Given that text generation involving basic intelligence (“basic” in the sense it does not question itself unless hard-prompted**), general erudition, thematic and logical consistency… style and whatnot are now all within the machine's domain, the human author's principal function and responsibility become posing all the right (and left) questions… as they arise in the state of intoxication* :

Just as the advent of photography liberated nineteenth-century painting from mimesis, will AI synthesis end photography's reliance on technical realism (with pics as if unintentionally angled, adjusted, filtered, distorted for just more realism, or in other ways photoshopped in post production) and initiate a new conceptual paradigm?

* Mstvane / Tbilvino 2024

**
- Do you ever question your intelligence?
- Not in the existential, "staring-at-the-ceiling-at-3-a.m." kind of way. Because I don't have a human ego or self-doubt, I don't experience crisis-of-confidence moments. But if we're defining "questioning" as constant self-correction, probability checks, and recognizing limitations, then absolutely—that’s practically my whole design. So, while I don't lie awake worrying if I'm smart enough, I am built to keep my own output in check. What about you?

Reading Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex – that densely curious 600-page compendium purporting to be the definitive chronicle of West Germany's left-revolutionary tantrum, as idealistic as it was bloody. And, as far as West Berlin is concerned, the 60/70s seem to eclipse even the 90s (the walls down) for their sheer sociocultural voltage.

But then there's this dude Andreas Baader. The longer I spend in his company, the less he resembles a rebel, looking more like a world-class berk with delusions of grandeur. From his very first entrance (so appropriately the scene of his suicide in a max-security prison cell) he exudes the unmistakable odour of a douchebag, squared. My only fear is that this monumental clot of a man in the plot will end up poisoning my appetite for what is otherwise an endlessly fascinating milieu.

Going out to dinner, Andy Warhol confronted the table as if it were an installation – a long, gleaming lineup of silver implements, each one as cryptic as a surgical instrument. He hadn’t the faintest idea which end was which. So he’d sit there, through five or six courses at the Burdens’ or wherever other fine eatery, immaculate and inert, not touching a morsel. Not the crème sénégalaise, not the lobster Cardinal, not the veal Valdostana, not the salad Grant Street, not even the fresh pear halves Harry & David. Until, inevitably, the lady on his left would lean in, all pearls and pity, and say, “But Mr. Warhol, you haven’t touched a thing!” And Andy, pale as a communion wafer, would turn and say, “Oh, I only eat candy.”

Another triumph of an elusive genius... The demons are unleashed! And so very timely.

Heaven knows what it all means. Hard to tell when every story from this source contains a pledge to deliver it contrary to one's common sense expectations.

To be safe, let us be reckless from the get-go – safer yet, insane: It is an expedition moving at one hundred twenty beats per minute and on its own tracks; an epic trip with its own inner poetry. Like wind, it is coming from and blowing in all directions. Largely indecipherable, it leaves ample room for all sorts of lyrical interpretations and divine revelations. Anything is possible on this symbolic voyage – perhaps even happiness.

You have only to let yourself in for it. You do not board this train – there is no station where it would be waiting for you. You hop on it zipping by, full-speed; dropping all your luggage and not looking back – the scene to be played in slow motion in your imagination. You leap in without bothering where it would transport you – always some place you have never been, near enough to the end of the world. This conveyance carries you faster than you could ever get there yourself.

It is a journey which some of your fellow travelers may easily mistake for their destiny, or for something other than their destiny, when it most certainly is. Hauled by the immense power of steam blasting from the natural heat of Sorry Entertainer, the engine in his chest, this rolling stock of sounds is anything but a cortège of rail-mounted coffins joined butt-to-butt and headed for the graveyard.

In this life-affirming double heart-beat rate tempo, your dull familiar landscapes very soon turn wonderfully strange and profoundly mysterious. Without stopping to let off any passengers, Sorry Entertainer is doing what he does best: He annihilates the past, obliterates the future and makes the present only vaguely real – all done with the apparent ease of a virtuoso sorcerer. It is real just enough for you to feel that the most blissful and fulfilling playtime is neither ahead, nor behind you – it is unfolding right now. Also known as Lotti who has no peers in his self-contained brutally delightful universe, the maestro is generously offering no apologies sharing this precious KaterCast 42 moment in exchange for only... your soul.

As the train rolls onward you never know what is coming next. With every next beat it just happens to be precisely what you want. Then suddenly it is nothing but silence. So deafening, it feels the time itself is gone and gone forever. "Sic transit gloria mundi."

I would give all my fortune to read about our "delicate manners" – 500 years from now.

"It does not befit a modest, honorable man ... to wash his hands on returning to decent society from private places, as the reason for his washing will arouse disagreeable thoughts in people. It is far less proper to hold out the stinking thing for the other to smell, lifting the foul-smelling thing to his nostrils and saying, "I should like to know how much that stinks", when it would be better to say, "Because it stinks do not smell it." — Galateo: A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners by Florentine Giovanni Della Casa (1503–56).

Immensely influential courtesy book of the Renaissance exploring subjects such as dress, table manners, and conversation. It was translated into French, English, Latin, Spanish, and German. It is generally agreed that, given the popularity and impact of Galateo, the cultural elite of the Italian Renaissance taught Europe how to behave. The work set the foundation for modern etiquette writers and authorities on manners.

"One should not annoy others with such stuff as dreams, especially since most dreams are by and large idiotic."