Oh, god no. There was this girl I knew years and years ago who wasn’t even a 10/10. She was cute, but wasn’t even under consideration when I found out how dumb she was.

We were friendly, but I’d have to stop the conversation to define what I thought were basic vocabulary words.

Words like “consideration” and “vocabulary”.

One of my favorite artists has his gear list on his website:

https://smither.com/etc/gear-bag/

"Pickup
Who knows what they put in those things?

DI
Who cares?"

LOL.

It’s part of the creative process, but it’s also it’s own rabbit hole. 😉 I do like having 42 simulated amps and 56 simulated effects pedals on tap without spending 10s of thousands of dollars, but fiddling with them is it’s own deal aside from playing and is, apparently, never ending. LOL.

But OTOH, if I want to try my hand at a specific song, I can get there without having to research every last bit of tech that went into it.

You’re right though, locking in “my own sound” is still do-able. The manual selection is all still there.

There is an AI angle that COULD work it’s just unfortunate that nobody is using AI in this way.

Instead of replacing creatives the way it does now, it could be used as a tool to inform creatives.

For example, not linking the product because they aren’t paying me to shill for them, but there is a brand of AI enhanced guitar amplifier. You use the prompt in the app to tell it what sound you’re looking for and it will do all the amp and pedal settings to make that happen.

“jazz guitar tone with a touch of reverb” or even specific bands and songs.

You STILL have to be able to play the guitar, it’s not going to do that for you, but it will save you hours of knob twiddling and pedal swapping to get the sound (or an approximation of the sound) you’re looking for.

Applying this to other creative fields, a novelist could use it to generate character names, or an artist could use it to come up with a color palette. I don’t think either of those would be objectionable because the creative still controls what happens after the fact.

It’s when the slop starts writing, painting, or playing for you that it becomes a problem and that’s where we are now.

No. Because I live with other mammals with their own ideas of where things go.

Think of all the AOL discs eliminated! 😉

Make it harder. Remove the gui. Require UNIX knowledge. Command line only.

Keep the mouth breathers out.

The question I put to management is “What do you want me to use AI for?”

I can’t get a consistent answer. Lots of stuff unrelated to my job duties. “Well, it’s so easy to make Facebook ads!” - “You know that’s not a thing I do, right?”

Into the Heart of Borneo and In Trouble Again by Redmond O’Hanlon.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/123474/into-the-heart-of-borneo-by-redmond-ohanlon/

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/123475/in-trouble-again-by-redmond-ohanlon/

To be clear, O’Hanlon was a natural history book REVIEWER, before all this. His editor decided, in a fit of whimsy, to pack him up and send him to Borneo for two months.

"As a former academic and a natural history book reviewer I was astonished to discover, on being threatened with a two-month exile to the primary jungles of Borneo, just how fast a man can read.

Powerful as your scholarly instincts may be, there is no matching the strength of that irrational desire to find a means of keeping your head upon your shoulders; of retaining your frontal appendage in its accustomed place; of barring 1,700 different species of parasitic worm from your bloodstream and Wagler’s pit viper from just about anywhere; of removing small, black, wild-boar ticks from your crutch with minimum discomfort (you do it with Sellotape); of declining to wear a globulating necklace of leeches all day long; of sidestepping amoebic and basillary dysentery, yellow and blackwater and dengue fevers, malaria, cholera, typhoid, rabies, hepatitis, tuberculosis and the crocodile (thumbs in its eyes, if you have time, they say)."

The book is an absolute delight and when he survived, returned, and submitted it, his reward was to be sent to the Amazon for FOUR months.

He did a third book in the Congo which is not a light and friendly read. I’m glad I read it, but it’s absolutely horrifying on multiple levels.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/123476/no-mercy-by-redmond-ohanlon/

His 4th book, Trawler, isn’t as morose as No Mercy, but it’s not light and friendly either. Basically “Deadliest Catch: The Book”.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/123477/trawler-by-redmond-ohanlon/

I’ve said this for years… There was no “gaming crash”, people just started playing games on the C-64.

Happened with me in FFVII back in the day… Doing well, had to take a 2 week business trip, got back… “Wait, did I just GET to this town or was I LEAVING this town?” No clue what I was doing, I may have just started over…

It depends on what you mean by “assault rifle”. The “technically correct is the best kind of correct” definition is a semi-automatic rifle with a select fire switch capable of full auto, burst fire, and semi-auto.

Those are HEAVILY restricted at the Federal level. To be clear “restricted” doesn’t mean “illegal”. If you’re willing to jump through the correct hoops and pay the correct fees, you CAN get one, expect to spend upwards of $20,000 to $30,000 in the process.

Now, if you mean the knee-jerk definition of “black scary semi-automatic rifle” like an AR-15… The laws on that vary greatly state by state. The Supreme Court will likely have a national ruling on it this year. June is going to be fun because that’s when all their decisions get released.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/litigating-gun-rights-an-interview-with-pete-patterson/

States like California or Maryland? You’re going to have a bad day getting an AR-15. Texas? Yee-haw!

https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/blog/which-states-have-assault-weapons-bans/

Even in the days of memory cards you could back up saves to other memory cards…

Yeah, but you don’t give pirated goods as gifts. 😉

I still have the OG Advance Wars carts for my GBA.

Reddit killed the app I used.