Fergal

It's a stupid technology and it's better than any human at producing stupid bullshit

Sometimes as a lawyer you are asked to write a certain kind of document (business pitches, marketing copy, press releases) which is not legal in nature and which, if you're entirely honest, you consider somewhat beneath you. This is where ChatGPT is useful.

For people looking for an alternative to Spotify, I suggest going into an office building at about 15.00 on a Tuesday, in an empty room where you can hear the din of work next door and further still the ambient hum of the street - a space halfway between loneliness and connection to our world.

And that's all this trans women in sports panic is; scrounging around for a handful of people, however few, that can be presented as victims, though they are so outnumbered by the victims of anti-Trans bigotry as to be statistically negligible

That's why they found all these bakers whose religious freedoms were supposedly infringed when they refused to bake a cake on religious grounds: these were the only victims they could find.

When the Christian right were fighting the losing battle against marriage equality, the problem they kept running into was that most people just couldn't get mad about people getting on with their lives and not doing any harm to anybody.

These kids are gonna grow up as dumb as bricks

The thing about this kind of deliberate deskilling (which is also what you're doing when you rely on AI) isn't that you'll one day need to fend for yourself in a Mad Max-style dystopia. It's just that you're making you existence less interesting and denying yourself basic human pleasures

You have to question the reasoning of "I'll do a deal with Ghislaine Maxwell, that surely will lay these rumours to rest"

And while I appreciate that the "Scary China" angle may help the ICCL to get headlines, this surveillance would be an illegal invasion of our privacy irrespective of what country the tech comes from

More accurate perhaps to call it "so-called facial recognition" because it's not always accurate. It also claims to be able to determine age, gender and even mood, which is frankly a load of old guff

Hikvision make the best CCTV on the market, so that's what everyone buys. Problem is the facial recognition tech comes as standard. You can switch it off, but not everyone does

Six month's regular work a year, a boon to our resting ventriloquists and clean comedians

Variety shows should still be a thing, I'd like to pay an affordable price for a non-pre-booked ticket to see a guy spinning plates, then a comedy skit, then a man sings a song and then there's a dance routine. And not some knowing hipster take with goth chorus girls, just gimme that good clean fun

When you hear the cliches about Karens wanting to speak to the manager you do wonder my god what level of toadying do these people actually feel entitled to?

It's actually unseemly, I felt gross hearing it from a man about my own age

That sedative complacency was the single biggest thing that struck me

This was in California, and it applied in a more or less colorblind (though absolutely not gender-neutral) way. I guess what's interesting about the Trump voter is that even this level of coddling isn't enough for him, he needs his racial privilege to be emphasized too

Security guards everywhere, all got up like Marines. The actual cops look like Judge Dredd. I found this disturbing and threatening, but after a few days I realised that if you live here in the bubble, it probably makes you feel safe. Only the non-airconditioned folks need to fear it

And you can feel OK about it because the official ideology tells you that they're all husting for their own part of the American dream - one day they'll be the ones inside here in the cool airconditioned air

I'd say it's a very smooth place to live if you have the money - I went from airconditioned hotel via airconditioned Uber to airconditioned office and back all week. Poor people outside in the sweltering heat, I guess all working to make this comfort possible for people like me

They're not dumb, that's a cliche and it's not true. It's complacency that's the dominant flaw. And they're nice! Very easygoing - so long as the going continues to be easy.

And then there's this popular culture and official ideology that constantly panders to you and your sense of self. The default channel for every TV in a public place was a sports channel, with blonde ladies talking very seriously about what you, a middle class man, are interested in

If you have money (which I technically did, as work was paying for everything) it must be hard not to lose your mind.

Like the concierge took 30 seconds to get my bag and came back smiling "I wanna thank you for your patience". Gotta be hard to get that everyday and not become an entitled shithead

I was in that America last week and hoo boy it's quite a place

I’ve got Magnum sweat

Irish presidential election campaigns bring out all the worst and shallowest instincts of our political media, and I will be ignoring this one like I did the last

Presidential elections are always an interesting insight into Fine Gael. They tend to be about personalities rather than politics. You want a candidate who is liked or even beloved by the wider population. So it’s always fascinating to see who FG thinks fits that bill

A few weeks ago GrokAI was advertising for a data protection lawyer and I wondered who'd get it, the way you do when a job in your field comes up but also in the "what kind of person would want that job?" kind of way

Yes…ha ha ha…yes!