Only if it were 100% local.

We’re just hanging out waiting for trick or treaters to show up.

SAILING MISHAP!

Reminds me of Roller coaster tycoon.

DOCTOR OCTOGONAPUS BLAAAAAAGH

H*R has irreparably ruined my vocabulary. I’ll often say “ooh, dere is two of dem!” whenever there are unexpectedly two of something, and “NOOOTHIIING!” when I check outside for a package and it’s not there yet. Also “ARROW’d” as above.

I also often say “hellot” instead of “hello”.

Was just about to post this exact question lol. Judging by how often I say it, I’d have to say

IMMA FIRIN MAH LAZER!

Art (in the broad sense) is communication. I don’t mean that in the sense of delivering a moral, though of course it can do that too. It hit me recently that that’s why I hate AI generated content, even if it’s indistinguishable from the real thing. There’s no other person at the other end of that communication, no intention to provoke a particular feeling, impart a lesson, or engage with a good story.

People call it parroting but I think that’s an insult to parrots. Sure a parrot isn’t inquiring about your day when he says “How ya doing?” But he is trying to socialize with you by calling out to you like he would another flock member.

Normies. I want decentralized social media to grow but to do that it needs people who aren’t self-selecting.

LOL I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to share an audio somewhere but reddit/random forum/whatever site wouldn’t let me. I’d have to make a video with that as the audio track. I don’t get it. Audio invariably takes up LESS space than a video with the same audio. Not even uploading but just embedding, too.

Months ago I ran across an interesting trick for quantifying the purchasing power of a wealthy person vs an average person, by scaling down their net worth (or salary IDK I’m not a money-ologist) then compare the thought process you’d undertake when purchasing an item of equivalent value.

So to get in the mind of a billionaire, lets say you have a net worth of $60K, so divide 60,000/1,000,000,000 to get 0.00006. Now how much does a jet cost, let’s say 1.5 million, just pulling a number out of thin air. Scale that down using the 0.00006 multiplier we get just $90. So a billionaire puts about as much thought into buying a jet as you might purchasing an OK pair of shoes or a water flosser. Not quite trivial but also not something you’re likely to mull over for weeks.

But let’s reverse that. What’s something you wouldn’t think twice about bying? Maybe a $2 candy bar from a vending machine? Divide that $2 dollars by .00006 to get over $33 thousand dollars. That’s a pretty common yearly gross salary for a lot of skilled workers, and a billionaire treats it with the same care you’d treat with a $2 vending machine purchase.

I’m into ham radio, which can be a deceptively expensive hobby. Some of the other guys in my local club have a significant amount of money, or at least a lot more money than I do, and that really does effect how they think and act. They’re all perfectly nice and helpful people, but sometimes they give advice that simply isn’t useful for a guy in my tax bracket. “Just get a resonant antenna” or “just put up a tower” they say, as though I have the land for a massive HF antenna with ground radials or a 40 ft tall mast. Bruh I live in a single-family home in an HOA.

Disclaimer: I only speak for myself. Blindness does not respect class, creed, or culture, so every blind person will have their own opinions and experiences. In my case AI hasn’t shown much tangible benefit beyond what clever algorithms are already doing, for optical character recognition etc.

Beyond blindness My knee-jerk reaction to AI is strongly negative simply because it’s another locus of concentrated societal power (Who else is there besides Open AI and Anthropic and maybe Groq? IIRC everyone else is just using one of those on the backend. So that’s what, three people, a few dozen if you include the other C-suite folks at each company, pulling a lot of very consequential levers) But that opinion is probably par for the course for your average Lemming.

When looking for videos to listen to in the background I always prioritize “low quality” stuff. They don’t have the perfect mic or studio setup, don’t meticulously edit out background noise, talk in a less polished manner, don’t have a background music track. Prior to the rise of AI it was because such videos were less overstimulating and felt more down to earth, now it’s because I know they’re humans.

Don’t have any recommendations you haven’t mentioned. As a blind person I listen to synthesized speech nearly all day long, so I’m pretty good at catching AI voices. I think the ones trained on IRL people have a “choppy” or “quavering” quality. I’m not an audiophile or computational linguist so I’m sure there’s a term for this I’m missing, but the overall audio has a particular tell to it.

It’s getting harder, though. Now I listen for things like odd prosidy, stuff like odd pauses or inflections or inconsistent pronunciations.

For example, the phrase “So I went to the store” could have a number of inflections that encode info about the ongoing conversation, whether I intend to continue speaking or whether I’m yielding the floor, whether I’m asking a question, indicating surprise, etc. AI is getting better at this but it’s not perfect.

Pronunciation of proper nouns or words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently in different contexts is a good indicator. Just the other day my mom was watching some AI-generated listicle and the voiceover mispronounced the name of a city after correctly pronouncing it every time before.

I just hated my old job (inbound call center agent) so hard that any anxiety about going back to school was overshadowed by relief at not having to talk nonstop 8 hours a day again.

Unfortunately I’m at a bit of a crossroads with my current job (IT) because both Pearson and Cisco make test-taking miserable if you have a disability. My current job isn’t under threat, but I let all my certs lapse because I’m just sick and tired of their nonsense.

I’m going to Gamalon to aid him.

Pfft listen to this young’un with multiple cells over here.

Listen to this hairless bipedal whipper-snapper. Back in MY day we THREW poop at one another. 🐒