kazarnowicz

kazarnowicz, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

Ellen DeGeneres: “I got kicked out of show business”.

No, sweetie, you were cancelled because you are a horrible person to anyone you deem below you, while stroking the egos of anyone you consider above you.

You bullied people on your show, both guests and coworkers.

You were cancelled because people saw the real you and realized that you're petty, unkind, and a sociopath who posed as a good person.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89zy07x40no

kazarnowicz, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random Swedish

"I think, therefore I am" has aged like milk, and I think this makes Descartes overrated as a philosopher (this being his first principle and all).

As late as last Friday, a group of academics in relevant fields, signed “The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness", which says pretty much the same thing as the Cambridge declaration from 2012: consciousness is likely possessed my most, if not all, animals.

"I feel, therefore I am" is a statement that would have aged like wine.

#philosophy

kazarnowicz, 1 month ago to random Swedish

I have no idea what's going on, but today I woke up with eyes and nose gushing as if to challenge Cardi B to write a sequel to WAP. My eyes are puffy, I'm sneezing like crazy and nose is stuffed.

I suspect allergies, but to WHAT? We still have snow, and nothing has started to sprout yet.

Also: allergy medicine barely helps.

kazarnowicz, 2 months ago to random

Sometimes, I’m struck with wonder at things I normally take for granted. Like seeing.

Photons hit flesh which transforms them to electric signals. These signals travel to the brain, which then constructs a mental image of the rich, immersive reality we see. Isn’t that insane?

The light doesn’t reach your brain - so it has literally never experienced light other than through the proxy of electric signals from the eyes, in a language only the two understand, evolved over millennia.

kazarnowicz, 2 months ago to random

U.S. maternal death rates almost doubled between 2014 and 2021. Black women are disproportionately harmed by this: black individuals are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related deaths than white individuals.

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024/03/u-s-maternal-death-rate-increasing-at-an-alarming-rate/

kazarnowicz, 2 months ago to random

As a gay man, I am offended by “Red White and Royal Blue”. It’s no better than a straight man writing a love story between lesbians, when he’s really acting out his teenage fantasies about what he thinks lesbians are like.

I am also saddened by Uma Thurman participating in this utter shite. It’s the worst kind of exoticism of gay men. If the author was twelve year old it would be understandable, but that an adult wrote this is forking insulting to decency.

kazarnowicz, 3 months ago to random Swedish

The top 1% in the USA now have more money than the entire middle class.

This will end really well!

(for the billionaires, that is - the average American is forked three ways to Sunday)

kazarnowicz, 3 months ago to random

If you have a Hugo Award, it now also comes with an “Approved by the CCP” rubber stamp.

If you make a list that has been washed from people who can upset the CCP, you are milquetoast at best and a useful idiot [for the CCP] at worst.

I feel bad for last year’s winners who did not ask for this, but will forever by associated with the corruption of the awards.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/science-fiction-authors-excluded-hugo-awards-china-rcna139134

#WritingCommunity #HugoAwards

kazarnowicz, 3 months ago to scifi Swedish

I have a hard time understanding how writers manage to write several universes at the same time.

I have no room for any other project, because literally everything in the news and zeitgeist can be related to my universe and the world building.

Writing the books, I am having the same experience that I hope a reader will have: a loosening of the rigid wall we put up between fiction and reality.

Or maybe “fiction and potential future” is more apt.

1/5

#WritingCommunity #scifi

kazarnowicz, 3 months ago to random Swedish

One thing that struck me about this meta-modern, post-truth era is that all the crazy feelings-over-facts arguments from politicians (pretty much all conservatives regardless of country), influencers, lobbyists, and the general population is not a temporary hickup.

Things will never be as un-crazy as they are today, it will only get worse.

I'm not sure how we move on to the next era, but it helps to not expect things to "go back to normal”. What we're experiencing today is the new normal.

kazarnowicz, 3 months ago to Health Swedish

Three things I've learned about fruit as an adult:

1. The apple core is a lie. If you eat the apple like there wasn't any core, it'll taste just the same and you'll barely notice it (and even if you bite through the seeds, you have nothing to worry about unless you eat a metric shit-ton of apples every day).

Also: eating the whole apple (and the stem, although it's a bit hard to chew) is good for your microbiome.

1/2

#fruit #health #apples

kazarnowicz, 4 months ago to random Swedish

Public Service in Sweden makes strange choices. When reporting on Israel's genocide trial, they chose to interview an Israeli professor who works at an Israeli university in an occupied area.

Why choose an Israeli? Why not someone neutral? Of course the Israeli professor working in a school on land taken from Palestinians will be all “it's not genocide, it's just a little unfortunate that our government speaks like that”

Swedish Public Service is so milquetoast that their logo should be beige.

kazarnowicz, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to Dogs

In hindsight, adopting two dogs is one of the best things I’ve done as a (sci-fi) author. Before Dante and Ori, I was subconsciously planet-of-red-hat-ing animals in general, and dogs in particular.

Getting to know two individuals with a history we only can glean in their behavior, learning how to communicate with them, slowly earning their trust, and glimpsing the world through their minds is like befriending two aliens.

