It's never answered (let alone asked) why AI needs to take over the arts. Who asked for AI tools to take over photography, film, and writing? Why does that need to happen? Who benefits from this because it certainly doesn't seem to be artists. Are people writing to the companies, protesting in the streets, complaining on social media in demanding that AI take over artistic and creative outlets? People should be asking bigger questions of the people and corporations looking to destroy art. It should be presumed that this is the goal to destroy art and attempting to disconnect humans from it, from the process and consumption. 

If one were to not go down a fully dark path of why they want to place art in the hands of automated machines, I do proposition one aspect from seeing how these tech vultures think. There is a fantastically stupid idea looping in the money machine heads that the public will want to talk to machines over people and that people will want art made solely by machines. It's the stupidest idea but they are throwing billions at it and destroying and disrupting whole industries to make the point that it's not, that this is what the people want. They think of humans as disposable servants and merely animals with basic and barbaric qualities at their core, no separation from their fellow beasts. Those beasts whose habitats keep getting demolished and destroyed again and again. The money machine men said this is the way of man, the way of our nature and fate.

Every construction I see on a patch of landscape that not needed any disruption has gotten me more angry over the years. Realizing that no piece of land, no grass, no trees, no insects, no bodies of water, no even formation of rocks is safe should make us enraged en masse but it doesn't. Trees torn up for Stuffed Puffs. And this is called progress. This is what we are born and die into for this goal by a few greedy and idiotic individuals, and the rest of us who keep going along till we can't.

This makes capitalism the most unforgivable system that has been wrought upon all of us without our asking, without our consent because we wouldn't have consented. I am not a person with great faith in humanity for people to always do the right thing but I know this much. Deep down most people know it to but they can't find any way to stop the powers that they are trapped under jugging along.

If Germany can't learn and organize from it's recent living past then...I mean what is there to say? 

Maybe a hot take on the youth and reactionary reasonings? Andrew Tate is not stronger than you in making a better world to reach others.

There is a lot of buzz of young people regressing and becoming reactionary and a lot more buzz that this is the sole fault of the online world, like the Andrew Tates, and whatever Musk is shoveling into the twitter algorithms and Google through YouTube. 

Yet I think people really ignore the impact of kids growing up in a pandemic where their lives and livelihoods as well as the people they cared about were thrown away and discarded and labeled as disposable. They saw many of their own parents, teachers, and community not give a shit about them. Why wouldn't that radicalize and/or numb them and they lash out from the culture they had grown up in and absorbed? Why would the kids be ok? No one is allowed to speak how traumatic Covid was. 

There was an Instagram post Bernie made about free tests being available still and some dipshit said "unfollowed." Besides Bernie (and maybe Pressely, haven't checked in awhile) government dropped it as an issue. Yeah it's not just the people around us but many of our own people who we put in charge to help. I hear Tammy Baldwin's office is getting flooded regularly with people with long covid asking for help. Bernie was trying to put up something recently I think for research. The eugenists have beat the public, private sector and government down

These young men that are becoming reactionaries and it's the fault of the internet is I feel not telling honestly of people's lives. Many in the figureheads spaces of left/progressive are always looking to blame everything else then looking at the missed signs and warnings. Instead blame it on Ben Shapiro and women on social media complaining about men, rather then reflect and observe 'oh wow missed an opportunity to organize on this and ask others, so how do we go about mending it?' No one ever comes to second part. As if we all aren't on the same internet with the same tools at our disposal. 

I was thinking this years ago 'I hope some white men get involved talking off young white men off the cliff of patriarchy that leads to nihilism.' Imo many seemed to hope women would take up the challenge. Growing up a lot of my company/friend group/close companions were teen boys and they were always susceptible to an edgy and not caring way of being not taking the world seriously. I think a lot of young men feel the world abandons them. And it does, it's a core feature of patriarchy and our system. Yet Andrew Tate is not stronger than you in making a better world to reach others. Stop handing fascist reconfirmation and power.

For some reason one of the worst places for opinions on the Gaza genocide is on the worldnews sub on reddit. I see the flames of hate, dismal, and delusion toward what is happening to the Palestinians. 

