Whiskey Pickle

here for the good vibes!

  • 1 Post
  • 58 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 3rd, 2023

help-circle

  • wtf is “the Real”?

    the vast moronity of ai travelers can behave like civilized people, even when annoyed by the burdens of air travel, and news flash: it always sucked. I’ve flown for over 40 years, and even before 9/11 TSA security theater, before the shrinking seats and legroom and lack of inflight meals, flying was uncomfortable, tedious and awful. The difference today? an increasing sector of society believe they’re entitled to act like selfish assholes all the time and that the price of an airline ticket entitles them to treat the entire plane like their own home where they’re allowed to act, do, and say whatever they want, regardless of how the actions and behaviors affect anyone else— worse, because they know (or think) that, once in the air, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them. It’s that kind of entitled, selfish, and childish mindset that makes them believe they can lash out and attack others without consequences when the flight crew tries to hold them accountable.

    THAT is the problem now, and the discomfort of flying just makes these horrible people worse, it’s not what caused them in the first place. And people who act this way on flights also act this way in restaurants, subways and busses, movie theaters, and other public spaces where they selfishly don’t give a damn how there behavior affects others.

    the airlines can be blamed for making flying uncomfortable but not for the fact that these people are selfish assholes who resort to violence when confronted.


  • those are certainly all valid points.

    but there’s another side to this: the rise in extremely shitty and entitled attitudes that people in general have regarding their behaviors in public spaces, that being a creeping breakdown in basic civility and decorum.

    I remember a time when people would just get onto a plane, sit down, and endure their flight. air travel has never been particularly comfortable or enjoyable. there was always an unspoken social contract between fellow travelers to at least do what we could to not make it worse for each other, but now? so many people don’t give a damn about how their actions affect others, often taking very selfish action at the expense of others’ comfort which push the boundaries of even the most understanding person’s patience.

    removing smelly shoes, eating pungent foods, and engaging in many other annoying or obnoxious behaviors that air travelers simply would not have done 5-10 years ago at a far higher rate with a “fuck you” attitude isn’t something you can simply blame on smaller seats and less legroom. combine that with a flagrant disregard for in-flight staff and their instructions or attempts to de-escalate to the point of engaging in violence has reached outrageous levels. bigger seats with more legroom and serving in-flight meals isn’t going to make these people stop acting like animals. whatever it is that caused these people to believe that acting like entitled assholes is ok now did not originate from airlines trying to squeeze out a profit, even though it may be a contributing factor to making everyone else miserable.

    the people who act this way ON the plane act this way OFF the plane, too.



  • well, if you really want to get specific, it’s because large corporations with a vested interest in maintaining and consolidating IP rights for as long as possible while neglecting small artists and individuals were the ones in charge of writing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and then the US strong-armed most of the rest of the world into adopting most or all of it via compliance by means of a great many treaties, trade deals, etc. in the wake of 9/11 and the expanding militarization during the “War on Terror” at the time. it was pretty underhanded.

    Or, in other words: capitalism screwed the little people, and we’re still paying the price.




  • As a designer, there is a limited purpose to use generative graphics as assets in a composition for various purposes. I might want to generate a cloud background, or perhaps a small object to use here or there. Certainly not an entire composition, because they always come out bizarre or warped, or having some sort of weird hallucination in them. But generative AI can create, for example, a flower, or a building to be used in background, or to cover up an empty space. Once you place that item, then I would have to go in and touch it up a bit to make it look like it fits and adjust the lighting and fix any weird quirks that might have, but it’s a lot better than having to have a photographer go out and take a photo of it or to pay for a stock photo of it and license that plus every problem that comes with that.

    So generative AI tools in Photoshop, for example, can end up saving a lot of time and effort and money for licensing stock photos, especially when I only need a portion of it, but it doesn’t comprise but a small portion of an entire composition.