Tracking toy tariffs

Damien said:
True. But I don't get that either. People are tripping over themselves to take a bullet for these goons but aren't even interested in listening to any of them talk for more than the length of a TikTok video.


It's probably time to just admit that the Republicans won. Taking three decades to systematically destroy the public education system and use Christianity as a tool to create entire generations of credulous lunatics worked. Now the 'Christian' party doesn't even have to hide their corruption and obvious lies because their entire base is too fucking dumb to know what's going on anyway.
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I always wanted to be an optimist but any shred of it has been beaten out of me in the last twenty years or so. My dad, a VERY progressive Boomer whom I call the last optimist on Earth I still respect, said maybe 15 years ago "I really thought your generation would be the ones to be better," and now I'm pushing fifty looking at the generations that followed mine thinking they somehow got even worse and it's because we've been pushing our education system through a meat grinder since the 80s and critical thinking skills are gone. Fox started it, TikTok put the final nail in the coffin, and anyone with good critical thinking skills or pattern recognition has to just be prepared to spend whatever years we have left being gaslit and watching the country burn around us.

I imagine I'm one of many people on this board who was THAT FRIEND who was pointing out all the shit happening to set us up to fail for the past few decades. (Just remembered that my high school yearbook quote in 1995 was "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." Christ, I've been a miserable naysayer forever.) But we've definitely hit a point where saving everyone doesn't feel possible, cos a lot of people just want to drink the Kool Aid or walk into the fire or whatever. Protect yourself and who you can, cos a lot of the country is willingly sticking their head in a noose cos God and Fox and Trump told them to.
 
I don't know if this is tariff related or not.

Apparently there's an 80% off sale at Sideshow right now.

I'm trying to get a $350 Black Widow for $80. When I go to check out I get a pop up that says "Maximum purchase of $80 USD limited. Cannot complete order."

Is this some tariff thing?

The countdown clock on the sale has shown 1, 2, 3 minutes left for the last two hours so. It all seems a bit weird. But then high-end Sideshow stuff is not my area of expertise.....
 
docsilence said:
. Fox started it, TikTok put the final nail in the coffin, and anyone with good critical thinking skills or pattern recognition has to just be prepared to spend whatever years we have left being gaslit and watching the country burn around us.
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Someone who reports to me wanted more responsibility. I know they have a fairly decent social media following for poetry, so I offloaded some writing onto her. Someone else asked if they could prove themselves. I offloaded some onto him.

Both couldn't deliver. Turns out the poems are AI written, but the prompts are hers, so it's her "thoughts and feeling still". Other one just had no clue. I asked how he did it in school. AI.

He asked me how I did it before AI.

"I just wrote my own thoughts out."
"Oh. How do you get to do that?"

Honestly, they're good workers and quick witted kids with good values. I blame everything you said. I am going to realign them.
 
altcunningham said:
Someone who reports to me wanted more responsibility. I know they have a fairly decent social media following for poetry, so I offloaded some writing onto her. Someone else asked if they could prove themselves. I offloaded some onto him.

Both couldn't deliver. Turns out the poems are AI written, but the prompts are hers, so it's her "thoughts and feeling still". Other one just had no clue. I asked how he did it in school. AI.

He asked me how I did it before AI.

"I just wrote my own thoughts out."
"Oh. How do you get to do that?"

Honestly, they're good workers and quick witted kids with good values. I blame everything you said. I am going to realign them.
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The Authors Guild (working d-list author here) just put out some surprisingly effective "ethical use of AI" guidelines I can share - they really do lay down the line between creation vs. just asking the machine to spit out words, and where those words come from (OTHER PEOPLE) and the fact that you can't copyright the output so it's never going to be yours. Happy to send you the link if it'd help. Consider the writing world is basically fighting for its life, the guidelines are able to, ah, remain calm and speak in a way non-pros should (hopefully) be able to understand.

What kills me is that they got to working-age adult level without understanding how to put thoughts on paper. Glad you're realigning them because it feels like the system failed them before that. Generative AI is only a few years old, and not knowing "I wrote my own thoughts out" feels like the whole system never told them they have wings they can spread any time they want to.
 
I'll take a DM of that when you get time! Thanks.

I illustrate, write, and play music and my stance is AI is it's just a tool. It's not going away. So I want to work with it or around it.

Too many people want it to be their work, and that I have no respect for. It's exhausting explaining to people that the whole reason AI can do songs or Ghibli or Dr. Seuss parodies is because it studied them ad infinite and... Y'know, a person created that in the first place for it to learn off.

I've tried AI just as a gopher for gathering sources or aggregating info, but I find they all can get lost and misinforming very quickly once you start adding plates to spin.

Anyway, pair that reliance on AI with the fact people don't even want to check secondary sources or confirm evidence, and it just sucks for the things everyone around me wants to use it for.

That Chicago Sun Times book list debacle infuriated me solely because there should have been three or five people doing editing and confirming in that publication chain.
 
I used to work on projects like the Sun Times cockup and yeah, that was underfunding leading to abdication of responsibility. They (or rather Hearst, who made the insert) own that humiliation. But those inserts have NEVER been appropriately staffed or funded.

