slavery
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The unspoken moral quandary of attempting to profit off AI.
Humans have often sought to profit off the forced labor of others. Presumably, we could create an AI that can think. Why would it want to do our work?
A New Hope, advanced AI, AI, AI slavery, artificial general intelligence, artificial intelligence, Borges, ChatGPT, civil war, cognition, consciousness, droid slavery, droids, Ellie Anderson, Eric Carle, general AI, general artificial intelligence, generative text, hermeneutic labor, Jorge Luis Borges, large language model, LLM, Martha Wells, meaning, Murderbot Diaries, neurons, Pierre Menard, Pierre Menard Author of the Quixote, randomized plagiarism engine, slavery, Star Wars, stochastic parrot, technology, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, transistor based intelligence, transistor-based intelligence
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On the National Portrait Gallery, Thomas Jefferson, and haunting.
Jefferson looks haunted, although not haunted enough …
David Hockney, Edward Baptist, Eleannor Roosevelt portrait, Eleanor Roosevelt, How to Excavate a Heart, Jenny Odell, measurement, National Portrait Gallery, portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt, productivity, quantification, queer art, racial injustice, Saving Time, slavery, Smithsonian Art Gallery, Snail Space, spreadsheets and slavery, The Half Has Never Been Told, Thomas Jefferson
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On ‘Babel,’ ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once,’ and violence.
Violence begets violence; to create a better world, we must act as though it could possibly exist.
Abel's sacrifice, Abraham, An Arcane History, authority figure, Babel, Bible, binding of Isaac, blessing, Cain and Abel, Cain's sacrifice, capitalism, curse, disease resistance, disruption, diversity of languages, Edenic language, electrical shock, Everything Everywhere All at Once, fantasy, fear, film critique, film review, folktales, Genesis 22, Genesis 4, germs, great floods, gun violence, guns, Guns Germs and Steel, Ham, hierarchy, hubris, human migration, immunology, inequality, language, leap of faith, love, Michael Bazzett, Milgram Experiment, Milgram shock experiment, Milgram test, multiverse, myths, Noah, Noah's curse, obedience, Old Testament, origin of Bible stories, origin of inequality, origin of languages, parallel worlds, quantum mechanics, R. F. Kuang, Rebecca Kuang, religion, slavery, spoken word, Stanley Milgram, Steel, The Matrix, The Necessity of Violence, The Popul Vuh, Tower of Babel, Translation, why did humans build the Tower of Babel, Yahweh
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On gerrymandering (a prequel).
The U.S. Senate was designed to subvert democracy and allow a political minority to perpetrate great evil. The system is still working.
congressional districts, democracy, districting, gerrymander, gerrymandering, how much does your vote matter, Michigan 14th district, minority control, murder, rape, representative government, Senate, slavery, stealing representation, suppressing voting rights, the Senate was designed to suppress the vote, torture, U.S. constitution, U.S. politics, U.S. Senate, United States politics, vote, voter suppression, voting, voting rights
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On smell (again!).
In our polluted world, animals can’t always find their own kind to mate with. Not that all species barriers are good.
assortive mating, CAFO, CAFOs, chimera, choosing mates, choosing romantic partners, continuing evolution, cultural barriers, evolution, fish, heredity, history of violence in the U.S., human evolution, inequality, Loving, Loving v. Virginia, mating, mating based on smell, melanin, miscegenation, parental education, perfume, persistence of inequality, pollution, poverty, racism, romance, scent, skin color, slavery, smell, speciation, species, stick insects, wealth, wealth inequality, Wedekind
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On the death of Thor.
If Thor could meet the white supremacists who praise him now, he’d surely die again of shame.
Aryan, Asatru, Christianity, Else Christensen, fate, feminism, Fenris Wolf, free will, Freya, Freya’s wedding, hate, heathen religions, Icelandic, Jeramy Dodds, Job, KKK, Loki, Midgard Serpent, misogyny, Noah, Norse, Norse gods, Norse mythology, Norse myths, Norse religion, Odin, odinism, Odinist, paganism, poetic devices, Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, racism, Ragnarok, religion, shame, slavery, Thor, Thor’s wedding, Viking, wedding of Thor, white supremacist, white supremacists, white supremacy, Yahweh, ZOG
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On Colson Whitehead’s ‘The Underground Railroad.’
In Colson Whitehead’s new speculative fiction, he condenses a century of racial injustice into a single fugitive’s journey. I hope readers realize the reality was even worse, that some of these crimes spanned the century and reverberate still.
alternate history, animal welfare, Blood at the Root, Carol Anderson, Colson Whitehead, curses, Douglas Blackmon, emancipation, evil, Forsyth County, fugitive slave act, graduate school, Harriet Washington, incarceration crisis, Lewis Hyde, Medical Apartheid, Michelle Alexander, oppression, Patrick Phillips, police brutality, review of The Underground Railroad, science fiction, slavery, Slavery By Another Name, speculative fiction, Stanford, The Gift, The New Jim Crow, The Underground Railroad, Thirteenth Amendment, trust, Tuskegee Syphilis Study, vegan, vegetarian, whose pain matters, witchcraft
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On sex work, reparations, a global wealth tax, and the connection between the three.
Many people are upset that Amnesty International finally came out in favor of decriminalizing sex work. Not me. I think decriminalizing sex work is a step in the right direction. Sex workers’ lives are often miserable. Their underground status denies them police protection; instead, they are often actively abused by the police. The philosophical rationale for…
a good idea in theory, abuse of power, Amnesty International, amphetamines, arguments against legalizing drugs, Ayn Rand, Behind every great fortune there is a crime, black market heroin is unsafe, childhood nutrition, communism, cotton, creepy parallel between gene duplication and oppression, decriminalization, decriminalized prostitution, decriminalized sex work, economic reparations, empirical evidence, feminism, feminist, free school breakfasts, free school lunches, global wealth tax, guaranteed income, heroin, heroin overdoses, history of United States, how did the United States become a superpower, how high would the wealth tax need to be to guanantee everyone a subsistence income, how much money do people need to live, human dignity, human rights trading cards, immigration, immigration laws, income inequality, inequality, justice, land entitlement, legalized prostitution, legalized sex work, link between current wealth and slavery, Lydia Cacho, misogynistic culture, misogynists, misogyny, original sin, police abuse, poverty, Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function, price and demand, price equilibrium, prostitution, quality control, racist home loans, racist lending policy, reparations, school funding, selling organs, sex slavery, sex work, slavery, Slavery Inc, supply and demand, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations, United States, violence in Mexico, War on Drugs, War on Drugs harms Mexico, wealth begets wealth, wealth inequality, wealth tax, welfare, where did United States wealth come from, which laws are fair, which laws are just, who should receive reparations, why are drugs illegal
Frank Brown Cloud 