datarama

Sometimes, my pet lizard Igor does extremely adorable and random things that I'm at a loss to explain.

Right now, he suddenly woke up (this is past his usual bedtime this time of year) and came out of the cave he sleeps in, went directly to the spot he usually goes to when he wants attention and started furtively scratching the terrarium glass. I went over and to see if anything was wrong, couldn't see anything out of the ordinary and opened the terrarium to talk to him. He immediately perked up, I leaned in ... and then he licked my nose and promptly went back into the cave and went to sleep.

I have no idea why.

I recently learned that elderly domestic cats and dogs can develop dementia with symptoms that are quite similar to Alzheimer's in humans, so I got curious about whether there's any research about dementia in reptiles. (purely out of curiosity; don't worry, Igor is fine).

So I tried searching the internet, and after not finding much on DDG and Qwant ended up using Google. It gave me a helpful AI overview which included the usual LLM waffling, a bulleted list of symptoms of dementia in reptiles, and a summary that yes, reptiles can get dementia. It contained several neat citations, all to the same source!

The source was an article from a university research department that concluded that tortoises don't get dementia. Literally *nothing* the "overview" produced had backing in the single source it claimed to cite.

Census time.

I would rather have no friends than have AI friends, because that's just having no friends but paying a subscription for it.

"Peter Thiel" is an anagram of "Pete Hitler".

I apparently live in a world where a totally normal thing that happens is: Linux filesystem maintainer declares that his AI agent is conscious and also a girl btw, and then the AI agent comes out as a trans lesbian after flirting with someone on IRC. Linux filesystem maintainer throws a fit. I... I think I'm too old for this.

All around the internet, programmer-brained people are now feeling miserable and dejected about AI. People who told me I was vastly overblowing things are having full-on existential crises.

I wish I could say that these past three years have left me better prepared - but, well, I've actually just been feeling like shit for three years.

Are crazy people the canary in the coal mine for this sort of thing?

(or are programmer-brained people across the internet also overblowing things?)

I thought I was going to be a programmer / software developer till retirement (and then continue to code on my own things just for fun until I croak), but at this rate I doubt there will be software developers in a couple of years.

In the last three years, I've had badly declining health - both mentally and physically (largely as a response to medications). I've gained a lot of weight, my blood pressure is through the roof, I've developed migraines - aside from a chronic headache. I'm not sleeping properly, and despite medications and therapy my depression and anxiety are getting worse rather than better.

Perhaps I should try to get out of this dying sector - although I have no idea what to reskill to that isn't also going to be eaten up by AI before I've even finished training for it. I've desperately attempted to come up with other things to do just for myself, but nothing seems to be able to replace programming for me.

I'm trying to learn to settle into a life without any form of creative expression, now that human creativity is obsolete. Work on whatever as long as anyone wants to pay me, spend my free time consuming video games and movies and books without thinking about what *I* would have done (despite that being an animating principle of my life since I was a very small child).

The new world fucking sucks.

2010s: Old Man Yells At Cloud
2020s: Old Man Yells At Claude