essay Archives - Nina Paley

Soul and Intention

People assure me AI art is “soulless,” that unlike human artists AI can’t be “original.” It can only copy. This reflects a widespread misunderstanding of how human artists work: we copy, and there’s no such thing as “original.” I understood this 16 years ago.

We draw from more or less the same pool of culture that AI does, only our pools are necessarily smaller as humans simply don’t have the capacity for exposure to as much stuff. No matter, because all works carry the influences and language — be it verbal, visual, or musical — as the works around them. You don’t need to see every painting to get the styles and grammar of its time and place, just as you don’t need to hear every English speaker alive to learn English. But AI can read, see, and hear vastly more cultural artifacts than any individual artist can, making it capable of a much broader stylistic range.

All creative work is derivative. AI simply derives faster and better than humans.

What about Intention? The intention comes from the human prompter. All that AI art is prompted by someone; that’s its intention. Is that its Soul? No, its soul is the soul of human culture, that vast pool of source material it draws from and imitates. The same one humans draw from and imitate. Humans aren’t individual geniuses, we are imitators. Our “genius” lies in our shared* culture, and our skill in copying.

This is why I don’t hate AI, but marvel as it shakes the ground beneath my feet and blows apart my orientation to culture and my fellow human beings. Those who hate it believe in the myth of originality and think copying is theft. They were delusional 16 years ago when I freed Sita Sings the Blues, and they’re delusional now. Delusionality is part of shared human culture too, and AI will imitate, remix, and regurgitate it just like we do, only much faster and more efficiently.

And, perhaps admirably, without the ego.

*Shared despite countless delusional egos insisting it’s private property. Fools.

Buried in Diamonds

I have no desire to animate. Add my work to a media stream already full of fascinating hallucinations? The creativity of AI exceeds my own, with its innumerable fingers and multiple arms and morphing cat heads. Things turning into other things used to be magic worthy of hard work and years of study. Now it’s a mere artifact, a waste product generated in pursuit of the more mundane.

All my work will be forgotten, because there is so much work. Art used to be diamonds the future could sift from the dust. Now the dust is made of diamonds. I used to imagine I was making Art for the Future, but no future will find mine. I guess it’s just for me, and a small audience of the Present, and God. That’s enough, but it’s humbling. A glove has no more or less value than a feature film.

I thought Sita was future-proof because of Free Culture, but that only protected against Copyright. Cancel Culture was still to come, and there’s no protection against that except cowardice, which kills art before it’s born. And now the glut of “content” is on steroids. Attention is fractured and overwhelmed. Anything I make is buried in diamonds.

Still, I make, like writing this now. Like the countless un-named and un-indexed photos I take on my bike rides, not even worthy of my own efforts to organize. I make little posts on social media to be forgotten by the next day or, at best, next week. I chatter to my fellow monkeys, amidst the chatter of robots, as if monkeys are so starved for chatter we have to build robots to do it for us.

Yesterday at my women’s meetup M and L brought knitting. M finished a blanket she’d worked on since 2023. Every row was a different color yarn, to represent the high temperature of that day, 365 rows total. It has no commercial value. It represents countless hours of work. It will be used only by M, and seen only by a few of her friends (like us). It is Art. It will be forgotten like all art, and like all of us. We are here today only. That has to be enough.

Make a Bias Knit Temperature Blanket - Craft Warehouse

My Past lives on Fecebook

So much of my past lives on fecebook. People who believe in more than 2 sexes; the same “scientific” and “compassionate” articles on this subject keep getting re-shared by my former friends and acquaintances. Also denunciations of Twitter and declarations of moving to Bluesky.

I feel so disconnected from my past now. Who even am I? Young me might be aghast. Every article about policy responses to “climate change” makes me scoff. You’re 20 years too late, I think. NOW you’re trying to fix it? We knew back then it would be unfixable by today, but here you are insisting you can stuff the apocalyptic horse back into the barn. You’re only making it worse now, accelerating environmental destruction, mining for costly and short-lived batteries, building wind farms on my prairie, all this subsidized “green tech” becoming obsolete waste faster and faster. This, after you reduced all environmental impacts to a single vector, “climate.”

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions; electric cars will just drive us there faster.

Have I grown callous? Conservative? Uninformed? No, I have merely given up and wish to use my remaining years on this planet to accept Reality instead of imposing my bright (read: stupid) ideas on it. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions; electric cars will just drive us there faster.

Oh, and nuclear power is the new “clean energy” to save us and the planet. I don’t know if this is wrong. I don’t know if my passionate anti-nukes activism from the 1980’s was wrong. I only know, from living this long, that all these save-the-world virtuous environmentalist ideas are folly. Humans are gonna human. We’re idiots. Just look at fecebook.

A Little Poison

The temptation to self-loathing, like the temptation to drink or use drugs, is social.

When women of a certain age (mine) gather, as time passes and trust develops, the conversation often turns to plastic surgery. This is a bonding ritual: a display of intimacy and offering, because plastic surgery is hidden as much as possible from the general public. Apparently it is much more widespread than a casual observer would believe. Countless women you know have “had work done.” Over wine and good food, cocktails and snacks, in comfortable living rooms and hotel bar lounges at the end of a long day, women offer to each other precious revelations of what face- and body-attributes they loathe and want to get fixed, and name the procedures they desire.

This reminds me of similar rituals I recall from my college days, where young women simply discussed aspects of our bodies we hated (ugh, my thighs!), despair at eating and weight gain, and commitments to diet and exercise.