'The numbers of people killed are not true.' 

'Why do queer people care about Palestinians?' 

'They elected Hamas' 

'Trump will be worse you virtue signaling progressives'

'You would do the same thing what Israel is doing if it happened to your country' 

Other dehumanizing sentiments to that effect are regularly reconfirmed glowingly and celebrated. And these are the good liberals making the bulk of the commentary. The people who would never dream of voting for Trump. Those who still make 2018 jokes about Trump to keep each other in good spirits on social media and irl, to not deal with the pain of the reality we are in another election year with him as the nominee. People who really believe the good moderate Republicans are going to save the election this time. 

The good liberals who really never question if they themselves are always on the right side. To check in from time to time. Anyone should do that. The types of people posting would be highly insulted to be challenged otherwise. Some people think this is some feature of liberals but I contend it's not. They are just like regular humans afraid to be wrong, deathly afraid and to become humbled by that sort of awareness, it's too much to bear. Get back in five years.

The worst sentiments of the worldnews reddit sub were yet to come. The other day Biden got his Great War Criminal Bush Weapons of Mass Destruction moment saying a genocide is not happening and it's outrageous to suggest that. Yes the person who had the temporary and bad idea to have a disinformation czar at one point to combat the online world, is spreading massive disinformation of his own. Everyone can see what is going on through their phones and if they so chose which many do not. However the ones watching it on their phones horrified and helpless are not supposed to believe our own eyes? That's literally the memo. 

So like clockwork on the reddit post people in the comments were agreeing wholeheartedly with No Malarkey Joe. The people who believe they are on the right side and would never support an outright fascist like Trump agreeing to this should scare you. But I have been scared of how people lie and deceive themselves of the awful thing that is happening but not happening since Covid phase 1 four years ago. There is a strange but I guess a way to work through the horror school of thought Biden is doing this on purpose and trying to get Trump elected, as if this is a big complex conspiracy, it's incompetence not malevolence of political strategy. 

I don't care about Palestinians political beliefs as prerequisite for their safety, livelihood and humanity. My support is not conditional on what someone thinks or believes in for me to not want this for them. I don't want this for anyone. Never again means now and means everyone. My politics means no bombing people to hell and back and starving them to death. And no it's not just because it's a large number of women and children but for the men too. They don't deserve to be collateral and dehumanized. To put it another way for other people in hoping a lightbulb clicks 'care for humanity', women and children are left as the survivors of the men they lose. If you care about them you should care about them losing the men in their lives, connect the dots. 

Don't lose your sensitivity and humanity for a political body that would feed you to the wolves if your cause/your belief became politically a battleground and the donors pressure wins out. Always keep eyes out. It's also like when people want poor and hungry children fed but their parents are addicts so they can't support help for them. You see this with how immigrants have been discussed.  Going from kids in cages, to get them out of here, to kids being killed is unfortunate in war, is a hell of a whiplash. It's America so many juggling contradictions at one time.

Buckle up it's time to give up because we are riding the high speed train to political disaster is not a slogan or solution, why don't some of you get it?

Buckle up and we are already completely fucked, Project 2025 is already here, so it can't get worse actually, while saying in the same breath it will get worse, so get armed. This not a strategy or a plan its rescinding the future to full throttled fascism. What are we suppose to do? Some wonder why the left is not taken seriously electorally and solely blame the DNC here but so many of you just throw away and trash the future after a couple attempts and losses.

You think being armed in the streets against the fascists and passing around books about theory that do not fully apply anymore to our current landscape that will win the fight you all talk about winning? I wasn't some hero over these last years or before but I don't believe in a lot of you who want to be figureheads and mouthpieces who have had no plans of your own in the last couple years. Many of you couldn't even stay masked Covid wave after Covid wave. This also before vaccines, indoors of all places. What resilience are you going on about? You think you'll be in the history books with your social media takes when you'll just be footnotes or like most people, forgotten to the fates of time. 

We have one of the greatest mobilizing issues of our time and so many are completely oblivious blowing it because the same people blew it off for years as important. Abortion has been taken for granted long enough by the Democrats and needs to stop being taken for granted by anyone who says they are on the left. The winning coalition issue all across the political spectrum and so many of you can't wrap your head around it still. Normal people are motivated by it, you know the biggest voting block.

