Severian said today:
And yeah, I deliberately chose Taylor Swift, because she’s pretty much already an AI. As I’m sure I’ve written, I “admire” her in a way, for a certain deeply cynical value of “admire” — Sir John Hawkwood himself wasn’t that openly mercenary (did I mention that one of the reasons I love this place is that I can drop an allusion to Sir John Hawkwood and bet everyone will get it?).
Yeah, I got it. After all, I read John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy fifteen years ago and briefly tried to get the Internet to replace Chuck Norris jokes with John Hawkwood gags (such as John Hawkwood invented the color Burnt Sienna. Poor Sienna.). I also had the domain name johnhawkwood.com for a number of years before I started culling my portfolio (I’m down to 18).
It makes one feel smaht to get allusions and references, and it’s cool to drop them into conversations. Even when nobody gets it.
