If you have to hit the gas all the time on life, at least get a good soundtrack to go with it.
I think I’ll update a text about music and post again before writing again about the voice on my head and all the crap she’s giving me – she can’t shut up.
I decided to go down to Serra do Rastro da Serpente in São Paulo* and failed miserably. I had never taken a long trip with Elsa and I decided to try one of 3,000 km straight away, maybe 4k if I was feeling good. When arriving in Ribeirão Preto, a city about 700km in, I cried to all alive and dead gods, gave up and rode back home slowly, thinking how it was possible to feel so much pain all over my body and keep going. These are the things I learned along the way.
*A state in Brazil, the country I live.
Elsa, my Cafe Racer (a Continental GT 650) parked at a highway service station
• There’s a reason a Cafe Racer is called “Cafe Racer” and not “World Tourer”;
• What she has there is not a seat, it is a wood board;
• I envied the old guys who traveled on their roomy Cruisers;
• I belittled the same old guys who said how painful it was to travel many kilometers on a Cruiser and how they were warriors for doing so. My dude, you’re on a two-wheeled sofa. Climb up here in a cafe racer and try that before whining.
• I spent more or less 7 liters every 160 kilometers, which gave me approximately 22km/L of consumption;
• With a 12-liter tank I could theoretically ride 260 kilometers before it stopped, but every 140 kilometers I rode I was already anxious for a gas station;
• Air-cooled motorcycle gets HOT, especially if you stay above 110 km/h;
• Speaking of heat, my cell phone was my GPS and it cooked the entire way on my handlebar under the sun. I don’t think its battery will ever be the same;
• Helmet camera, do not use. The weight over time tires the neck and the wind throws the head to the side, creating a lot of aerodynamic resistance. And besides, the battery runs out quickly. Attach it to the motorcycle and plug it into a USB socket;
• By the way, I didn’t install a USB socket. I kept the cell phone alive with a 20000mAh battery, it lasted 10 hours and still had some charge left;
• BR-050 is the easier highway I’ve ever taken, little to no traffic most of the time;
• Anhanguera is the most BORING highway I’ve ever ridden, an infinite straight line with no sights to see;
Just this. Alone. Forever.
• Tolls are a hindrance to life, many accept cards but a good number only take cash. Like, paper money. Like a savage. In the year 2024. And there’s no point in using tags, that sticker you put in your bike or car to bypass the toll and be billed directly on you account: you can’t use it on motorcycles – they are illegal at toll booths and tag readers don’t recognize them.
• Lots of trucks along the way, but as BR-050 is dual carriageway they were not a problem;
• I hate passing through Valparaíso and Luziânia, two cities in Goias, with all my strength, the drivers there are suicidal. I increased the travel time by 1 hour by taking the GO-436 road, even though I was in a state of disrepair, so as not to go through that hell;
• In fact, this stretch of GO and the beginning of BR-050 were the most fun on the road;
• Take a spray bottle with water and a flannel to clean the tons of bugs that will splatter on your visor and jacket;
Visor clean after a lot of scrubbing, but still with signs of the massacre on the helmet and the jacket
• I stopped at practically every service station on the BRs to stretch and drink water, this must have increased the travel time by at least an hour;
• I’ve spend 10 hours on my bike riding each way, on a total of 20 hours on a goddamn cafe racer;
• My arms felt numb along the way;
• My legs felt numb along the way;
• I had joint and back pain for three days;
• I was wondering on the way why in the flying hell I decided to do this;
• I can’t wait to do it again.
But why this pessimism all of a sudden? Mostly because I didn’t bother with generative artificial intelligence tools, until the moment they stopped being an option.
Before, I needed to actively go after the tool, activate it and manipulate it to be able to produce something and get some result. Today they are spreading everywhere, in every tool, and I’m not exactly ok with that. Windows itself wants to make AI such a mandatory business that Microsoft created a button on the keyboard dedicated to its artificial intelligence, Copilot, which has become an increasingly mandatory part of the operating system, and began to demand all new computers that, to be certified to run Windows, they’ll have to have the darn thing.