I can't abide by generative AI but then again my life's work has been fed into it and I'll never get that back, so I'm biased and disgusted by it in general. But I also cover technology part time and NON-generative AI has a ton of use cases (how about an AI that looks for irregularities in cancer screenings and basically says Hey Doc, you missed something over there! That exists, interviewed those guys last year.) But I also know there's no escape from it. Nobody will ever respect the arts cos they never have; I am resigned to that. We're just meat in the sausage for tech companies now.

My new favorite game though is proving that AI searches are only useful if you don't know much about the topic. AI has gotten D&D rules wrong for my players five times this month to the point they're actually opening the fucking book instead of using AI for answers now, and it definitely told me Stalker and Snake Eyes were Native American last month. Trying to teach kids to verify not trust is going to be hard though, because that popup box is so tempting if the user doesn't want to take a step further to check the accuracy of it.
 
akajomiha said:
As my kids would say...we're cooked.
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It's all pretty skibbidi toilet ohio, really.


docsilence said:
The Authors Guild (working d-list author here) just put out some surprisingly effective "ethical use of AI" guidelines I can share - they really do lay down the line between creation vs. just asking the machine to spit out words, and where those words come from (OTHER PEOPLE) and the fact that you can't copyright the output so it's never going to be yours. Happy to send you the link if it'd help. Consider the writing world is basically fighting for its life, the guidelines are able to, ah, remain calm and speak in a way non-pros should (hopefully) be able to understand.
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I'd be interested just as a curiosity. And as someone that would love to be a writer one day - maybe if I can retire and therefore have any actual time for writing.

My thoughts on AI are pretty simple; Spellcheck is an AI -tool-. Using stuff like a spellchecker or a program that can learn to find entirely missed words or incomplete sentences or whatever? That's fine. It's an assistant. Once the AI is doing the actual work and all you're doing is telling it what you want to end up with - which is how most people are using AI these days - that whole thing can fuck off.

Also, like... it's a meme at this point but WHY the FUCK are we even teaching AI to do artistic stuff that we ENJOY doing when we could be teaching AI to go buy my groceries for me or do the yard work. Like what the fuck? (I know what the fuck - corporate greed, because Capitalism destroys everything good in this world.)
 
Damien said:
It's all pretty skibbidi toilet ohio, really.



I'd be interested just as a curiosity. And as someone that would love to be a writer one day - maybe if I can retire and therefore have any actual time for writing.

My thoughts on AI are pretty simple; Spellcheck is an AI -tool-. Using stuff like a spellchecker or a program that can learn to find entirely missed words or incomplete sentences or whatever? That's fine. It's an assistant. Once the AI is doing the actual work and all you're doing is telling it what you want to end up with - which is how most people are using AI these days - that whole thing can fuck off.

Also, like... it's a meme at this point but WHY the FUCK are we even teaching AI to do artistic stuff that we ENJOY doing when we could be teaching AI to go buy my groceries for me or do the yard work. Like what the fuck? (I know what the fuck - corporate greed, because Capitalism destroys everything good in this world.)
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Just shot you the link in a DM.

The author / artist world is in a never ending fight right now, trying to explain generative AI is not spellcheck, nor is it a tool for cleaning up your layout. We're simultaneously dealing with having our careers set on fire by tech, but also having a witch hunt that's accusing us of being AI if we use the word "delve" or know how to use an em dash. (Hint: those are signs of AI cos AI is trained on writers who USE THOSE. Argh. Dumbest timeline. We're in the dumbest timeline.)
(EDIT: Occurs to me that talking about being in the dumbest timeline in the tariffs thread actually keeps this post on topic, because... dumbest timeline.)
 
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As a writer and an artist, I've had to start including a bunch of WIP shots of my artwork to prove it's not AI. I'd rather castrate myself with a spoon than use AI , let alone put my name on whatever the computer makes. But I guess I'm glad that they actually care enough to want proof. On one hand it's kinda insulting but on the other there are already people out there selling AI as if they did it.

But the writings on the wall. The future will be AI apps that people will use to make their own comics, movies, video game etc. There will be pre generated prompts, etc. We'll always have human curated media and stuff generated by "experts". But I think little Jimmy of the future will sit down and say "I'd like a superhero film, but rated R. Make it realistic, with an A24 arthouse style. Make it a team movie. Download the Tom Cruise pack, but cast him old, like a grizzled old Tom Cruise, as the main character. Should have a tragic ending, but with a sparkle of hope. Take the rest from my taste profile, but give me something newish. I want to be surprised" And in 15 minutes their movie or 9 episode prestige TV show will be ready. You'll likely be able to upload and share what you generated, and people will upvote the best ones.

There will always be old school creators, but we'll be like going to the theater, or vinyl records. There for the few that care. But I'd bet money that the new entertainment technology will be AI allowing you to be the creator.

Or whatever comes after the current generation will nope out entirely and we'll see an analog revival.

Anywho, got another package in from China. No tariff charge or bill so far. I do not know whose been paying the import fees, but it hasn't been me. Wouldn't be surprised if they simply didn't have the staff to go through and bill for all of these packages.
 
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Still waiting on my package from Cool Toys for the JoyToy newest wave. It shipped on 5/31 and hasn't updated since the 3rd. Am I being impatient?
 
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