thomasjkenney
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RE:
Cuba’s Power Grid Collapses As Castro’s Grandson Seeks Talks With Trump (ZH)
It’s been done before…
I watch Slashdot because it’s a convenient Experimental Flagpole, can see what’s coming from a safe distance. Here’s the ‘government hands off my MediCare!’ quote of the day:
We all need to adjust to the fact that, since Trump v Slaughter [wikipedia.org], the FCC is no longer an independent commission – every member has their job at the pleasure of the President, who can fire them at will if he doesn’t get the outcome he wants.
Curiosity
Passion
OCD
Profound dissatisfaction with current state
True randomness
Weighted randomness
Nurtured bias
Traumatic experience
Epiphanies
Boredom
Overeducation
EmotionThe list is longer, obviously.
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I commented ~last month re: C-17 fleets and evacuations. Can’t find it in the archive, or I’d post the exact quote.
Stanislav
Reminds me… I stumbled across a bizarre effort to paint ‘Stanislaus’-named locations (county, river, National Forest) in California as having a native American origin, to erase the Russian history of North America. A few sites have attached the name to a chief who was named Stanislaus. When I was a wee lad, we visited Fort Ross near San Francisco. There, I learned that Stanislaus was Slavic in origin, and that much of the west coast was temporarily colonized by Russians.
None of these sites has said why a Miwok or a Piute might be named Stanislaus.
Huang blathered on right past his failed attempt to nullify the word ‘smart.’ He’s a classic General Turgidson, just like Martyanov.
Confusion will be my epitaph
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh!King Crimson, Epitaph
Apropos of nothing…
Little Murders: Alfred’s monologue re: reading the mail
I was looking for his other kitchen monologue, re: (paraphrase) “…seek to destroy a thing, you should be comfortable with the fact that thing will no longer exist…” But the above clip is pretty good.
RE: RIM
Do we say “HAPPY Juneteenth” at all?
Tomorrow night, I will wish anyone within earshot a Happy Solstice.
More random ‘AI’ musings:
The Virtual Tulip Mania has sopped up much of the commodity hardware, doing a yeoman’s job at wresting General Compute from the hands of John Q Public.
The effusive slurry emanating from these machines is widely panned as bad. What if it’s intent is to steepen the incline for a few select players in that market? Make it the equivalent of smeared-on shit, so anyone caught using it can be ridiculed?
Parallel Construction Machine
@Dr. D re:
“The reason was an amendment that limited the exhibits to biological women to the exclusion of transgender figures.”
There aren’t any, so… I mean that in every sense. First “There aren’t any” since we just made up that category about 6 years ago. Like “Astronaut” you literally can’t be one until there’s such thing as “Space.” You were a “Cross dresser” or nothing at all since wearing pants doesn’t make you a man. Second, no Trans person has yet to do anything worth a museum. “They Exist”? Yeah, so do I and you don’t see my face in a museum. Did they invent the light bulb? It’s a non-issue. Do anything worthwhile at all first and get back to me.
Switched-On Bach – Walter “Wendy” Carlos
That’s about all I got, though. It’s a neat album, but if it never existed we still got Keith Emerson and Vangelis.
Clifford D Simak quote re: his City series, from an essay by Robert Silverberg:
“The series was written in a revulsion against mass killing and as a protest against war,” Simak declared, many years afterward. “The series was also written as a sort of wish fulfillment. It was the creation of a world I thought there ought to be. It was filled with the gentleness and the kindness and the courage that I thought were needed in the world. And it was nostalgic because I was nostalgic for the old world we had lost and the world that would never be again. . . . I made the dogs and robots the kind of people I would like to live with. And the vital point is this: That they must be dogs or robots, because people were not that kind of folks.”
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IIRC, the lunar soil also contains oxygen and aluminum, and other goodies.
@Dr. D re:
View to the Amalfi Coast c1860
Believe this is a real place that still exists. I think I saw it on TV sometime. Bond film? Show on Italian houses?
IIRC, Cary Grant in Charade and Humphrey Bogart in Beat The Devil are two samples.
And furthermore…
Look at any system and see ‘AI’ everywhere. Family, company, country, gang, club. All have rules geared toward self-preservation. It’s members are charter-bound to follow those rules. The rules evolve as new conditions arise. All are kinds of Artificial (created by humans) Intelligence.
I had in my mind that I knew who Dr D was, had heard or read his voice elsewhere. It struck me that he might be Karl Denninger, but he doesn’t say ‘That Putin is a thug!’ every fourth paragraph. It’s probably just that he’s slightly older than me, and has the outlook of my various mentors.
@Dr D re: “…rename it HAL…”
Humans created the hardware and software to run HAL. Had the source code, so could debug. HAL’s breakdown was a ‘fairly basic’ psychosis. Asking a machine to iteratively optimize it’s own software is pretty scary, but you can still go unplug it. If you ask it to do same with hardware, you’ll get stuff using quantum effects and it will quickly escape.
Philip Jose Farmer is another good read, particularly ‘World of Tiers’ series. They built the machines, allowed the machines to do all heavy lifting, and became imbeciles, captives of their machinery and a profound paranoia. This is where Musk and some others publicly proclaim they are headed. Some of the applications are spot-on, I’d do them in a minute. Samuel R Delany wrote of nervous control of industrial machinery, plug in and get to work. James Blish, in 1940s, wrote of nervous drone control.
It’s the stuff where Musk starts ranting about assisted/augmented brain function that is a worry. Prima facie, there’s the issue of brain function atrophy. You’ll become the imbecile. Next, so you have a giant memory warehouse now. Is someone protecting that memory for you? Did somebody sneak in and subvert/replace/erase stuff? Next, actual processing power. So you’ve wired yourself up to be able to do FFT’s in your head. Did you choose or design a good algorithm for the task? Were you an idiot and let someone else write a routine for your own damn brain?!?!?
And then the IRGC bombs your datacenter…and you really, really are now an imbecile.
Or go the other direction. You figure out how to ‘hack’ other cyborgs’ brains. You build a covert army, stage them on Mars for an invasion of Earth. And what of those who abstain? Do we get Mentats?
These are low-hanging-fruit examples, and I’m not smart.
What he’s describing is a species breakaway. Cyborg is not human. Any non-cyborg animal that would rely on the machines would devolve to EM Forster/WALL-E babyland, not human. If you’ve done the smart thing and used the machines to train up your brain, that would be a good direction but again not human anymore.
BTW, Farmer wrote of an odd kind of cyborg, Black Beller. Upload your brain into the helmet, and it becomes portable. Incapacitate a stranger and download, Body Snatchers style, but don’t forget the helmet!!!
@Dr D re:
I agree this is extremely likely. However, it’s out and they’ve had more time. Are they going to release a new one now that actually works?
ZH headline from yesterday AM, was there a few minutes but disappeared. Argentine cruise ship, 3 dead, hundreds quarantined. They are indeed trying, but I don’t think there’s an audience.
Which of you, to gain me, tell,
Will risk uncertain pains of Hell.
I will not forgive you
If you will not take the chance!@TDK:
Intentional misdirection:
ha! norway and the u.s.a. have the exact same rate of rapes per capita.
How about you quote us some numbers for arrests, convictions, jailings, ‘black’ and ‘grey’ justice?
Publicly available ‘AI’ junk seems to be evolving into Ayn Randian work-to-book flameout. The recent goblins foofaraw required counter instruction. Result could be that when a user asks about goblins the machine will be evasive and give at best a low-quality answer…until users complain again, and the instruction is added to only spill the beans if the user explicitly asks about goblins. Now you’re micro-managing and you end up with a hobbled ‘intelligence’ as pasty and useless as Grey Davis. How many Yes Men can you buy for US$900,000,000.00? How many can you buy for life at those numbers?
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Topcat’s post are now impotent one-liners that don’t land.
My mentor once said if I ever wrote self-modifying code, he’d break both my legs.
Moraines are bulldozed into place by glacier movement. They are highly unstable, very dangerous places to stroll. Talus, which looks like moraine, has been sorted by gravity and found the angle of repose.
Singularity? No. We aren’t even at Rainbows End yet.
The equipment arrived in a region via C-17. How might the equipment be retrieved from said region?
If you wanna know from where Cameron ripped off Pandora, read The Pandora Sequence, Frank Herbert and Bob Ransom. It’s likely also the source for Waterworld and a bunch of other weird stuff.
Show my CA drivers’ license or my passport to vote? You betcha! Enroll in a new (likely digital) federal ID ‘just for voters?’ No Flurking Whey!!!
RE: Make power in space…
Gerard K. O’Neill – FIFTY F#(XING YEARS AGO!!!!!
Additionally, the bot ‘helpfully’ linkified 2 domain names in the above output. The ‘http’ was added by the bot, and should not be there.
I tried to post a little more, but my post gave some bot a sad, and it’s been axed. Here are some clues:
tom@keledai:~$ nslookup
> server 1.1.1.1
Default server: 1.1.1.1
Address: 1.1.1.1#53
> swentr.site
Server: 1.1.1.1
Address: 1.1.1.1#53Non-authoritative answer:
Name: swentr.site
Address: 185.79.236.174
Name: swentr.site
Address: 89.191.237.192
> http://www.rt.com
Server: 1.1.1.1
Address: 1.1.1.1#53Non-authoritative answer:
http://www.rt.com canonical name = en.wpc.rt.com.
Name: en.wpc.rt.com
Address: 91.215.41.4
Name: en.wpc.rt.com
Address: 185.79.236.174
> exittom@keledai:~$
Scott Adams checked out yesterday, and Bob Weir last week.
Reading list:
The Machine Stops – EM Forster
So Bright The Vision – Clifford D Simak
Rainbows End – Vernor Vinge
A Case of Conscience – James BlishEverybody jumps on the Orange Dick, and all logic goes whoosh! MoA is very bad right now. I wasn’t named for the skeptical Thomas, but here…try this…
It’s not him posting these last (2? 3?) ultimatums. He doesn’t control his accounts any longer. Has anyone seen him state these exact words to a camera? We just went through 4 years of random folks usurping President Potato. Dry run? Is the Orange Upstanding Dick now MIA? Thread on MoA recently contained a link to a fake David Attenborough video.
I see two streams accelerating, passing the myriad others. 1) “I told you so!” and 2) “Judas!!!”
There was another attempt at distraction this past hour. A semi-wildfire stated near Placerville, CA. Gold Country, south of Tahoe, now baked dry for the year. Looks like they knocked it down quick, but it’s only June.
@Germ re: TVASVVF
My mom passed this AM, peacefully. She was already suffering dementia (maybe >5 yrs?) when the ghouls conned her into getting the shot. Gullible? No.
So, Germ… I cordially invite you to go fuck a glory hole and contract a fierce case of syphilis. May your passing years be painful and full of frightening visions.
The incompassionate are so very very fucked.
Himself it was who wrote
His rank, and quartered his own coat.
There is no king nor sovereign state
That can fix a hero’s rate;
Each to all is venerable,
Cap-a-pie invulnerable,
Until he write, where all eyes rest,
Slave or master on his breast.I saw men go up and down,
In the country and the town,
With this prayer upon their neck,—
‘Judgment and a judge we seek.’
Not to monarchs they repair,
Nor to learned jurist’s chair;
But they hurry to their peers,
To their kinsfolk and their dears;
Louder than with speech they pray,—
‘What am I! companion, say.’
And the friend not hesitates
To assign just place and mates;
Answers not in word or letter,
Yet is understood the better;
Is to his friend a looking-glass,
Reflects his figure that doth pass.
Every wayfarer he meets
What himself declared repeats,
What himself confessed records,
Sentences him in his words;
The form is his own corporal form,
And his thought the penal worm.Yet shine forever virgin minds,
Loved by stars and purest winds,
Which, o’er passion throned sedate,
Have not hazarded their state;
Disconcert the searching spy,
Rendering to a curious eye
The durance of a granite ledge
To those who gaze from the sea’s edge.
It is there for benefit;
It is there for purging light;
There for purifying storms;
And its depths reflect all forms;
It cannot parley with the mean,—
Pure by impure is not seen.
For there’s no sequestered grot,
Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot,
But Justice, journeying in the sphere,
Daily stoops to harbor there.Astraea – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson Lake, viewed from the slopes of Mt Emerson, Bishop Creek, CA
Ha! I get a two-fer today…if only a stupid little observation…
@jb-hb and @Dr D: That ‘meddlesome priest’ was also destroying power. He prevented the welding of church to state, by being a passive-aggressive little s#!+!@Dr D Rich re: “Mosquito Protocol”
It’s a very old affront. Use the Goggles and check out ‘mosque’ vs ‘masjid.’
re: Carlin…
Are the young’uns sharing clips of Lenny Bruce yet?
RE: soap vs detergent
Dr Bronners has unscented, but I’ve had good luck with Euc, Almond, and Citrus flavors. I use it for shower. Buy in 1-gal jugs, and it lasts ~6 mos. Wife uses the unscented bars, I prefer Euc or Citrus liquid.
For laundry, unscented All does the trick, haven’t looked into whether it’s ‘not-a-soap’ but it’s probably a detergent, like it says on the label. Tangent – if you crush a bunch of yucca spears in water, and extract the sap, it’s a gentle soap.
I have a severe allergy to anything with perfumes. Natural scents from oils (citrus, etc) are OK. It’s the fake stuff, chemically formulated perfumes, that do it. Especially deadly is fake lavender.
@jb-hb re: sprinklers and such
The Codes are another self-inflicted gutshot. I was gonna mention, but I figured anybody near a forest would know about timber interests.
re: fires
Those are 2 of the richest zipcodes on the planet.
Altadena: I’m aghast, somewhat surprised, but it’s possible. That’s Huntington’s neighborhood, in part. It’s a smear of very-very rich on the east, base of Mt Wilson Toll Road, gradually ranging thru mid-class to somewhat poor toward the west.
Palisades Highlands: Separate from the flats of Palisades, Highlands was a natural death trap. It’s a box canyon, very craggy sandstone formations. The only public road is via the narrows, ~2km of skinny canyon with sandstone cliff formations overhanging. The basin had expensive tract houses and condos built on the eastern slope, brush and live oak. