One side spent years laughing at people whose jobs got automated. The other side spent years saying art requires rare talent. Both of them just met the same machine. The sounds they are making are identical.
A new word took over the replies this year. It started as a joke about superhero movies. Then it swallowed fast food, then social media, then the entire AI art scene. The people using it cannot agree on what it even means, which is exactly why it works.
You can tell a lot about someone by which version of “slop” they use and which version they suddenly find unacceptable. The pattern is not subtle.
Out now, and as always, thanks so much for sticking with me. It is very much appreciated and I hope your coming weekend goes well.
Be well. 

Before the joke, there was the omen. Before the omen, there was the god of chaos and a pharaoh whose youth happened to wear the same color. That collision should have been enough to end the “this started in the 1990s” theory.
Americans like a tidy origin story. The redhead slur, they insist, arrived fully formed from a cartoon and a playground. It is a convenient story. It is also incomplete. The hair had already been doing work in the human imagination for a very long time.
South Park didn't invent the ginger stereotype. It popularized one particular version of an idea that had already been circulating in Western culture for generations. 
Red hair occupies a peculiar position in the human imagination. It is uncommon enough to be immediately noticeable, yet familiar enough that virtually everyone recognizes it. Rarity creates a paradox. The less common a look becomes, the more it registers. The more it registers, the more some people want it gone from the frame.
Out now, and as always, thanks so much for sticking with me. It is very much appreciated and I hope your weekend goes well.
Be well.  

There is a strange contradiction in contemporary discussions of women and responsibility. Women are rightly treated as capable adults when the subject is independence, equality, professional achievement, sexual autonomy, political participation, or personal freedom. Yet when circumstances become sufficiently tragic or disturbing, the language can change dramatically. Suddenly the emphasis shifts toward vulnerability, psychological forces, social circumstances, hormones, trauma, or victimhood.
Where exactly should that line be drawn?
 None of this requires pretending that mental illness isn't real. Severe psychiatric illness can dramatically affect human behavior, perception, and judgment. The difficult question is what follows from that fact. Does explaining why someone acted remove responsibility for what they did? Does compassion require us to minimize accountability? And why do these questions become particularly emotionally charged when the accused person is a woman and a mother? 
Out later today, and as always, thanks so much for sticking with me. It is very much appreciated and I hope your weekend goes well.