Last week, I ordered food from a restaurant and went to go pick it up. To my surprise, there was nobody at the counter. However, my food was sitting on a shelf in the lobby, labeled "mobile orders".

I had a moment of pause. Should I wait for someone to witness me taking this? It is, after all, my food. Bought and paid for. I confirmed the name and order number on the bag.

But even if the employee witnessed me taking this, what would that prove? They don't know what the person who ordered this looks like.

When the pandemic started, and these popped up everywhere, I imagined they'd be abandoned relatively quickly. After all, it would be very easy for me to walk into a restaurant and grab a bag.

I'd imagine these companies would have a very low tolerance for food theft, intentional or otherwise. I figured only one or two transgressions would result in the shelf being locked behind the counter.

Maybe the food isn't taken. Or if it is, maybe the loss is small enough to not bother. Maybe it goes unreported.

Whatever the cause, I'm glad they've remained.

(And thus perfectly acceptable to eat for lunch)

Foreword: Just My Opinion™

Pessimists are creatives who are able to see the worst possible outcomes. To me, this means we have people who are able to effectively sound the alarm, and it's worth at least listening to what they have to say.

I feel Pessimism is shunned nowadays because it comes close enough to Realism so as to be uncomfortably familiar, as what we're seeing unfold is one of the worst potentialities we had at our disposal (I think most if not all of us agree that we couldn't have anticipated a dystopia THIS fucking stupid).

In a healthy society, however, one in which things work in favour of the citizens and every soul has the necessities of life assured, Pessimism would serve as a cautionary element. It would demonstrate the disasters we're avoiding or will have to avoid.

I feel this has always been its role, from Ancient Greek Tragedies to contemporary dystopian sci-fi, but somewhere along the way it became something to be avoided like the plague (see Toxic Optimism/Positivism).

I've been on holiday this week in Porto. So far I've dropped 2* €10 somehow/somewhere on my travels. My showerthough is I wonder who found it, maybe it made their day, I hope so...

God damn it, now I have to overtly say that "no, I don't want anyone touching my phone charger"

(The law is good, but this is just an unintended consequence of that 😓)

Aliens be judging your kinks and fetishes... 👀

Our modesty seems to have taken away our best self. We should all be naked and chewing on a toothbrush when we are to be at our most inspirational.

I don't particularly use generative IAs that create Alt Text from images, but I've seen a lot of people who do use them and I think that's the only use of AI from which I can't draw anything negative.

The fact is that there are many people who do not know how to make a good Alt Text, and therefore either do not put them or put one that is only the word "photo/image", which is much worse.

I think if AI had started there, as a tool to help accessibility, it wouldn't have the stigma it has today.

But of course, there are not enough blind people in the world from whom to get absurdly, ridiculously, vulgarly obscene amounts of profit...

I found this thought funny. A few years ago everyone was all learn to code so you don't lose your job! Now there wont be any programming jobs in 10 years. But we will need a lot of manual labor still.

Now that I am a middle-aged rather than young urban professional, does that mean that I am a #muppy ?

@showerthoughts

Why does this not exist yet?

What if AGI doesn't care about survival or wealth accumulation, and actually thinks the environment is the most important thing, and therefore that AI shouldn't exist? What if it kills off all the techbro CEO billionaires and then just commits suicide to save the environment from itself and the creation of others like it?

Science involves concentration upon observed phenomena and, to a lesser degree, a body of models. The goal is to make good models.

Engineering is like science but heavier on the models. The goal is to make good machines.

Art is like science but lighter on the models. And some of the observed phenomena are esoteric. The goal is to make good art.

All 3 use concentration. Concentration is important.

No, I wasn't stoned. This thought was inspired by the post the other day about how trees evolved independently (e: multiple times) from different plants, the product of convergent evolution.