self
exactly! I took this opportunity to start over from scratch (which is why I’m seeking recommendations) with Bandcamp and a pile of automatically organized and tagged FLACs in storage for when Bandcamp enshittifies (coming soon!), and YouTube Music on a friend’s account if I get truly desperate for a shitty recommendation engine
of all these options, the automatically managed pile of FLACs have by far the best API, because you choose what it is (and there’s some very good options even for streaming them to your own devices)
it’s a fucking tragedy what techbros, fascists, and gurus have done to the perception of what a trip even is. there’s this hilariously toxic idea that a trip must have utility or else you’ve wasted your time and material; these people will gatekeep and control how you process what should be a highly personal experience, because that gives them a subtle but powerful amount of influence over what you’ll take back from your trip. the Silicon Valley/TESCREAL crowd have even ritualized bad set and setting so much that they don’t need a guru personally present in order to have a bad fucking time.
the damage these fucking fools have done is difficult to quantify, largely because psychedelic research is either banned or firmly in the hands of those very same fucking fools. it’s very important to them that you don’t use your temporarily jailbroken neocortex for your own purposes; that you never imagine a world where they don’t matter.
they phrase it so your brain will think otherwise, but I just want to point out the maybe obvious so nobody else has to do a double-take at the quoted paragraphs:
their example of what an ultra-intelligent AGI could do is of a human speedrunner using a glitch to beat Minecraft in 20 seconds. this asshole is taking something humans are excellent at and saying “but what if AI could do this, and also what if Minecraft was real life?” this is literal baby shit. like, even tool-assisted speedruns are the product of a shitload of human research into the problem space, and the tool’s just executing impossibly precise game inputs programmed, again, by a human. this is another space where AI sucks compared with regular human effort.
and speaking of which, does anyone remember the early OpenAI and Google marketing where they had an LLM play pac-man or some shit at supposedly superhuman levels? can anyone dig up an outcome for any of those in the form of a record on any credible speedrunning site or during an event? cause speedrunning has a ton of categories including stuff like dog-assisted runs, where you train your dog to play the game, and it’s all considered valid as different forms of skill applied to the game. the one thing you can’t do is cheat, and they’re very good at verifying runs (ie, you must be provably using the method you claim, and you can’t splice video together or use emulator cheats to achieve a better run). so where’s the verified LLM speedrun records?
thanks to this article specifically, Ludic’s going on a podcast with Robert Evans:
I just agreed to go on a podcast on a whim, then a friend told me it is with the host of Behind the Bastards, and I spat tea everywhere.
My to-do list today said “go for piano class” and “prepare for rental inspection”.
I am unprepared for this level of prime time.
