bad to ask genAI to write for you."

Here's what I got back, complete with unasked for suggestions at the bottom. (Edited for formatting, because apparently you can't copy/paste from Google's AI bullshit without it ruining that, since the "paste" part just puked a giant block of unformatted text into my DW post edit window here. Anyway, any bolding and italics here is from the AI, not me, at least after I reinserted the html for it):

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( AI Overview stuff behind cut )

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As a bonus, "AI Mode" gave something slightly different, so here's that, too, for explosive diarrheas and guffaws (again, edited for formatting, and also including the unsolicited suggestions at the bottom):

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( AI Mode stuff behind cut )

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So, yeah, that's what Google's own search results AI Overview thing and the AI Mode thing """""think""""" about allowing a genAI to write for you. I wonder which sources it stole all that from, because it didn't site anything at all, in either case.

"A social media manager with a background in radio comedy has made the Greensboro Police Department's social media wildly popular. But a pattern of offensive posts may threaten the department's reputation at a critical time."

Wow, being someone who tends to avoid most "social media" like the bubonic plague these days, I had no idea that the social media presence of the Greensboro Police Department has been so incredibly shitty for so long. (I mean, I didn't know the Greensboro Police Department had a social media presence at all until now, for that matter. *shrug*)

Where'd they find this stupid DeSota asshat? 4chan? The article compares the shitbag to Howard Stern, but Howard Stern (at least as far as I'm aware) was never the social media """""manager""""" for a police department, of all things. As someone in the article was quoted: "Sir, this is not a Wendy's." This isn't cheeky fast food restaurant accounts trading meme-y insults on 卐️-formerly-Twitter or whatever, this is the public-facing social media for a fucking police department. ಠ_ಠ

Utterly despise it. I made an order with eight items in it yesterday, and today they sent a driver all the way out here to where I live in the relative boonies[1] just to deliver one of those eight items. The rest of the order indicates that it "arrives today by 10pm." I'm (half-)facetiously expecting each item to be its own separate delivery now. I would have picked the "save gas/fewer deliveries" option or whatever it is, had that been presented to me, but it was all showing as one single delivery, so I didn't even get that to select. And yet, here we are, with someone coming all the way here just to put 1/8th of my order on our porch.

As far as I'm concerned, they really can/should wait until the entire order is ready before dispatching a delivery driver, and especially not just deliver a single thing (unless it's the last thing left to be delivered that might have been somehow missing from a prior delivery, which was not the case here).

They used to allow a "shipping" option, in addition to the "pickup" and "delivery" options, in which case, things would just be sent by FedEx or UPS or whatever, and it would usually be delivered in one or two packages tops. However, I did not see the "shipping" option when I made my most recent order at all, which was annoying because I'd have picked it had it been there.

(EDIT - 4:15pm)

Just received a text saying that the remaining seven items I ordered are estimated to be delivered by "5:06pm" today. Also, the delivery driver, according to the fancy-pants active-time map associated with my order on the Walmart website, apparently is "3 stops away." However they are also approaching from a southwesterly direction, which is extremely odd considering that "my" Walmart is northeast from here. Like, seriously, the delivery driver is currently about twice as far away from here to the southwest than "my" Walmart is from here to the northeast. So, possibly, they're delivering from a Walmart that is even farther away than the one I had selected as "my" Walmart, or else they delivered first to people who live even farther away from "my" Walmart than I do. (There are definitely other Walmart stores closer to where that delivery driver is at the moment than "my" Walmart is, though... but not closer to here). Go figure.

(/EDIT)

(EDIT 2 - 5:25pm)

And then, on top of all that, the stupid motherfucker delivered it to the wrong goddamn house, and I had to walk over to the next door neighbors' house and get my shit before one of their several dogs tore it up or pissed on it or whatever. At least the first driver managed to deliver to the correct house.

(/EDIT 2)

[1] - The closest Walmart to where I live, i.e. the one I have selected as "my" store, is around 12 (driving) miles away.

"To continue, turn off your VPN/Proxy. This will allow YouTube to locate the best content."

How about you fuck off forever, Google? How about that?

Wonder if the money asshole(s) in charge of ZA/UM will find a way to steal the IP for this one from the original creators, too, the way they did with Disco Elysium.

Or is this a more "traditional" modern video game[1] industry situation where the IP is already directly owned by the company (i.e. the money asshole[s]) from the outset, and the people who actually do the work of creating it can just get fucked if they don't like that (especially if the "company" decides to make any shitty, stupid changes to the thing along the way)?

