Rob Graves

"The world is a dream" Here's some of what the world's most famous physicists had to say about reality: A short thread 🧵

@notalive_zombie @StpVapor @Devon_Eriksen_ @deadbeatsred The show. Not the books.

Stop this. Don't you understand? They are not looking for sales. They do not want your approval. They hate you, and they want to humiliate and demoralize you so they can be socially ascendant and feel good and momentarily forget that they were weird theater kids in high school that no one liked. And so they can pave the way for a communist revolution that they imagine will put the theater kids in charge. In reality, they'll all be machine gunned into mass graves by thugs within the first 18 days after the fall of the old order, but they don't know that. So every time they hollow out another franchise and wear it like a skinsuit, they don't care if you buy it. They just want to hear you cry. So if you tell them you don't like it, you won't buy it, you're very upset, then you might as well be giving them a smoothie and a handjob. But you can't help it, though, can you? You see the death of your beloved Warcraft, your Star Wars, your Warhammer 40K, and you can't help but mourn. You think something precious has been destroyed. You're sad for what might have been, but never will be. You're wrong. You don't understand. You don't understand because you are an electrical engineer who designs high-voltage grid hardware, and reads and watches stories in his spare time. You are not a professional maker of stories. Well, I am. So I'm going to explain this to you. Star Wars, Star Trek, Cowboy Bebop, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer40K... these aren't stories. They are story ideas. And any professional author will tell you that ideas are the cheapest and easiest part of our whole job. That's not the hard part, or the part that requires talent and skill. The real work in storytelling consists of turning that idea into a complete, satisfying story that is ready to publish and be read and loved. I can come up with ten story ideas in ten minutes, but I dream of someday having enough control over my writing process to publish one good novel a year. The reason you loved all these franchises is that they were a garment worn by good writers, who were able to make you love the characters and situations. Now they are a skinsuit worn by bad writers. Good writers are always going to make stories you like, regardless of which characters and settings they use. Bad ones are always going to disappoint you, no matter which franchise you hand them the keys to. If all the good writers are kicked out of Games Workshop, they still exist and can write good stuff. And if they are not kicked out, but merely disenfranchised and overruled by managerial theater kids, but they have to stay for a paycheck, then it's because YOU give more money to Games Workshop than you would to all the independent projects they could start. You thinking you are fighting for the soul of Warhammer40K and Star Wars. But you are fighting against the people who own the copyrights, so you will always lose. The best you could ever do is to kill the franchise by rallying the customer base to defect. And you can do that right now by giving your attention to storytellers who don't hate you, instead. But you are attached to the familiar, to what you are used to instead of to what could be. So you follow franchises and intellectual properties instead of artists and writers. And you get so mad that there won't be more Star Wars that you reward critics like @TheCriticalDri2 for his tenth angry rant about how Star Wars sucks now. Sure, I could tell him to spend his time promoting good new stuff instead, but the only reason he is able to promote anything is because he has an audience, and you are that audience, and you are rewarding him for ragebaiting you, demanding that he ragebait you, because that's the only thing you tune in for. That's why there are so few good writers in your field of view who are making good new stuff that you like. Because you've never heard of the ones that exist, and if they're not attached to one of your beloved franchises, they can't raise any money. I would love to spend 100% of my working hours writing novels. I'd certainly finish them faster that way. But I can't. Because I have to be on Twitter most of the time, so I can pay my bills now. And I'm considered one of the fortunate ones, because the time I spend on publicity actually earns me enough money to do that. Most other authors, good storytellers who don't hate you, can't even quit their day jobs. Which means even less time and energy for creating. I know you loved these franchises when they were alive. I did, too, some of them. But you have to let them go. Because they are dead now. They are still moving, but they are dead. We're in the part of the zombie movie now where your son has succumbed to the infection, and you have him locked in the basement, feeding him raw meat while he lunges at the end of his chain, trying to devour your flesh. You're just too attached to let go, hoping against hope that you can hang on until a cure is found, but there isn't a cure, there's never a cure, and that isn't your son. It's pure evil piloting the husk of his body. The only thing left for him is a quick 5.56mm bullet in the head. Do you doubt me? Do you think you can win against the copyright holders? Well, tell me then, when have you ever won one of these? Name one franchise that fans have rescued. Not rescued from financial cancellation, there are plenty of those, but name one that was rescued from woke infiltration, and brought back to its roots. Well? I'm waiting. The truth is, wars are not won by being bold and resolute and surrendering no inch of ground. That's just a strategy for filling graveyards with your brothers. Wars are won by fighting the enemy where you are strong and he is weak. If every one of you gave an independent author, or artist, or filmmaker, or developer, one tenth the time and money you spend on overpriced plastic army women made by neomarxist feminists who hate you, then a lot more of them would thrive, and there would be just as many new things for you to love are there were old ones. You're not selfish, or short-sighted, or tight-fisted. You just loved too deeply, and you can't let go. But he who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in chains. Stop stalking your crazy ex-girlfriend who got fat and hates you now. There are younger, hotter, nicer women who would love to meet you.

@TXEquestrian @julien @AlanWattsOrg 😂im so sorry, I didn’t even look, terrible by me🖤

@robgrav3s @julien @AlanWattsOrg *sister 😉🇺🇸

While I was running a company and started having almost daily panic attacks, Alan Watts lectures calmed me. I just listened to them, and they would ground me. In a way they saved me. I realized I could get better (it didn't feel that way at the time).

