h a l f b a k e r yMagical moments of mediocrity.
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Registration wall in link |
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Post an archive link? (Save the article on archive.org or similar and link to that) |
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it's not a paywall, registration is free though there are a limited number of articles per month under that plan. |
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I'm impressed with their setup, they're making it work |
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I could free the story, [a1], but how will I finance my next European vacation :) |
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The process is fascinating, I'm trying to understand the algorithm still -- I'm impressed Medium is pulling this off, or at least making it appear to work with investor money or however they're doing it. Tempted to think there's a Ponzie scheme aspect to it. |
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But imagining how HB could have worked with their kind of scheme is interesting. [xenzag] would be raking it in :) |
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Bottom line for the interested -- I write poetry. I rarely write articles such as the one linked. If I can continue to shamelessly self promote -- if you click on the Amazon link in my profile, you'd see it's well reviewed and all -- in the best month ever, with no ads, I'd sell a dozen copies -- not shocking. My poems made 40+ dollars on Medium in roughly 3 weeks. It should be impossible. Probably is. But it appears to keep going. |
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The article I just linked -- you'd recognize the theme if you've ever read my annotations or ideas -- has already paid for my membership fee -- and will make more over time. |
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thank you a1 -- next one called Sonnet Station is coming out in 2026 and is actually, shockingly enough, from a uber-liberal Seattle based publisher :) |
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Please put it all here. These trips to member or pay sites are not good. The links generally are expositive of the half-baked offering, acting like receipts and further curiosities. Putting the meat of the "idea" elsewhere doesn't make sense to me. At least duplicate here what you have now withheld from us. Curious minds want to know, but not enough to fish around. Was this a good idea? I have no idea. I was captivated by the title, but quickly lost focus when 3rd parties and their websites became involved. |
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It's good to know that AG and [tc] are the same person; Kindle has been urging me to buy AG's book for a long time now. Now I know, maybe I will. |
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Regarding "Medium", the economics are a little puzzling. If it's mostly creators who pay for memberships, and if membership fees are the only inflow to the fund from which creators are paid, then it's a negative-sum game. On the other hand, if the intention is to build up a base of paying subscribers who don't create anything, then why would they choose that service over other paid content? |
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Maybe the answer is, because other paid content is not written by our favourite people, such as [tc]. |
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[pertinax] -- I am super curious about the economics and am trying to understand it. The simplest explanation would be investor money in typical VC fashion. |
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Keep in mind that the top podcasters -- say a Scott Galloway -- typically have more than 100K followers on Medium. Presumably that would generate meaningful returns. The primary goal of the site would be to get you to become a member and then climb the membership fee pyramid. |
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Substack is a bit different -- I do plan to try that at some point this year |
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I'm auto-bunning anthing with AI art. |
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Can we all agree to illustrate our ideas whenever possible? The technology is here, let's use it. |
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I'm boning anything with ai "art" |
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I'll address that. There's a lot of fear that AI, robots, algorithms etc will replace human creativity. |
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It'll replace some aspects of human illustration or expression OF that creativity but creativity itself isn't at risk, on the contrary. I'll explain. |
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I had a skill replaced by technology when I was a kid. I was a draftsman. I used a series of led pencils whose tips I'd shape with sandpaper. I'd use rulers and straight edges to draw and I was very good, it's how I made my living as a teenager while all my loser peers were going to the sheep herd, I mean, school. |
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But then I started using a computer to do my blueprints, the TRS-80 (known as the "trash 80"). I was the first draftsman I knew of in my area using this. I'd bring in blueprints to the planning and building departments and everybody would say "How did you make the lines so varied in thickness and have typing for the notes instead of lettering?" |
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So my designs didn't suffer, in fact the creative aspect of what I did was greatly helped, but the physical skill I spend so many years perfecting was obsolete. |
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So why isn't AI going to replace human creativity? I'll let you figure that out with an example. I won't even explain it, I'll let you do that. |
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You have a choice of watching two football games. |
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Group A - The players are comparatively horrible compared to the other group I'm going to describe. They're slower, they're flawed, they are un-predictable in their play by nature of the very fact that they kind of suck compared to this other group. |
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Group B - These players are so incredibly phenomenal in their skill as to be poetry in motion. They're faster, more accurate, they throw the ball twice as far and much more accurately. |
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So who are you gonna watch? B of course, right? |
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Let me add a piece of information I left out. |
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B is robots, A is humans. I don't need to ask which group you'd watch now because nobody would give a shit about a bunch of robots knocking each other around, who cares? I'd watch a minute or two just out of curiosity, but... actually maybe 30 seconds at most, as would most humans. |
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Now you might say "But what about that great show from years ago Battlebots? That was mechanical gladiators." No, that was humans fighting on a level of ingenuity, design prowess, problem solving. THAT'S who we were watching. |
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Same with art. Illustration of an idea doesn't take away from the idea, it adds to it. But it's the human creativity we're attracted to, because we're humans. |
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That being said the job of graphic artist is as dead as the job of draftsman. It's in its infancy, but I'd tell any young person to not waste their youth getting an education in that dead trade. |
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Now creative art made by hand? That's probably going to be more popular than ever. Why? See the football analogy. |
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Ask how much an actual hand drawn version of my robot bee would be worth compared to the AI version that took all of 15 seconds or so to create? A hand painted version of this would be worth many thousands of dollars. My version is worthless. (link) |
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The laws of supply and demand factor in too. We'll always love great hand made art, humans playing sports, making music, writing poetry etc. |
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Because we're human. The human bond from art, sports, communication etc is as strong as ever. |
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AI art? Who gives a shit about anything but the idea behind it? If the idea is cool, great, if not, great AI art isn't going to help it. |
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ai is nothing more than a box of wires sitting in a bland data centre. I will only reward the additional efforts made by those who take a lot of time and effort to generate their work. Even poorly rendered drawings made by human hand are superior to the slick, heartless outputs of ai. I suppose in the end it depends on your standards. Give me analogue over digital every time - real dog over Boston Dynamics robot dog. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" |
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Clearly you didn’t read what I wrote which specifically and succinctly addressed that. |
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And right after this conversation, a friend of mine who's currently having a bad time financially posted the linked art he created and asked if anybody wanted to buy it. |
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I told him he needed to make 300 signed, numbered prints and sell them for $250 each and use his situation to draw interest in his art. The story behind it is interesting, and generating interest is the first step in selling something. |
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Now if this was created by AI, it would be worthless, but it wasn't. It was created by a real human, and because of that I think it's a masterpiece that people would want to invest in. |
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The coincidence of this coming up right after a debate about AI vs human art is pretty incredible. |
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Like I said, AI art won't replace human art, just human made graphic art representation of ideas where the art itself isn't the point. It happened to a skill I had, draftsman so I know what I'm talking about. Graphic artist jobs where a company just needs a picture of their product or illustrations of systems or sequences are dead. Hand made art from humans might even be revered more than ever. |
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