#drawing programs specifically are just fucking soul destroying

[eridan-ampora]

science side of tumblr why do i love learning new things & yet every time i try to use a new UI i feel nothing but the white hot rage of the unfairly maligned

[seeyouspacecoyote]

Rant/Vent/Dump post of the day #3,402,573,045 or something:

Sometimes I think about how in the not so distant past the internet was by and large a useful thing that could help you find information about any number of subjects or topics and you could pretty much search for anything you wanted and even if you couldn't find it, you could at least find more information on where to find it.

Now, with AI and bots taking over everything, it's basically impossible to find real stuff made by real people unless you specifically know where to look or you just so happen to stumble on it by lucky accident. Technology is good and useful, or at least it can be, but letting it run out of control is how you wind up with shit like this, where now an entire resource, the internet, has basically been destroyed because dipshit fucktard techbros decided they wanted to steal other people's jobs and destroy people's livelihoods so they can jerk themselves off saying they made a bunch of robots do things that people can do but worse.

With people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and whoever the shitfuck CEO of Tumblr is, there's basically nowhere where you're guaranteed to find real, original, genuine content made by actual human beings, whether that be art, news, music, whatever. It's miserable and heartbreaking to think about all the artists and other creators who have had their livelihoods impacted by the decisions of some stupid selfish assholes who decided that making art and creating things should be done by soulless machines instead of real, living, breathing, thinking, feeling people with thoughts, ideas, and unique personalities.

To create such a useful concept, the internet, and then let some selfish dipshits destroy it by allowing it to get overrun by robots is one hell of a testament to the arrogance and hubris of the human race and it's depressing as fuck watching people hop on the latest stupid AI programs, like that character AI shit or using AI image generating websites to create pictures instead of just creating things using their imagination. Even if you can't write or draw as well as you'd like, the genuine feeling that goes into content created by actual, real human beings will always have more depth and soul to it than anything spit out by a machine, and art in all its forms is part of what makes us human, so watching it get destroyed by machines and the dumbass dipshits who created the machines is too dystopian to fully describe with words and I'll do everything I can to fight against it if it's the last thing I do.

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Spoilers.

Okay I can’t hold it in anymore, I need to yell about Star Trek. 

SO.

In light of the revelations we got from Picard ep8 and ep9, I have come to the conclusion that the plot is a giant fucking mess. Lemme explain.  (Buckle up, it’s long and VERY spoilery).  First, a recap: 300 000 years ago, synthetic lifeforms from another galaxy dragged eight suns together (or maybe created them) and put a sign on the planet in the middle, saying “hey synth pals, when the organics decide to destroy you, give us a call, we’ll destroy them.” The Romulans stumbled upon it, understood only the “synth, organics, destroy” part and decided to hunt and kill robots before they evolved. So far, the robotic higher beings have only succeeded in making the organics hate the synths, so good job. Using the Romulan rescue, Oh makes synths illegal through the attack on Mars, causing the death of most of her people (and incidentally, of the entire Vulcan race in another timeline. Thanks, Oh!). I’ll give her points for dedication, at least this isn’t a “save my people and screw the rest of the Federation” scenario. She’s actually willing to sacrifice her planet to save the whole galaxy. (Doesn’t make it moral, but still, pretty selfless, in a dark a twisted way.) Again, this is the robotic higher beings’ fault. 

Moving on, The surviving synths try to make first contact with Starfleet, resulting in the death of Jana, Beautiful Flower and Vandermeer, which has overall very little consequence on the bigger plot. AGAIN, this is indirectly the robotic higher beings’ fault. (Maybe losing her sister is what makes Sutra such a bitch? Don’t think so though, we’ll get to that.) Maddox, learning nothing from the Ibn Majid, decides to learn the truth about the ban and sends two synthetic girls that look exactly like Jana to investigate (my god is he stupid), while not actually telling them what it is they’re supposed to find (oh, Bruce. Oh my god). It leads to the Romulans realizing that there’s an entire planet of synths. Outstanding work, dumbass. 

