LSR
October kicked off with LSR 2023 aka The 8th International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots, an academic conference of which I am on the planning committee.
Id like to say it went off without a hitch, but I have complaints. For whatever reason, Ive decided to offload them from my monthly update- so if youre interested in how a sex robot conference goes wrong,
CLICK HERE.
WFR
In other academic pursuits, we got a lot of responses to the Call for Submissions put out for the special arts and poetry edition of the World Futures Review I was asked to co-edit with one of my favorite persons, Dr Marcus Bussey. Dunno if I've blabbed about it here before but its meant to showcase art and poetry made by futurists, but has morphed into a collection of writing that:
½ applies art to futurist practice (creating art to explore possible futures);
½ applying futures practice to art (eg., analyzing film tropes about the future);
½ correlates process to art (hippie dippy stuff), or
½ is art itself by way of creative writing, poetry and images.
and while one or two papers did address generative AI, surprisingly none of the submissions utilized it.
Crafts & Media
I spent a large amount of my freetime making
products and graphics for the etsy store Ive dragged my heels on opening. I also created a new page on this site where you can download some of the files Ive used for past cricut projects- its hidden under the gluebottle icon in the menu, or you can go to
cricut.html.
Fall Reading List
During October I happened upon a book called Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada, a fun, weird novel about linguistics, which I wouldnt necessarily recommend, but I didnt have a bad time reading it. The book has reinvigorated my exploration into Japanese writers, and Ive noticed that when it comes to novels im most drawn to books from female writers, part of me thinks its because they tend to get better cover design. The kind of novels I like to read are ones that aren't too serious and take place in, or close to, present-day (even better if they talk about social media/email), with some allowances for breaks from reality. The kind of thing the Japanese can do best (see everything by Haruki Murakami).
That all being said, with apologies to Clark, i did have to DNF No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood- surprising since it ticked all the boxes i just mentioned, and came recommended by a friend that knows my taste pretty well. I just couldnt get over the style. First off, the pacing- everything is broken into chunks a few paragraphs long at best, so I was never able to find myself swimming through it. More importantly, the writing was just soo flowery, as to be maddening. i constantly felt like i was witnessing the author trying to suck her own authorial dick. Allegedly, the second part is supposed to be better, and ive kept the book laying around to guilt me into finishing it, but picking up the other book I mentioned, and consuming it so quickly, came as a relief after what was meant to be a short break.
As of now Im reading Shit Cassandra Saw, a book of short stories I take in during my smoke breaks, and I have two novellas next in queue, parade by Hiromi Kawakami (which is tiny and illustrated; i have no idea what it's about), and The Factory by Hiroko Oyomada.
Bad Press
A funny thing that happened that I suppose is worth documenting, some folks I know ended up in "the news".
First I found out that an acquaintance of mine had been arrested in the Jan 6 Seige specifically for smoking weed in a senators office and trying to abscond with a bottle of booze, which he tried to pass off as "just throwing some papers".
He represents himself as a photojournalist, documenting political events like border camps and migrant caravans. I had long believed that when he showed up to events like anti-vax and pro-trump rallies he was simply there to provide a neutral depiction of what was happening. That benefit of doubt i had extended finally snapped in half when i read a few articles covering his trial, citing his disdain for Biden (which is fine) and his belief that the election was stolen (not very fine).
[Article 1*] [Article 2]
Next up, my boss went on an emotional rollercoaster I bore witness to via discord DMs after discovering the generative art detection tool was getting mentioned in the press.
First was The New York Times, which listed his AI Art Detector as a tool among others doing the same job, and mentioned his lack of response to a request for comment. Apparently the article had been written some time ago, and he missed their request altogether, spurring him to create a new company and a website to go along with it.
Then came 404Media, and while less well-known, is more of an authority on tech news, particularly as it relates to AI, and a source he happens to admire. Let's just say they did not look favorably upon his creation. Let's just say they said it was a tool to spread anti-Palestine propaganda. le yikes.
He requested to speak with the journalist (about thresholds, transparency, and the degree to which the results ought to be trusted), who to their credit did ammend the article, but would go on to have the same take (or so i am told) during a 404media podcast. Left dejected, the company and website was scrapped. This was all in the span of less than a week.
[NYTimes*] [404Media] [podcast]
Miscellany
Picking passionfruit in israels backyard while avoiding the giant, angry, hissing tortoise that roams the orchard.
Downloading an untold number of fonts from
fontesk whenever I want to procrastinate, then installing and organizing them into collections whenever i want to procrastinate again.
NSFW 
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This year also marked my folk's 40th spin around the sun tolerating each other's driving, and despite my mom being supremely pissed at my dad over a comment about a chair(?), we had a lovely dinner at Mr. A’s, which I had actually never been to despite its sign being an iconic part of the san diego skyline.
