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AnarchistArtificer

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TIL about Roko's Basilisk, a thought experiment considered by some to be an "information hazard" - a concept or idea that can cause you harm by you simply knowing/understanding it (en.wikipedia.org)

Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development, in order to...

AnarchistArtificer ,

Oh damn, I just lost the game too, and now I’m thinking about the game as if it were a virus - like, I reckon we really managed to flatten the curve for a few years there, but it continues to circulate so we haven’t been able to eradicate it

AnarchistArtificer ,

A few posts above this one, I saw a post about how German bridges are falling apart, so your comment has done me psychic damage. Man, things feel grim.

AnarchistArtificer ,

You’ve got to be careful with rolling your eyes, because the parallelism of the two eyes means that the eye roll can be twice as powerful ^1

(1) If measured against the silly baseline of a single eyeroll

AnarchistArtificer ,

I saw some previous news coverage of the Devs saying they’d rather players pirate it than have it spoiled for them, and I went in blind and bought it full price. I don’t generally play this kind of game but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

AnarchistArtificer ,

Well that’s a horrifying way to think of things, thank you for that (not sarcastic)

AnarchistArtificer ,

I have learned linear algebra in a few different contexts now, and each one I learned made it easier. When I first learned it, it was in a pure maths context and I found it tricky. It began to make more sense in university, when I learned it in the context of x-ray crystallography. I think more so than most topics, linear algebra really needs the context of it’s usefulness for it to really make sense, but also, I think I’d have struggled with the x-ray crystallography if I hadn’t already got a grounding in linear algebra from a pure maths angle.

AnarchistArtificer ,

I’ve not heard that quote, who said it?

AnarchistArtificer ,

They were never going to let this man be Prime Minister

AnarchistArtificer ,

Incredible

AnarchistArtificer ,

The message is “we are heading towards complete climate collapse and The Powers That Be are acting like things are fine”.

AnarchistArtificer ,

I read this article a few months ago that I found quite interesting: Original linkUnpaywalled link

The manufacturer in this blames the DEA, and whilst I don’t trust a pharmaceutical company to do anything other than ruthlessly maximise profits, in this case I’m inclined to believe this depiction of the DEA as the overly persnickety bad guy (because I have even less reason to trust the DEA)

AnarchistArtificer ,

It’s a bit more complex.

The bacteria causing this (Streptococcus pyogenes) causes hundreds of millions of illnesses each year, ranging from the mild “strep throat” to the extremely severe scarlet fever. Whilst there have been a few outbreaks of antibiotic resistant strains of this bacterium, that doesn’t appear to be what’s going on in this outbreak, so thankfully the underlying streptococcus infection should be treatable with standard antibiotics.

Unfortunately, the condition that’s actually killing people (Streptococcal Toxic Shock Syndrome (STSS)) is caused by exotoxins released by the bacteria, and killing the bacteria only stops further exotoxins from being produced — antibiotics can’t do anything about the exotoxins that have already been secreted by the bacteria. If you’ve ever wondered why we can’t cook spoiled food to make it safe to eat, this is a large part of why — exotoxins are often better at sticking around than the bacteria that produce them. It doesn’t help that exotoxins are often super potent toxins (Botulism is a particularly potent and well known example).

It’s not clear what causes some cases of Streptococcus pyogenes to escalate and non-eventful cases of strep are common enough that treating every case with antibiotics is implausible. It’s tricky because if symptoms are severe enough to warrant a diagnosis of STSS, then things will have already progressed enough that the exotoxins present s risk to health even if antibiotics are administered. This outbreak of many cases of the severe STSS is concerning because it might indicate that the strep bacteria has evolved to be more deadly, but we really don’t know why there’s such a cluster of severe illness in one place.

AnarchistArtificer ,

You might enjoy Freya Holmér’s videos - I mostly know her for her excellent mathsy video essays, but she has loads of videos about “maths for game Devs” that might be useful.

AnarchistArtificer ,

I wonder what would facilitate people to make their own solutions in this way. Like, I have made a few apps or automation things myself, but if I look at my “normie” friends who don’t have the level of tech familiarity that I do, they struggle with whatever out of the box solutions they can find. Poor IT education is a big part of this, and I’ve been wondering a lot about what would need to change for the average “normie” to be empowered to tinker

Oklahoma Supreme Court dismisses lawsuit of last Tulsa Race Massacre survivors seeking reparations (apnews.com)

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit of the last two survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dampening the hope of advocates for racial justice that the government would make amends for one of the worst single acts of violence against Black people in U.S. history....

AnarchistArtificer ,

Comments like this remind me of how I felt, as a Brit, to learn about Irish history, way after I left school.

