Back in college, one of the apartments I lived in had a ‘house rule’ about alcohol: all of it must be finished before another run to the liquor store was made. So, every few weeks there would be a scattered few bottles of mixers and stuff people brought over at one point and time, and we would have a night of making strange concoctions to finish everything off. We’d mix different types of alcohol into strange shots that ranged from somewhat enjoyable to completely undrinkable. It was a dumb college thing with completely forgettable (and, easily forgotten) results.

It was, for the most part, literal slop.

This is sort of what I see AI as in the long-run. Cheap entertainment for a night in college. At high levels of processing, yes, it will be able to solve complex math problems. But for your average consumer, it’ll be somewhere between an assistant and a joke—something the most uninspired kids at university will use as a party trick.

People will always want to discover and create. Nobody who isn’t financially invested in AI wants to see it take over the arts. Company founders talk about a future where people will have to work less—what do they think those people will want to do with their time? Nothing? Being creative is part of human nature, and I don’t just mean painting or making music. Some people want to build houses, some want to tend to a garden, some want to explore caves. All of this comes from curiosity about the human experience, and none of it can be replaced by a computer.

Yet so many resources are being poured into this concept that a financial collapse of the industry would take down the entire economy. The people in charge are sociopaths with no appreciation for human potential; they’re neck-deep in a god complex with only the idea for the evolution of ‘intelligence’ as a north star. People want to go to concerts and museums and visit cool buildings and archeological sites and experience reality—not the mish-mash of stolen art prompted by someone who doesnt’ want to consider anything about what it means to have a heartbeat.

Homes

Various from around the city over the last few days.

It’s the best time of the calendar year for sports: we’re in the meat of the World Series, both college and professional football are in full swing, and the NBA season has officially begun. There’s no shortage of something to see on TV if you’re into the general idea of, well, anything sport-related.

However, now that means you see more gambling ads than ever. The NBA just announced an official partnership with two major ‘prediction market’ apps. (Prediction market has to be the dumbest ‘just make sure we don’t call it gambling’ workaround ever.)

Even if there weren’t so many disgusting celebrity-packed advertisements for this shit, and even if every broadcast of any sporting event wasn’t filled with sponsored, real-time betting lines, the fact remains that gambling addiction is a real thing that is being treated like nothing at all. The media in the United States has laws in regards to marketing alcohol and cigarettes, but when it comes to gambling, it’s not only unregulated, but these companies are allowed to sponsor sporting events that people bet on.

I don’t know anyone who likes sports who supports any of this—most people I talk to find it all infuriating. But I do feel for the people who have a gambling problem out there, because this can’t be easy. I know a guy who goes to GA (Gamblers Anonymous) and watched him go through a six-month relapse a couple years ago. Every day it was hours and hours at the tables, up thousands, down thousands, wild swings of financial fortune and loss in rapid succession.

It just feels like these companies are counting on people like this, waiting to take their money, regardless of the consequences, and the leagues and broadcast networks are all-in.

I don’t often dole out the money to see a ‘real’ concert when Los Angeles is so full of incredible music that takes place in clubs for like $20, but Chelsea Wolfe’s last couple albums have been complete bangers and her live show did not disappoint. I saw her in a hotel basement bar in Portland on her very first tour and kind of lost track of her music after that, but damn tonight is showing me I’ve been missing out.

(She also brought out Shirley Manson to do “Seethe,” which was also pretty great—a perk of seeing a show in LA, I guess.)

Rain on Larchmont

The past two days have seen some much-needed, long-awaited rain—mostly because the temperature has been down in the mid-70s.

The recent weather—the intensely hot summer and the upcoming rainy season—is all from a ‘super El Niño,’ but this one they’re saying is so immense it’s earned the nickname of a Godzilla El Niño. While whether or not it’s a direct correlation to the climate crisis isn’t possible to prove, studies show it’s probable.

As the heat in summer increases we’ll need an increasing amount of power to stay cool, which plays into the whole energy debate that is at the center of all this. But in the winter the problem in LA is something else entirely—the existing city infrastructure just can’t handle rain. Every time it floods more than a couple inches, entire streets flood and mudslides threaten many areas across the region.

And that’s the thing about the climate crisis—for so many years we’ve been calling it ‘global warming,’ and so the general image that comes to mind is just the temperature is going to rise. But the weather is going to threaten all kinds of infrastructure around the weather, and I don’t think many people appreciate the causes and effects of weather systems (and how much destruction they can bring). Today, I’m enjoying the rain, but tomorrow, we might all be underwater.