The VHS Wizard 🦝📼🧙

Screenshot of a post from github. The reply is from majorariene, and she is responding to this quote: "Chances are that you are already using more Al than you actually think you do, you just don't notice." Her response is: "Because every company, whether we want it or not, has shoved it into its workflows. It's really easy to accuse people of using Al in their daily lives when they literally cannot fucking get away from it because every other dumbass company has implemented it, despite it being the most useless fucking thing on the planet (and actually actively harmful). I have to use the Microsoft suite at work and I disable Copilot in every place that Microsoft has shoved it into, because it's actually fucking useless for my job. Can't be an accountant and spit out a 57% accuracy rating. I like using my own brain to solve problems, or at least do the research to solve a problem. I understand if YOU don’t want to do that, but that just makes you a shitty developer, and that's just what it is. Let the people who actually want to work on this thing work on it."

[Wet Cement Thread, An Update]

I promise, I promise, I am nearly done with this, but sometimes you just see things that perfectly fit into your web you're weaving and you have to go "...and another thing..."

Eoin Colfer/Douglas Adams enjoyers will get that […]

[Original post on retro.pizza]

A countertop ice maker. It's a small black cube with a transparent door on the top that lets you see the ice and a fan on the side that it uses for refrigeration. This one's black and is very similar to the model I own, but they're all good

I think we can all agree that ICE is terrible. But how do you feel about actual real ice... frozen chunks of water, the sort you would put in your drink?

I drink a lot of soda (takes a ton of caffeine to make the magic happen) and ice lets me cut the soda so […]

[Original post on retro.pizza]

Photo of an advertisement for an Anamatronic Vintage Circus Clown in Canon for $4500

Unrelated to anything else I have posted about today, does anybody have a spare $4500 lying around that I could borrow for important... wizard... reasons?

[Wet Cement Thread, Summation]

The "cement" of the Wet Cement analogy... in case you hadn't picked up on it, it's history.
And memory.
And knowledge.
And information.

It's what's recorded, what's written down, what's kept for the future and not blown away by the sands of time. It's public […]

There is no war in Ba Sing Se

[Wet Cement Thread, AI and The Flat Earth]

They want you to use the AI because they want you to trust the AI. Just like they wanted you to use the Search Engine because they wanted you to trust the Search Engine.

Because if they can get it so that you pass […]

[Original post on retro.pizza]

Very old magazine ad with doctors advocating smoking Camel cigarettes

A comic book character - Asbestos Man

Propaganda showing communists injecting "red" into a school house

Colin Powell at a UN assembly holding a vial of "anthrax"

[Wet Cement Thread, AI and The Flat Earth]

Ok final diversion, I promise.

How do you know the Earth is round? Like, really? Most people have never been to space, or even high enough to see the curvature. There are tests you can do, sure, but they're hard to do […]

[Original post on retro.pizza]

Screenshot of a google search for "what are the signs of dementia in Biden" with an AI overview and a bunch of actual search results.

Screenshot of google results for a search for "what are the signs of dementia in Trump" - no AI overview, just search results

[Wet Cement Thread, AI and Politics]

Basically, if you can strategically place your AI between a person and the internet, it is a perpetual wet cement pouring machine that lets you write your own version of reality.

Just look at the constant dance that Elon […]

[Original post on retro.pizza]

[Wet Cement Thread, AI and Politics]

What does this have to do with AI?

Well, most AI models are basically just search engines that've gotten ideas above their stations.

Hell, if you want to get incredibly reductive, LLMs are "look at the rest of this paragraph and guess what the next […]

[Wet Cement Thread, AI and Politics]

I mention SEO and the Arms Race because I feel like it was during this time with the ever shifting algorithm that Google really got the idea into their own head that their search results didn't have to be actually accurate, just... feel that way to the end […]

[Wet Cement Thread, AI and Politics]

Suddenly, if I was searching for Brave Express Might Gaine (an obscure giant robot cartoon from Japan) I did not get 10 pages of results about Chris Gaines, I only got... like... half a page, and then I started getting actual fan sites and subtitling groups […]

[Wet Cement Thread, AI and Politics]

Simple answer? Money and power.

I swear to the gods it's like Scooby Doo sometimes, you pull the mask off almost any monster that exists in society and it's rich white dudes that want to become richer white dudes.

More complex answer?

There are probably […]

[Wet Cement Thread, Now talking about AI]

And so they are also trying to use AI to "Disrupt" in the "modify an existing thing" form.

Because if they can't get you to go to AI, they will bring the AI to you.

