@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

graydon

@graydon@canada.masto.host

Starts-with-X programmer. Fantasy author. The human social function emulator may not function as expected. He/they. Born at 322 ppm

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cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

I'm still manually approving all my follow requests and every week or so I think "are they okay now?" and then nope, some kind of spam account shows up with an AI-generated garbage user profile, AI-generated user photo, and the only toots its made are attempts to get other Mastodon folks to solve CAPTCHAs for it …

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@cstross Same.

I sometimes have doubts about the follows 3, no posts, no picture, accounts, but not enough to click accept.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Dinosaurs, being closely related to birds, were almost certainly cloacal (soft tissues don't fossilize well) and used the ZW sex-determinant chromosome system, not XY.

Someone needs to tell the incels that T. Rex was 100% into teh buttsex and didn't have a cock.
https://beige.party/@Lana/112497133538964868

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@cstross They almost certainly did have penises; there's some question about one or two, but basal birds (anatids, paleognaths) do have penises and the accepted reason for losing them is "weight". T. rex not being volant, that wouldn't have been an issue. Though they use lymphatic fluid rather than blood as the erection mechanism.

(Then there's the great "give us a quote that's not alike all the other quotes" paleontologist response about T. rex, which was "testicles the size of pumpkins".)

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

See also: "FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Thesis Defense" https://web.mit.edu/bbaren/Public/snakes.html

See, MIT has it on their web site so it MUST be valid training input for BullshitGPT!

(FYI @lauren )

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@cstross @lauren I'm starting to wonder when, driven by the relentless mechanisms of the folk process, the first actual thesis defense snake fight will happen.

TonyStark, to random
@TonyStark@progressivecafe.social avatar

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act at work. In addition to clean energy solutions being good for the planet, low-income and minority communities typically bear the brunt of everyone else’s pollution and also rely on public transportation the most.

A fleet of 60 new electric buses will soon traverse across Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn along routes in low-income and minority communities, MTA officials said Tuesday (May 14th):
https://gothamist.com/news/mta-rolls-out-new-electric-bus-fleet-for-queens-staten-island-brooklyn

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@philip_cardella @TonyStark I would argue they're not trying to return to any economic model. (And certainly not feudalism, that turbulent bottom-up social structure where the great and good had specific obligations they had to meet or else.) They want a world in which they're guaranteed that everything good that happens to them is permanent, and they don't care this means it'll fail and they don't care this means pushing all the risk and consequences on to the defenseless.

w7voa, to random
@w7voa@journa.host avatar

OpenAI hits pause on the Scarlett Johansson soundalike voice it calls Sky. https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@w7voa When people who really, really want a world in which they never, ever have to take no for an answer start accumulating power, it's going to be better for all concerned if they don't succeed.

graydon, to random
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

So I'm seeing a lot of posts about "COVID is still going on", and various inescapable consequences if it's allowed to go on, and I'm struck by three things.

Firstly, effectively no one appears to have internalized that about half of all COVID cases are asymptomatic. It isn't, and can't be, "if you get sick"; you can't tell if you're sick. The only effective policy has to assume everyone, you included, is infected all the time. That's all we can presently know about the insidious threat.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

New blog entry: Harmless Fun! https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/05/harmless-fun.html

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@cstross Conspiracy theories seek to explain injustice. (It is, axiomatically, a just world (created by a just and loving god) and they are, axiomatically, good people, so the world SHOULD be doing what they want it to do. If it doesn't, that's injustice.)

Conspiracy theories are, without exception, the product of demography that's already lost. (Often to vast impersonal forces like the electromagnetic absorption spectrum of specific gaseous molecules or just the rushing passage of time.)

remixtures, to China Portuguese
@remixtures@tldr.nettime.org avatar

: "“The Western markets did not democratize EVs. They gentrified EVs,” said Bill Russo, the founder of the Automobility Ltd. consultancy in Shanghai. “And when you gentrify, you limit the size of the market. China is all about democratizing EVs, and that’s what will ultimately lead Chinese companies to be successful as they go global.”

Inside a huge garage in an industrial area west of Detroit, a company called Caresoft Global tore apart a Seagull that its China office purchased and shipped to the U.S.

Company President Terry Woychowski, a former chief engineer on General Motors’ big pickup trucks, said the car is a “clarion call” for the U.S. auto industry, which is years behind China in designing low-cost EVs.

After the teardown, Woychowski, who has been in the auto business for 45 years, said he was left wondering if U.S. automakers can adjust. “Things will have to change in some radical ways in order to be able to compete,” he said."

https://apnews.com/article/china-byd-auto-seagull-auto-ev-cae20c92432b74e95c234d93ec1df400

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@remixtures The US is the Oil Empire. There will only ever be one.