I really also hate the scorch earthing of liberals on social media we have bigger problems we aren't in 2016-2020 anymore, but it's like how some people never leave high school and social media is their playground to pile on and harass whoever whenever. Did you really survive the pandemic to waste your time like this? 

Who is helping to stop those books bans, organizing and gathering signatures for abortion amendments, canvassing door to door in midterms and special elections, voting against the school boards from being overtaken by Christian nationalists? Those cringe wine mom resistance liberals you complain about all day as well as the left/progressives who know how to organize and not belittle them. We are outnumbered by normies. I can tell some of you haven't canvassed. If you can't talk to a hypocritical liberal I don't believe your bragging of flipping around your MAGA family or co workers to socialism. 

What is the benefit of all women and people with reproductive capabilities losing them? What’s the point of letting Trump build mass concentration and deportation camps? How does it help anyone with all trans people being outlawed, LGBTQ marked as child predators? Who is saved by more Supreme Court seats (and other judges appointed) becoming more far right? 

Why let a president have power to push and bully schools out of vaccine mandates? What are your plans in all this disaster unfolding? How is Biden fully comparable to Trump? Why are so many of you so despondent and lost that you don’t have anything to offer but doomerism? Why do you think you need to be in the positions and taking up platforms being the figureheads and moral voices? 

I think the Trump presidency years inflated too many people into believing they could be resistance martyrs to lead a brand new way. It has done a number on some psychologically and been a disservice for anything considering solidarity with one another, not that that was ever a given. We are all stuck with one another and sharing the same internet and planet and that won't change. Did you really survive the pandemic to waste your time like this? 

Maybe you're rightfully bone and soul deep tired. Maybe you don’t need to put yourself as being the voice of conscious anymore. Maybe you’ve come to realize no one has all the answers. Maybe it’s time for some of you to be humbled out of the positions of social media political amplifications you feel ennobled and reinforced by large followers and retweets, likes, and posts. Maybe it might save some sanity. 

Maybe I don’t know anything. Maybe we are already fucked. Yet why should I just accept and take that? Why should millions of other people feeling lost, hopeless and dejected be given that advice? The fascists want us to give up. They are happy seeing all this amplified. They love your black pilled, irony pilled, "both sides are the same" 'liberals are fascists too' and making enemies of people 80% on your side. They aren’t worried about you out there if Trump gets back in. They knew people blew the last years of protest in the Trump years, they see the momentum was folded. They’re waiting when Trump orders protesters to be executed point blank in the street. I can’t believe so many people can’t see it, can they feel it, or is it all just drowned by hopelessness and rage?

Why are some people so convinced they are going to lead a revolution? People like this are not saboteurs but they can't help you, they can't help themselves they are barely surviving day to day like many of us. This is why my politics is more of a no gods no masters flavor, this approach feels like the only long term sustainable way to not burn out or be gutted completely when it comes to politics.

I think why am I suppose to surrender on the bullet train to catastrophe that no one can do anything about what so ever? I'm under no illusions of a future possibility of being steam rolled and bare knuckling against an unstoppable Christian Nationalist forced birth eugenist psychopathic dictatorship but I’m not taking it lying down in this election year.

Remember the Floyd protests? Because everyone else seems to forget. What a time in every state and it went around the world. The cops beating the shit out of people sometimes the media itself on camera and in the end they get away with whatever they like. A Men in Black cultural memory wipe. People out there because they knew something was wrong that something has to be better. Now that gets brushed aside?? people came out because they were bored, it was trendy (??). 

Now we got a Cop City destroying a forest. Biden gave more money to the cops than ever. A black Donald Trump Democrat mayor for NYC. Netflix remaking Beverly Hills Cop into a series. Cops as TV entertainment is back. Patrisse betrayed people and denied doing that leaving lasting damage. Black men motivated to vote for Trump. Police budgets swelling. The person who was president who could be president again, who let cops be attacked and die related to Jan. 6th is supported mostly by police still (not surprised but it’s something to at least point out) and the blue lives matter crowd no matter how much Biden and the Democrats love the police. 

