This… requires a person to look at the profit numbers. To care about them, even. I’m not really sure what you’re getting at.

I think you’re saying that computers can be very good at chess, but we are the ones who decide what the rules to chess are.

Imagine however, that a machine objectively makes the better decisions than any person.

You can’t know if a decision is good or bad without a person to evaluate it. The situation you’re describing isn’t possible.

the people who deploy a machine […] should be accountable for those actions.

How is this meaningfully different from just having them make the decisions in the first place? Are they too stupid?

The comparison is the door-to-door evangelism, i.e., it’s really easy to tell that that phrasing has an ulterior motive. Kinda like how “Netflix and chill” does not mean “let’s watch Netflix.”

What I’m suggesting is that if we’re going to pretend that consumers are never victims of company practices, then emeralddawn specifically should never, ever, ever complain about shrinkflation. Or $80 video games, as far as I’m concerned.

But who knows. Perhaps they don’t.

Getting around people’s lack of willingness is the only way the year of the linux desktop will ever happen.

Like with global warming, people can just choose not to, you know.

“Uh, I bought my computer from Alienware. I don’t know what a GPU is.”

You aren’t being paid to give IT advice either.

The thing I love about linux people is their inability to abstract or do any kind of analysis.

— Me to somebody complaining about their depression.

I would like to imagine you say these same things every single time grocery store packaging gets a little bit smaller.

This makes you sound like a Jehova’s witness.

The main problem is that linux people are politically linux people, their morals and identity are strongly attached to their OS choice, and they have no social skills.

You can advocate for linux to windows people all you like, you just can’t be annoying. A lot of linux people are really fucking annoying.

I think it’d be nice if there was an OS-app version of the web browser middle-click. I never feel confused about whether an opened link is or is not taking focus because I shared my intent by which mouse button I used (left: open and switch, middle: just open).

so why the pretence that this particular shape, the “R. Mutt” signature, has significance?

Because reinterpretation is not an art historian’s job.

The original reaction is lost to time, dude. A modern audience is, broadly, already aware of the transgressive urinal, and so already more accepting of it. There is no recreating the piece. There is only recreating what it was.

If you think that’s BS

I don’t, other than it seems to be something you’ve written specifically to tick the boxes you think I’m looking for.

Would it baffle you to know I might consider this “critique” to be art where the image itself is not? I leave that as an exercise to the reader.

But anyway. Yet again, your contempt for the modern art world really betrays your jealousy of it. Do I just take your word for it that these critics have nothing to say?

If you think that the writings of these critics are smug, self-important hogwash, then why are you using their tools, the tools of the enemy, to justify to me why I should care about this talking cup?

Again, to the crowd: this is why what barsoap is saying is bullshit. It’s just a chess move to them. They don’t actually believe any of this. Their sole motivation is salvaging gen AI’s reputation.

buy a random [urinal] off the shelf, then proclaim it to be original.

This is profoundly offensive to art history, actually. A museum?

People go to great lengths to preserve CRT setups for old video games, but you’re like “nah, a TV is as good as any other.”

Dude, your contempt for art is insane. I’m telling you, you’re jealous that I respect the profane and “meaningless” urinal and not your AI toys.

Were they chuckling because the talking glass confuses and upsets the rule-of-three comedy technique being used?

I guess I’m talking to the crowd here because this is important: The reason this is notable evidence of AI and not human choice is because it is incoherent.

People know what a knock-knock joke is, and it wouldn’t work so well to say “knock-crack” for a chuckle but still expect me to ask “who’s there?” after. In comedy, and in visual art, the talking glass is an example of poor grammar.

A person, a human artist, could say knock-crack to me. Maybe they just have poor grammar generally. Maybe they did intentionally choose or ask for a giant talking cup for no reason, even though it harms the other joke they’re obviously interested in telling. But I flatly don’t believe this. It is far easier to believe this is random noise from the machine we already know generates random noise.

barsoap is reaching for the stars here to justify something they know is bullshit.

Oh my god.

Jesus christ.

I was thinking, “nah, that seems nitpicky, I’m sure a real person could write either.” But that is the entire setup for the punchline. I’m gonna rip my hair out.

This Excel joke is pulling on 100 years of surrealist cultural history? That’s incredible.

As a connoisseur, maybe you can explain why the oversized glass is talking about itself to me.

Why should anyone be interested in a urinal on a pedestal?

It is incredible how jealous AI-hornies are of the toilet.