[1] - See also: general software, entertainment, or really just any other business/industry where anything and everything that is invented/created on "company time" and/or using "company assets/equipment" just automatically belongs wholly to the "company" rather than the person/people who actually made the thing or came up with the idea.

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(EDIT)

"ZA/UM's New RPG Is Similar To Disco Elysium Because 'We're Still the Same People'"

Uh, no, you literally, demonstrably are not the same people. The original creators of Disco Elysium (and by that I mean the ones who actually came up with the idea of it all, from the original Püha ja õudne lõhn novel and other such things, not whatever rando grunts who happened to be working in the trenches while the game itself was being made) were dubiously fired in the process of ZA/UM stealing their IP. (Even the very term "ZA/UM" itself, for which the company was named, was part of that IP that was stolen. And given what "ZA/UM" is, in the original Sacred and Terrible Air book, it's actually ironically appropriate that the company was named that.) The current Ship of Theseus version of ZA/UM is just trying to ride the coattails of the success of their predecessors, with something that looks superficially identical, but which actually has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

I will give current, counterfeit ZA/UM at least this much credit, though: even they knew they wouldn't be able to pull off another game explicitly set in the Elysium world (given the people who actually created and knew that world are no longer at ZA/UM, even if ZA/UM still technically owns the IP), which is why this new shit is "Cold War" whatever the fuck I don't actually care. It's why all the actual direct follow-ups to Disco Elysium that were (ostensibly) in the works were unceremoniously canceled between then and now.

This shit is going to be so ass.

(/EDIT)

...how did this webcomic go from being one of my favorites to becoming a massive festering shitpile over the past half-year or so? Like, almost everything from the moment Joyce and Dorothy chose to actively and very publicly cheat on their then-current boyfriends (at a genocide protest[1] that neither of them personally cared about, in the midst of a police crackdown, during which pink tear gas clouds were framed by the cartoonist as if they were romantic sakura petals, no less [yes, really]) up to now has just been complete dogwater.

Well, pretty much everything directly involving Joyce and/or Dorothy since then has been rancid poo, anyway. Any scenes not featuring Joyce and/or Dorothy (and which also didn't involve other characters asking "Where's Poochie?"talking about Joyce and/or Dorothy) have been (mostly) fine.

I say "(mostly)" because aside from that, everything to do with the genocide protest itself and pretty much any of the scenes involving follow-ups to the events of the genocide protest (whether Joyce and/or Dorothy were in those scenes or not) haven't been especially super-great, either. Such as the police raid on the dorm most of the female main characters live in, ostensibly to look for Amazi-Girl, who was last seen kneeing cops in the face during the crackdown on the protest and helping people (including Joyce and Dorothy) escape from said crackdown and which is presumably what led to the body Amazi-Girl shares with Amber (it's complicated) getting beaten to shit later that same (in-comic) day. (The raid on the girl's dorm ended on a "comedic" wet fart with basically nothing of any real consequence resulting from it, for what it's worth [aside from the Amazi-Girl suit being "safely" sequestered elsewhere, I guess].) Or like how two of the teachers at the genocide protest who ended up in jail for at least a couple days[2] had to be/could only be bailed out by former students (one of whom was, yes, Dorothy), apparently.

It really sucks, because I've been following David Willis comics since the Roomies!/It's Walky![3] and Shortpacked! days. And, really, at least prior to last June/July or so, Dumbing of Age itself was good, too. Hell, I remember chatting about the crossover between It's Walky! and Fans! back in the old OtakuWars! chatroom on IRC... that's how long I've been following this stuff. Now, though, I'm close to just deleting my Dumbing of Age bookmark and washing my hands of the shit altogether.

[1] - A very thinly veiled "ripped from the headlines" version of an actual genocide protest at Indiana University, by the way.

[2] - In comic time, that is. Real life time was, again, more like half a year or so.

[3] - Never read any of the Joyce and Walky! stuff, though, because most of it was locked behind a paywall at the time, years ago, and I haven't given enough of a shit to look back into it again since then. Apparently it's not behind a paywall anymore? Hell if I know.

Woolie: "...there's a national Olympic committee for e-sports stuff..."

*weary sigh + facepalm + smdh*

Playing a fucking video game != playing a sport. (Fak)e-sports are not a thing that the fucking Olympics (or SEA Games or whatever) should be touching with a 10-foot pole. I have no problem with people playing in video game tournaments and other people watching those people playing in video game tournaments, but the ones participating in the tournaments are not doing sports, and the ones watching the tournaments are not watching sports. Outside of literal "sports" video games like Madden or FIFA or whatever (which still aren't actual sports), the word "sports" should not be associated with video games. I will die on that semantic hill.

