Is there a term for a society that has all the wealth, technology, industrial knowledge, and manpower readily at hand to be a utopia and despite that, leans hard into dystopia?

I’m enjoying this as well. I may be broken.

I didn’t even catch it until you explained lol, the explanation did actually make it funnier for me

It reminds me of surrealist paintings crossed with the darker stuff Fuseli and Goya painted. It gives me a feeling of nostalgia for things I really enjoyed but haven’t thought of for a long time, by reminding me of all of them at once even though whatever the prompt was, probably is not directly related to any of them.

Specifically, just looking at it the first time reminded me of a bunch of fantasy and science-fiction story arcs I like all mixed together, with world-building magic or tech, like the Cosmere universe of Sanderson, or the Discworld, or the Hainish Cycle, or Dune; all the portals to different worlds and ways to fold time or space, like the wardrobe to Narnia + the Subtle Knife rifts + The Ways & Telaranrhiod + the Dark Portal to Draenor + the machine in Primer + ansibles and NAFAL travel + spice. The 3 main figures remind me of the Dathomir witches, but also the 3 witches (at a time) in Discworld, the main Maiar in LotR, etc.

It makes me think about all those at once intertwined and how much I enjoyed getting lost in each story the first time through, but how it doesn’t conform to any of them individually, and then try to imagine what kind of different world-building series could come out of it without completely ripping off any one of them. Like, how Shelley and Polidori and Byron inspired each other and spawned both Frankenstein and every modern vampire saga, how Robert Jordan talked about being inspired by Tolkien, how Tolkien and Lewis ran their stories past each other as they wrote, how Sanderson was inspired by Jordan and even completed his WoT saga, how basically every school of young witches/wizards series and instant communication across space was inspired by Le Guin, and makes me look forward to discovering the next author who writes like any of them who I haven’t yet stumbled on, or the next game or movie or show that mimics that style well.

Wheneved I look at the abstract circles & triangle triptychs, I think of Abbot’s Flatland, so I like those ones a bit more than the still lifes, but not as much as something like this image. I do really enjoy Mondrian’s colorful straight lines and I can’t explain why, and tbh that might be the easiest style for AI to replicate. And I’m fine with that, bc a nice quality Mondrian print was obscenely expensive up until about a decade ago, due to moronic copyright laws that didn’t benefit him or even his children at all, since he didn’t have any. I would love for the programmers and prompt writer of this image to be able to make money off its creation/copyright while they’re alive, so they would be inspired to make more like it.

I love it, too. Your pigeons are always so well-behaved!

I’m going to go scrub my tub with scouring powder now. Thank you for the motivation.

Exactly. People already enjoy AI-assisted art in many other forms and they don’t even realize it. When they find out, will they stop enjoying it? They don’t seem to have stopped enjoying autotuned or computer-generated music, or CGI movies, or practically every artistic photograph made in the past 30 years. It’s an arbitrary line in the sand.

That could be said of much art from cave paintings to modern art, but the important part is that art is subjective. The main issue I have with the people complaining about AI generated art is, they only seem upset about it after they find out it’s AI generated. If you really have the ability to see the difference, maybe you should be judging these contests. The judges had absolutely no idea until it was pointed out to them. If that bothers people, they shouldn’t place any value in that competition.

People enjoy paintings with modern pigments and canvases and synthetic brushes as art, autotuned music (and other post-recording fixes) as art, photographs that use filters and image/color/artifact-correcting software as art, and I see no difference in prompt-tuned AI-generated art. It’s a technology that makes it easier for the artist to arrive at their desired result, and it has the ability to inspire emotions and thoughts in the viewers, in the same way.

I’m guessing there is art you enjoy that I might not, but I am happy you have that available to you. It’s funny to me that people are so strongly against something so innocuous. In that it inspires such strong emotions, it’s arguably more artistic than the hand-painted submissions the judges found lacking.

I like it, it’s more interesting to me than most of the boring “original” paintings people try to sell at art shows and online, and almost all of the stuff I’ve seen on people’s walls in their homes. Not another triptych with 4 circles and a triangle, or a lone tree on a grassy hill, or a bowl of fruit and a wine bottle.

This hurt my heart as someone with a semi-annual meeting to discuss SMART goals and progress coming up this week.

You’d think someone would’ve invented carbon livoxide by now. What are these chemists even doing?

It’s true for leaders in general. The best leaders I’ve had were people who didn’t want to be, and each person I’ve seen focus on “leadership skills” and trying to climb a corporate or other power ladder has been abysmal at it.

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Kiefer Sutherland, two last names, bad name for a boxer.

Tommy Douglas sounds like the name of a boxer. Two first names, good boxer name.

Wait what vegan cat food debate? Cats are obligate carnivores, what insanity is this?

Followed instructions but verification failed, seems like nothing happened except dick got stuck in toaster again. Using Arch, btw.

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Oh wow, really steep fines, less than one year’s salary of the whistleblowers they fucked over in several cases. Less than the yearly compensation of the executives who should be held criminally liable in every case. Essentially no penalty at all.