We all love stories about AI supplanting humans. Or face-planting, while trying to outdo humans.
Stderr
All the unbuffered error messages
We all love stories about AI supplanting humans. Or face-planting, while trying to outdo humans.
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” – Winston Churchill
Churchill, an aristocrat, imperialist, racist, and militarist, was arguably part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Sometimes I get addicted to weird cheap crap, like hydrophilic beads, odd LED lightbulbs, or purple lasers. And, often, right after I click “BUY” I think, “whoever makes this stuff must realize what a decadent culture we are.”
The traditional blacksmith’s anvil stand is a big chunk of log or a stump, but I had this idea of making a laid-up stand out of 2x4s and plywood. It seemed like a good design.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 – A Pentagon spokesman confirmed today for the first time reports of damage to the Bach Mai Hospital and Gia Lam Airport in Hanoi during heavy air raids last month over North Vietnam but he denied that the damage was either massive or intentional.
All creatures are perpetually in a state of war: each species is born to devour others.
Voltaire by Houdon
I’m going to assume that many (if not most) of you are familiar with Iain Bank’s The Culture, and the naming system of Culture ships.
Internet security is complicated and there are lots of dependencies – usually if you ask an internet security practitioner “is ${this thing} safe?” they’ll tell you “if you’re trying to do ${this} or ${that} then…” and carry on for a half an hour in that vein.
Here’s another one to add to the list of “ideas that won’t happen.” In high school, a friend of mine and I hit upon the idea of writing an illustrated book of “unusual family customs.” Sort of a Martha Stewart idea guide gone horribly wrong: quirky and surrealistic customs that families could enact with great seriousness, raising their kids as though the custom was perfectly normal. In his book The Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman hits on one: the kids in the family are taught that, on presidents’ day, you are supposed to go to school and cosplay your favorite president. Other schoolkids did not understand why the child showed up claiming to be Millard Fillmore.
One fascinating characteristic of the well-indoctrinated ultra-nationalist is they tend to lose their sense of reflexivity. Ultra-nationalism depends on authoritarianism and exceptionalism, so it doesn’t hold up well to challenges against its authority – after all, it wouldn’t have to be authoritarian if it were possible to justify their beliefs. What we wind up with is this weird sort of “what I say, goes, as long as it applies in the direction I want it to.”