I don't give the slightest shit about the actual specific topic here (though I agree with Woolie and Pat that it's a scam, not a "hustle"), because I honestly consider the entire concept of (fak)e-sports as a whole to be utter bullshit, but especially when the (fak)e-sport in question in this particular case was just some shittier mobile knockoff of already shitty League of Legends. Also, in what actual sport would you ever see a woman building an entire career on being an athlete when it was really her boyfriend out there actually playing the sport in her place and this shit went on for months before anyone ever caught on?

Pat, after Woolie's attempted explanation: "You completely lost me. Like 100%. You 100% completely lost me."

I agree, Pat. I agree. (For reference.)

No, Woolie, the Qui-Gon Jinn/Quan Chi thing was not funny due to being an intentional "bit," or whatever the fuck, because it wasn't an intentional "bit." It was funny because it was a completely unintended brainfart on Pat's part that caught both Pat and Matt by surprise. Most of the best humor of SBFP, at least for me, was when they were spontaneously reacting to things happening unexpectedly, not the intentional "bits" that they always ended up beating into powder, not unlike a horse skeleton, long after whatever infinitesimal amount of "comedy" already had been extracted fully from it. Like Pat said, the "Obi-wan and Quan Chi" thing was completely out of nowhere, not intended, and completely lacking any kind of "set up." Because, again, it wasn't an intentional "joke" or "bit," even though Woolie is going all "that's it!" as if he gets it. "I don't know if you even..." Because, Pat, no, Woolie doesn't even. He doesn't even, at all. Woolie is completely misunderstanding the whole thing and why it was funny. "It's the same thing over and over," says Woolie, as if he's making a point, when his bad example here of "Hey, it's Qui-gon! Hey, it's Quan Chi! Hello, Qui-gon from Star Wars and Quan Chi from Mortal Kombat!" only ever happened that one time, and never again, and it wasn't an intentional "Ha ha I'm making a joke here on purpose! Isn't it so funny?!" thing at all, the way Woolie seems to think it was. No, it was Pat and Matt trying to make yet another forced Star Wars reference (which wasn't all that funny to begin with) and then Pat accidentally saying "Quan Chi" instead of "Qui-gon" and then him and Matt both completely losing the entirety of their shit over it. Pat mistakenly saying "Quan Chi" wasn't even the funny part for me. It was their complete inability to retain their shit afterward that I found hilarious. YMMV.

On the other end of the spectrum, the actually intentional "bits," like, indeed, the whole "Wakka is a Ku Klux Klan member" "bit" that Woolie and Matt did for most of the SBFP Final Fantasy X Let's Play, got incredibly tiresome after the first five minutes, once they started doing the Wakka voices, but they just kept drilling that shit into the ground for the entire rest of the fucking playthrough. It was neither "solid" nor "gold." Not even a little. It was "liquid" and "shit." Seriously, if you watch that compilation video there, you'll fully get the "point" within the first 2 minutes, because it's just that same goddamn thing, "over and over," for the remaining 49 minutes. Woolie trying to explain it in the above embedded CSB clip just makes it seem all the more asinine, honestly, in my not so humble opinion. I never really cared much for the overextended "bits" that they kept trying to force through their LPs. Fortunately, it wasn't even remotely as prevalent as Woolie is trying to make it seem here. But in the cases where what he's talking about was there, though, it invariably became trite, tedious dogshit.

Have I mentioned just how much I hate this time of year? Well, I loathe this time of year.

Just had to go out, in the rain, to replace the empty propane tank with one of the other ones (of the three we have) that I'd just taken down to Dan River Oil to get refilled, this past Monday. The empty tank that I replaced today had only just, a week ago, been hooked up, full, to the gas line that connects to the "gas log" heater that my sister has been apparently running way more than she ever has in previous years. Because this is the third time I've had to fucking replace the tank hooked up to the gas line and twice now that I've had to lug two empty tanks to town and get them refilled. All in just this past month or two. And it hasn't even been all that cold yet, aside from this past Sunday, when it got down into the 10s (°F) that night. Like, right fucking now it is 48°F outside. We don't fucking need the gas log running right now. And yet... it's running (now, after I replaced the tank). *weary sigh*

Oh and we've already had the first power outage of this time of the year. (Though it apparently wasn't weather related?)

It's not even literal goddamned winter yet.

Hot steaming shits all over everything about this dumbfuckery, except for the initial catalyst of this dumbshit moron getting the terrible grade she wholly deserved, because she wrongly thought it was a good idea to barf irrelevant religion all over a school paper.

Would rant more, maybe, but it's almost 6am and I'm pecking this out on my phone, so nope.