for the second morning in a row i woke up at 5am thinking about ai. this time i inexplicably had 'the logical song' by supertramp stuck in my head. the song is about the lead singer's experience of being sent to boarding school, but somehow my mind started to connect some dots and i've convinced myself that he predicted (or at the very least tapped into some sort of premonition of) the rise of generative ai... back in 1979!
the way the song critiques the education system of the 50s makes me think about the way that ai - and by extension algorithms - are homogenising everything, starting to strip language and culture of its colour:
when i was young, it seemed that life was so wonderfulin the chorus, it makes me think about how nobody seems to notice or care (they're 'asleep' to what's happening), and still use ai blindly to give them their words and answers and think for them:
oh it was beautiful, magical
...
and then they showed me a world where i could be so dependable
clinical, intellectual, cynical...
there are times when all the world's asleep,
the questions run too deep
for such a simple man...
won't you please, please tell me what we've learned...- this could be people asking this thing that contains seemingly all of knowledge - everything we've ever learned as a society - at our fingertips... but also the underlying question of - what have we learned from times in the past that similar systems have harmed the natural order of things... e.g. the education system, capitalism, fascism...
...please tell me who i am."– ai and social media algorithms are flattening our individuality, and somtimes it feels like we are all the same. some people also use chatgpt and other llms as a therapist - quite literally seeking answers about who they are.
the second verse feels particularly poignant to me...
watch what you say, they'll be calling you a radical– people who criticise or who are skeptical of ai get told that "they must want to hinder 'progress'" and gatekeep knowledge, which is almost precisely the opposite of what they're trying to say.
a liberal, fanatical, criminal
won't you sign up your name, we'd like to feel you're acceptable– the tech companies and the billionaires, industries and systems that have been co-opting ai all have something to benefit from a society that does not think critically, who will blindly follow any trend, advert, opinion, like 'vegetables.' they know a society like this won't fight back when they try to take something from us for their own power or gain.
respectable, presentable... A VEGETABLE (!!)
'cause i was feeling so logical– this outro is a bit spooky, because llms famously 'hallucinate'/glitch when asked to process sequential information... sometimes they literally can't count to five. okay, so probably roger hodgson didn't know back when he wrote this song in 1979 that it would become a thing, but he certainly tapped into a common disillusionment with the systems and institutions that we inadvertently find ourselves in, and that seek to control us... I feel that these lyrics could just as easily apply to corporate life under capitalism. but this is the beauty of music and lyrics, and what defines a truly timeless song.
d-d-d-d-d-digital
one, two, three, five
i still need answers about that outro, though.
thursday sep 11 2025 6:01am
i've woken up in full brain-whir mode again and i'm determined not to forget, so i'm writing this down...
i'm thinking about the rise of generative ai use and the homogenisation of language, and how we can protect our identites and our unique voice in a world where everything is starting to sound the same.
i almost feel myself getting more depressed and restless with each paragraph of ai-generated corporate 'writing' that i have to squeeze into a page layout. as a brand professional (something i'm increasingly trying to call myself... manifesting) i'm interested in how we can avoid getting lost in the sea of voices by avoiding ai generated content. this applies to myself as an individual as well. i don't want to contribute to the general zombie-fication of society that i feel coming every time i read or see ai-generated 'slop' - as its now so aptly named - either on a personal or professional level. is this what we want our children to get used to seeing? to not question the uncanny, and not be motivated to have a unique voice because ai/algorithms encourage them all to be the same?
call it brainrot, call it whatever you like, but the more i see it the more i fear from the world
an mit study suggested that when we use ai to generate something, we feel less and less connected and engaged with what it is we're writing about/creating. if we're not connected to our work how can we expect anybody else to be?
sunday aug 24 2025
i like hearing people whistle, especially when it's a seemingly made-up ditty rather than a song they just heard on the radio. it sounds like the outward expression of contentedness. no, not just contentedness... of gratitude;
how grateful I am to be alive today, with a mouth that can turn nothing into something by simply breathing in and out, and a heart that can pull a song out of thin air.
sunday aug 17 2025
i have a mug that i drink my chai tea out of nearly every single morning. on the mug is vintage-style illustration of a squirrel, with the phrase 'born to dilly dally' written underneath it. i love it. it's probably my favourite mug.
one of the things i love most about it is that it's unlike much else i own. by that, i mean i didnt buy it because i'd typed 'minimalist kitchenware' into a search engine, or because one of the many interior decor accounts i follow tagged the brand on instagram. i came across this mug while dilly-dallying in a bonafide brick-and-mortar stationary shop, on a shelving unit with about 20 similar mugs, each with a cute illustration, cartoon character, or a lightly-humorous phrase such as "do you want to see me cry? because i will" and "sorry i'm late, i didn't want to come".
i silently lost my mind a bit, took a quick picture of it and then – like an idiot – left it there on the shelf.
it just felt too frivolous and unserious a purchase for a soon-to-be-married woman in her late 20s who has a tumble dryer and a 30-year mortgage. i hadn't examined this potential purchase against a vague mental model of my own 'taste' after seeing it in one of @thishouse3000s reels.
but i couldnt stop thinking about this stupid squirrel mug for the whole day. i'd gone all patrick bateman... the matte texture, the satisfying shape, the squirrel's quiet determination to dilly dally... i imagined my husband bringing me chai tea in this mug, and the quiet smile it would bring to my face every morning – even bigger than the quiet smile that i always get when my husband brings me chai tea. i even whatsapped the photo to my friend with the message 'ngl i cant stop thinking about this mug'. it just felt meant to be. after all, i was born to dilly dally.
but how did this mug fit into the carefully-curated aesthetic i'd worked so hard to maintain? would it go with my stoneware plates from made.com (rip) or my "scandi chic" white ikea mugs? what would it say about my taste in drinking vessels to the 2-3 people who regularly visit?
i haven't lived a social media free life since i logged into tumblr for the first time at age 14, and now i was supposed to trust my thoughts and feelings when it came to my own taste? i needed an algorithm to tell me that this was the mug i needed for self-actualisation, based on half-snippets of data that have assigned me a corner of the internet and tell me "this is who you are, and this is what you want to fill your home with."
when i got home, i had a word with myself and ordered the mug online. why had i been questioning this object that i'd turned around in my hands and felt my heart tug a little towards it? because it hadnt been presented to me by a capitalist robot that i inexplicably trust to know me better than i do?
the experience of finding a kinship with a real, tangible, physical object – rather than a product in a two-dimensional ad in 16:1 resolution – had felt so novel to me that i managed to convince myself that this would be an impulse purchase i'd instantly regret. 6 months on, and i don't regret it even a tiny bit. the novelty hasn't worn off. in fact, i'm drinking from my mug right now (while dilly-dallying, obviously). looking at this mug still brings me a little bit of joy each day. of course it hasn't led me to full self-actualisation, but it does serve me a reminder – as well as tea, ha ha – to rebel against the social media machine and its reductionary idea of my "taste". i think that the reason we keep re-hashing the trends of the past is because we look at our parents and grandparents - how they cultivated their taste over time with each object they fell in love with in a shop window, a bric-a-brac box, or a shelf of mugs - and subconsciously wish that we knew ourselves that well.
so perhaps this novelty squirrel mug is exactly my taste, and i'm more than ok with that.
saturday 16 aug 2025
to remain innocent may also be to remain ignorant
– john berger, 1972
innocence is bliss
– thomas gray, 1742
