{"id":1180,"date":"2025-07-18T12:46:47","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T18:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cultofdarian.com\/blog\/?p=1180"},"modified":"2025-07-18T12:46:50","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T18:46:50","slug":"my-god-its-been-so-long-never-dreamed-youd-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cultofdarian.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/18\/my-god-its-been-so-long-never-dreamed-youd-return\/","title":{"rendered":"My God, it’s been so long, never dreamed you’d return…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We had a busy day yesterday, and didn’t get to do all the “fun” stuff I had hoped as it took much longer at Verizon than I thought it would. I did, however, manage to get my Google phone exchanged so that line is taken care of, and today the phone I ordered to install GrapheneOS<\/a> should be arriving – hopefully unlocked this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve successfully managed to avoid Twitter all week, save one time when I logged in to respond to a DM – but I didn’t doomscroll. That said, I also learned, last night while setting up my new phone, that Google apparently had my Facebook password cached and when I accidentally clicked on a Facebook link in an email it took me right there and logged me in. First time on Facebook since 2011. Since I was already there, I took the time to download some old photos and gave a canned response to a few messages: “I didn’t actually mean to log in and don’t plan to again – you can reach me at XXX-XXX-XXXX.” I don’t know if anything will come out of that – the messages were pretty old – but my recent re-connection with my old friend has been exhilarating and I wouldn’t mind catching up with a few others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyhow, I have more writing I want to do today, but it isn’t for this, so I’m cutting short. Whenever I finish the short stories I start, I’ll start posting them here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interesting Tidbits<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Song of the Day: Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town<\/a> by Pearl Jam<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I Fire My Gun<\/a> – “On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, when my husband and I turn on NPR to hear confirmation that Donald Trump has won, my husband carefully sets his coffee cup down, takes a deep breath, and says, ‘We should buy a gun.'” Frankly, I encourage everyone to train and be armed – I don’t care what your politics are. The fact is, it isn’t black vs. white or any of the other divisions pushed on us – it is us against the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent 24 hours flirting with Elon Musk\u2019s AI girlfriend<\/a> – “The ick factor is that AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude \u2014 which are more comparable to Grok \u2014 have guardrails that preclude them from being sexbots. With Ani, you can feel yourself being pushed toward this creepy, hypersexualized interaction. It\u2019d be one thing if this were a niche startup. But this is Grok, which is owned by one of the influential names in tech.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI training, copyright issues headline U.S. Senate hearing<\/a> – “U.S. senators blasted companies, including Meta and Anthropic, for training AI models on copyrighted content, including pirated books and other materials.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a busy day yesterday, and didn’t get to do all the “fun” stuff I had hoped as it took much longer at Verizon than I thought it would. I did, however, manage to get my Google phone exchanged so that line is taken care of, and today the phone I ordered to install […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-1180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t