China wants to displace the US as the global hegemon. That requires displacing the Oil Empire, which at its most basic means domestic decarbonization in China. Hence EVs and solar are for-serious policy.

In the US, cars exist to create a market for fossil fuels. (Suburbs exist to create a market for cars.) Incumbent power requires this; incumbent power rests on this.

Incumbents refuse all change they have the power to refuse.

thatkatharine, to random
@thatkatharine@ohai.social avatar

There’s a new cancer spreading. Here’s why that’s good news.

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@thatkatharine I do wonder if someone's going to have the little moment of thought and go "hey, wait, if it's less infectious, why and how is it the dominant variant?" but presumably anyone who has that thought is carefully prevented from getting it into print.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Deeply telling about how far the Overton Window has shifted in 40 years that Ronald Reagan took a harder line with Israel than Joe Biden, never mind Mitt Romney.

(But then, per wikipedia Romney was best buds with Benjamin Netanyahu at university. So this tracks.)

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@cstross US elite consensus was not pro-apocalypse during the Reagan presidency; most evangelicals, never mind American Christians broadly constructed, did not believe that these are the end times and it wasn't anybody's policy to hasten those events. (One of Reagan's secretaries of the Interior was roundly mocked, even form the right, for an assertion that the world was going to end soon so restraint and conservation were unnecessary.)

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

I am deeply regretting that for my political satire series I went with a head of government who is merely a faceless Lovecraftian Elder God with a skull-collecting hobby.

He seems kind of understated these days.

Should have picked a cross between the South Dakota Puppy Shooter and Liz Truss instead ...

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@cstross The Laundry needs some modicum of peace, government, and good order to exist as a thing in a context, and the Black Pharaoh does provide.

The current crop of politicians aren't arguing about how to do the thing; they're arguing about what other thing should be done instead, if only people can be compelled to be good, righteous, moral people who understood their duty to die uncomplaining in specific ways with specific timing, lest the incumbents face alteration of circumstances.

graydon, to random
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

You get what you reward.

If you don't want it, make it structurally impossible to be rewarded by it.

That's not a question of law enforcement; that's a question of systemic, structural possibility.

Almost all our problems exist because you can get extremely rich.

delong, to random
@delong@mastodon.social avatar

Tesla Needs Its Tim Cook Now!
What is Tesla, Anyway? And What Is to Be Done About Its Management? Now that Elon Musk is no longer a fundraiser, cheerleader, & sometime coach for engineers pushing forward remarkable & essential technologies and has become a meme-stock tech-bubble carnival barker, is he the right CEO for Tesla? No. What Tesla needs now is its very own Tim Cook…
<https://braddelong.substack.com/p/what-is-tesla-anyway-and-what-is>
2024-05-01 We

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@delong I think you are mistakenly supposing that Tesla the organization knows how to be a car maker, that the current conception of "car" is a useful one (if we're as serious about PM2.5 pollution or decarbonization as we need to be, we can't have pneumatic tyres), or that the purpose of Tesla post-Musk was ever transportation.

It's a bit like the "toy salesman George Lucas" moment; Musk's Tesla existed to extract public money. It was never about cars.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

So, working on a Laundry novel yesterday I was crawling over the scrivener files from an earlier one and stumbled on a really promising codename for something ghastly that fits perfectly in the new one—a grisly contigency plan called FORLORN AVALON—only to discover that it never made it into the final as-published novel because fuck how was I to know in 2008 that the 2024 climax to the series would absolutely have to involve Gashadokuro King Arthur?

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@cstross On the plus side that is still a really promising code name.

Or do you absolutely require the prior mention?

graydon, to random
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

All this concern about housing affordability is mostly kabuki.

Nigh-all the housing stock isn't worth having; it's not designed for, and is certainly not built for, the time of angry weather. (The next century-plus at an absolute minimum.) It probably has a combustion furnace; it is not designed to shrug a tornado. It's not built on drainage suitable for the day you get twenty centimetres of rain. It depends on fragile distributed infrastructure. The roof will blow off.

NunavutBirder, to worldwithoutus
@NunavutBirder@mas.to avatar

Nanuraq only started running dogs two years ago and was participating in his first Nunavut Quest, a race that his grandfather and father have both run.

And today he was announced as the winner.

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@NunavutBirder Those dogs are pleased with themselves.

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

So, who said what to that slick looking nazi Speaker to change his mind about aid to Ukraine. He went to Mar a Lago the night before.🤔

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@StillIRise1963 All US policy comes down to US domestic politics.

"No aid" as a policy was at risk of fracturing the GOP, and once fractured, it will stay fractured.

The core leadership will do nigh-anything to avoid that fracture, because they need the unity to enact their prefered domestic policies once Trump is again president.

