No - I don’t agree that they’re completely different.

“Made by AI” would be completely different.

“Made with AI” actually means pretty much the exact same thing as “AI was used in this image” - it’s just that the former lays it out baldly and the latter softens the impact by using indirect language.

I can certainly see how “photographers” who use AI in their images would tend to prefer the latter, but bluntly, fuck 'em. If they can’t handle the shame of the fact that they did so they should stop doing it - get up off their asses and invest some time and effort into doing it all themselves. And if they can’t manage that, they should stop pretending to be artists.

I’m roundaboutly reminded of one of my favorite novels - Greener Than You Think, by Ward Moore.

It’s a science fiction story about the end of the world that was written in the late 40s. The proximate cause of the end is all of the landmasses of Earth being smothered by a gigantic and very aggressive strain of Bermuda grass, but the real cause is the utter and complete failure, due to ignorance, greed, selfishness, short-sightedness, incompetence, arrogance and so on, of every attempt to combat it.

Another of the many things the current US shares with Ancien Régime France - then and there too, the richest paid little to nothing in taxes, even as the government served their interests almost exclusively.

Well damn.

No - I very deliberately used round peg in the square hole, initially just to avoid the cliche, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

Conservatives pound on round/natural/organic/smooth pegs to try to force them into square/artificial/contrived/rigid holes.

I liked it anyway…

In all seriousness, I sort of pity conservatives.

They’re sort of like the one kid in kindergarten who could never manage to figure out which plastic peg went in which hole and would just get frustrated and throw things. Except that they never grew out of it. Here they are, twenty or thirty or sixty years later, still unable to grasp the simple fact that the world just is what it is and the round peg isn’t going to go in the square hole no matter how much you pound on it, and still angry over it, as if it’s some sort of vast conspiracy rather than just the fact that they’re fucking morons.

That has to be an unpleasant way to live.

Of course, they’re such vile and loathsome and destructive assholes that my pity is short-lived, but still…

Just another step toward making used-to-be-Twitter a safe space for cowardly fascists.

How is anybody even surprised by this?

This is exactly the sort of thing Beth has been moving towards ever since their first ham-handed attempt to monetize mods deservedly blew up in their faces.

They didn’t give up on the idea - they just shifted to a strategy of doing it incrementally.

And this is just the latest step in that ongoing process.

Think about how bad it’s (very deliberately) going to be by the time TES 6 finally comes out…

It strikes me that I went on at great length but didn’t directly answer your main question.

Targeted emotions felt via affective empathy (at least for me and presumably for others) aee generally either directed at the same target as they are for the source or untargeted. Though sometimes, they can end up being directed at the wrong target.

I think the way it generally works is that if I both feel affective empathy and experience cognitive empathy, then the emotion ends up aimed at the same target, since the cognitive empathy provides a framework for it. For instance, I feel someone else’s anger and understand who they’re angry at and why and agree that it’s justified, so I end up angry at that target too.

And yes - if I’m the target and I grasp the idea behind it, so experience cognitive empathy, then I do become my own target.

If I don’t have the context for cognitive empathy though, the emotion is just sort of there. I’m just aware that being in this place or around these people or whatever is putting me on edge. I don’t quite feel the full sense of the emotion then, presumably because it needs context and a target to fully manifest. Instead, I feel a vaguer, less directed form of it - like being around angry people without really focusing on it, so not getting cognitive empathy, just leaves me feeling unaccountably stressed and cranky. Or being around sad people makes me feel unaccountably melancholy.

And along with that, one thing it definitely does is prime me to find something to direct it at. It’s not just that I feel unaccountably cranky or melancholy or whatever, but that I’m likely going to (over)react to the first thing that happens that provides something like justification for the full-blown emotion. Like once it starts, it has to find a way to fully manifest.

For myself, other people’s anger makes me really uncomfortable, and I avoid it as much as possible, in part specifically because if I don’t, I end up sharing in it, but without a reason or a target. It’s really unpleasant because in a sense, it’s not real.

Real anger - my own anger - feels complete. Not that it’s pleasant or anything - it’s still anger. But in a way, it’s a sort of relief to feel it, since it at least makes sense. I have a reason for it and a target for it, so it fits. Empathetic anger is weird and unsettling, since it’s just there, but it’s not a complete, sensible thing.

And you’re right about targeted emotions, at least in my experience, and while anger is a good example, it’s not the worst.

Grief is awful, because it’s such a horrible, desolate feeling, and just that much worse when it doesn’t even really mean anything.

