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Ghostly Matter

@transcendentalmaggot

Maggie - 32 - She/Her
“Art matters. It is not simply a leisure activity for the privileged or a hobby for the eccentric. It is a practical good for the world. The work of the artist is an expression of hope - it is homage to the value of human life, and it is vital to society. Art is a sacred expression of human creativity that shares the same ontological ground as all human work. Art, along with all work is the ordering of creation toward the intention of the creator.”

— Michael Gungor, The Crowd, The Critic And The Muse: A Book For Creators (via sacred-dwellings)

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My supposition is that sometimes – perhaps more often than not – we think we know more about the experiences we don’t have than about the experiences that we do have, ‘frustration’ being our word for the experience of not having an experience. I am struck, for example, by how much people talk in psychoanalytic treatment about the experiences they have not had in the experiences that they have had; and how authoritatively, with what passion and conviction, they talk about what they have missed out on. It is not unusual, say, for each member of a couple to know exactly what is missing in their partner; and to know, by the same token, how their lives would be different, that is, so much better, if their partner would change in particular ways. This is my supposition: we live as if we know more about the experiences we haven’t had than about the experiences we have had. And certain ways of reading aid and abet this strange form of authority – the authority of inexperience, the conviction we gain from not having done things.

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If ‘frustration’ is the word we use for the experience of not having an experience we want, that peculiarly insistent form of knowledge called the ‘knowledge of deprivation’, then childhood reading in Greene’s terms answers to this deprivation. For children who love reading it meets a need; it gives them a picture, a drama, of what is possible, which becomes what they want. But by the same token, Greene’s description of adult reading – ‘In later life we admire, we are entertained, we may modify some views we already hold, but we are more likely to find in books merely a confirmation of what is in our minds already’ – is all about the aspiration to stay the same. ‘As in a love affair,’ Greene adds, ‘it is our own features that we see reflected flatteringly back.’

Missing Out, Adam Phillips

Whenever I get a puncture wound I feel so smug towards any tetanus that might be in there. They have no idea about my sick ass vaccinated immune system. While you were crawling in soil my cells were studying Tdap. Now die by the hands of my learnéd warriors.

it does more harm than good to prop up the myth of the ‘neurotypical’ who completes tasks cheerfully with no issues. this person is a capitalist fantasy. the more you define yourself in comparison to this myth the more you justify social structures staying the same with minor accommodations to the ‘exceptions’ and the continued pathologizing of discomfort under hostile conditions

Tech companies that have branded themselves “AI first” depend on heavily surveilled gig workers like data labelers, delivery drivers and content moderators. Startups are even hiring people to impersonate AI systems like chatbots, due to the pressure by venture capitalists to incorporate so-called AI into their products. In fact, London-based venture capital firm MMC Ventures surveyed 2,830 AI startups in the EU and found that 40% of them didn’t use AI in a meaningful way.
Far from the sophisticated, sentient machines portrayed in media and pop culture, so-called AI systems are fueled by millions of underpaid workers around the world, performing repetitive tasks under precarious labor conditions. And unlike the “AI researchers” paid six-figure salaries in Silicon Valley corporations, these exploited workers are often recruited out of impoverished populations and paid as little as $1.46/hour after tax. Yet despite this, labor exploitation is not central to the discourse surrounding the ethical development and deployment of AI systems. In this article, we give examples of the labor exploitation driving so-called AI systems and argue that supporting transnational worker organizing efforts should be a priority in discussions pertaining to AI ethics.

Shout out to my friend who spends every working day transcribing thousands of voice commands that digital tools failed to identify, and who has to do that transcription as consistent break-neck speed so that you think your voice activated tool works perfectly, and you don’t have to think about the reality of some low page worker somewhere listening to your voice command.

Source: noemamag.com