“Western culture”? 😂

And I heard in a public consultation meeting about bike lanes that… get this… Adding bike lanes would make it dangerous for kids to get to school.

What backwards universe did we wake up in?

Does America not have school buses anymore?

I’m in Canada, and yes, we do. In fact, the buses were having difficulty getting into the school’s parking lot because of the way the illegally parked cars were quite literally at the edge of the turn (leaving little space for the bus). It’s been sheer madness these past few weeks.

And it’s hilarious (not) when people put on their hazard lights to park illegally while they pick up their kid. I swear to the gods, if my municipality ever gave citizens the ability to write up parking tickets, I’d reduce our property taxes by 10% from the revenue I’d generate! 😄

For speeding, yes, you’re right. I was talking more about general inattentiveness, bad judgment, actual malicious driving behaviour, and poorly skilled drivers. No amount of infrastructure can correct that! LOL

Keep going. Every failed attempt makes him look like poor leadership material. Not that his words and actions make him out to be good or anything, but still. 😂

Graduating from school in Canada or the US is basically “Congratulations on surviving not being killed by guns or cars!”.

The way we design our roads psychologically encourages speeding.

I think most “major” roads are like that, but the school I have to get to is in a subdivision that isn’t busy. And people are still rolling through stop signs while looking at their phone. I think being in a car detaches people from the reality of what’s going on around them. Like playing a video game from behind a windshield.

It is not safe. At all.

That an area designed for our most vulnerable demographic is so dangerous that adults wouldn’t want to be in it says a lot about North American culture.

That’s honestly disgusting. Not only for the environment and public safety, but those missed opportunities to get some level of activity in your day are simply pissed away in a car.

Like, people are OK commuting by car for 1-3 hours a day… but a 20 or 30 minute walk with a dozen benfits? NO WAY!

A generative AI ouroboros accumulates error until its output is useless.

We’re already seeing this, but I don’t think that will stop people from using AI (with some human oversight). Countless articles are being generated each day using AI, just so that someone can publish a garbage website that gets a lot of views, and reap those sweet advertising dollars. The quality of the content on the internet is eroding, and i don’t think we’ll be able to put the genie back in the bottle.

I’m seeing more and more legitimate websites no longer using stock images, but AI generated images for their photo content. It’s just too easy, so why wouldn’t they, right?

I saw a teenager get hit crossing at a crosswalk in front of a school. Red light, driver in the left turn lane didn’t stop behind the line as the girl was crossing. She ended up on the hood and tossed.

I guess the only reason she wasn’t severely injured was that she was hit by a car and not a monster truck.

Even when making something new the AI has to be “trained” on existing material. They can’t make something from nothing… yet.

And that’s the important part: “yet”.

AI is fairly new, so it only has human-created datasets to work off. But at some point, it’ll either generate original content on its own, or rely on content already created by other AI.

The quality and originality of this content will probably be stale, but enough of it will be generated to make money and keep people interested, that I don’t think it’ll matter. The enshitification of the arts is rapidly upon us.

The thing is, we still have recognizable human voices, so there continues to be a market for that talent. But how long will that last? Once AI generated voices become good enough to create new, recognizable voices, it’s game over.

AI music isn’t inventing sick rifts or using new instruments together. Humans do. We’ll continue to make the better music

For now, perhaps. It really is only a matter of time before the “algorithm” in these AI music generation tools know what people like to hear, and creates music that hooks them. It doesn’t have to be a sick riff, just an earworm that keeps people hooked.

There still may be a market for live musical performances, and I’d still want to see humans on stage. But commercial music? It’s too easy for a movie or game producer to enter the prompt: “Errie, slow music with a focus on string instruments.” and be done with it.

Sure, some human input will still be required to program a new sound or to tweak the created content, but that won’t take the same talent or skill as our current artists.

The only way around this that I can see is to have “Human Verified Content” certification on music, movies, video games, websites, etc., and for people who want to support that content. If enough people simply get used to AI generated art/entertainment, then there’s no path forward for these professions.

Traffic infraction bingo sounds like fun! /s

To be quite honest, their days are numbered. AI voice generation will make these jobs completely obsolete in the next few years.

Don’t believe me? Just listen to AI generated music using the voice of famous singers. Voice acting by humans doesn’t really have a future, sadly.

Mosquitos have entered the chat.

But really, pollinating insects have been extremely rare this past year. It’s alarming, and nobody seems to care.

It was about blackface, which you know very well. No-one has ever been offended by “whiteface”, because of what fucking happened in history.

Not all white people share the same history, man. If you think that any white person is the same as every white person, then you’re being a real racist.

Nazis brutalized my family, so fuck you for thinking I would ever be ok with som “white lives matter” cunts. You are an asshole.

My dude, I hate racists.

I also have a sense of humour, so stuff like comedy and costumes aren’t places where I tend to judge people. If I did, I’d think that most black and brown comedians were racist, and that most white ones were pedophiles or rapists. But I don’t.

My comment was in response to the question about people using <insert colour> face during that time, and it seemed to be more common than some of us can remember.

I don’t know anything about the guy in question, and it seems silly to judge him based on a basketball player costume he wore on Halloween almost 20 years go. We should use some common sense here.

Well, just a few years earlier than this guy’s black face, a movie called White Chicks came out… two black dudes playing white face in an entire Hollywood movie (coincidently, filmed in B.C).

I don’t ever recall outrage over it, though.

That said, I guess we’re lucky that our politicians are only playing black face during costume parties, rather than wearing white hoods during regular business hours! LOL

I think everyone is misunderstanding the “kids” part.

The daughter is a teacher, meaning she has “kids” (i.e. in her classroom), but not “real kids”, as in, kids of her own. A strange way of saying it, but I’m sure that’s what she meant.

The no real bills part… that could mean anything. If she’s living with her folks and doesn’t have to pay rent, utilities, etc., then I can understand how a request like that could be taken poorly by the mother.

Still, posting it on social media is Karen-like behaviour.