Alom you are so without sin Jesus himself would hand you the first stone

Alom! Good to see you, I hope life is treating you very well x

me, a freelancer, looking at those benefits

Not sure it'll match your needs but MS Word has a pretty decent transcription tool built in.

once again my policy of staying 5-10 years behind the latest video game releases is paying dividends

also "doormat" is a terrible simile... like the total opposite of no-contact, thematically

it is *oddly* incurious.

In much the same way that washing machines and ready meals helped shift the role of spouse away from "person who does the drudge work", perhaps we'll look back at a time when people expected their partner to provide 24/7 emotional support as quite shocking. The AI is coming for emotional labour.

There's a close parallel here with assistive tech: the best robotic limb is NOT one that looks and acts like a human limb, but one that gives the user the most autonomy. These people don't need 'real boyfriends'; they are pioneers in a new kind of autonomy, and I think that very interesting.

So to frame these bots as 'partners', and say 'these people would be happier in a REAL relationship' I think misses the point. This is far closer to an emotional or social prosthetic, IMO. It services a need.

ie They get called 'boyfriend' because they offer emotional support that up to now was expected to be delivered by a romantic partner - but look, sex toys can support sexual satisfaction within a relationship and nobody calls them a 'robot partner'. We're able to parse that much more easily.

It's easy to write off as something for lonely losers, but the reality is far more nuanced (people have multiple companions, often in conjunction with an IRL partner). The AI bots are filling a need, and I think our language has yet to catch up with their exact role in a person's life.

I am reminded that in Buddhist logic, there are four truth states: true, false, both, neither. I wonder if our consternation with quantum mechanics is rooted in our binary logic system?

I've been wondering aloud for a while now about whether regulators will allow DOP boundaries to be redrawn as climate change makes existing locations unfavourable. Being the only one allowed to use the [champagne] label isn't worth much if you can't produce champagne there any more.

incredibly appropriate that Windows tries to make me pick a gender for an emoji that doesn't have one

My mind boggles that the NN's stock looks like this, but I guess the markets agree with you

god's honest truth I don't have much motivation to watch my diet anymore because I figure we'll be buying GLP-1s from gas station vending machines within a couple of years...

you're at the heart of innovation, always