The Tarot Path

So, you ask me, "Why did I descend? What could be more innocent than a boy on a pony smiling and happy? Did I descend because the original image on the tarot card was modified by AI and so constitutes AI 'slop' and one must never choose AI 'slop'? Or is it because I chose a tarot card, and tarot cards are associated with the occult practice of 'reading the future'? I don't understand!"

Let me reassure you: You didn't descend for any of those reasons. In fact, you didn't have enough information to make a rational choice. You based your choice on intuition, and intuition usually fails us, contrary to what we've been told.

Nope, you descended because the boy riding the pony is an AI image (that much is true) adapted from the Yellow Kid, an enormously popular cartoon character in the New York World in the late 1800s. "Yellow journalism"—the manipulation of information for political purposes—took the adjective "yellow" from the Yellow Kid's nightshirt. In fact, the sinking of the USS Maine in a Cuban harbor is often cited as the first instance of "yellow journalism" because that incident was exploited to justify America's declaration of war against Spain. America won the Spanish American War and acquired the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain; Cuba became a U.S. protectorate. Thus ended American isolation and the beginning of the American empire.

And that's why you descended. That's why we are all descending.