Picard does his thing and decides to save the synths and advocate for their lives, Sutra realizes what the Admonition actually meant, and decides that killing all the organics sounds like a great idea. She doesn’t hesitate to let Narek kill one of her sisters to unite her people, showing that she’s exactly the same kind of psycho bitch as Oh. The problem is: SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES. The robotic higher beings are fucking IDIOTS!! They’re supposed to have seen many civilisations rise and fall, so they should know what to do and what not to do, and their rational still is “organics will kill us anyway, so let’s kill them,” leading to the organics being like “oh shit, the synths want to kill us, let’s stop making them,” leading to Sutra being like “welp they’ve already started hating us, our robot overlords were right, let’s kill organics.”  OH. MY. GOD!!!

I get that the lesson is that fear is the great enemy, and in this case it’s really well demonstrated (gotta give credit where it’s due), but still! It’s so frustrating!! 

My biggest problem with that convoluted plot is that we (the viewers) are supposed to see the synths as the organics’ equals. Their plight is supposed to be equal to the Federation’s. Except NO. I’m sorry, NO. 

(More on in-universe morality and out-of-universe viewer experience under the cut, because I took pity on your dashboards.)

I get wanting to survive from the Romulan attack, okay. (There is la Sirena for that, just as a reminder.) But Sutra saying that the Federation banning them was essentially genocide? NO. They are made. They aren’t born naturally. A government telling its people to stop making procreating isn’t the same thing as a government killing every kid younger that ten! Parents refusing to conceive isn’t the same as murdering their children (I won’t open the can of worms that is the abortion debate, the point stands). 

We as an audience are still supposed to see the Zhat Vash as the bad guys, because Oh, Narissa and Narek are villains, and because they have caused untold suffering. (By the way, linking Cris’ personal tragedy to the synth crisis is a massive plot contrivance to make us hate the Zhat Vash more, which I found frustrating watching ep8. Losing people in a horrible way happens even without grand global conspiracies, and Cris had already been established as going out of his way to help people even when there was nothing in it for him. We didn’t need the connection to empathise with his pain, and he didn’t need the added incentive. Seriously, how small is that galaxy? Are everybody’s demons linked to Picard’s heroic quest? How convenient.)

But are the Zhat Vash really the bad guys? (Even Cris questions that despite arguably being the Sirena crewmember who as per ep8 had lost the most because of them, along with Elnor.) I’m sorry, if Sutra does try to call the robotic overlords, I say burn Cappelius to the ground. Lemme continue to explain. There are what, 50 synths? 50 robots. And the show tries to make me (again, the viewer) accept that risking the survival of the entire Federation (trillions of people) to save them is actually a question worth asking? From an in-universe moral standpoint, perhaps. 

From an outsider’s perspective (the audience), not even close. Robots having souls and being equal to humans isn’t even a discussion we’re having in real life. I don’t believe androids will ever be self-aware, and capable of emotion and love. Sure, in the Star Trek universe they apparently are. So what? Suspension of disbelief only goes so far. The show can’t expect me to accept that many IFs. I get the very one-the-nose “fear of the Other,” “make love not war,” “different races have equal rights to life” analogy. The message is very much worthy, the show’s depiction of it really pisses me off. The show isn’t asking me to decide whether or not it would be moral to kill the last survivors of a human (or even alien) tribe to save the world, it’s asking “but what if we were basically God and we fucked up, how would we fix it? What if the stuff we made eventually had feelings? Then it’d be bad to destroy it, right?” 

Aside from the sheer hubris of that premise, I don’t know that the robots have feelings. I know it looks like they do, and that they believe that they do, but again, how am I to know? From a biological viewpoint, they’re certainly not alive:

“Life” (biological def taken from the web) Definition. noun, plural: lives. noun, plural: lives. (1) A distinctive characteristic of a living organism from dead organism or non-living thing, as specifically distinguished by the capacity to grow, metabolize, respond (to stimuli), adapt, and reproduce. 