AnarchistArtificer ,

When I was at university, the student union had a small fund for creative projects that weren’t related to your degree. Many of the people who applied for cameras also included Adobe licenses on their funding application, because many of them were new to film or photography so they defaulted to what is “industry standard”, because that’s what the majority of online tutorials are available for.

AnarchistArtificer ,

That there is no silver bullet, no quick fix, no “Eureka” moments that happen without work. “Progress” is less an exciting event, more a rhythm made by the repeated struggling against entropy; when you’re doing it well, you’ll come to hardly notice its beat until one day you look around and everything’s different.

You’d think that recognising this progress might be motivating, but it’s often demoralising because it demonstrates how unglamorous the work of self-improvement is. You hardly get time to enjoy your achievements, because as you grow, you become aware of how much more there is to do; the burdens on one’s time and energy tend to expand as our personal capacities do, so even if one makes incredible progress it can feel like you haven’t moved at all — in both your “before” and “after” snapshots, it can feel like you’re still barely staying afloat in life, even if objectively, you have massively improved your coping skills.

And the worst part of it all is knowing that it’s okay to be feeling like this. You’re tired because it’s a lot of work, and you’re demoralised because the work doesn’t end. You’re not the only one who has the stake in your life and your wellbeing, and as you grow, this will be underscored by a greater sense of duty towards the systems and people that depend on you; When I was young and very depressed, I stayed alive for my family and I resented the fact that they cared about me because it bound me to life. (Un)fortunately(?), over the years, my attempts to stick around to avoid hurting the people I care about has led to a bunch more people being invested in my wellbeing and I ended up loving those people too. How privileged I am to have such wonderful people in my life, who give me hope for the world and embolden me to keep fighting. And yet, I resent these people too. I have to allow myself that, at least a little bit, otherwise I’d collapse under the pressure of a duty to a world so much larger than I am. The worst part of it all is that I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So here I am, still plodding along, despite everything, hoping to make my existence a tiny little monument to resistance, as I stubbornly push back against all-consuming entropic decay. I know that in the grand scheme of things, nothing I, as an individual, does will matter, nor will it last, but I don’t care. Well, I do care — the enormity of it threatens to swallow me whole — but I don’t care that I care, because what difference does it make? The hardest lesson I’ve learned is that everyone feels this way, to an extent, and I’m nothing special. In that truth is terror, but also the comfort of solidarity. I may be scared and exhausted, but I know I’m not alone in this. For better or for worse, my life isn’t just for me.

AnarchistArtificer ,

I tried to think of a witty response to your funny joke but I’m apparently too tired for that, so instead, I’ll wish you good luck for next week, and the weeks that follow it; getting a diagnosis as an adult is often cathartic in the short term, liberatory in the long term, and in between those points is a long period of introspective untangling a web of messy feelings and possibly internalised ableism. I wish you the strength to endure and to emerge with a better understanding of who you are, regardless of the outcome of the assessment.

AnarchistArtificer ,

Big respect to the McBriens of the world, your lit reviews make a lot of things easier

AnarchistArtificer ,

I think the “Moved from Jekyll to Hugo” dot has an implicit catchment area around it, which includes people who don’t technically fit that description, but they’re close. I’ve used neither Jekyll nor Hugo, but the fact I understood that archetype meant I felt pulled in by the gravity of that point.

AnarchistArtificer ,

We might have seen the same comment, because a similar sentiment has stuck with me. I’ve found it very useful for self reflection because I am not a furry and I don’t understand furries. My instincts tell me to be weirded out and judgemental of furries because I don’t get it. I then consciously work to override that instinct because it’s silly and it’s actually much easier to not be an asshole about things. I am glad for anyone who has a hobby and a community that brings them joy and fulfillment.

AnarchistArtificer ,

The way that I make sense of fursonas and fursuits is to just reflect on the various silly things I have done as part of my hobbies. I made a chainmail skirt/dress for a party a while back. It took many many hours and the result is great, but I mostly did it because I like having a project to work on, and the event I was making it for was a great opportunity for people to tell me about how awesome the new thing I made was.

I’m also friends with a bunch of LARPers (Live Action Roleplaying, for anyone who doesn’t know — like Dungeons and Dragons, but with more hitting people with foam swords in fields). I’m not really into LARP myself, but I’ve been to a few because it’s really cool when you know enough people that you feel a part of a community. A couple of times, I wasn’t even playing, but helping out as crew, which meant putting up tents, ensuring everyone got food, helping put secrets into envelopes. LARP is one of those hobbies which is like, objectively weird (I say this with affection), but having existed in that sphere, the reason why most people do stuff is because they want to make cool shit that other people will appreciate, and they want an excuse to hang out with friends for a weekend in a field or a ballroom.