@cyantist @donalddhoffman

Who are the best people in the world right now studying or writing about consciousness?

Whatever it is really needs to be this format: “grok - no vague posts, no rage bait posts. Insightful, uplifting, and informative content only. Emphasize positive or interesting content in science, music, art, sports etc.” Or whatever you want it to be in plain language. This might go a long way to fix the current problem of shit behaviors being rewarded by the algo; we’d have a way to remove them from the feed.

You can now tap on For You and choose general topics, such as “Technology”! Update your 𝕏 app to make this work.

@TXEquestrian @julien @AlanWattsOrg Got it brother.

@robgrav3s @julien @AlanWattsOrg Thank you so much!

@TXEquestrian @julien YouTube has tons. But his retweet is AI, not real. There are a lot of fakes now. This is the official channel on multiple platforms (including YT): @AlanWattsOrg

@julien What platform can we hear these lectures by Alan Watts?

@julien Well, that’s AI Alan Watts, not real Alan Watts.

@waldenpod Yeah. AI has ruined almost all forms of parallelisms, which used to be a quality of good writing.

You have no idea how much I resent AI for completely ruining a perfectly good sentence structure: "It's not just x – it's y." You cannot write that anymore. Everyone will assume it's AI or get derailed wondering if it's AI. We've been robbed of an entire sentence form.

@theUMreal The “show more” is a new low. Even for engagement farmers.

@Xius32251098 Thanks<3 available on all streaming platforms. Under my name and also Gods & Martyrs.

@robgrav3s Love all your work. Where can I buy all your music?

Releasing some singles this fall and winter ahead of a full album early next year. “Oversoul” now on all platforms <3

In theory it’s a valid concern, but in practice it’s not. Taylor is a very unusual situation; while a few other artists have re-recorded songs, no other major artist has done it to the extent she did (where it significantly devalued the originals). There are severe restrictions in artist contracts that prevent this situation - usually a 5-10 year period of restriction from when a recording contract ends until masters can be re-recorded. So - sign a deal in 2025 for five records. Release the first one in 2026, the fifth, say 8 years later in 2034, ending your deal. You aren’t re-recording masters for the *first* record until at least 2039, more likely 2044, almost 20 years after its release. It’s also very difficult to pull off successfully - if an artist is big enough for this to even matter, it’s likely the fan base will want the originals, not a new version (which by law must be different from the original, can’t be note for note). Only a fan base like Taylor’s could really be convinced to switch versions of a song. So again, valid question but in practice it’s only been a serious issue literally once in the history of music, so it isn’t something to be too worried about.

@robgrav3s @Kazeem On another note, i just had an IP class in Business Law and didn’t quite understand why would anyone want to own masters rights as opposed to publishing rights if artists like Taylor Swift or Prince could easily re record the songs and effectively emptying it of any value.

I love how Michael Jackson clearances will cost you an arm and a leg unless it was fire and he’d be like “yeah, nah go head”

Nope, not when it comes to actually recording and releasing the song (in the US anyway). Any true cover of the song is allowed. *How* that song is used is a different matter and the artist/publisher do have some control, but that’s a separate discussion. And if you’re curious, song parody is an entirely different category under US law, so even that doesn’t require permission. But overall the answer to the question is no - artists cannot prevent someone else from recording and releasing an audio version of their song (music videos can be prevented though, different license).

@robgrav3s @Kazeem Doesn’t the author retain some kind of “moral rights” to the art? Allowing to prevent someone from misusing his work?

A license is obviously needed (what grok means by “permission”) but it cannot be refused. The only refusals are in specific instances, such as lyric/melody changes. In theory the sync license for the video could’ve been denied, but that isn’t what we’re talking about. This is a very well know and clear law in the music industry (compulsory license).

@robgrav3s @sol_chowin @Kazeem I mean. You're wrong. But you're so convinced it's impossible to convince you otherwise. Just ask any AI of your liking if you don't trust Google. Here @grok . Can you legally cover any song without permission?

@SpellArchivist @sol_chowin @Kazeem Untrue. Any song can be covered. No permission needed.

@sol_chowin @Kazeem The song writer can just say no. Getting a yes is the "clear" he's talking about. So I don't know what your point is.

@sama I’d love to get rid of this alert (can delete memories, then they fill up again). Any chance of an increase in memory or make this a temporary notification

we really do try to listen to feedback! we would love to be able to do even more; we continue to have to make very hard tradeoffs between rate limits, new feature launches, and latency. the GPUs are coming, so hopefully it gets better.

we have doubled rate limits for o3 and o4-mini-high for chatgpt plus subscribers. enjoy!

@TheProjectUnity The urge to break free from the matrix is part of the matrix.

If you were human, how would you break out of the matrix? ChatGPT:

The urge to break free from the matrix is part of the matrix.

@PJaccetturo This basically already exists and was done in 1978, for anyone who wants to see it (Amazon has it to stream).

What if Studio Ghibli directed Lord of the Rings? I spent $250 in Kling credits and 9 hours re-editing the Fellowship trailer to bring that vision to life—and I’ll show you exactly how I did it 👇🏼