@SpeakerToManagers@wandering.shop
@SpeakerToManagers@wandering.shop avatar

SpeakerToManagers

@SpeakerToManagers@wandering.shop

Retired software engineer. Progressive lefty from trade-union socialist communist family. Neurodivergent (ADD, OCD) & physically disabled. Interested in a lot of things including photography, computing, art, SFF, experimental video, astrobiology, complex adaptive systems, poetry, visual mathematics …
#Fractals, #ReactionDiffusion, #GenerativeArt, #CellularAutomata.
Allergic to libertarianism, AI hype, trans-humanism, crypto currency & web3.

𝐋𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬.

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johnshirley2024, (edited ) to random

[Um--what?]

AI faces look more real than actual human faces

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231113111717.htm

SpeakerToManagers,
@SpeakerToManagers@wandering.shop avatar

@johnshirley2024 @Wildbill @lilithsaintcrow
Whoever wrote it should be made to walk the prank.

SusannaShore, to scifi
@SusannaShore@wandering.shop avatar

System Collapse by Martha Wells, the latest MurderBot book, is out today and it's great. Read my review: https://susannashore.blogspot.com/2023/11/system-collapse-by-martha-wells-review.html

@bookstodon

SpeakerToManagers,
@SpeakerToManagers@wandering.shop avatar

@SusannaShore @bookstodon
Just put the 1st page of the text up on my ebook app ready to read as soon as I brush my teeth & get ready for bed. Not sure if I’m prepared to stay up all night reading, but needs must when the fiction drives.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

PREDICTION: Pigfucker Dave will backstabbing Sunak, replace him as PM by next November, running a snap general election on a single issue manifesto of rejoining the EU ... then either he wins and we're right back where we were in 2013, or he loses and Starmer won't be able to do anything to fix the worst fuck-ups of Brexit.

We're doomed. Idiocracy, now with added bonus stupidity and a side order of groundhogs! Er, I mean pigs.

SpeakerToManagers,
@SpeakerToManagers@wandering.shop avatar

@cstross
Could be interesting if the EU insists on Charles III emulating Charles I.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

I grew up reading Heinlein novels too; the difference (I think) is that I learned (a) how to read critically and (b) that Heinlein loved to play fake-out mind games using unreliable narrators, to study ideological positions he didn't necessarily agree with but enjoyed playing with. Oh, and (c) he had some weird unexamined cognitive biases.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@cstross
While it seems clear (to me, anyway) that Heinlein was an unreliable narrator, there are a few subjects he wrote about outside of his fiction that he seemed to really believe in. One was the American Empire (see his public support of the Vietnam War, not just in Glory Road and indirectly in Starship Troopers).

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Dinner:

SpeakerToManagers,
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@cstross
Yum! At least my eyes can feast, my taste buds don’t get that sort of pleasure just now; working on keeping my glucose level down.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Ah, the joy of flight cancellations and being rerouted via Mars on a tight connection! Or in this case, Zurich.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@cstross
Yes, luggage would be my concern. I once went from Portland, Oregon to New Orleans, only to discover that my luggage was being sent to West Africa. Luckily it was intercepted before it left Florida.

xgranade, to random
@xgranade@wandering.shop avatar

Today's newsletter from @charliejane is really good, and just makes what's going on in TV make so much more sense.

https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/the-lesson-that-superhero-tv-shows-keep-learning/

SpeakerToManagers,
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@xgranade @charliejane
“If a TV show feels as though everything is just building toward the big battle in the season finale, that's probably not a fun TV show to watch -- but that's a perfectly good format for a movie.”

This is a hot button for me, after seeing a number of otherwise excellent superhero movies dragged down by overlong and even boring 3rd act battles tricked out by way too much cataclysmic CGI. A lot of movies could stand more character development and fewer explosions.

SpeakerToManagers, to random
@SpeakerToManagers@wandering.shop avatar

What Happens to a Werewolf on the Moon? - Scientific American https://apple.news/AD3_XBQzQR8-Pxzwa6keL8g

xgranade, to random
@xgranade@wandering.shop avatar

I would love it if, before multiple thousands of words on quantum computing for an international audience, folks could be bothered to look up one (1) fact about it first.

This isn't subtoot of anything in particular, either... it's just depressingly common to just declare quantum shit is weird and give up.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@xgranade @stufromoz
I have the problem that I know something about both quantum theory and quantum computing, and I get really irritated by people going on about it when they don’t have even a basic understanding of the field. Especially the woo-woo “spirituality is quantum” and “all cconsciuosness is connected by quantum entanglement.”

evilrooster, to random

I dreamed last night that in one particular place, if you laid a few pieces of paper shaped like the steps of a spiral staircase on the ground and stepped on them just right, you could descend (it was just to the next floor down in the building).

Spent the last third of the dream trying.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@evilrooster
There are stairs like that in Gaiman’s Sandman comics. I think you’ve been visited by Dream.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Behold, the Citroen Picasso!

https://www.andysaunders.net/the-picasso/

SpeakerToManagers,
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@cstross
Does it keep a couple of Bugatti Mistrals around s its mistresses?

exchgr, to random
@exchgr@mastodon.world avatar

good god

SpeakerToManagers,
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@exchgr
Capital ℵ₁

brunoc, to random

Reading @pluralistic say "There's a reason that every plan to "disrupt" transportation ends up reinventing the bus" reminds me of a story on Wired/Fast Company/TechCrunch (honestly don't remember) where the author begs Silicon Valley to "disrupt" the US—granted—ancient air traffic control system. Imagine moving fast and breaking things on a system that controls things that are already very fast and should not be broken? The savior complex is jarring.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@mentallyalex @skepticsbookoflists @brunoc @pluralistic
I actually worked on a project once that was trying to stop companies from moving clinical drug trials too fast and breaking people. The project was abandoned because nobody wanted to put money into it.

