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Alright, folks, I'm out.
Consider me the first Motte casualty to AI. No, I'm not planning on any self-harm. Quite the opposite, in fact. But reading about this shit is so depressing and anxiety-inducing that it's giving me a premature mid-life crisis, so I'm going to do the reasonable thing and take the grill pill.
As part of that reevaluation of how I've been spending my time, I've taken a look at the 15ish years I've been "Very Online And Politically Aware". Since the financial crisis in 2008, really. And I have to conclude that the investment of 10's of thousands of hours of my life has been basically a wash. I don't think I can point to a single tangible benefit to my life, it's all just sunk opportunity cost. Maybe a few memes pushed out, but thinking I inspired them is probably just arrogance. My lazy, slacktivist involvement almost certainly didn't matter for anything at all. Being Politically Aware is arguably the worst thing I've done with my life; I would rather have played more video games.
Even the insight porn is getting stale.
So combining these two epiphanies, I'm going to block TheMotte and SSC, and ACT and Instapundit, and unsub from any remotely political or AI-interested subreddit and block /all. Anything else I can think of or that comes up, I'm just gonna dip. (I would like some advice on how to block websites on chrome mobile for Android. The recommended apps seem to not really work the way they're presented.)
Because if this is the beginning of the end, of us becoming either obsolete or all dying, I would rather go out in a eudaemonic frenzy than wasting my time whining and worrying. I would rather double-down on being an amazing dad, and son and brother. I'll double-down at the gym, and run the best D&D campaign my friends have ever seen. I've had fantasy novels fermenting in my head for decades, I'd like to write a couple before GPT-X makes human creativity obsolete (and then I can have GPT-X churn out countless sequels!) Maybe I'll even try dating again.
And if and when the nanite disassembler swarms come for me, I'll go down on my feet knowing that I was a pretty kick-ass human, back when that mattered.
If anyone has suggestions for other things worth doing or being, or that satisfy that "check my phone while waiting in the line to pickup the kids" nudge that avoids my new no-nos, I'm all ears.
I've enjoyed this community a great deal, and think fondly of many of you. Thank you for contributing to making this a place where I felt at home. Maybe we'll have a grand meetup if humanity wins, and spend a subjective eternity having AI-moderated arguments about who was right.
And if any of you are in a position to do anything about the future - godspeed. We're all counting on you.
Thank you again. <3
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take this empty propane tank to ACE for a refill.
Good luck and Godspeed.
Lighter fiction would be my suggestion. Collections of genre short stories (lots of excellent options for sci-fi /weird fiction/horror) are good, but also most more generic fantasy or sci-fi would work. Gotrek and Felix for Warhammer Fantasy, Ciaphas Cain for 40k, Discworld series has worked for me, haven't read R.A. Salvatore's D&D stuff but I've heard it's the kind of thing you can pick up and put down as needed.
Basically just fiction that isn't literature and isn't aiming for realism. If you want to be extra careful, can exclude stuff published after a certain year, year chosen to preference.
Comics or manga could also work depending on preferences.
Is there any way to read the 40k books aside from buying them each individually?
If you're already taking the grill pill might as well take the piracy pill too. It also means you don't have to have that nagging "am I financially supporting people who hate me" thought in the back of your mind any more, which will help you think about politics even less.
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There are anthologies available collecting different novellas + short stories on the same theme.
I know for sure most of the Ciaphas Cain and Gaunt's Ghosts books are covered by omnibus versions, would assume others as well. For those their wikipedia pages include book order + which books are included in which omnibus, hopefully same for the others.
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