Do the synths grow? Nah. Do they metabolize? Yes. Respond to stimuli? Yes but debatable as it’s programmed. Adapt? Yes. Reproduce? NOPE. 2.5/5 on the living scale lol. That’s not that great. (From an in-universe moral perspective, this time. I know, TNG did an ep on that, sorry.)

Still the show tries reaaaally hard to sell their sentience, and the one time that really didn’t sit well with me was that “robotic finger touching the human finger” image. WOW, last place where I expected to find religious imagery, a show that questions what it means to be human and what creating beings in our image would entail *sarcasm*. 

Except they twist the imagery. In the Bible, human lives are sacred because they are in the image of the perfect God, and He values us (=> so human worth come directly from God attributing worth to us because we’re meant to reflect His goodness). Humans being imperfect due to their fall, creating something in their own image is called an idol - it’s a false god, it’s not sentient, it’s even more imperfect, and it’s wrong. And if humans don’t value it and and it doesn’t reflect who they are anymore, well, it would make the idol even more worthless, right? (clearer explanation because my arguing skills suck => drawing on the Bible’s imagery, either humans are not gods and the images they created are worthless, or the series means for them to have God’s place, in which case refusing to attribute worth to their images makes those worthless. That invalidates the question that I previously said the show was asking.) So all in all, reminding us of the Christian take on the issue right in the middle of the Admonition claiming that synths are perfect is thus completely counterproductive, both in universe and from a viewer’s pov.

But but but, I hear you protest, what about Data? He had worth! 

This may be controversial, but Data mattered to us because of the character he was, not because he was supposed to be human. He was adorable and losing him meant losing an interesting and enjoyable element in the show, which would make us sad. I love him like I love Cris’ holos, the Voyager Doctor, Wall-E and Eve, R2-D2, Jarvis and Chappie. They’re (very) likeable fictional creatures that can be used as metaphors for real life issues, nothing more. In any show/movie I’d be really sad if one of them had to be sacrificed to save the world, but I’d accept it (looking at you, Infinity War Captain America). If the question arose in real life, would I question the morality of it? No. 

So, are the new synths the same? I already tackled the metaphor thing, it’s not handled that well and Detroit Become Human did it first. (Again, it’s hard to portray the otherness of other real life-cultures that we may unjustly fear by using things whose living status is so easily questionable!!)  Is killing off the synths wrong from an out-of-universe perspective because the audience loves them? Let’s see... Are the new synths adorable/likeable? Heck no, give me Emil and Enoch over them any day. Would we lose something in the show if they died? Nah. We didn’t even know they existed until one episode ago. Picard would get angsty and Agnes would get upset, but it’s nothing a few fluffy fics wouldn’t fix. Do we know the synths as characters? We know that Sutra is crazy, violent and bloodthirsty, Jana was probably nice (?), Dahj had a cute boyfriend (outstanding characterization) and Soji... Welp... *sigh* I guess Soji is okay, even though she’s the least relatable and interesting character of the whole Sirena crew?  We know that their creators and biggest advocates, Soong Jr and Maddox, are(/were) creepy old dudes with warped ethics, half a brain between the two of them, really toxic interactions with Agnes, and enough hubris to bring the entire greek demigod population to shame. They would race Icarus to the sun, seriously.  We know that Captain Vendermeer killed himself over two robots, permanently damaging one of the nicest and most beloved characters of the series. Yeah, real incentive for me wanting to see the Federation risk destruction for the androids, guys.

But seriously, the last time a psycho AI tried to destroy the galaxy and make it in its image (*cough* Control) the protagonists spent a season trying to destroy the thing, and they were right! Future-control was self-aware and demonstrated anger and fear! Make up your mind, CBS!! 