AnarchistArtificer ,

I think that furry sex stuff can seem very queer in this way. To clarify what I mean, as well as being the Q in LGBTQ+, I’m also invoking queer as in queer theory. For example, prominent queer theorist Eve Sedgwick says that queer can mean “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps…and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically”. Another less verbose definition, from Michael Warner (who I’m not familiar with, pulling these words from Wikipedia): “Queer gets a critical edge by defining itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual.” (Source: Wikipedia article for “Queering”)

The way that I think of this is that I’m bisexual because I’m attracted to both people of my gender and not of my gender. I’m queer because as a chronic punk, I relish the chance to leverage my bisexuality to challenge societal norms and assumptions — I got a hell of a lot cooler once I pushed myself out of the closet because it was fear around fitting into moulds that was driving a lot of my internalised homophobia. That’s my personal take on the distinction between gay/bi and queer. Personally, I don’t necessarily think one has to be LGBT+ to be queer, but that’s a somewhat contentious opinion.

This isn’t to say that all furries are queer, though I’m sure some people would argue that. Just that I think I think a lot of furry culture makes more sense if you’re familiar with queer theory and queer culture.

This is all a long winded way of saying that there’s a sense in which furries are punk as fuck, and coming from someone like me, that’s an indication of respect

AnarchistArtificer ,

It’s nowhere near a full replacement to Spotify, but something that eased my switchover was Listenbrainz for open source music recommendations. It’s not as good as Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlists (yet!), but the greater transparency is worth it imo. I have the app from fdroid and it tracks what songs I’m listening to (especially useful if you connect it to a streaming app) and gives recommendations based on that.

AnarchistArtificer ,

A tension that I find very interesting is how YouTube creators with a decent but not huge subscriber base (I’ve mainly seen it in video essayists, but that’s just what I watch more of) grapple with the sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit dichotomy of “content” vs “art”, where “content” is what the algorithm wants and what will pay their bills, and “art” is the weird stuff they actually want to make.

AnarchistArtificer ,

I hadn’t thought about it from that angle, thanks for sharing your perspective, it’s really interesting

AnarchistArtificer ,

Of those movies you were shocked your wife hadn’t seen, which did you most enjoyed watching with her?

AnarchistArtificer ,

Due to skim reading, I didn’t see where it said “vagina exploded because of clandestine dildo usage”, and seeing the phrase in your comment made me reread OP incredulously. Yeah no, I agree with you

AnarchistArtificer ,

Eh, it depends on what we count as “AI”. I’m in a field where machine learning has been a thing for years, and there’s been a huge amount of progress in the last couple of years[1]. However, it’s exhausting that so much is being rebranded as “AI”, because the people holding the purse strings aren’t necessarily the same scientists who are sick of the hype.

[1] I didn’t get into the more computational side of things until 2021 or so, but if I had to point to a catalyst for this progress, I’d say that the transformer mechanism outlined in the 2017 paper “Attention is all you need”, by Google scientists.

AnarchistArtificer ,

Yeah, I’m super salty about the hype because if I had to pick one side or the other, I’d be on team “AI is worthless”, but that’s just because I’d rather try convincing a bunch of skeptics that when used wisely, AI/ML can be super useful, than to try talk some sense into the AI fanatics. It’s a shame though, because I feel like the longer the bubble takes to pop, the more harm actual AI research will receive

AnarchistArtificer ,

Damn, kids these days. Like, I knew that I shouldn’t disregard slang as meaningless just because I don’t understand it, but I’m realising how despite knowing this, I’ve probably been subconsciously dismissive. TIL, thank you.

AnarchistArtificer ,

Your comment reminded me of this pixelastic.github.io/pokemonorbigdata/

AnarchistArtificer ,

One of my favourite biochemistry tutors at university was also a reverend. We never spoke about the overlap but I’ve read his books since graduating and it’s interesting to see how his faith augments his science and vice versa.

AnarchistArtificer ,

Yup. We’re least safe when we most think we’re safe. Architects of self fulfilling prophecies

AnarchistArtificer ,

I mean, racism has as much reason to exist now as it ever did. “I’ll protect me and what’s mine” has been the dividing line between species for thousands of years, and we have to choose whether we’ll continue it. A “Kill or be killed” mindset might keep you safe, but you’ll never know if the person you killed did indeed mean you harm, or if you could’ve instead lived without killing, and broke bread with a rival. The logic still applies

AnarchistArtificer ,

That’s a hilarious reply, and I can’t think of a witty response to match it

AnarchistArtificer ,

Fuckin’ savage.

AnarchistArtificer ,

I don’t understand this joke, is anyone willing to explain it for me?

AnarchistArtificer ,

I was wondering where the weird w-like symbol formed by the brownie pan means something.

