always-a-night-owl

[always-a-night-owl]

I've seen a few comments now like "but without chatGPT I don't know what to make for dinner" or "but character.ai is vital to my mental health" and those are not arguments for genAI. They're signs that you need to sort yourself out.

An adult human being should be able to decide what to have for dinner. Yes, some days it's rough and you don't wanna, but the point is, you can do it. And if you can't, you can learn. Hell, make post-it notes with dinner options, stick them on a dart board, and on days when you really can't decide, throw a dart.

You'd really rather put these decisions in the hands of an AI? As in, a company? And you don't see the issues with that? You don't see how easy that makes it for companies to manipulate you, influence your choices and your spending and your entire life?

And if your mental health relies on talking to a robot about your issues "because it listens and cares" - no, it doesn't. It can't listen. It can't care. It's lying to you. It's parroting phrases said by other people in similar contexts. It's an elaborate predictive text machine.

And again, you're just giving all of this information about yourself to a company. A company that wants to make money and likely has no compunctions about selling your data. You're trusting a software run by a company. And you don't think that'll be used to manipulate you? I've got a bridge to sell you.

What you need is actual human connection with other humans. And if you don't know how to connect with other humans then it's time to learn. Start by caring about other people. Take a genuine interest in them. Listen to them. That's how you connect. Not by treating others as entities to dump all your issues on or monologue at about your boring life. Sure, character.ai will put up with that and humour you, but there's literally nothing genuine about it and you will never ever learn to make actual friends.

Relying on genAI for any of this means you'll never learn, in fact you'll get worse, and if genAI ever goes away or you find yourself without access to a computer/phone/internet or the people running chatGPT or character.ai take down the website or put it behind a paywall, you'll be completely adrift. You are handing control of your life over to a piece of software run by a business. Instead of developing skills and independence you're just handing control over to someone else, someone who by the way does not care about you, someone who's only here to make money.

"But some people need--" to stop infantilising themselves, to start taking responsibility and control of their own life, to realise that they have agency and power, to learn that agency and control are not the same as blame and guilt and that someone trying to help them reclaim control is not trying to blame them for their situation.

People, yes even people with your exact diagnosis or background or medical history, were living and making decisions and dealing with their issues and going to therapy and learning and coping for millennia prior to 2022. As in, before genAI was even an option. You can do it. Trust me.

[always-a-night-owl]

being so staunchly anti generative ai while everyone around you is "i used chatgpt" and "i asked grok" and google search is useless and every company is implementing ai and every single celeb is taking ai money and partnering with ai is like... it's so jarring. why can't you see the harm like i can? why are you so lazy? why are we making society this stupid? can we please stop? it's killing people does that not matter to you?

[always-a-night-owl]

Someone was asking in a thread what kind of people could work for ICE right now.

I think it's a good time to remember that the image above are the people who put children into gas chambers.

When I was little, I asked what kind of person could work at a concentration camp.

The answer to both questions I think is "normal people who have accepted the dehumanization of another group of people."

[always-a-night-owl]

This may be the worst use of LLMs anyone has attempted, ever. Up there with recognizing mushrooms.

[always-a-night-owl]

i'm literally begging people to relearn how to use earbuds and headphones. i don't wanna hear your fucking tiktok while im waiting for my flight.

[always-a-night-owl]

"you can use ai to improve spelling and grammar"

[always-a-night-owl]

The largest mass shooting in American history was a hate crime against gay people. Don’t ever forget that.

[always-a-night-owl]

283,000 likes………giant meteor strike the earth rn holy shit. oh my god.

[always-a-night-owl]

[always-a-night-owl]

WHY WE MASK: IT'S NOT 'JUST A COLD' 2025 ED

My COVID-19 comic is BACK, babeee, because all these respiratory viruses sure didn't go anywhere! I took all your generous feedback from WHY WE MASK 2024 to make the free printable zine the best version of itself. Mainly, I edited all the dang text to be as simple and clear as possible! Which is harder than it sounds, but worth it to reach more readers. Also I did a million tiny visual fixes that no one will notice but me :P

Thank you to everyone who's read and shared the zine, and THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to everyone masking out there! It's never too late to start taking care of each other.

website version - featuring: clickable endnotes! working URLs!

free downloadable version - print & distribute your own copies! (donations to our print fund welcome but not required)

our patreon - help me & my partner @earnestattempts keep making comics like this one!

send us questions, comments, etc at laurellynnleake@gmail.com (we love seeing pics of the zine out in the wild)!

Extra pages under the cut, including sources for all the endnotes:

[always-a-night-owl]

[always-a-night-owl]

No transphobes allowed, only transborbs.

Check out my stuff!

✧Read Namesake✧ ✧Read Crow Time✧ ✧Store✧ ✧Patreon✧

[always-a-night-owl]

Nice people make the best Nazis. Be mean, be tough, have a fascist tooth/skull collection.

[always-a-night-owl]

we were talking about the criminalization of homosexuality in class and my professor (who as far as i know isn't in any way queer) said something i quite enjoyed in that. well the exchange was more or less this: a student asked a question (doesn't really matter what exactly just know that i was rolling my eyes So hard internally) that i was and the prof looked at the student and was like (i'm paraphrasing here this conversation was not in english) Do you have any queer friends? and the student went Uhhhh in a manner that made it clear the answer was probably no and the prof said Actually statistically speaking you most likely do. If I had to divide this room into two groups the way to do it would not be "people with queer friends" and "people without queer friends" it would be "people whose queer friends are out to them" and "people whose queer friends aren't". And if you're in the latter category you should consider why that is--if maybe your behavior is indicating to the queer people around you that you're not safe to come out to. to come back to your question if you really want to know about queerness there's a very simple way of doing that: you make yourself a person queer people feel comfortable talking to about their experiences and then you fucking listen to them when they do (the fuck is not paraphrased) (there was a fuck involved) (frankly king shit)

[always-a-night-owl]

I keep thinking abt this comment and giggling

[always-a-night-owl]

"I know chatgpt is bad but you just don't really have any choice" you literally do. Don't use it. Have some moral backbone.

[always-a-night-owl]