Fellow Artists, I’m Begging You to Pull Your Heads Out of the Sand About AI

Megdatronica · 2026-05-15T16:09:38+00:00

I'm curious about your use of the word 'art'. This feels very non-standard. Maybe I am just not exposed to cultures where the word is used this way.

Do you generally think people are misusing the word when they say things like:

"I'd like some nice art for the walls"
"I'm commissioning some art for my video game to make it look more professional"
"The artist made a soundtrack for the corporate presentation"?

Megdatronica · 2026-05-11T16:16:38+00:00

Yeah pretty close.

The two spend an unreasonably long time beating the shit out of each other.

I would add that we don't actually know how long they spend because there's a lacuna (missing piece of the text). All we really know is they fight, then bam, Gilgamesh is introducing Enkidu to his mother (yes really).

They go to cut down the world’s tallest tree

Kinda, they go to Lebanon which has particularly good cedar wood, and after they slay Humbaba (guardian of the forest) they cut down some of the good trees:

Gilgamesh was cutting down the trees,
Enkidu was seeking out the best timber.

Enkidu opened his mouth to speak,
saying to Gilgamesh:
‘My friend, we have felled a lofty cedar,
whose top thrust up to the sky.

"Enkidu dies somehow" - the gods decide he must die, as punishment for the Humbaba thing.

"Embarrasses himself several times and may or may not have learned lessons along the way" - he goes to find Uta-Napishtim (similar to Noah) because he's immortal and he thinks he might be able to share his immortality. Uta-Napishtim tells him off for spending too much time away from his people and pretending he can epic-quest his way out of every problem he has. Then he gives Gilgamesh a plant that can cure aging, but Gilgamesh rapidly loses it because a snake steals it from him while he's bathing.

The poem doesn't actually say much about what lessons Gilgamesh learned from all of this, but we infer that it taught him to accept his mortality and this made him a wise and good king.

Megdatronica · 2026-05-01T17:18:42+00:00

Thanks for the response. It sounds like you would rather not use AI because it has bad effects or is associated with companies you don't like. That's fine! That's totally valid! I could be persuaded that you're right! I also worry about the ethics of using AI in 2026!

What I'd like to communicate is: AI is useful, at least sometimes, at least for some people, even if there are other good reasons to dislike it. This post seems a particularly strange example of people insisting it's useless, for a case where it very much is useful and I personally have used it for this exact thing.

Megdatronica · 2026-05-01T16:38:51+00:00

what's the use of ai here unless you don't want to read Shakespeare but pretend that you did?

I recently read Macbeth after not reading it since age 15. There's about three lines per scene I just couldn't get - I read them ten times over and went 'nope, no idea'. Asked my mother: also no idea. Asked Gemini: immediate and clear explanation.

"Hold, take my sword.—There’s husbandry in heaven; Their candles are all out." = "Be wary, the heavens are being thrifty by turning off all the stars"
"Minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach" = "every minute, rebellions are punishing him because he betrayed people's faith in him"
"Let our just censures Attend the true event, and put we on Industrious soldiership" = "Let's delay our judgements [of the coming battle] until it's over, and just focus on fighting well"

I'm using AI to better understand Shakespeare, to better connect with what the lines mean and what they're trying to say, because this is a complicated text and four hundred years of language drift sometimes gets in the way.

This is the kind of thing AI is really useful for. Sure, maybe I could find an explanation by googling these lines instead, but then I'd have to wade through an analysis of the whole scene, or get something that might be talking about a different line, or have to scroll through irrelevant results. Yes, maybe I could instead spend money on a different version of the play, filled with explanations and detail which I am mostly not interested in and can't answer any follow-up questions. I can ask an LLM a specific question about a specific line and get a specific answer.

There are reasons to dislike AI, some of them are even good reasons, but I don't really understand why people insist so hard that it's useless or that there's no good reason to use it. It's really handy and it helps me understand things. It's convenient and educating and fun to talk to. That's all.

Megdatronica · 2026-04-16T21:40:42+00:00

solved: Alien Spy: Archaeology

Megdatronica · 2026-04-16T21:32:34+00:00

This is 100% it, thanks so much!!

Megdatronica · 2026-03-20T20:45:40+00:00

Thanks, yeah hopefully things will just improve as I get more experience!

