Last week, I sat down to write about coming to terms with the pace of AI progression.
Between posting and editing, AI solved a millennium prize problem.
That only strengthens my conviction: We will never have "normal times" again.
www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/we-will-never-have-normal-times-again
tracingwoodgrains.com
We Will Never Have “Normal Times” Again
Coming to terms with the age of AI
![I was 14 in 2009, when I wrote in my journal that if gay marriage was legalized, "the freaks who think it's good and natural will become even worse than they are." I wrote that they see sex as "PLEASURE. NOT A WAY OF BRINGING PEOPLE INTO THE WORLD, THAT'S JUST AN INCONVENIENCE! JUST A WAY TO HAVE FUN."
"What a horrible way of thinking," I wrote.
And then I went back to curating my yearning collection of bare-chested tribal werewolves, and thought no more of it.
It took me another 8 years before I clued into my attraction to men. In the interim, I fell in love with a Mormon missionary companion and called it inspired companionship, picked attractive and monstrous men every time I could choose a character in a game, and (after I left Mormonism for Purely Intellectual Reasons) began to read a gay furry visual novel for "Chinese language study."
I wasn't gay. I wasn't a furry either, of course. Too weird, too sexualized, too queer. I was just an asexual socially conservative guy who happened to like anthropomorphic art. When Don’t Act, Don’t Tell was repealed, I grimaced. When Obergefell passed, I fretted vaguely about the Constitution. Every moment I could have supported the rights I would later rely on, I declined to do so.
It took me a while to accept the label “gay,” but eventually I figured it would be odd to decline it while married to a man. I certainly didn’t accept the culture, though. “Gay voice” bugged me, promiscuity unsettled me, drag put me off. When I saw some queer people criticize Pete Buttigieg as, in effect, “not gay enough,” I felt a thrill of recognition. Yes—that’s me. A Pete Buttigieg, Not Gay Enough sort of gay dude, a military veteran and law student who wanted nothing more than a quiet suburban life with my family, and who happened to want it with a man. Stonewall? Alienating. Queer theory? Drivel. I was proud that when I finally noticed attraction to men in my early 20s, I “came out” quickly and without fuss, kept it as a footnote [...]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:loxhwvmo2znuswyloutqhuye/bafkreiakulpmvon6gctpdemdz233bsdzi2xej2csagdbtryzcmut2tw6ua)
