But God damn it. It was really nice. And I think that I do probably feel like that more often than I think I do. The big bad things are big and bad, and should be resisted and oh god now I'm talking about the NOW...

Point is, joy sneaks in. Don't ignore it when it does. Enjoy stupid little joy.

2. It's INCREDIBLY stupid. Every part of that story was dumb as rocks, but especially the surge of pleasure my brain treated me to by being unexectedly mildly competent. What has become of me? Is this all it takes, brain? Any port in a storm?

Two important things about this story.

1: It's a little thing, and we have a lot more of those happen to us than the big things. And big things are fine! Nothing against them. But if someone gives me the choice to pet a horse or a MINIATURE horse, I'm going with the little guy.

So I grabbed the lids, got a mint and a chamomile, and brought it upstairs to drink with my wife! I felt incredible, finding those lids! Like goddam Macguyver. If he just... looked a little and found the stuff he needed instead of inventing it.

I do not. But failure is not an option. So I start rummaging through the cabinets below the zone; cabinets that I think should be locked, but it only made sense that a place that probably had to restock daily wouldn't actually lock it. And they didn't!

Again, no one to ask where to find them, though I'm not convinced I would ask if there were because it was late at night and I was wearing a tank top that said "butts," but this means I have a dilemma. Do I really want to carry hot tea to the thrid floor of the hotel with no lids?

I get to the tea-coffee zone (this is an awkward description, but I don't currently have the language to name or describe where you get tea and coffee from in a hotel lobby accurately), and am thinking about pouring myself a cup, but DISASTER, there are no lids for the disposable cups.

I'm traveling with my family, staying at a hotel, and my wonderful wife asks me to run downstairs and grab her some tea from dining hall. I do, because I'm considerate and handsome and she has a scratchy throat. It's late, and there's no one around.

Stupid Little Joy must, by definition, be Stupid and Little. That means I don't have to put in the effort of trying to be joyful in big, important moments. Just a dumb little thing, and often it's effortless! Here's an example:

People who use AI think that they’re skipping to the success when they’re skipping to the failure. You begin and end your life as someone who has not written the novel, you did not teach yourself to express what was inside of you, you died without making something that no one else could make.

Hitchhiker's Guide. The BBC miniseries, which led me to the books. Genuinely changed the trajectory of my life.

We like our artists starving, our actors charismatic, our authors brilliant, our musicians weird and alienating. People who like AI art are people who are predisposed to accept AI. People who aren't won't, regardless of any "objective" measure of quality, whatever that is.

I teach rhetoric, and one thing I think a lot about is art and entertainment as a form of rhetoric (Comedy, for instance, needs to convince people to laugh). I think one thing that is currently complicating the idea of "quality" AI art is that Ethos matters when considering the quality of art.