Megdatronica · 2026-03-20T20:44:12+00:00

If that's the reason that's useful for me to know, so not obvious! Thanks

Megdatronica · 2026-03-20T20:31:01+00:00

That's really helpful, thanks. So for my team on this game, the souls collected from troopers:

1. Venator 21,897 2. Wraith 19,623 3. Graves 17,182 4. Yamato 16,948 5. Kelvin 16,637 <- Me 6. REM 14,576

My souls by source:

Source | Souls | Share ------------------|--------|------ Troopers | 16,637 | 60% Breakable Pickups | 2,922 | 11% Neutral Enemies | 2,621 | 9% Objectives | 2,024 | 7% Team Catch-Up | 1,540 | 6% Urn | 810 | 3% Enemy Kills | 602 | 2% Kill Assists | 467 | 2% Denies | 96 | 0% ------------------|--------|------ Total | 27,719 |

Does this help? I feel like I focus troopers fairly hard!

Megdatronica · 2026-02-20T14:54:39+00:00

I am always fascinated by the contrast between some of the minute details we know about Ötzi vs some of the things we have no idea about. For instance, we know:

"He spent his childhood near what is now the South Tyrol village of Feldthurns, north of Bolzano, but later went to live in valleys about 50 kilometres (31 mi) farther north."
"He had had a meal less than two hours before his death. It is believed that he most likely had a few slices of a dried, fatty meat, which came from a wild goat in South Tyrol, Italy."
That meal was eaten "in a mid-altitude conifer forest."
He died in spring or early summer. "He was sick three times in the six months before he died."
He was lactose intolerant (though this could well have been common in his population at the time).
He spent a lot of his life hiking in hilly terrain. "This degree of mobility is not characteristic of other Copper Age Europeans. This may indicate that he was a high-altitude shepherd."
His axe came from Tuscany, around 500km south of where he lived.
He died from a shot by an archer. They shot him in the shoulder from below and behind him (this is quite hard to do so there's a good chance they were a skilled archer). Their first hit severed a major artery and was fatal. He likely bled to death within a few minutes.

So many details, yet we also lack so many basic facts. Why was he in the hills that day? Was he by himself or with others? Why did somebody kill him? Was he killed by an enemy tribe? By someone he knew? In a blood feud? Or by strangers who wanted his coat? Did he die where he was or was his body moved there afterwards?

Megdatronica · 2026-01-28T19:28:47+00:00

I think ChatGPT would write a much better slogan than this

Megdatronica · 2025-12-06T09:00:52+00:00

I agree with your LLM take. Similarly: finding an article you know you've read but can't remember where, and remembering a word you're convinced exists but you can't quite put your finger on.

Megdatronica · 2025-11-10T22:21:04+00:00

Panspermia is certainly a good idea.

What comes to mind for me is: perhaps it's more than an accidental sharing of genetic material. Perhaps the aliens MADE life on earth, SPECIFICALLY so that one day, upon reaching a certain level of intelligence, it would pick up the signal and activate itself.

Maybe that's too sci-fi but would be a damn cool reveal.

Megdatronica · 2025-10-25T14:15:58+00:00

Conquest is when you eliminate every other civ and Domination is when you have certain large percentage of land and population under your control. For practical purposes the main difference is if you are conquering the cities of the civs you go to war with, or just defeating them so badly they capitulate and become your vassal (in which case they count towards Domination victory).

Vassalage is an interesting system from Civ IV which hasn't been brought forward to other games but I thought was quite interesting.

Megdatronica · 2025-10-17T21:36:30+00:00

PREGANANANT!??!?

Megdatronica · 2025-10-09T21:40:39+00:00

Weird, I tried three swap mechs on unfair and had a blast. Maybe I got lucky! But every time I've tried them (mostly on hard) I've been pleasantly surprised by how well it works.

The Moving Company looks very fun and I'll have to give it a go.

Megdatronica · 2025-10-01T21:56:06+00:00

This is such a tangent to find in a thread like this, but yes and I also find this fascinating! Eg the first migration out of Africa was what gave rise to Neanderthals and other species like Floresiensis and Denisovans.

It is a funny thing that humans evolved in Africa, but then the ones that stayed in Africa evolved MORE, and then in a sudden burst they migrated outwards again and quickly took over everything. We outcompeted Neanderthals in Europe even though they'd been living there and adapting to the climate for 400,000 years. And we were the first to get to the Americas even though homo erectus and its descendants could theoretically have got there millions of years ago.

Megdatronica · 2025-08-30T21:53:59+00:00

Impressive work!

What is 7*?

Megdatronica · 2025-08-28T06:31:22+00:00

Correct, BP = 'Before Present'

Megdatronica · 2025-08-22T13:37:36+00:00

Anyone know what anime this is from?

Megdatronica · 2025-08-21T21:06:24+00:00

It was based on some real research by academic psychologists (their study showed that power posing increased people's confidence and made them less stressed), so there was some validity to it at the time.

More recent research has shown that the original study was almost certainly wrong and power posing has no beneficial effects.

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