And by the way? THE SYNTHS HAVE A MEANS OF ESCAPE!! No, I’m sorry, if they don’t decide to go aboard la Sirena and choose to endanger the Federation instead, then for all plot issues I’m siding with the Zhat Vash. Go on, destroy the synths. As part of the audience, I don’t care, and the show attempts at making me care by trying to make it a moral issue feel clumsy and forced. 

Also. Q exists in the Star Trek universe! He’s a deus ex-machina machine!! (Pun intended.) It’s hard to take big issues like that seriously when he could just swoop in and teleport the synths out of the galaxy/destroy the Romulan armada/put the robotic overlords in their place. JL, please, give Q a call. Yeah, yeah, it’d take away from the moral stakes because you can’t solve your irl problem with a snap of your fingers and you have to make actual decisions - but as I already said, I feel like the moral stakes are dumb and contrived. Give me the deus ex-machina, please. 

This has been a Star Trek rant. I know that I tackled two separate issues here: the in-universe morality of the synths’ death (I will admit that from the crew’s perspective it’s not right, because they can’t know if the synths are alive or not for sure) and the out-of-universe viewer experience. I apologize if it came across as really confused and complicated. 

I still like the show and love the actual characters (meaning, la Sirena’s colorful crew), and the show writers are not incompetent, or stupid, or wrong for writing their show how they want. They are really skilled and talented and they have created mostly compelling characters - I’m just unhappy with the direction taken by the story.

[one-of-us-must-be-crazy]

13, 23 Ripules, please?

Under a cut becuase 1.) the second half of the first answer turned dark as fuck, and 2). that 300 word thing ended up with a super-long prelude.

13. Name something they would never do for the other person. 

Amanda would never be the one to handle major updates. For minor fixes, general upkeep…well, she has an engineering degree and more than basic hands-on experience with synthetics, why bother going to a lab? Dealing with their questioning glances and assumptions and judgements…No, no, they’d rather take care of it themselves. 

However, when Samuels needed his memory core installed in a new body, they both grit their teeth and found an independent lab that specialized in synthetics. Ripley stayed through the procedure, monitored it carefully through a window becuase she needed to know she was getting him back and not a copy (I’d know, she tries to tell herself, I’d know if it was only a copy because even if we don’t have them I know he has a soul and I’d know if it was missing.)

Samuels would never follow one very specific set of orders that she made him swear to.

“Find someone younger,” she told him; begged him that when she finally looked too old to be his partner that he wouldn’t stay around out of responsibility. Put her in a home, and find a life with someone else. He’d never. Realistically, he knows it’s possible that there very well could be others out there now or in the future that he’d be able to love, but Ripley was the first one. And if he was lucky enough to find forever the first time… Anyone else would either pale in comparison to her, or worse, what if he found someone even more suited for him, that he loved more? The concept was as repellant to him as his own death.

Her death on the other hand…

Her will, that she told him he would be legally bound to follow, included strict orders that should the shell program be available–even as an experiment–at the time of her death, he was not under any circumstances to put her in one. The money, the risks, the unnaturalness of it; Ripley lived as a human, and would die as one, and like so many other widowed spouses, hers would find someone else or perhaps another pursuit or purpose to fill his time.

Samuels found it rather selfish of her to want him to be alone. If anything ever were to happen to her that put her life at risk, and the shell was an option, he would destroy any and all records that she ever held an option on it. As legal next of kin (and so he was at this point in the census records, forged of course, but it was still there) he’d be the one to tell them Yes.

If the shells weren’t ready yet, then he’d request cryo for her until they were. 

And it’s only fair, she refused to allow him to die, he can only do the same.

