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TechTakes @awful.systems David Gerard @awful.systems 4mo ago

Elon Musk releases Grok-2 AI image generator for edgelords

pivot-to-ai.com Elon Musk releases Grok-2 AI image generator for edgelords

Grok-2 is the latest edition of Elon Musk’s Twitter chatbot, featuring a preview of xAI’s forthcoming image generator. This lets paying blue-check users “have some fun.” [Twitter, archive] Mo…

think I forgot this one

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Guess it’s appropriate that Musk should go from some sort of entrepreneurial tech guru who was going to save the planet to some right wing billionaire shitheel, steals “grok” from Heinlein, who went for sic-fi author darling to libertarian shitheel.
- Musk appropriating "grok" from Stranger in a Strange Land is on-brand for him, seeing as he fundamentally misunderstands Banks' Culture series and reduces it to "the one with the cool ship names".
  
  Edited for clarity
  
  @gerikson @cstross the domino meme with the small domino being “ESR takes over the Jargon File” and the largest one being “Musk destroys the parts of geek culture not already owned by Marvel”
  
  @acb @gerikson @cstross esr taking over maintainership and then adding in his own made-up terms and ugly politics really does feel like a harbinger of all this. It also feels similar in the way the institution (Jargon File/Twitter) got taken over and corrupted-in-place.
  
  @acb and esr still hasn’t fixed that http headers, html headers, and actual html content show three different, incompatible character encodings.
  @gerikson @cstross
  
  @Landa @acb @gerikson @cstross Maybe he thinks his Aunt Tillie should fix it?
  
  @m Well, seems like she's still busy with her guru meditation class or putting the wrong certificate onto cats.org, so it's still ISO-8859-1 pretending to be UTF-8 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  @acb @gerikson @cstross
  
  @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_
  "Taking Tesla's name is such an Edison move"
  
  I do chuckle a bit every time I see the logo. It really looks like an IUD.
  
  @gerikson @cstross
  
  Yeah he has no self-awareness at all that in the culture universe he’d be taken out by Zakalwe
  
  @szbalint @gerikson @cstross
  
  But Joiler Veppers was taken out by Lededje Y'breq.
  
  @szbalint @gerikson @cstross
  
  Now I think of it, he's also trolling for Gray Area.
  
  @resuna @szbalint @gerikson @cstross IIRC by-as-in-close-to Lededje Y'breq, but by-as-in-responsible-for the avatar of the Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints.
  
  But 100% with you on Musk = Veppers
  
  @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ As a member of The Affront, of course he would.
  
  @gerikson GSV The One With The Cool Ship Name is a vessel in The Culture though.
  
  "Why did you choose that name, Mind?"
  
  "Well you see I happened to catch this "TV" show on this backwater planet and it really stuck with me!"
  
  <avatar turns out to be a copy of Jennifer Aniston>
  
  @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ to be fair Heinlein had some fascist tendencies too even if Stranger In A Strange Land was just good (although I read it so long ago that I might have overlooked stuff)
  
  @blikkie @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ The bits about homosexuality haven't aged very well and there's a certain amount of "society shouldn't inhibit hot young women's natural desire to fuck curmudgeonly ageing authors".
  
  @chaucerburnt @blikkie @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ one of the tendencies that kept so much male written fiction from the mid 20th century from being truly radical. Weirdly a lot of Sci Fi is much more revealing of its time of authorship even to the decade than things like Pride and Prejudice or King Lear.
  
  @jayalane @blikkie @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ huge vision in the scientific sphere, far less on social issues - though despite the failures, I think SIASL still did better than many on questioning the social status quo.
  
  @chaucerburnt @blikkie @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ it was my first exposure to carney culture and tattoos. Actually reasonable prep for the 3rd millennium so far. I think the lessons are that the people in the powerful groups really can't escape the societal blindness that position entails, blindness of their own society and time, and that reading of works non-hegemonic authors is needful to find the most free and innovative visions of the future.
  
  @chaucerburnt @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ thanks. I read the book 20 years or so ago, so I don't trust any memory I have of it.
  
  @blikkie @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ to be fair to RAH, it's an ambitious book; he was trying to recognise and challenge society's assumptions, including his own, and nobody is likely to do that flawlessly.
  
  @blikkie @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ One way to read Stranger in a Strange Land is what happens when our society is visited by a radical pacifist (who knows how to protect himself). Another way to read it is "our society is stupid and we know better how it should work". I can see how Musk might be inclined to follow one of these interpretations over the other.
  
  @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ Wasn't that word coinedby R.A.H.?
  
  correct, see edit
  
  @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_
  
  And if you look at the drone ship's actual names, they're not even officially registered by these "cool" designations. So all fantasy and appropriation. Makes me wonder if his kid with the edgy name doesn't actually have "George", "Errol" or "Maye" in their passport...
  
  @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ rather than people use technology to consciously take over their gender expression.
  
  @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ he doesn't grok it!
  
  @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_
  
  It's the least of the things he appropriates. He also appropriates a chunk of the federal budget.
  
  @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_
  
  I thought it was a Heinlein reference.
  
  correct, see edit
  
  @gerikson @cstross grok was from the Heinlein thing about the psychic kid raised by martians, who starts a polyamorous sex cult. The same book that the concept of air suspension beds came from
  
  @Cuprohastes @gerikson @cstross I’ve great that described as “Heinlein’s later, post-talented stage.”
- @RememberTheApollo_ @dgerard he was only ever cosplaying as an "entrepreneurial tech guru" though

112 comments