{"id":47208,"date":"2025-06-26T07:35:49","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T11:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=47208"},"modified":"2025-06-26T07:35:49","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T11:35:49","slug":"borough-of-broken-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2025\/06\/26\/borough-of-broken-systems.html","title":{"rendered":"Borough of Broken Systems?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I sometimes feel drowned under the weight of my own accumulation. Textual, visual, audial… Today I made a somewhat depressing pass through the tundra of writings I pecked out onto Google Docs. As I’ve done a number of times, I dropped the full text of some paragraphs and poems into GPT’s image generator. Some were interesting, others meh. This one interested me for its evocation of “BOROUGH OF BROKEN SYSTEMS” which did not appear in the text and is a phrase I’ve never seen before.<\/p>\n

EVERYONE KNOWS HOW TO RELAX AT JUST THE MIRACLE MOMENT. I CHOOSE FLOOZIES BECAUSE THEY ARE SMARTER THAN THE SELF-APPOINTED INTELLECTUALS. FLOOZIES CHOOSE ME FOR DIFFERING REASONS. I AM EASILY ABUSED AND EXPLOITED. FOR ONE WITH LITTLE LEFT TO GIVE THEY FIND SO MUCH TO TAKE. TAKE. TAKE. TAKE. IN MY SLEEP THEY SING SONGS OF TAKING ME HOME, TAKING ME TO TERRIBLE TEMPERATURES. SONGS LIKE THIS HAVE GHASTLY MELODIES, FORMIDABLE EDUCATION, AUDIENCES OF LITTLE MORE THAN ONE. SONGS LIKE THIS GO UNHEARD ON CITY STREETS, UNKNOWN IN ARENAS, SILENT ON RADIOS. SWINGING INTO THEMSELVES I HEAR SONGS OF MY CAPTORS, THROUGH NIGHTS, MIMED THROUGH DAYS. THEY ARE WISE JUST HOURS BEYOND THEIR APPEARANCES, MINDS CONSTANTLY CHEWING ON FEED. MY LITTLE MIRACLE: NONE OF THEM KNOW MY NAME. THEY CALL ME DEROGATORY, DEMEANING THINGS. THEY EXPECT HUMILIATING TASKS FROM ME. THEY DEMAND MONEY KNOWING THERE IS NONE. PUNISHMENTS FOR POVERTY VARY. SECRETLY, I CANNOT GET ENOUGH OF IT.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"BOROUGH<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019ve always said about myself, if you want to win an argument with me just yell louder. That\u2019s all it takes, It doesn\u2019t matter if you are right or wrong, or vice-versa. Just yell and you take the prize. When you win your argument you might lose me, but if I was making you so fucking angry then you probably did not need me anyway.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"ARGUMENT<\/p>\n

\n

I got around town yesterday, in a somewhat frivolous and meaningless search for a homeless woman I\u2019d heard had been living at a bus stop in Flushing for several months. I don\u2019t know why but I wanted to see for myself. Maybe she was waiting for me, waiting for whatever powerful force of change I could bring to her conspicuous existence.<\/em><\/p>\n

Indeed, there she was, monopolizing a bus stop with bags and small furniture and I don\u2019t know what else because I did not want to stare. She was older, Asian, her hands looked tough and calloused, large claws of a bird of prey. She seemed peaceful but oblivious to her surroundings. I probably could have stared, stared and stared and stared until I sated my appetite for the sight of a vagrant woman who made a bus stop her home.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"HOMELESS<\/p>\n

\n

Things get kicked around.<\/em><\/p>\n

A slab from someone\u2019s pizza ends up where it shouldn\u2019t be, causing alarm.<\/em><\/p>\n

I thought it came from her. She said it was from \u201cbeyond.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Either way we handled it with surgical gloves and metaphorical hazmat gear, erasing it into a shot glass lined with months-old coffee grinds.<\/em><\/p>\n

It would have been wise to do but I never explained. It would have prevented weeks of manufactured agony, the kind you buy at dollar shops.<\/em><\/p>\n

I became an independent seller of the stuff, finding success in novelty packaging and quantum distribution methods.<\/em><\/p>\n

She remembers. Memories drift for years in her oceans, which are violent.<\/em><\/p>\n

We never sailed.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"SLAB<\/p>\n

This one pretty well confirms that ChatGPT is bringing in elements from previous chats. No mention of LinkNYC or FFMPEG in this prompt though previous conversations used those terms extensively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sometimes feel drowned under the weight of my own accumulation. Textual, visual, audial… Today I made a somewhat depressing pass through the tundra of writings I pecked out onto Google Docs. As I’ve done a number of times, I dropped the full text of some paragraphs and poems into GPT’s image generator. Some were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[669],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/SLAB-OF-PIZZA-Jun-26-2025-07_29_44-AM.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-chq","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47208"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47214,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47208\/revisions\/47214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}