Jealousy is another bad one - in fact, thinking about it, I’m tempted to say it’s the worst of them all, because it’s so unpleasant, and in multiple ways, and it’s so entirely pointless without an actual reason or target (it’s arguably fairly pointless even with both).

On a somewhat different note, just because I’m thinking about the trials and tribulations of affective empathy - embarrassment is weirdly bad. Partly it’s that it’s unpleasant, but more it’s that it’s such a common aspect of other people’s enjoyment - there’s a great deal of comedy that hinges on laughing at other people’s embarrassment, and it’s all completely lost on me, because I’m stuck just feeling pointlessly vicariously embarrassed.

Broadly, the way I have to deal with all of it is to try to avoid situations in which I’m going to be subjected to other people’s unpleasant emotions, and if I find myself in one, to try to shut myself off from whatever they’re feeling. I’m okay up to a point, but I can feel it coming if I’m getting to the point that it’s going to suck me in, and pretty much all I can do then is resign myself to it or throw up a barricade and just shut it out. Which sort of ironically makes me come across as aloof - as if I’m insensitive rather than overly sensitive. That gnaws at me, but there really isn’t much I can do about it, since I already have enough to deal with with my own emotions, and just don’t have the fortitude to deal with everyone else’s as well.

Normal.

In fact, I don’t think there’s a single person on the entire planet who doesn’t make that exact choice, with the only differences between individuals being which things go in which categories. And, I guess, how aware they are of the fact that that’s what they do.

Israel has been trying to provoke Lebanon into a war for decades now. They’re not going to stop.

Maybe you can answer a question for me.

Why do shit-stirrers immediately rush off to start separate shit-stirring threads if a mod accuses them of being shit-stirrers?

Do they - you - really not grasp the painfully obvious fact that by starting threads like this, all they - you - manage to do is demonstrate that the mod was probably right?

This is actually true.

Most notably to me, the ability to sift through and collate enormous amounts of data has led to surprising things like diagnosing diabetes through retinal scans.

But those sorts of things, beneficial and impressive though they might be, remain at the fringe of AI research for the simple reason that those sorts of uses are too niche to provide the revenue stream that all of the bubble-building corporate parasites demand. Their focus is on the AI-as-a-substitute-for-real-intelligence aspect (and increasingly “AI” as just a meaningless marketing buzzword), since that’s where the money is. And unfortunately but not coincidentally, that’s where most of the public attention is too.

And yet again it cynically amuses me that AI has become “artificial” intelligence in the sense of “fake.”

It’s a shabby substitute for real intelligence, used by people who don’t possess any of their own to impress other people who don’t possess any of their own.

deleted by creator

I would presume it’s not paid yet (though the CEO certainly is). That phase of the operation comes later.

For the moment, they’re working to solidify as much control as possible of as much of the fediverse as possible, which control will allow them to gatekeep it, monetize it, extract rent from it and inevitably enshittify it. That, so it’s hoped, will be the phase during which their investment now will pay off.

So… by my count, the board of directors actually outnumber the employees.

At a “non-profit” (until that was revoked) company that gets most of its funding through Patreon.

Years from now (and at this rate, not very many of them), when people wonder how it was that such a promising venture that championed decentralization turned into just another enshittified megacorporation squatting over a piece of internet real estate and extracting rent to pay obscene salaries to a handful of executives - this is how. We’re watching as the foundation is being laid, right now.

England’s already the snooping capital of the west, isn’t it?

It seems that every time a new privacy-invading technology comes floating down the pike, England just instantly adopts it. They don’t even hesitate -it’s like, “Ooh… new survellance technology? I’ll take that one and that one and that one and… you know what? Just give me the lot!”

And every time, I cynically reflect on the fact that Orwell was English.

Imagine Israel, of all countries, crying to the UN, of all organizations, about a purported “flagrant violation of narional sovereignty, international law and Security Council resolutions.”

I laughed out loud when I read that. As if that isn’t exactly what Israel does virtually on a daily basis, and has done for decades now, and while thumbing their nose at the UN the entire time.

I don’t.

Neither censorship nor reeducation would be generally voluntary, so somebody would have to be given the authority to mandate them.

There’s a simple test then for whether or not something is a good idea:

Think of the person or people or political party you consider to be the greatest threat to others. Then think of what they would do with that power.

Because it doesn’t matter what the original intent is - if such a power is granted, no matter to whom or for what, those people WILL, sooner or later, get their chance to wield it.