@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
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ZachWeinersmith

@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social

The SMBC guy.
New book: A City on Mars (Nov 2)

Co-author of Soonish
Illustrator of Open Borders
Scop of Bea Wolf.

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ZachWeinersmith, to random
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An interesting thing with Karl Popper is that he's deeply concerned with refuting historicism, in the sense that there are predictable unfolding stages of history. This is in response to Marxism and certain forms of fascism. I wonder how he'd feel about the more modern futurology/longtermism stuff, which is more about the rate of technological change and whose sociological ideas, in my experience, are broadly liberal.

ZachWeinersmith,
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@john Reading him, even his stuff that's almost a century old now, is really impressive. I think he over-reacts to some things, but the way he takes down then-popular movements, e.g. Freudianism, with perfect clarity and without hesitation, is always really impressive. There must have been lots of people calling him naive and reductionist.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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How do you think International Law would look at the following situation:

5 years from now, humanoid robots are really good and relatively cheap. Russia tries invade a non-NATO country. The US sends 10,000 robotic soldiers, which are technically operated locally.

ZachWeinersmith,
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Like, in some sense it's no different from drones, but somehow... robots with human-ish war capacity feels different?

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Bonus panel here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/nice

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Learning
Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/learn

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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I'm always impressed the IRS makes you verify your identity before paying, as if there are rogue actors looking to pay other people's dues in the dead of night.

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/lit
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #books

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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One of the weirdest modern things to me is this obsession with generations. Maybe I haven't read the right stuff, but you pick up a 19th or 18th century book and they talk about the past, or conflict in families between old and young, but never this weird cohort-antagonism thing?

Could be it's random culture shit, but maybe it's because people have fewer kids, so they don't span generations? Or maybe tech acceleration means cohorts have more differences that are real?

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Click for full comic: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/pain-5
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #ai

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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10-year-old just got to function stuff and I'm having trouble explaining in general why you should care which variable is dependent vs independent? Other than that, in stats, you should know the direction of causality, does this sort of thing matter?

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Coverage
Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/coverage-2

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/sympathy-2

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Fuck you, ad -- this is not a disorder, it's a lifestyle

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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This is so baked into the modern internet that it's only weird once you take a second to think about it. Artists, musicians, communicators... we have literally no platform loyalty. None. If I could switch from instagram and make half a cent more without much effort I would feel zero compunction. It's just math. This is not how I feel about my book publishers.

ZachWeinersmith,
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You would think this'd produce instability, but the large social media platforms have so much network power, and are so siloed from each other, that they do not have to care about how you feel about them. And likewise, they do not care about you other than the ad views you generate.

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/art-6

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Look it's me!

https://youtu.be/JDh2QTYYA6o?si=tvhfdO9_0gxomCQM

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Next time someone asks what SMBC is about, I'm just posting this

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Judging from the response to today's comic a LOT of you are not welcome in Etymology Club.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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The first rule of Etymology Club is, wait hold on did you know that the word "club" meaning a group of people with a common goal is of 17th century origin and refers to the idea of a mass of people as being like a club, in the older sense of a cudgel, what were we talking about?

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Bonus panel here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/why-6

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Mildly interesting:

A lot of etymological roots for male/female are fairly insulting to women, e.g. ladies and gentleman = loaf-kneader and well-born, wife and husband = woman and householder, HOWEVER knight and dame is just the opposite, where a dame is the boss of a household and knight originally means something like boy or servant.

Good morning.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Weird observation - I've talked with a number of kids under 12 and none of them were familiar with Pig Latin? Nor more obscure kid-cants, like Ubbi Dubbi or Gibberish. Seems to be less of a thing now.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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I'm at UT Austin for a lecture and a nontrivial number of students, of diverse gender and ethnicity, are carrying huge plastic jugs of water? Or sitting with huge jugs of water? What are they afraid of?

ZachWeinersmith,
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@slothrop ew

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