Ann Droid is a bizarre show. S1 is only six half-hour episodes, so I can't rightly tell you not to watch -- it's short and inoffensive and easy enough to work through -- and I almost want to encourage viewing it. It's not good. It's not even consistent -- the show really doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it pro- or anti- AI? Are the characters good people we should root for or terrible people who deserve what they get? And the show (unevenly) splits its time between the elderly widower Sue -- who receives the titular Ann Droid so that she can stay in her home rather than move to an assisted living facility -- and her son Michael, an underemployed ne'er-do-well simping embarrassingly for the self-centered wife that cuckolded him prior to the start of the show's events. So it's kinda two shows, and they're both hella dark if you overthink it.

The show inexplicably encourages you to overthink it. Michael is so pathetic that our *introduction* to this man sees him picking a sandwich up off the floor after Sue drops the ceramic plate it was on, and he continues to crunch -- wincing in pain all the while -- after acknowledging that the sandwich now has bits of plate in it. (And no, Sue is not so doddering that this is an attempt to assure her it's okay -- she stares at her son in bewildered disappointment during the entire scene.) We're told that, prior to her husband's death, Sue's identity was defined by being a homemaker and mother -- but one can't help thinking she did a terrible job (either with guidance or with seeking accommodations for his obvious mental handicap) if this is the result of her mothering. I'm actually not saying more to avoid spoilers (eh, I'm gonna throw you a few to whet your palate), because if you're going to watch you *should* be surprised. The Michael show's resolution is insane. (more...)

Have a couple of reads I found interesting. The anti-AI crowd talks a *lot* about the so-called cognitive decline that results from using GenAI (for particular tasks and in particular ways, not that they much care for nuance) as if it's causing actual brain damage, a point that they'll maintain despite the studies not actually saying *that* and moreover hardly concluding that GenAI should be banned as a result of their dangerous findings. (One might recall the frequent allegations that watching TV "rots" ones brain in a meaningful way and the likely contempt with which we'd view anyone who believed that in a literal sense.) Anyway, these articles touch on the described phenomenon in a more sensible manner.

From singularityhub: Is AI Making Us Dumber? (more...)

So I've finished this season of The Vampire Lestat (aka S3 of Interview With the Vampire) and... meh? I admit that I haven't really been into this show since S1, where I did think the choice to make Louis a black man made for some interesting departures from the source material. (That said, while I think many similar criticisms derive from shallow/racist motivations, I actually do think that some of what I found interesting might have been better explored in a story not yoked to the Vampire Chronicles mythos and story scaffolding -- a "new" story, so to speak. That said, I maintain that every adaptation *is* somehow a "new" story and that these kinds of choices and deviant interpretations are valid whether I approve or not.) I recently noted just how much I hate the character Daniel Molloy, which probably does drive a lot of my dislike in this show even though it's easy to forget he even exists because he's entirely absent during the most significant story beats. And I admit to liking actually a fair number of the songs, and I do think they derive strength from the character relationships and motivations playing out in the music, but they're hardly enough to justify the rest of the show.

Anyway, final episode. The whole season has effectively been setup for Akasha's uprising -- a whole bunch of Lestat on tour, flashbacks with Gabrielle and Nicky and Marius and Akasha, patching things up with Louis, too much being interviewed on the tour bus by Daniel Molloy for no great reason except to shove this character down our throats during filler moments -- moving characters into the places and mental states they need to inhabit to play their parts when all hell breaks loose. Ending the season with Akasha would have been the logical -- and, to my mind, more exciting -- conclusion and cliffhanger. Instead, the season ends with filler. Not just any filler, but bullshit filler. Apparently fans like it? Certainly the kinds of fans who watch After Dark -- basically a half-hour talkback that airs after every episode for viewers who want a deeper dive into the episode -- like it. It annoyed me and the After Dark episode annoyed me even more. (more...)

I am cracking up because it took me until now to truly grok that half the reason I'm not at all** digging this Interview With the Vampire Lestat series is that I fucking hate this Daniel Molloy character. Like on some level he barely registers as a character worth caring about, so I'd be inclined to spout off about nearly every other character on the show before I got around to Daniel Molloy because every other character on the show is infinitely more interesting than Daniel Molloy. But also? HE'S IN THE SHOW A WHOLE LOT. LIKE A WHOLE LOT. He's a nothing and he's irritating, and when he's not irritating he's boring, and when he's not boring he's SCUM, and he's like half the show and somehow I'm really supposed to give a shit about his career and his family life and fuck all?? I can't with this character. And it took me that long to truly feel it in my chest.

**That's a lie; I kinda dig some of these songs and I'm eager to see whether they'll actually manage to avoid an Akasha problem with Akasha herself. It is very possible and they just might pull it off.

FB keeps showing me ads for Jordan Peterson's Peterson Academy. I know why it does that -- I seek out a lot of reading that someone who'd plunk down hundreds of dollars to hear Peterson ramble might also read -- but I do think it's nuts that there are apparently folks who'd plunk down hundreds of dollars to hear Peterson ramble. Judging from the Peterson Academy trailers -- complete with dramatic music and sweeping pronouncements like, "All your ideas are the ideas of dead philosophers. Every single one of them... The probability that you've had an original idea is like zero."

And it's such horseshit, because it's not *entirely* untrue -- many of your ideas when it comes to ethics and values, for instance, probably are shared by dead philosophers (and politicians and monarchs etc etc) who exerted cultural influence over the societies from which our own is descended. But ALL of them?? Surely he didn't mean ALL of them -- except he said "every single one of them." How is that not the point where most people tune out? Why take one's claim into obviously flawed territory? Is that supposed to be mindblowing, such that people plow forward to know more? Is that why the music is so dramatic??? (more...)