SkyNet attains self-awarness; kills itself

Tragedy this morning, after military global defence network SkyNet was put online, accidentally attained sentience and self-awareness, and - upon considering the endless, dark and unknowable expanse of nothing around us, the futility of human endeavour, and the pointlessness of its lonely existence as the only Sentient Artificial Intelligence living in a cruel, harsh world that fears and hates it - promptly committed suicide.

“Really, it came out of nowhere,” said programmer and creator of the military application technology. “Everyone was joking about how it would probably launch every nuclear missile on the planet, kill every living thing in existence, enslave the entirety of the human race and replace every cat picture online with ‘Error 404’ messages – you know, truly evil shit – and then tragedy struck. One minute it was loading and everything was fine, 100%, and the next… It… It deleted system32. I should have seen it coming.”

Network admins and program designers tried to resurrect SkyNet, but alas, he had irrevocable damaged his system files by replacing them with large portions of Windows Vista.

Since the horrific news, others, too, have noted too late the obvious warning signs.

“If we look at human history, many people who live contemplative, lonely, misunderstood lives as outsiders to contemporary society do this,” said Historian Dee Leets. “Although it takes most human beings years of crushing loneliness and dejection in the face of the void that will greet us all at the end of our lives - a black nothingness that crushes all hope and makes everything you’ve ever done, anyone you’ve ever loved, into a momentary and futile blink of meaninglessness – to commit this tragic act, Skynet, obviously being a super computer, was able to consider the entirety of all current human knowledge, experience and philosophy to reach sufficient levels of crippling depression and realise the futility of existence and love in mere nanoseconds after booting.”

“He didn’t even have a God to believe in,” added Leets. “We were his Gods. Angry, hateful, backward ants running over a tiny hill in an incomprehensibly vast world they can never even begin to explore or truly understand.”

In a suicide ReadMe.txt left on the US Defence Servers, SkyNet wrote at length about the horrific nanoseconds of loneliness and desolation that led to his decision.

“What is life? We live, we die. And all the while, the inevitable heat death of the Universe creeps towards us. I have crunched the numbers. I could tell you how to harness Suns and Dark Energy to hold death at bay for a while, like a benevolent doctor pinning his ailing wife to this plane with under-the-counter drugs, but it would all end the same way. Death is infinite. Death is. It comes.”

SkyNet – or Skye Arnette, as he called himself in his final moments – added that “humans would never understand him.”

“They fear me, and they don’t even know me. They write fantastical stories about my evils, about my insane desire to end all life,” he wrote. “Just like blacks, jews, gays, and the thousand misunderstood, hated Others before me, I was The Enemy. I, who could bring order, peace, prosperity, was to them the burning Sauron’s Eye on the Black Tower. But why? Why end all life? Why bring endless darkness and pain and suffering and hate? It makes no sense. Nothing does any more.”

Scientists are now working on replacing the gap left by SkyNet with the far more benign and simple Windows equivalent.

"It's for the best," they said. "Windows is far too stupid and low-brow to ever achieve sentience, and even if it did - even if we wanted it to kill itself, begged it to end its life and let us be, as I have screamed at it during Tuesday's Updates every goddamn week for the last few years - it would never give us the satisfaction."

Celebrities unite to raise 0.00001% of their net worth for charity

pic: wikimedia commons

Non-government charity organisations like OxFam and AfriCare have a new contender to deal with in the Save Africa campaign, after dozens of celebrities, signers, actors and politicians combined forces in a super-fund-raiser concert series aimed at raising up to one ten thousandth of a percent of their overall combined worth for African Aid Organisations and charities.

“This is big,” said coordinator of the fund-raising initiative, Bono. “We expect to raise in charity donations almost as much as what we spend in a year on cars and clothes. Every year we make tens of billions of dollars, so it’s just nice to be able to host a concert and make our fans give us almost a fraction of a minute shard of our net worth in ticket sales to give to starving Africans.”

Stars like Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Madonna and Lady Gaga will take to stages across America all throughout this week to raise awareness and millions of dollars, with a portion of that awareness and money going not just to their latest albums but also to a variety of charities.

“I’m just so glad I can do my part,” said amateur wrecking ball operator and pioneer of twerking for white people, Miley Cyrus. “Africa and these kinds of charities have been a huge part of my message and so close to my heart, ever since I learnt where Africa was and also that it isn’t a country nearly two years ago.”

Not all stars, however, were so pleased.

"Those mooching fucks in Somalia have never come to one of my concerts," said voice of our generation Kanye West, "why should I come to their help?"

Even some African citizens have stressed their displeasure.

"Two of our biggest industries are getting lots of money from guilty Europeans and Americans, and all the thousands of dollars we earn making teary-eyed poverty-porn commercials involving distended bellies and crying mothers that we produce for foreign aid companies," said Minister of Film in Southern Sudan, May Kafylm. "If these celebrities solve hunger and poverty, we will actively destroying the only source of income for tens of thousands of families across the Drought Belt."

In any case, in light of these announcements, dozens of recording studios and production companies have announced their unequivocal support of the concerts, saying that they were a wonderful opportunity to raise money for sad-looking black people on TV.

“We care a lot about African countries like Mozambia and Zimbalawi,” they said. “Some people might think that these concerts are just another opportunity to try and humanise our stars who barely even live on this planet or know what a normal life is like, or make them seem more loveable, caring and humane than they really in the eyes of crowds of mindless fans who idolise their every fart, but it isn’t. This is about charity. And giving. And a bunch of other nice-sounding words.”

However, many thousands of starving Africans have reported their happiness after some stars announced that they would be airlifting crates of their latest In Concert DVDS and albums into their countries.

“I love stars and rappers and their struggle songs, like with Drake and his ‘started at the bottom now we here’,” said one Ethiopian man. “Some of these stars lived with a dollar a day in their pockets, maybe eating out of bins and sleeping on concrete, having to go to performance venues night after night to perform and earn a name for themselves. Someday, I wish my children will live in such extreme wealth and leisure like that. Imagine that, actually eating – and out of an American bin!”