What does everyone else do with their knicknacks? Little toys or figurines, bag and phone charms that are nice but you're not going to put them on your bag or phone, pins and badges you don't wear but still like, etc? Right now I have a bunch of mine in a box but that definitely feels like knickknack jail where they go to be forgotten.

Ash McAllan shared 10 hours ago

Honestly, it's wild but I think that the idea of AI becoming conscious and super intelligent and taking over the world and destroying it was wishful thinking. Every time an "ai" "breaks containment" in the news I realize that the real threat is the machine taking over the world and destroying it without ever becoming conscious or intelligent. It shouldn't really have been surprising looking at the caliber of people already doing the same. Really the idea it would have to become intelligent to take over was an illusion created by the myth of meritocracy. All it ever really needed was the ability to take actions unaudited and a lack of moral restraint, like the humans.

Ash McAllan shared 8 days ago

Thinking this morning about the poem Warning by Jenny Joseph and the way that the women of my generation around me have all been so eager to declare themselves old women, or describe themselves with words like "nana-core", etc.

While society devalues and marginalizes older women, many millennial women and even some gen Z women I know have been quick to adopt the mantle, at least as part of a bouquet of identities we festoon our selves with, as a way of trying to escape both the violence of being valued for the youthfulness of our bodies, and the constraints of the performance of womanhood in general. Instead we see that the identity of the elderly woman, as someone society no longer has any use for, allows for comfort, mischief, joy, and often community, and we seek to claim that freedom to live for ourselves.

When I am old I will wear purple and put brandy in my tea. I will solve murders and spray paint breasts onto fences. I will laugh with my friends and feed children sweets.

And so I have chosen to be old ever since I was young.

Warning Scottish Poetry Library