Flux, to random
@Flux@wandering.shop avatar

publishes the Fraser institute's "but the wealthy already pay almost all of the taxes!"
Of course the wealthy pay most of the taxes. When you have low income the tax bite cuts deeply into your ability to pay rent and feed your family. When you have high income you can pay much more without threat of homelessness or starvation.
That's the basis of progressive taxation.
If the FI wants the poor to pay a higher share they should back a flatter income distribution.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/wealthy-canadians-fair-share-taxes-1.7179031

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@Sir_Osis_of_Liver @Flux Finland does that; the fines are set by percentage of income. Which is why the world record for traffic fines is about 100 kUSD, paid by a Nokia exec going too fast in a school zone.

This would be a simple change to make in the law. Great candidate for a private member's bill and a chance to really hammer on "a fine is a price" politically.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

I am having a brain fog day—the worst in some weeks (months, even). Can't work. Should probably go back to bed.

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@cstross that seems like a good plan.

Plumbing-related stress would provide a sadly plausible explanation, too. Headmeat out of chemicals.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

I'd just like to note that "less than 15 cents in the dollar goes to farmers" is very familiar, because it's about the same for novelists.

This isn't because we're being ripped off but because there are too many steps in our supply chains between producers and consumers, and each step imposes a cost of maybe 30-40%, most of which is operating overheads (not profits).

Modern societies are complex and complexity is inefficient but without it we all starve.
https://c.im/@cdarwin/112255751985233723

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@katfeete @cstross @cdarwin The only societal excuse for capital is to absorb risk. (On the theory that capital can survive loses in ways other elements of the economy cannot.)

What's happened is that capital functions to transfer risk to the defenseless. It makes capital more durable but society as a whole more fragile.

ChristosArgyrop, to random
@ChristosArgyrop@mastodon.social avatar

There are many anecdotes about people diagnosed with after a infection (we have 5 in our circle in the US and Greece) in alignment with⬇️
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4716751
Shouldn't we ask the role of viruses as a cause of dementia? Is just the strongest among many?

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@ChristosArgyrop With COVID, we've got evidence of brain infection, a strong possibility no one clears it, the 2020 paper that reported universal Lewy body formation in a monkey infection experiment, the progress of existing dementia being greatly accelerated by COVID infection, the indications that long COVID involves neurons stuck together, and the recent Alzheimer's human pituitary extract prion link.

It seems all too likely that virus-induced misfolded proteins could be a cause of dementia.

steter, to random
@steter@mastodon.stevesworld.co avatar

If you live in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, anywhere on the eastern seaboard or the Caribbean, if you can get the hell out of there now, get the hell out of there now. It will make for fewer bodies to find in the wreckage to follow this hurricane season.

If you can't, this is the worst start to a hurricane season in anyone's lifetime. And it's La Nina. Please take this one seriously. You may lose everything. Prepare now. Insurers have.

https://t.co/QlcYf2Iyob

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@steter Sedimentary petrology gives us a way to recover wind speeds, because sedimentary rocks from aeolian deposits (= the wind blew it there) let you recover wind speed based on the grain size in the deposit.

And sure, all of this stuff has error bars, but just like the aeolian deposits of benthic ooze in Turkey tell us the Med really did dry out in the geologic past, aeolian deposits tell us the ancient warmer world had stronger winds than our Holocene expectations.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

"Problems with this fuel include its toxicity and its characteristic of bursting into flame on contact with the air. Furthermore, its exhaust (when used in a jet engine) would also be toxic." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentaborane(9)

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@cstross That's from the USAF's youthful enthusiasm and Every Conceivable Fuel period. (Can you say cryogenic acetylene? Well, yes, but please do not say it loudly. Or out loud. Or anywhere near here...)

https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-green-flame-surviving-government-secrecy-9780841218574 (not currently available, and presumed seriously out of print) is a specific account of the borated fuels development project.

NunavutBirder, to worldwithoutus
@NunavutBirder@mas.to avatar

Oh the grace! Gyrfalcon dive turning to come around to an outcrop.

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@NunavutBirder It took me a serious minute to stop wondering how you had managed to get ABOVE the gyrfalcon.

graydon, to random
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

xv from this corner:

Every security service in the world is doing this. (Or they are now, as the possibilities percolate in.) Assume the xv effort is the RCMP; what's GCHQ done?

It will always be possible to run a secure server, but the cost, and the cost of having justified confidence that it's secure, can be made unbearably high. That's one of the goals of this kind of effort.

VLSI was a surprise. That doesn't mean incumbent power structures have to tolerate the results indefinitely.

graydon,
@graydon@canada.masto.host avatar

@cstross @kithrup @ravenonthill Effective identity verification would have to be public, have to rely on immutable true names, and ought to allow Use Name creation with a considerable barrier to making the connection to the True Name that created it.

This is roughly equivalent to extirpating all the intelligence services on earth. I don't expect it's a tractable problem.

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