This bothers me, as I feel there is a very high chance of being violated by a corporation that only sees you as a number. On the one hand, I always wanted a decent search tool, which would actually find the files I needed just by looking at the context of the question. On the other hand, having all my private data and files – including medical reports, expense sheets, personal projects and even diaries – processed by a computer somewhere in the world, managed by who knows who, is giving away to to a company enormous power over my life, since it will be able to analyze and draw conclusions (right or wrong) about everything I do or could do. And not only that, this “perfect” profile of my life and personality will be sold to those who pay the most, putting more advertising into my life. It’s a Minority Report dystopia, but the precogs are made of chips instead of three humans in a bathtub, being used to sell Amazon’s sheets and blenders.
It’s bad to know that I’ve become the old man who shouts at the clouds and to have to say “in my time that didn’t happen”. It used to be that a computer was a computer, and an MP3 player was just an MP3 player. None of them monitored every click, every interaction, and every file I opened. An advance in technology was received with authentic enthusiasm from those who knew that life would really get easier.
Today, it’s over. Every advance and every change is made to make people’s lives worse, make things more difficult, and try to take every penny out of your pocket and send it to the companies’ pockets. Everything is either a subscription, or changes for the worse with software updates, or simply cannot be repaired because it is cheaper to buy a new device that comes with even more strings attached. And with that, I’m becoming more and more of a Luddite, trying to keep electronics out of my life to have a more analogue life, because I know that I can use, repair and control it the way I want.
Let’s see how far I can get.
I, in my naivety, did not expect to see such a strong movement to replace artists with AI tools. I still believe that they are fantastic tools that makes life a lot easier: boring tasks like cutting out a character or filling in an incomplete background have become much simpler. But seeing artists and writers effectively fired and replaced by these tools was something I didn’t want to believe. We are heading towards a future where art, music and literature are being automated, leaving humans free to do bossy work, becoming stamp beaters.
There is at least one consolation: AI depends on content produced by others to function. There will come a point where AI will feed on art produced by AI, regurgitating content to the point where there is only garbage on top of garbage, incomprehensible and unusable, breaking the cycle and all AI companies along with it. Add to this the new tools for poisoning data models, protecting works from being absorbed by models, and perhaps this moment is closer than we think.
But of course, this could also be another naive thought.
Me: I swear to you, once I finish this postgraduate course I’m going to spend the next 5 years without studying anything and just enjoying life.
Also me: look, a course to learn 3D with Blender! *signs up*
No. Next question.
Wha? You want to know more? Sure, whatever. It’s been a while since I wrote an opionated text about art that would make people angry and pointing the finger at the screen.
Here’s the deal: Inhotim is an open air art gallery. A museum. Stylish, beautiful, full of scenery, but a museum. And one about contemporary art to boot. I personally love that place and want to go back whenever I get the chance, but at the risk of sounding elitist, it’s not for everyone.
And I don’t say that in the sense of thinking I’m intellectually superior to everyone (although… No. Stop. Get a grip, man), but thinking about the whole context. Inhotim is expensive, specially if you’re from Brazil. A can of water is six reais. Their buffet costs around 50 reais, less if you eat almost nothing. The entrance fee is 40 reais for students, 80 if you use internal transport (and believe me, you will want to use internal transport. Unless you’re used to walk up and down hills). Per day. And you won’t be able to see everything in one day, because the place is huge.
Of course, everything there is gorgeous: the modern buildings strategically placed in front of a water mirror, the bridge positioned in the perfect place to take photos, the impeccable landscaping. But all of this is punctuated, or tainted depending on your opinion, by works of contemporary art.
And that’s the thing. If you don’t like contemporary art, if you think it’s silly to see a ceiling full of styrofoam balls, or a wall with half a bus hangin on, or a colorful Volkswagen Beetle posing as a work of art, or if you don’t have the slightest openness to works of contemporary art, or even works of art in general, all of this will bother you and even irritate, ruining what would be a walk in pretty a botanical garden. You will be furious, thinking that you paid 200 reais per person to see a room full of broken glass on the floor.
Look, I’m not saying you need to like it, but you do need to acknowledge it. I myself don’t like several of the works there (the bus on the wall, for example), I love others (Desvio para o vermelho!), and I’m indifferent to some. But I know that’s part of the experience, and that’s why I go there.
Now, spending a lot of money to being pissed off while you walk will ruin your wallet, your mood, and everyone’s trip, just to say that you visited Inhotim. So save your money and go to the beach. You’ll enjoy it much more and you won’t need to complain about that hole in the ground being an art piece.