Did the fascists see those people out there four years ago and think cynically if they can be motivated for the right things maybe they will become disenchanted and we can get them on our side? They sure did and it looks like it's working. Good job whoever. 

It’s extremely dangerous to memory hole the Floyd protest the way it has been especially in a moment where fascism is ascending around the world and the ruling class is lining up to fill their pockets and help it along. As well as mainstream and independent media outlets, social media platforms, entertainment companies, celebrities, cultural critics, even the fucking art world infiltrated by the fascists through being funded by heterodox and anti woke bullshit peddlers. Those crypto nazi podcast cunts had on the CRT moral panic scammer and he was arguing in defense of Chauvin I read. The execution of Jordan Neely a year ago and the reaction of 'well actually....' was also disturbing and I wondered if this was a sign to come a cultural backlash. There have been so many incidences I keep collecting and trying to read if it's something more.

It's strange to see all these amazing pro Palestine and anti genocide protests yet in the comments and in articles and interviews no one mentions the Floyd protests at all the these young people grew up seeing and participating in likely. ???? Did Covid damage so much memory and hope? On another note I notice much silence of the professional celebrities liberal activists who loved speaking up in Trump years and talking about how they speak out for social justice and now crickets for Gaza. The best are wealthy white women entertainers who rescinded their white privilege cards  during the Floyd protests to speak out and now take it out exclaiming they don't benefit from it to excuse Palestinian genocide. Don't make excuses for people worth a tens of million dollars who have had a fruitful long life in American pop culture.

In Palestine they put up a mural for Floyd during that time, it's so fucking heartbreaking. I hope people are not going to memory hole this but my faith in the long term cultural memory of fight and resistance is mostly remaining faithless.

https://ips-dc.org/why-palestinians-are-mourning-george-floyd/

Charlottesville didn’t just come to the White House on Jan. 6th, it's echoing around the world to take out all governments and bring every citizen to their knees. For those not seen as the desired perfect specimen in that specific nation state's fascist guidelines will be put against the wall. 

Our children are buried under the rubble

Release the hostages!

You are bombing our hospitals

Release the hostages!

You are blowing up our schools

Release the hostages!

There is not enough water or food

or even fuel

Release the hostages!

There is no milk for the newborns

Release the hostages!

or sanitary napkins for women

Release the hostages!

You also have thousands of hostages

in your prisons for years.

Release the hostages!

You are killing us

Release the hostages!

You are killing your hostages

Release the hostages!

Can you hear us?

Release the hostages!

- Mosab Abu Toha

American informercial conspiracy candidate, abortion rights right there for the win will the Dems give us a hand?

Very interesting that the washed up infomercial conspiracy theory menace to public health candidate* for president not only has had part of his brain eaten by a worm but has (for now) completely backpedaled on abortion rights saying he supports ALL abortion, even though he was on record agreeing to national 15 week limit, mmm does this dummy who doesn't seem to get that Kevin Spacey endorsing you is quite insane understands that abortion is the coalition winning issue of our time?

🤔 

I've talked about this and a thousand times to my mom but abortion rights and reproductive freedom is a fight men can get on board helping out here because many do actually support it. 

Right ?? 

🤯  

Did the media lie to us all these years that abortion was just some silly suburban mom or raging feminist bitch issue that took so much wind out of people's sails for organizing and expectations and asks?

🤔

Am I just fantasizing? No I just did a lot of canvassing and talking to people in the mid-terms and men brought this up to me all on their own and this was also the experience of my canvas partners own experiences as well. I was dumbfounded to be honest. Men old enough to be my father and others who are just the standard cis-white males (who are just statistically more conservative leaning) brought it up all on their own. It really was eye opening. It made me think about not always assuming coming across someone and their identity where they stand and a healthy reminder because there are many women who are traitors on this issue. Women who have given birth too. How twisted and sadistic, that's dark you have to admit, it's fucked and they are well organized. No need to debate these people though, there is plenty of other people with their hearts and minds cleaned and open.