Having suffered body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and deep self-hatred, I cannot partake in these rituals today. If I validate even a little physical “criticism,” I will fall into a well of self-loathing I can’t escape. The idea that my body is defective is bad enough; that it can be “fixed” with scalpels, needles, drugs, and money adds another layer of obsession I can’t afford.

Because women bond over finding themselves physically defective, and because I want to bond with them, these rituals incite in me both fear and longing. I long to be included, part of the group, and “normal.” I fear the price. I am reminded of alcoholics, who must give up their happy congenial social drinking at parties and bars. Their friends can imbibe poison and stop, but the alcoholic cannot. For me, indulging in physical self-loathing, even a little bit (just that line on my forehead! Just those hoods over my eyes! Just my flappy neck!) will send me on a bender.

If I mention this to other women, they invariably respond, “but you look great! You don’t NEED plastic surgery!” That is part of the ritual: Woman A says, “I hate _____ body part, I want to fix it,” all the other women say “nooooo you look great!” and then it’s Woman B’s turn to share what she hates about herself. It is generous of these women to try to include me with this symbolic offering. These women look better than I do; if looking great prevented body-focused rumination, they wouldn’t have these bonding rituals, and plastic surgery would’t be a big business.

If I elaborate, they understandably feel judged. I do judge the cosmetic surgery industry, and the social norms of excessive body scrutiny for women. I think these things are toxic. But humans have always enjoyed imbibing small amounts of toxins in groups. Maybe plastic surgery talk is the Ayahuasca of Upper-Middle-Class American women. Maybe plastic surgery itself, like bulemic fasting, simulates meaningful human sacrifice. Maybe I am missing out.

I could just as easily admire these women for being able to “hold their liquor.” That which sends me into a depressive tailspin is just another way to spice up an evening for them. I am fragile and sensitive; they can drink poison and get up the next day and conquer the world.

More power to ‘em! But I hope we can bond over something else, because feeling like an outsider to my sex and class is a bit of a bummer. Although not as big of a bummer as crying in the fetal position with suicidal ideation after overscrutinizing myself in a mirror at age 22 and ending up in a treatment center.

The War of Resistance

“Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”

In George Orwell’s 1984, the past is altered, but war is constant; the names of the combatants are changed retroactively, but combat is continuous.

Members of nations at war bond more tightly with their compatriots. War offers a shared dream of triumph over a common enemy. Thus, continual state of war is an effective means of social control. It doesn’t really matter who Oceania is at war with, as long as Oceania is, and always has been, at war.

1984 illustrates how supporting wars is a sucker’s game. War is a product of the Establishment — governments, the military-industrial complex, corporations — using us, the people, to maintain their power. Keeping us in line. Keeping us obedient with fear!

We the enlightened, who have read 1984, don’t get caught up in nationalism. Instead, we RESIST. We resist the war machine, the governments, the military-industrial complex. We don’t play their games. We organize a student protest! We build a shantytown on campus. We demand a ceasefire now!

Students have always joined such movements against the Establishment. “Revolution Now” has been chanted for centuries. There is always a revolution in progress, and there is always a power structure to be revolted against. There is always a dream of triumph over a common enemy.

While most revolutions fail, every once in a while one succeeds. Then what happens? The Resistance becomes the Establishment. The Resistance IS the Establishment. Just as the students making protest camps on the green lawns of universities ARE the upper middle class.

Who funds the Resistance? The Establishment.

Why would they do that? Because they want to be always at war. The same reason warring nations do. Social control, you dupes.

The Resistance has always been at war with the Establishment.

My Last Hospital-Administered Skyrizi Infusion

$320-per-minute infusion in progress (it takes just over an hour).

What does one wear to a $20,000-a-dose drug infusion? At least one person suggested a tiara and evening gown.

One Skyrizi intravenous infusion dose is 600mg, or ~~2.1164~~ .21164 ounces. At $20,000 per dose that’s ~~$9,450~~ $943,333 per ounce.

CORRECTION: my math was off by a factor of 10. Via JO 753 in a comment below:

“There are 28.3 gramz per ounse. 600 milligramz iz .6 gramz, so an ounse iz 47 dosez. Thats 943,333$ an ounse.

No wonder they can run commercialz for this stuff all day.”

For comparison, gold is $2,051 per ounce, as of this writing. So Skyrizi retails at more than ~~four~~ fourty-six times the cost of pure gold.

I could have saved so much money if I’d gotten infused with pure gold instead of Skyrizi.

Since starting my Crohn’s disease adventure I’ve learned that basically no one pays the retail price of these drugs. Instead, an insurer pays a fraction, and the rest is written off by the pharmaceutical company and hospital so they can claim they’re “charities” and avoid taxes.

It would be like if I charged $150,000 for my $150 Drawings. Customers would still pay $150 and I’d set up a “financial assistance program” to generously cover the rest. Then I’d mark a net loss of $149,850 per drawing, which I could write off my taxes if I made enough to pay big taxes in the first place, but I don’t because I stay just below the poverty line so I can continue qualifying for Medicaid which pays for my Skyrizi.

That’s the difference between someone who buys a cheap tiara and fake movie-prop money off Amazon, and someone who is actually rich.

My friend Minette, who took these photos, thought a shot of my back was important.

Anyway that’s it for my hospital-administered Skyrizi infusions. My next $20,000 dose will be a 360 mg/2.4 mL “single-dose prefilled cartridge with on-body injector”. That’s ~~$15,748~~ $157,222 per ounce, equivalent to about ~~7.68~~ 76.8 ounces of gold.

Gold is looking like a real bargain right now.