SpeakerToManagers, to random
@SpeakerToManagers@wandering.shop avatar

How about returning them to their communities?

Top New York museum to remove all human remains from display - The Guardian https://apple.news/AwkseV0dQRqWDM-c5rOygvA

SpeakerToManagers,
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@cstross
Good point. We’ll have to find people with the most Neanderthal genes, and give the remains to them.

charliejane, to random
@charliejane@wandering.shop avatar

My crankiest opinion: I hate apps.

Most apps are just clingy bitches. They want to collect too much info, they take up too much space, they want to notify you of trivial bullshit. Most apps should just be websites.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@charliejane
I’m still pissed off 20 years later that OpenDoc was ignored by everybody, even Apple, where it was invented. The idea was to make documents the central objects of computing instead of applications or files.

donni, to random
@donni@mastodon.social avatar

What's a good age to just start screaming incoherently

SpeakerToManagers,
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@BlackenedGreen @donni
Now.

Catvalente, to random
@Catvalente@wandering.shop avatar

The online reaction to the Israel-Palestine situation & Hamas attack is really showing how entirely people have leaned into their internet opinion bubbles & forgotten what their big-feelings outside voices sound like beyond their constantly-cycling outrage-dispensers.

The decency standards of any political/digital bubble aren’t really standards at all, they’re the current meta-strategy of someone’s profit model.

Fucking hell, guys. Take a step back.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@Catvalente
Every war in my lifetime has killed more civilians than soldiers of any kind, uniformed or not. Collateral damage is the order of the day. Been there, sick and tired of other people wanting to go there again.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@Catvalente
BTW when I said “been there” I meant I’ve seen it up close & personal, and I never want anyone to have to see it again. So I’m not going to applaud anyone who wants to fight with innocent civilians in the middle.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@cstross @Catvalente
I think if Falklands more as a very violent game of capture the flag than a war.

As for Ukraine, it could go either way depending on how the Russian endgame turns out, and depending on what happens to the huge number of kidnapped civilians taken to Russia.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

WRITERS: anyone else taking Semaglutide (Ozempic™, Wegovy™, Rybelsus™, etc) and finding it demotivates you for writing?

GLP-1 agonists aren't just antidiabetic drugs that cause weight loss, they also seem to reduce reward-seeking behaviour, eg. alcoholism. And for me, writing has always been my obsession.

But I'm on Rybelsus (for type II diabetes) and it's been a real slog this past year. I'm just starting a project that SHOULD be obsessive and instead I'm just … meh, don't wanna.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@cstross
Shit, Charlie, I’m really sorry to hear that. I was just diagnosed diabetic 3 months ago (and promptly hospitalized with kidney failure when my gp doubled my Lasix dose), and was wondering if I would have to go on one of those drugs. So far, not; diet is doing what’s needed.

My experience with anhedonia was being prescribed an SNRI for ADD and having its SSRI minor side effect snap me out of a 2 year depression I didn’t know I was in. Doubt that experience generalizes.

johnshirley2024, to random

"It occurs to me that, perhaps through perusing computer models, or simple conferencing, our international leaders may calculate that what they’d have to spend, and to sacrifice to help these desperate migrants is actually far less than the price they’ll pay if they do not prepare and do not offer transportation, food and shelter to these hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of future migrants."

https://instantfuture.org/flash-forward-to-coping-with-climate-migration/

SpeakerToManagers,
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@johnshirley2024
I really wish I believed I live in a timeline where even some number of governments had the knowledge nd of foresight to think ahead farther than next week. What I do know is that the US Army has stated that it is planning to fight wars whose cause is climate change, and I’d be very surprised if the Chinese military were not doing so as well.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@johnshirley2024
I love the idea of the Space Elevator, have since I read Hans Moravec’s original paper on Skyhooks and Elevators. Unfortunately an elevator up from Earth can’t happen without materials 2 orders of magnitude stronger available now. In any case it’s not clear that moving heat with elevator is an option. I once calculated the heat carrying capacity of the nanotube tape elevator proposed by Edward’s. Because of its small width & immense length, it could carry a few microwatts.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@johnshirley2024
All true, it’s a question of how much time we have to develop new technology, I spent time in Silly Valley for my sins and learned a little bit about how that works; from finding a new material in the lab to manufacturing and use at scale is typically 15-20 years.

There’s also the fact that one drone could take out an elevator, Bc you can’t add the weight of armor to it. Sorry, I know I’m being rather negative today, the news is bringing me down.

SpeakerToManagers,
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@johnshirley2024
Kevlar isn’t strong enough, though we could build elevators on the Moon with it. I saw something a few days ago, but my memory of it is fuzzy, I can’t remember details but someone discovered a fiber that’s much stronger than Kevlar. Still not enough for an elevator, but closer.

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