I read an article that in Kentucky in 2022 midterms they had specific targeting for men on this issue. From my understanding of organizing time, money and energy you wouldn't do that if you didn't smell blood in the water. The white Christian fascists will always be better funded but they don't have the numbers when an issue is organized around because most people don't want to live in a theocracy. And yesterday saw Kamala Harris' husband whom I had seen on the Men4Choice Instagram account when he had met with them, footage of him on TV speaking about getting men to support this issue. A commentator who was one of the Republicans who ran away from the GOP after Trump was nominated said what a great idea this was. And you can say a lot going on about how the campaign operation is what is working and what isn't or to be improved etc, but they wouldn't be putting money into an issue that has not done off the wall blown out the door and knocked down the house numbers, so something is salient. Trump saying he will be hands off on the states I can and do expect people who support him but support protecting choice will vote for the amendments to believe him on that. I wonder if Nicki had gotten the nominee if she would have tried that lie as well as people polling don't like bans actually.  

Wouldn't it be wonderful if Biden could make some incredible speech about him being a man of faith is what has inspired him to join the fight that he was reluctant to do and evolved on. That despite whatever he believes personally, the reality of suffering about this extremely serious and personal issue can affect his own family as in his granddaughters. So he has to think of all other people's loved ones and that is why we must protect people's healthcare decisions and family planning. It is the most kitchen table issue ever and we aren’t going to let the Republicans and the courts get away with it we are going to fight them all the way down because he understands as a man of faith standing up for values of family. Yeah wouldn't it be wonderful 

😔 

Will the Democrats be organized nationally on this issue or is it just up to each state? Could you stop endorsing people like Cueller?

Are people to desensitized and disillusioned? Is it too late? 

How much is the brain-worm anti vaxxer getting paid I wonder. Is it enough to keep the vast number of skeletons he bragged that he has that he could rule over them in their coffins? 

Is another Kennedy going to be this consequential for American politics once again? Isn’t three times enough?

May 9, 2024

*update June 7, 2024, just found out this dipshit who could never win but could upend everything decided to walk back this stance because he needs that sweet evangelical money. Well he did have Spacey endorse him so he just has terrible instincts and no real money outside of the fascists and eugenists funding him.

  Photography, it's crazy how the photo world is divorced from speaking of the photography being utilized in what is going on in Gaza and that being on social media as well. We are liars and cowards of our craft if we ignore the function and role of photography in the first genocide of the 21st century we see unfolding on our screens. 

 I guess at the rate of technology we must combine video in many conversations about photography as well. Though they are different mediums of functioning yet they are both visual communication tools for the private, sharing of the personal, selling of the personal, and political.

We not only see through these technologies but hear the horror of what Palestinians are facing. I hope that punctures at least some people's hearts and headspace though it doesn't seem to get to the right ones with the power. Because those in power are reenforced and nurtured that they must be divorced in certain contexts. 

Politics before people, political games before human lives. Corporations over people living out to be full human beings. Profits over what mental, psychological, emotional potential and comfort we could have in our everyday lives. People tell you it's not possible, to go back to work because the boss of their boss of their boss believe people are disposable and need to serve the man.

When I try to imagine the horror of people in Gaza it's only a flash, it's an evil that can't be reached through the screen. What is the complicity of merely bearing witness? There is no real guidelines to all this in the context of viewing this on social media. Is it a question that can be answered truthfully and given easy guidance on? 

Though there are plenty of assholes reactionary to liberal and say you're being too sensitive and virtue signaling consuming a form of torture porn war trauma being hypocritical, but it's like people are dying fuck off with that. We know where some of you will likely be with a fascist regime slowly unfolding into place (it's actually happening now under Biden in the red states and the states who are not fully red but are controlled by red congress houses and governors) you'll be drinking Starbucks disaffected.

