@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

PaulGrahamRaven

@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es

Science fiction writer turned tech critic turned STS/critical futures academic turned consulting critical foresight practitioner and worldbuilder-for-hire. Resident in (and aspiring citizen of) Malmö, Sweden.

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bruces, to random
@bruces@mastodon.social avatar

*The Ibizan tot has discovered press-on tattoos

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@bruces The Cephalopods are surely the toughest of the Balearic pirate crews, so you picked a good faction

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

Quick question for anyone using Stripe to take payments online: are pay-outs sent as domestic transactions, i.e. wired to you from an instance of Stripe based in your own country of operations, or are they wired to you as a payment from overseas?

(Would appreciate some signal-boost on this query, because Stripe's FAQ is super opaque, and it turns out that their email-based customer service systems have been almost entirely turned over to LLMs... )

urlyman, to random
@urlyman@mastodon.social avatar

Portsmouth has reopened another section of its new seafront defences, the bit that goes round Southsea Castle.

The second pic shows a granite groyne which mitigates the long shore drift that Southsea beach is vulnerable to.

Looking perpendicular to the seafront along a granite groyne. In the distance, an enormous container ship heads towards Southampton.

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@urlyman Been a long time since I last cycled up and down that stretch of seafront. Looks like they've made a passing decent job of it.

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

The UK Conservatives are set to get only 20% of the vote and 100-150 seats in July.

This would be a defeat of epic and unprecedented proportions.

Their previous worst results were 1906, with 150 seats and 43% of the vote and 1997 with 165 seats and 30% of the vote.

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@Loukas Yeah, something big is changing, for sure. But to folk looking forward to a Tory wipeout, I extend a warning: what comes to to take their place could actually be worse.

(That's no reason not to vote them into oblivion, mind you. More a warning against the inevitable complacency of a huge Labour majority.)

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

A Swedish acquaintance of mine has written a zombie submarine novel called "The Hunt for Dead October."

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@Loukas ... OK, I'm kinda jealous of that title. That's some serious pun skills.

PaulGrahamRaven, to Sociology
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

at the crest of the curve

https://www.velcro-city.co.uk/at-the-crest-of-the-curve/

ianbetteridge, to random
@ianbetteridge@writing.exchange avatar

The funny thing about Microsoft's new Recall feature is how little actual "AI" it's doing. It's basically just making automatic screen captures, then running OCR and image recognition to create a semantic index you can search. Unless I'm missing something, there's no LLM (or small language model) used in it. Maybe in parsing queries?

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@ianbetteridge I think this mostly illustrates the point that "AI" has become a completely hollow signifier by this point. I've been in a loooot of futures workshops in the last nine months, on all sorts of topics, and it's become obvious to me that Those Two Letters are what people now say where before we would have just said "computers".

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@ianbetteridge Which is to say: everyone's badging everything as "AI", regardless of how it actually works, because that's just the playground catchphrase this semester.

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@ianbetteridge It's like that culminatory scene in Being John Malkovich, only devoid that movie's deep ironic self-awareness

ancient_catbus, to random
@ancient_catbus@jorts.horse avatar

friends the suspicious local cat who wouldn't even come inside when I first met him is now fully passed out on the couch napping while I draw

same napping cat but showing off toe beans

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@ancient_catbus omg the tiny ginger paw-beans

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

I feel like there's a very real possibility that if we engineered the opportunity and circumstances for Elon Musk and Javier Milei to start a really terrible band together, we might through sheer distraction get at least two of the current crop of rampaging manchildren off the gameboard for a little while

bruces, to random
@bruces@mastodon.social avatar

*Where the hell is that eerie place where you live, Captain Copilot

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@bruces I think Copilot may have bought this lakeside plot after Barbie moved out?

PaulGrahamRaven, to philosophy
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

the space necessary for thinking is lost

https://www.velcro-city.co.uk/the-space-necessary-for-thinking-is-lost/

#Philosophy #Politics #Technology

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@polinski Re: urgency loops -- would "Pianoblivion" off of Wreckage.Systems be an example? I love that one for its restlessness.

But I'm also curious about the ingredients of the urgency loop: in the RFTC tracks in particular, there's a stacking of layers going on, but I feel like there's also something happening with the interaction of chord progression and riff/melody that I don't quite understand, but which is nonetheless doing something with regard to kicking things up a notch.

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

"Your Android devices will soon join the Find My Device network!"

No they fucking won't, sunshine.

kb, to random
@kb@assemblag.es avatar

I fear my best and most beautiful girl has very little time left. We're going to the vet in a couple of hours to see if there is anything left that can be done.

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@kb I'm sorry, Keith.

klingebeil, to random German
@klingebeil@newsie.social avatar

20-year-olds killing soldiers with drones from a bunker while vaping is uncomfortably cyberpunk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WipqeFgzdTc

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@klingebeil "They sent a slamhound on Turner's tail in New Kharkiv, slotted it to his pheremones and the flavour of his vape."

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

Each successive blog post from Sean Bonner reads more and more like the longer-each-time manic and self-knotting letters you might get from a smart cousin who got into Scientology during a low period at university, and who keeps trying to explain to you (and by proxy to himself) that really it's all quite rational and there's nothing to worry about, which only makes you wonder how often he speaks to anyone outside of the echo-chamber

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

"Cryptopunks are art. Culturally important genre defining art. I know it, if you are reading this you probably know it, and others are starting to realize it every day."

Substitute "Xenu is love" for "Cryptopunks are art", and you see what I mean.

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

And the whole post is basically about how much of a predictable clusterfuck some recent "drop" turned out to be, and it's all very sad, because this is a very smart and creative person who (if you ask me) inducted themselves into a cult while trying to deal with the one-two punch of a major relocation between countries followed by pandemic lockdown isolation, and I do wonder how long it will be before we can have a conversation about the psychological damage of that era.

PaulGrahamRaven, (edited )
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

And yeah, I know we're not supposed to diagnose at a ̶d̶i̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ distance, esp. if we're not actually mental health professionals, but all the same I'm pretty sure we will look back on the early 2020s as a period of fairly extreme psychological distress. We can discuss the causality, sure, but the basic fact of social isolation causing serious cognitive warping needs to be put on the table without all the "stop denying the pandemic!" stuff (which is another manifestation of the same thing).

ancient_catbus, to random
@ancient_catbus@jorts.horse avatar

🎶the only card I need
is the Ace of Spades
the Ace of Spades🎶

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@ancient_catbus ♠️

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

Today I learned that the prefab voting booths they are setting up in my local library is called "The Benjamin Franklin."

Politics. All about those Benjamins.

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@Loukas Better to call it the Benjamin Franklin than to call it the John Wilkes Booth, I guess. ;)

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@ahmetasabanci Hey, man -- I recall you offering to send me clips of FT articles if I found I couldn't read them? Well, I can't read this one, and I'd like to... any chance you can grab it for me? https://www.ft.com/content/14a60649-172a-45c1-99a9-039f481430e7

PaulGrahamRaven,
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

@ahmetasabanci Ah, I should have checked there first -- thanks for indulging a lazy request, I owe you one!

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