From now until the #election, I'm playing the Benny Hill theme tune at full volume and adopting a Kenneth Williams "oooh matron" voice, because it's now the only way to keep a grip on #reality
@TCMuffin@Thebratdragon@PaulNickson@spytfyre@Man
Please say if wrong, but low-level US Atlantic radar was not that great at the time? Plausible they could simply fly in low, if refuelled of course.
There are definitely times when the Urge to do Journalism bites. For example: I'm sat drinking a coffee overlooking Whitstable harbour. There's a ship unloading, and I search for the name. This leads me to find out that it was impounded earlier this year for a bunch of safety violations, and is owned by a reasonably elaborate bunch of shell companies. Probably nothing illegal, but quite a lot of playing "pass the asset" from one company to another.
Not enough people realize that the "Turing Test" as originally presented was "can a gay English man in 1945 tell the difference between a chatbot and a femme-coded woman" over a teletype connection.
(Turing was very gay and had a sex-segregated education and then work life: he basically didn't know women and his alienation is palpable. But today's techbros don't have any such excuse, and the emphasis on femme-coded AI is ... telling.) https://mastodon.xyz/@pmorinerie/112506480363973206
@cstross@Oggie
I suppose there’s a change from the old robot as metaphor for the strong but suppressed male worker to the intangible ai as knowledgeable and entertaining but submissive and servile.
Does that connect to Asimovian male robots being exterior-focused in the factory or on the frontier, while female ais are all around the homes and interiors?
No matter how far we travel, we don’t leave our preconceptions behind.
Sometimes when you learn how something works, you think, Thanks knowledge, that really helped, everything makes more sense, and other times you look up how wrists turn, and it's like WTF?!
@EVDHmn@RickiTarr
Yes, I have a bit of background in palaeontology, with some zoology and genetics. Very much in a big dark cave with a small light (which is why you need to talk to all the other folks with lights!)
@Wen True, but with everything on fire, there’s a space for ‘here’s an easily fixable, reasonably cheap, high impact on local voters’ issue.
Whereas if we wait until everything’s not on fire …
@adnan@Garwboy Moderate odds he’ll be off to be the new banking face of India plugging into New York fintech, while Akshata sets up base camp in Cali. Any journos want to check if the girls have already registered in any Santa Monica schools?
@simon_brooke@HighlandLawyer@glitzersachen@cstross
I wouldn’t quite agree. Our example, at least since, say, 1945, shows that you can have an appointed leg chamber that isn’t corrupt albeit imperfect. More recent events have also shown it’s not at all intrinsically stable, lacks any control feedback, and is easily corrupted.
Hence, when you cry ‘Abolition’, most people’s memories say ‘oh, it works ok, why bother’.
@HighlandLawyer@simon_brooke@glitzersachen@cstross
It’s a tricky one. There are very few modern attempts at this which aren’t rewarmed hashes of the US tripartite structure. Maybe a modification of the German system?
@glitzersachen@HighlandLawyer@simon_brooke@cstross
If I were being thoroughly impractical, I might suggest a second chamber made up of bards and teachers as the antithesis of a primary chamber of successful politicians.
When Maxwell realized in 1862 that light consists of waves in the electromagnetic field, why didn't anyone try to use electricity to make such waves right away? Why did Hertz succeed only 24 years later?
According to 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘹𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘴:
"Since he regarded the production of light as an essentially molecular and mechanical process, prior, in a sense, to electromagnetic laws, Maxwell could elaborate an electromagnetic account of the propagation of light without ever supposing that ether waves were produced purely electromagnetically."
In 1879, a physicist named Lodge realized that in theory one could make "electromagnetic light". But he didn't think of creating waves of lower frequency:
"Send through the helix an intermittent current (best alternately reversed) but the alternations must be very rapid, several billion per sec."
He mentioned this idea to Fitzgerald, who believed he could prove it was impossible. Unfortunately Fitzgerald managed to convince Lodge. But later he realized his mistake:
"It was FitzGerald himself who found the flaws in his "proofs." He then proceeded to put the subject on a sound theoretical basis, so that by 1883 he understood quite clearly how electromagnetic waves could be produced and what their characteristics would be. But the waves remained inaccessible; FitzGerald, along with everyone else, was stymied by the lack of any way to detect them."
In 1883, Fitzgerald gave a talk called "On a Method of Producing Electromagnetic Disturbances of Comparatively Short Wavelengths". But he couldn't figure out how to 𝘥𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵 these waves. Hertz figured that out in 1886.
@johncarlosbaez A bit of waiting for equipment to catch up and be serendipitously able to stimulate ideas?
Things like having reasonable vacuums and dependable higher voltages available in the lab. Or, outside the lab, advancing telegraphy.
Not to mention the difficulties in detecting something you don’t fully understand. iirc, Hertz had a lot of trouble until he realised the room he was working in was affecting his detection.