I haven’t spent enough effort understanding ActivityPub to come up with something coherent. But i often find myself with similar thoughts, although for me its usually focused on “would it be possible to create some kind of service-agnostic ActivityPub client?”

to be clear I’m quoting the Rolling Stones article that was linked

In my opinion, you would be better served reading a history of Duchamp and a study of the piece rather than taking for granted screenshots of random people on the Internet. It’s true that we don’t actually know if Fountain is actually a readymade sculpture or not but the idea that most art scholars believe that it is not a ready-made sculpture is simply untrue. In any case, whether or not it is actually a ready-made sculpture doesn’t really have a bearing on its quality as an artwork. On the contrary, the whole point of the piece is to demonstrate that it is not important who actually made the physical object which represents the artwork.

Now that you understand that it is not a conventional opinion that Duchamp secretly made Fountain himself, I would like you to reconsider your answer to the question. And if you don’t believe me that it’s not a conventional opinion, I invite you to consult with literally any encyclopedia that has an article on the piece.

This is literally just people speculating. He definitely made replicas of it later but the official story is the original piece known as Fountain (which eventually was lost) was a standard urinal purchased at a New York hardware store (J L Mott Ironworks).

And whether or not he actually made it is kind of besides the point. Like the whole point of Fountain is it demonstrates that it doesn’t actually matter who the specific individual is who made the physical manifestation of the object which represents the artwork. Like even if he never made replicas of it, even if we knew with 100% certainty that he literally just bought a urinal and submitted it to an art show that “accepts all submissions” just to see if they really would accept it, it would not diminish its quality as an artwork at all. On the contrary, it would only better serve the point it’s trying to make.

I guess what made me find this weaselly language especially sickening is I have long criticized the tendency of people to refer to killing inconvenient animals as “euthanasia” and I would usually ask people if they could imagine calling doing the same thing to people “euthanasia“. Well, I guess this person is happy to.

I definitely read the whole post. Maybe you can let me know what I’m missing. From what I can see, someone asked why a guy buying a urinal and then signing it gets to be art but not an AI generated image. Another person responded by saying

I would say the difference is that intent is not controlled by the artist […] When you’re holding a paintbrush, or sculpting clay, or whatever else you’re doing, you’re controlling the tool and manifesting your intent through it. With AI you aren’t. There can be intent by the creator but there’s no intent in the tool.

But how does any of that apply to Duchamp’s fountain? He did not have any control over the inputs that went into making the urinal. He didn’t hold any clay. He didn’t even paint anything unless you wanna get cute about what a signature is.

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade endorsed euthanizing unhoused people suffering from mental health issues who decline getting help.

Why do journalists do this sort of thing where a guy will literally say that we should murder homeless people and then they try to dress down their language to the point of dishonesty? Euthanasia is when you help something die that is in horrible unyielding pain. Not when you kill something because you don’t know how to take care of it.

I think it’s really weird how people who are categorically opposed to considering AI generated to be “art” seem really uncomfortable with the idea that some art can just be really bad or mediocre.

Like, when using a traditional medium, every movement you make in an individual moment and every factor from the materials you use to the conditions you are working under is contributing to that creation.

And you think that this applies to buying a urinal off the shelf and then signing it?

Are you actually understanding the question though? Do you understand that Duchamp did not sculpt the urinal, but literally just bought one already made and signed it?

Did Marcel Duchamp play some kind of role in the manufacturing of this urinal?

I would not, if the “someone” was Gucci itself, and the materials were only different in how they were made.

This is literally an official commodore product. There are original Commodore engineers involved with this latest iteration of the business. And when they put a 6510 core on the FPGA, that fpga has in a very physical sense become a bona fide 6510.

I guess I just don’t understand what it having an AMD chip has to do with anything. I just assumed you thought it was being emulated, my bad if it’s not the case.

You know that an AMD FPGA is not the same thing as an AMD CPU right?

It might not be a “first edition” but it’s definitely not a “knockoff”.

Social level opinion: While I hope it is successful in making cruelty free living more accessible, I hate what lab grown meat represents, and I hate the idea that human beings are so self-centered that the only way they would give up meat as if someone else made an exactly perfect replication of it. I also unfortunately do not think it’s going to succeed, because even today if you served somebody a bunch of different burgers made from different animal meats, and in there you also included a beyond burger, I doubt that person could identify which one was vegan, unless they are some kind of meat connoisseur. So why wouldn’t I expect people to just convince themselves that whatever imperfections are going to be in the lab grown meat are a dealbreaker?

Practical personal level opinion: I wouldn’t have a problem with lab grown burgers, hot dogs, and most sausages. To me these are basically just “processed protein tubes and patties”. And if that’s what the party was grilling then i won’t complain. But I also think that if I’m at the grocery store and that’s what I want to eat that week, I’m really just gonna care about the sustainability and the price to quality ratio more than anything. Now if it’s just a cut of meat on the other hand with gristle, connective tissue, a grain, that just skeeves me out. But I wouldn’t say it offends my morals or anything, just seems kind of grotesquely self-indulgent and offputting

You’re right, and I didn’t notice the first time I skimmed the article that this is only mainly affecting commercial roofing, so thanks for the perspective!

That’s great, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s easier to sell a roof to a person when you can point out all of its flaws from the ground.

You know I just thought about this for a second longer. Maybe you could just get them to stop by convincing them that people are more likely to replace a lighter colored roof sooner because defects and wear are more visible

Maybe they’re also selling HVAC systems lmfao