AnarchistArtificer ,

I’m familiar with edging, but I’m not sure I see the joke. That might be because “edge” feels somewhat semantically separate to “edging” in my mind. As a clearer example of what I mean, if the word “edgy” came up, I would be way more likely to think of it as describing someone or something that tries too hard to be dark and provocative. I’d be very confused if someone used “edgy” as an adjectivified form of “edging”.

Besides that though, I’m sure that edging was a thing 15 years ago; the Wikipedia article for “edging(sexual practice)” dates back to 2006, for one. Part of why I didn’t get the joke is because I can’t think of any logical link between edging and 15 years ago, so I think I concluded that the meme wasn’t about the sex thing.

Is there still something I’m missing, or am I just being supremely autistic about this?

AnarchistArtificer ,

I always experience a weird sense of sonder^[1] when I see spam bots, because even if it’s a huge, highly automated network of bots, there’s at least one human involved if you could trace the bots back to their source.

I wonder what kind of person they are, and how the hell they make a profit from the spam. They surely must have a non-zero return rate, but how well does it work? Are they making bank from the task, or barely scraping by? Are they surviving on the scam income, or is it just a bit extra on top of a regular job? Do they enjoy the work, or are they as much of a wage-slave as I am, just in a different way. Were they themselves a victim of some scam, perhaps? I’ll never know, hence the sonder.

[1]: Sonder, noun, neologism. “The feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles” (dictionary.com)

AnarchistArtificer ,

Probably incomplete list that I may update after a nap.

  • Outer Wilds The most sublime game I’ve ever played. I can’t begin to describe how this game made me feel. It’s also an excellently designed game. If you’ve never played it before, go in blind, because even the smallest spoilers risk diminishing your experience. It’s an open world, exploration adventure game, which involves space travel, a quaint setting and fun physics

.

  • Disco Elysium Another game that made me feel things. One of my favourites

.

  • Tetris Played it on a Gameboy back in’ day. It’s a great game

.

  • Rollercoaster Tycoon 2

.

  • Halo Reach I don’t even know if I believe this was the best Halo game, I was just indecisive and I’m biased because I like the DMR and the SWAT multiplayer game mode (no shields, so a headshot kills in 1)

.

  • Deep Rock Galactic Feel like it’s the peak of the four person squad based kind of game. I’ve literally got hundreds of hours in this game.

.

  • Stardew Valley I didn’t actually vibe with this too much personally, but I’ve got to respect it for how accessible it is to many different kinds of gamer. It executes what it set out to do perfectly.

.

  • Faster than Light
    • I don’t even like rogue likes generally. The soundtrack is great.

(Edit 1: formatting)

AnarchistArtificer ,

I’ve already played it but yes, that’s a great recommendation for anyone who has enjoyed the games I mentioned. I especially enjoyed it because I’m also a fan of Dark Souls (& other FromSoft games), and it was neat to have souls-like combat in such a cute packaging.

AnarchistArtificer ,

Mental health systems are so overburdened that it’s not uncommon for someone assessing a trans person’s poor mental health to go “well, you’re experiencing [wide array of concerning mental health symptoms], but it’s my opinion that these symptoms are almost entirely attributable to gender dysphoria, and you’re already on the waitlist for the gender identity clinic, so there’s nothing more I can do.” and then they discharge them.

With such huge wait lists, it would make sense to keep someone on your books to keep an eye on them at least, if they’ve expressed feelings about self harm, but that doesn’t happen because the system hasn’t sufficiently acknowledged just how fucked the trans healthcare wait times are. Like, in the UK, there’s a statutory maximum of 18 weeks wait from when the referral was made until your first appointment, but the standard wait for an adult to have a first appointment at a gender identity clinic (which doesn’t involve any treatment, that comes months later) is literally years. But officially, you should be seen within 18 weeks, and under those circumstances, well the mental health people discharging you is reasonable if there’s little they can do to support you

Publishers are a cancer. Knowledge is meant to be shared, freely. (mander.xyz)

The university should be the place demonstrating socioecological change, serving as a site of experimentation and praxis (see Dunlap et al., 2023). This, however, could not be further from the truth. Beside advancing technologies of digital, political and military control (Chatterjee & Maira, 2014), not to mention genetic...

AnarchistArtificer ,

Good luck on this final push; take care of yourself where possible and stay angry at the things that deserve it

AnarchistArtificer ,

Anti paywall link archive.ph/JxFc4

AnarchistArtificer ,

The thing is that that was how Google became so big in the first place. PageRank was a cool way of trying to filter out the garbage and it worked real well. Even my non techy friends have been getting frustrated with search not working like it used to (even before all this Gemini stuff was added)

AnarchistArtificer ,

Try crouching

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