260831: Sausage & Confectionary
Brian Eno, in AI's walking dog, compares LLM output first to "confectionary" and Weisswurst sausage, "made of available scraps on the butcher's floor." Cristóbal thinks I'm very confused & mistaken to take the "taste" metaphor seriously, but it seems to me like we can't get away from it. Media is "consumed," we have a media "diet."
We devour our books and binge our television. We read "digests" and "feeds. We "browse"—a term taken from herbivores' grazing. We "relish" our favorites with "gusto." We enjoy pulps and pot-boilers. We laugh or fail to laugh at "cheesy" lines, "corny" jokes, and "hammy" performances. We talk about eye candy, smorgasbords, and feasts for the eyes. We gorge, inhale, savor, chew on, and ruminate on our content, which may be juicy, spicy, or meaty. We call undeveloped ideas half-baked, undercooked, or warmed-over. (Sometimes, as praise, we call it "raw.") We try to avoid syrupy treacle and saccharine; we try to avoid the bland, vanilla, and the vapid (stale wine); we declaim pap (bland food for babies), slop (half-liquid leftovers), and swill (kitchen waste, fed to pigs). When we consume our media "junk foods," we call them "empty calories." We marinate our ideas. Minor media are bite-sized nuggets, tidbits, and sound bites. Our wit is dry, our commentary acid, our replies tart, our remarks salty, and our satires bitter.