23. Write a ~300 scene between them with no dialogue, only body language. 

(okay so I wrote about 600 words of exposition and still didn’t get to the prompt itself, and it kept getting more and more miserable so let’s go with this instead)

It was just one patch job. One. Simple. Job.  It shouldn’t have gone this badly, and if it did it should have been laughed off, but his panicked ass overreacted, got angry, then apologetic, then morose, and now this again…

Samuels was still standing at their counter going through a thousand different pages on the release of the new patch, and exactly how and why it could have caused him to lose the ability to speak. Not exactly accurate, so far he had found and showed her (tapping on the countertop to get her attention from the living space across the center room) that he wasn’t unable to speak, but unable to connect his central command system to his vocalizer.

Nine months into cohabitation, and they were mostly (she was mostly) comfortable and adjusted to his technical functions and needs, but to him any slight reminder that she was aware of what he was sent him on a downward spiral into himself. Amanda had tried earlier, edging him back towards the sofa; if his mouth was occupied then no one would notice he wasn’t talking. 

Apparently, he hadn’t been interested in making out like repressed teenagers.

Fine then, she’d let him wait out his misery until the another patch came out from the labs to fix this line of fucked up coding. An hour after she figured that, she felt a wave of guilt at his nerve-ridden expression as he tapped the refresh button for the hundredth time, his posture so straight it was painful to look at.

She sighed, stretched a little, and slumped back into the couch. A minute.

Leaning forward, she sighed again, exaggeratedly, and he looked up. Poor bastard looked utterly miserable. He raised an eyebrow at her, his lips parted slightly like he had almost tried to speak again. Ripley shrugged in silence, earning her a confused look over. She smiled, shivered a little (it was unseasonably cold, she’d send him to Luna’s climate control department with a note of that), and snuggled into the back of the couch. There was a slight whir of his respirator as he breathed out, picked up his datapad from the counter and moped so formally to her side that she would have laughed if she witnessed it on someone else. She did smile though; he shot her a pointed glance, sat as bolt-right as he was standing at the counter, and went back to staring at his screen.

Ripley turned sideways and leaned back into the arm of the couch, her legs pulled up in front of her. Samuels, with all the emotion of an eye roll without the actual action of it reached an arm out, and Ripley scooted over under it, tucking herself in close next to him. His brows were still knit tightly; Ripley chewed on her lower lip. Usually touch was enough to melt him.

A short, annoyed breath (drama queen, he doesn’t need to breathe..) and he held up the datapad, words punched out.

 W H Y A R E N’ T Y O U T A L K I N G

She laughed, bit her lip, and shrugged. This time he did actually roll his eyes at her, but he couldn’t keep his grimace; the corner of his mouth twitched, and she moved upright, gently pushing him forward so she could climb behind him. There’s confusion in his eyes as he looked over his shoulder back at her; she dug her hands into his shoulders; she pressed into synthetic muscles. The left shoulder joint was stiff; he could probably use another dose of fluid, but she wasn’t about to make him meditate anymore on his nature today than he already had to.

It took a minute or so, but eventually he relaxed under her touch; she gently worked at the muscles that met at his steel alloy spine, and rubbed at their connective points. They’ve been together long enough, she’s studied his likes and dislikes with him enough, and studied books on his make and model on her own enough to know what feels the best. A few more minutes of it and he shifts away from her enough to meet her eyes, if only briefly.  He knows that she’s doing all of this, including the silent treatment to lift his mood, to show that she doesn’t mind, and it’s overwhelming for him to be the center of so much emotional effort. He opens his arms, and she accepts the request--and it is a request, if it was an offer he would be more confidant, sitting up straighter; this was him asking to be held, not showing he was there if she wanted to be. 

Ripley hugged him tightly and kissed his cheek; she smiled at him drawing back enough to see his genuine, finally brighter smile.

The datapad buzzed, and they both looked down, 

“Code Patch 98.7.21 Revision Available.” was blinking on the alerts bar at the top of the screen.

“Come on, I can move your computer out here to connect if you want,” she said.

He shook his head, and at her puzzled expression tugged her back to him; his heavy lidded eyes read carefully a few more minutes...