May 9, 2024 - 3:44pm

Do you realize how much artists have lost their way in the culture when the man who rapped “Thrift Shop” has more moral courage on Palestine than 90% of mainstream-well known artists out there? He's one of the very very very few vocal and consistently vocal out there. Like one of the most political creative mediums is in a crisis (but many have said for the last almost decade) if the top of the game people Kendrick Lamar and Drake are having a pants pull down contest right now. Rap is not even music in my rotation of pop culture knowledge and what I curate in my day to day listening, but even I know this is pretty insane and surreal. Respect to Macklemore because so many artists have truly lost their way.  

we like connecting to one another and knowing about each other and there is nothing much we can do about it

What is confusing about the ruling tech vulture class who seek to dismantle art and replace it with all AI as well as human communications through social media, is that people deeply want to connect to other people. People don't use the internet and scroll social media for the chance to communicate with machines. The machine is the tool to connect with people in some form whether reading, watching, or direct chat and commenting with others. Even the biggest misanthrope is deeply curious and intrigued and desperate to know people in some form whether they avoid direct interaction with them. People love work from actual humans. For centuries people risked life and limb to find people to connect to traveling not knowing what or who they were going to find. Why would this change with technological advancements? 

Covid was the biggest indictor of this. People risking their health in a pandemic to go down to a bar for company with people maybe they don't know or like too much just to have company with stale beer and overcooked burgers. On top of that humans desperate to travel to see their  families, families with histories of deep resentment between many individuals. The perfect excuse to not visit your family with unsolvable troubles that make you tear up when you are by yourself thinking of it all sometimes were tossed by the wayside. Rationality was not going to be the winner in America here. High Covid risk stuffed in an airplane for Thanksgiving before we had vaccines.  That's commitment to human relations. How can AI replace that? It's the ruling class shoving this AI replacements and interactions down our throats that don't understand it.

AI Photography, Palestine, art ego, complicity, it all haunts heavily

As AI haunts my mind and I struggle against the rage and frustration that stirs at not merely the new reality, not merely toward the ruling class tech vultures ready to destroy art at all costs, but my fellow photographers and the photo world people for embracing it. The only people who push back are the people in the comment sections. The art world in the larger scope I'm not surprised. Photographers you think would know better but no they actually seem to be less critically thinking on this issue because they're caught up in art theory approaches and philosophical magical fantasies. 

We don't get to do whatever we want because we are artists. We owe the world to be more than solely acting on our own desires to play around in the creative inspired bubbles we move about in. We don't get to make whatever we want at any cost. The world is more than the artist's playground. Some of us could be humbled more than clapping for the technical feats and dreaming about this tool/weapon. 

To the artists who love to act like they play and exist on the perimeters outside of society, we are all here and stuck together, sorry to break it to you. Maybe that's why some don't take us artists too seriously and some even think of us suspiciously.

Many artists like to think of themselves as especially in tune and sensitive people. Uniquely in touch with the world and can provide guidance into understanding it better. A kind of saviorism and martyrdom. Artists overall would be better to come down off the soapboxes we are enticed by. You don't have to give up shows, awards, or interviews, but the idea that it makes some superior in the intellectual and sensitive sense is demonstrably false. Inflated and fawned over egos are never helpful to artists and art as a whole.

To another point, these characteristics lead many of these artists and photographers to see current AI technologies as their god given right to use anyway they like. As well as keep their silence on Palestine lip locked as to not offend potential donors and collectors who believe in a superiority of certain people’s human rights over another group of people. It's amusing to act like this is not what this is about when it comes to Israel versus Palestine. The positioning of a colonial power formally claiming their people matter more.

People don't want to say out loud the obvious in their support of Israel over Palestinians. They believe Israeli and Jewish people who support Israel matter more than Palestinians. They don't see them on an equal footing, they don't see them as human. They see Palestinians as inconveniences. To some others Palestinians are completely invisible. It’s Gaza a strip of land to them not a people. Rubble not bodies. Infrastructure and buildings, not families and history vanquished.

This is what supremacy over others is, this is colonization and dehumanization. Is this so difficult to grasp? Well the above opinion may soon become illegal with overwhelming support of Democrats in congress. Though I heard Nadler pushed back but we’ll see.

Artists can't claim to speak to a universal human condition displayed in their work if they're silent on these issues. A technology that can upend society for most people for the worst including art, because even if you don't care about human society as a whole as an artist you should care about art. The first genocide of the 21st century paid and proudly supported by our government should also be on your radar and alarm if you spent years fearing and speaking up about the maniac who could very well slide back into office. 

May 4-6, 2024