That's why they are shoving it into browsers, and […]

[Original post on retro.pizza]

[Wet Cement Thread, Now talking about AI]

They want AI to be a disruptor. That's the fastest way to guarantee it survives beyond the bubble pop. But in order to do that, they have to embed it in that meta cement as deep and as fast as they can.

What they really want is the "this is a brand new […]

[Wet Cement Thread, Now talking about AI]

Everybody loves to talk about "Disruption" in the tech industry, but I don't think people really think about it much. This is relevant, I promise.

Disruption (mainly) comes in two forms - replacing/improving on an existing thing OR inventing a brand […]

[Wet Cement Thread, Now talking about AI]

That's why they are pushing it as hard as they are as fast as they are. They NEED AI to get over that threshold, while the cement is still wet. They need it to evolve beyond 'a toy' and become a daily driver. And they have to do it NOW, before the […]

[Wet Cement Thread, Now talking about AI]

Remember when you could not go to a movie theater and see a movie in 2D because all the movies were in 3D? And for a while, it seemed like everybody was insane for things in 3D - we had TVs that supported 3D, a 3D handheld game system, and even VR […]

[Wet Cement Thread, Now talking about AI]

If they can shove AI into enough places and wear people down, eventually they can train people to use AI for everything.

That's the hope, anyway.

Trying to write an email? Let AI write it for you. Trying to read an email? Let AI read it for you […]

[Wet Cement Thread, Now talking about AI]

If you opted out of the Alex Jones stuff, I do not blame you, we're moving on at this point.

So now, let's talk about something worse than Alex Jones... AI.

As you may have noticed, AI is in... everything now. And the general impression I've gotten […]

[Wet Cement Thread, School Shooting]

In reality, these were NOT the result of a grand conspiracy, but instead the result of inaccurate reporting from news agencies and eye witnesses trying to cope with the scale of how fucked up this was.

And that's sort of the magic of Wet Cement (yes, we're […]

[Wet Cement Thread, School Shooting]

As the story unfolded in real time during his show, Alex Jones correctly clocked that this was going to be a problem for gun rights (and more importantly, gun SALES)

The Columbine shooting - the only real thing we could compare things to back then - had […]

[Wet Cement Thread, School Shooting]

In 2012, a very unwell individual with access to a lot of weapons went on what can only be described as a "shooting rampage" through an elementary school, killing 26 people - 6 adults and 20 children.

I know it's hard to keep this in mind, but we as a […]

[Wet Cement Thread]

We're going to stick with Alex Jones for a minute as an example of Wet Cement meddling (sorry in advance) because it's basically his whole deal, and then we'll take the things that we learned from that and apply it elsewhere - eventually AI itself, which is what this is […]

[Wet Cement Thread]

I'm not going to "summers with my grandmother in tuscany" you and hide the concept of "Wet Cement" thirty posts down, I'm stating it now, as a thesis statement.

The idea of "Wet Cement" is that when there is a new thing, a brand new thing that's unprecedented, there's a […]

Photograph of a buff-colored domestic medium hair cat walking on wet cement. The cement is full of tiny cat paw prints and the cat is unrepentant.

One of the things about being a "Wizard" is that my special wizard eyes see shit other people do not. And most of the time I keep that shit to myself, but today I'm going to share.

There's an idea that I want you, dear reader, to get into your head.

Wet Cement […]

[Original post on retro.pizza]

A 35mm slide carousel nearly full of slides

A 35mm slide of someone playing baseball in the 70s

A slide of someone on what i suspect is Christmas

A slide of two people embracing under a christmas tree in 1981

Flea market was wildly successful today, 10x nearly full carousels from the 70s and back.

Face reveal, I guess?

On a movie shoot, I have a different role normally but today i am a random background extra and was allowed to wear something more... Wizardly...

I miss my beard though. Had to shave it off for the primary role.

If you are new to Mastodon, hello.

If you are not new to Mastodon, also hello.

If you are just waking up from a 10 year long coma, I have some bad news for you. It's not to late to go back into that coma - give it another 10 years and see how things have shaken out.

I hope this email never […]

@fairtradestu Can I ask what model of laptop these were? I've always been tempted by the siren song of converting a used school laptop like this but the couple of times I've tried they have been underpowered and outgunned by basic tasks by the time they were abandoned.

I used to be good at this […]

Anybody have any good #Android games they'd like to recommend? I don't particularly care what type, I just want something to blast myself with serotonin while killing time between things.

No shame, no judgement, what brings YOU joy?

I know I am about 10 years too late, but I am suddenly getting weirdly into Minecraft "let's play" videos.

I generally tend to enjoy watching people who code things that should not exist into Minecraft (I have witnessed the rise of Knarfy and it's been great)

I stumbled upon this yesterday and […]