I see the world differently now.

#WritingCommunity #dogs

kazarnowicz, 4 months ago to philosophy Swedish

A lovely conversation with @Thoreau made me aware of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, and from that the analogy of the divided line.

It looks like this:

A—B—C—D——E

"(AC) is generally taken as representing the visible world and (CE) as representing the intelligible world”

If you think of it as a process (the evolution of mind) sapience would emerge between C and D. D is also a point that inevitably leads to E (the ability to think about why we exist)

1/5

#consciousness #mind #philosophy

kazarnowicz, 5 months ago to languagelearning

Two words that are common in descriptions of natural scenery are “picturesque” and “scenic”.

Both are weird if you consider etymology, but the first is the weirdest: “What a picturesque view!” in other words is “this view is like a picture of natural beauty!”

There are really interesting implications in this on a metaphysical level.

#WritingCommunity #language

kazarnowicz, 5 months ago to scifi

The Truman Show, but it’s the internet (with a pinch of The Game)

A guy spends his life on an alternate internet, where all user created content is just an AI playing all the different parts. The news is the same, it’s just all the commentary that’s different. All of it.

He is slowly radicalized to murder a progressive politician.

It is the first attempt by the AGI hiding in the internet to program humans, to find out when they snap. How far you can program them.

#scifi #WritingCommunity

kazarnowicz, 6 months ago to sweden

If you read news, you’ve probably heard about Tesla’s conflict with Swedish union IF Metall.

It got me thinking about other examples of “the Swedish model” and how to explain it to, say, an American.

The spirit of the law is common sense to me: it is about markets being self-governing by the involved parties. The state is the keeper of the rules the players agree on. You can see it in government agencies like the National Board for Consumer Disputes

1/x

#sweden #tesla #unions #law

kazarnowicz, 6 months ago to scifi

Tip for sci-fi authors:

If you're interested in academic discourse regarding interstellar travel, you should check out the I4S quarterly newsletter. It's free, and the digest is really worth checking out.

Their summary of the upcoming paper “Development of a Model Framework for Examining Language and Cultural Issues in Human Starfaring Civilizations” was really thought-provoking.

"Should we Colonize (Interstellar) Space?" too!

https://i4is.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IRG23-The-Summaries-Principium43-2311270915opt.pdf

#scifi #WritingTips #WritingCommunity

kazarnowicz, 6 months ago to scifi

I sometimes think about the existential dread civilization in the far future of the Milky Way will feel when peering into deep space.

There will be a handful of other galaxies (those that we are gravitationally bound with) in the void - beyond that, there will only be darkness since the expansion of space will be such that no light from the rest of the universe can reach us.

What stories will they spin about their lonely island of matter and light in an otherwise dark void?

#scifi #cosmology

kazarnowicz, 6 months ago to scifi

“Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson has me thinking about the evolution of consciousness, and the ways biology facilitates it. It makes me even more certain that consciousness is not emergent, but fundamental to the universe.

I realize that the main thesis I have in my books is that "the flesh is not a prison, it is training wheels”. Biology can obviously be overridden by a sufficiently developed mind (the Marshmallow test is a concrete example).

1/x

#consciousness #scifi

kazarnowicz, 6 months ago to gaming

I've played through Assassin's Creed Mirage, playing out in 9th century Baghdad.

It was short, but that doesn't equal bad. It was easier to enjoy the historical facts without the distractions a large game necessarily offers.

It was refreshing to hear Arabic being spoken without “the Arabs being the bad guys". In Valhalla, they got all translations from Scandiavian languages right, and in Mirage they get the politeness of everyday Arabic across.

1/x

#gaming #AssassinsCreed #VideoGames

kazarnowicz, 7 months ago to random

I was just at the goldsmith to pick up our wedding rings. We wanted two thin bands each, one for each ceremony we’re going to have, that together form a whole.

Mike had both of his grandfathers’ wedding rings, so part of the gold and the diamond in my set comes with a history.

I’m so glad we chose to splurge on the rings.

kazarnowicz, 7 months ago to random

TechTrump is threatening the EU with very good times (blocking accesss to exTwitter from inside the EU) https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-considers-removing-x-platform-europe-over-eu-law-insider-2023-10-18/

kazarnowicz, 7 months ago to NealStephenson

I reread "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson over the summer. It has a core idea about memetics that is very interesting, and it was much more fun than I remembered. I was only 19 when I read it the first time, and a lot of the satire was lost to my inexperience of the world in general and the US in particular.

It's a great read that still holds up today. I'd love to do a book club discussion around it.

#bookstodon #SnowCrash #NealStephenson #scifi

kazarnowicz, 7 months ago to TheMatrix

Half a decade ago, a friend sent me a (now defunct) link to a Jungian reading of The Matrix. The message of The Matrix becomes profound on an existential level when you look at it through a Jungian lens, and this is why I believe that it is one of the best examples of shamanism in the metamodern age.

New bucket list item: to have a conversation with the Wachowskis about the shamanistic aspect of storytelling.

#TheMatrix #shamanism #TechnoShamanism #popculture #Jung #consciousness