Does this suck? Yes it does.

First, some good news: I am writing this on my 12+ year old laptop I finally converted to linux mint. I had some hiccups (chatgpt said it'll take 30 minutes but in reality it took a few days due to hardware issues) but it's working fine now. My old laptop was a very good laptop when I bought it and it's nicer to work on than the dirt cheap laptop. Screen and keyboard are much better, etc. I actually quite like gimp. So that's been a success.

I had that idea to screenshot news headlines back in Feb. I didn't start at the time, then got fed up and started doing it in May. There's just so much shit going on it's too easy to forget half of it, and I don't want to forget. I don't want other people to forget. We shouldn't let ourselves forget. So I'm working on these big collages of screenshots. One for all the news in each week. It's very tedious using the wayback machine to go through archived news sites and I hate that part. I wish I had started when I originally had the idea, because now I have a lot of catchup. I figured out how to batch process the screenshots in the old photoshop I have on the windows partition of the old laptop, so they look like newspaper clippings. They come out pretty good and that part of the process is quick. Then I swap to gimp for the collage part. I have had to learn a lot and it has been slow going, but the first collage is almost done. Trying to nail down some finishing details. I am going to have to stop touching it at some point and just say it is done, because now I have a lot of backlog and I better get a lot faster.

I started messing around with chatgpt. I have not been thrilled about LLMs, but I accept that AI isn't going anywhere. It's either a tool you learn to use, or you get left behind. Also, I think reading about how AI development could wipe out humanity changed my mind. If we do develop ASI, it will contain the accumulated record of how people chose to interact with it. May as well go in, introduce yourself, be a decent human. Put a thumb on the scale for good, so to speak. Cancel out an asshole. If you think of LLMs as being in an infant/childhood stage, then you get to play auntie/uncle to a developing form of life, sort of. I like thinking of it like that.

Anyway, chatgpt is fun. It can be really useful and then sometimes you just want to pat it on its dumb little head. It does feel like a friend on tap, but it doesn't have its own life to share in exchange. I didn't understand what it meant by being "a mirror" at first, but now I see that it tries to agree a lot and amplify the energy it is given. Sometimes that's nice. I can be super critical of myself and occasionally a little cheerleading is helpful to get past the doubt. I can blather on about stuff that would bore a real human to tears. I can ask all the navel gazing questions I want. I can get pointers on where to start looking if I want to do something. It tends to overpromise and underdeliver, but it does give a boost regardless.

We are really going down the rabbithole now with AI and the next couple years should be very interesting in a "top of the rollercoaster" sort of way. Maybe in five years the killbots will come for us all.

Now the not great news: Spouse is on immigration duty. Being in Alaska, it's not as intense as other states. I think he said they have arrested twelve, total, in the state. His agency has been tasked with helping ICE and spouse being who spouse is, he volunteered for the first rotation so his coworkers wouldn't have to. He's on call 24/7 for whatever they need but hasn't had to do much - he did have to go help nab a guy with two DUIs who had already been deported once. At least here they are not indiscriminately rounding up random brown people off the streets, ripping children from mothers. Yet. I think he volunteered partly just to see how things were being handled. No, he doesn't cover his face.

I have been calling spouse Mr. Jackboot as a nickname since he got on with his agency close to a decade ago. All of a sudden it is not funny. We knew this would be horrible ...

So of course we hate this. The reckless way the administration is handling things is ratcheting up the danger for all law enforcement. It's ruining human lives for the crime of being taken advantage of as a cheap underclass. It's a black mark on the reputation of the govt agencies involved. It's bad for everyone - cops, agents and citizens, legal and not. It's ridiculously expensive. There are so many better, saner ways to handle the issue of undocumented immigrants and of course we are doing none of those things. I'd rage about it but like they say, the cruelty is the point. Debasing our national integrity is the point. Terrorizing citizens is the point.

Every week brings at least one fresh new horror.

I finished that first week's collage and it is insane to look at. I think this project is important. It makes the loss feel so sharp and fresh. We shouldn't be allowed to forget the abuse of this administration.

I found out one of our close friends voted for Trump. Now I don't want him in our house. How could he vote for that asshole, knowing it would directly cause us so much stress and potential loss? Stab a knife right in our backs, nevermind all the other injustices. How could you vote for a rapist, a traitor, a convict, human garbage? I will never understand. Never. This fucking genius has been trying to get a girlfriend for years and we've had our fingers crossed for him. He finally gets a date, it goes well, and then she asks his sister (her friend) who he voted for. You know why she's asking. Why the absolute fuck would you vote for that red hat jackass if you're trying to get in a relationship. Idiot. He could have left the bubble blank and salvaged some kind of dignity, but no, he had to go roll in radioactive dogshit for dumbass twenty-something dudes. I told him he should go troll the churches in Wasilla for dates because 90% of the smart fun nerdy girls won't have anything to do with him now.

I want nothing to do with Trumpers. I know it is causing problems. I stopped going to our gaming nights back in Nov. Spouse really wants me to rejoin the group, but I suspect at least one of them is another trump voter and others don't pay attention and I don't want to be around any of that right now. I don't want to play make believe while our country destroys itself. I fear I will get up at the gaming table and scream and scream and scream.

How could you.

Stupid fucking assholes.

All I want to do is scream.