Tara Maya's Tales

Yesterday, I met a snow gnome. This was odd, since we have no snow in California. I was really cold, though. (Not sure if the gnome was to blame...) The snow gnome, or nisse , asked me, "Are you living your best life?" Immediately, I started thinking about a palatial estate with a gorgeous, cozy grand room, a fire crackling in the immense fireplace... "No," said the gnome, "Not THE best life. Not the best life you can imagine..." "Fair enough," I said, "Since I have a very vivid imagination!" "We know," said the gnome, "since you're talking to gnomes. But I meant: Are you living the best life you can live right now? " As I wandered home through the snowy street lined with white marble facades and glowing, festive evergreens... or actually, through a suburban California neighborhood lined with palm trees (but really cold, guys, I'm serious!) I pondered this. Am I living "the dream?" No... There'...

In a previous post , I brought up the concern that AI generated art could start putting artists out of business. And I don't deny that new tech can discombobulate us. Shortly after I wrote that post, I read about an artist whose distinctive abstract style of art was stolen by one of the art-generation programs that easily produced imitations (although not as good, I have to say) as hers.  Stealing her style was pretty crummy. If she had created the program herself, though... hmmm. She could have fed it the original art to train it and then sold other people the right to make art in her own style. It's not the AI itself that's the problem, it's that our legal and commercial systems have to catch up in a way to reward the artist. That's tough, yes. Not insurmountable, but tough. But meanwhile, there's another issue that artists almost always overlook on this topic.  Has anyone really considered just HOW MUCH DANG ART we are going to need for the future? Let's ...

AI generated art. An English teacher, Natalie Kay, wrote about the rising difficulty to “ The College Essay is Dead ” posed by ChatGPT and like programs. (Natalie Kay   Dec 9, 2022, https://medium.com/predict/ai-is-here-and-its-harming-future-generations-and-the-present-ones-cf40985b9bbf) This time last year, I was in the middle of my one-year stint as a high school English teacher. There were many reasons I left the job (the teacher shortage exists for a reason, it turns out), but undoubtedly one of the most significant ongoing issues I had was plagiarism. I tried it myself using ChatGPT, the AI program he discusses in the article. I used a prompt that I had given to my own students when I asked them to write essays on Romeo and Juliet. The quality and level of detail was similar to that of my students. Even if I had been suspicious of plagiarism, I never would have found a way to prove that a student didn’t write the essay. It passed in every way I know to look for...

Bethany November 30, Wednesday night 21 Days to the Winter Solstice Kyrah, where are you? Please call out to me! I want to help you! Bethany Dilly Giscard was flying around, a sure sign that she was dreaming, ‘cause she didn’t have wings in real life. Moreover, Bethany was aware that she was dreaming, which was pretty cool—and usually a sign that it wasn’t her own dream—she was Dreamwalking. In the last year since Bethany had become a Guardian, she’d learned that her power was not limited to simply being a big, walking Null. As a Guardian to the Sphere of Dreams, she could visit that Blessed Realm in order to enter the dreams of anyone. Since entering another person’s dreams constituted a severe breach of privacy, Bethany didn’t do it often. Tonight, however, she was searching for her friend. Her best friend, Kyrah, had been captured by the Dark Triad, the three powerful sorcerers who were driving the Elven War. Bethany had been trying to connect to Kyrah in the Sphere for Dream...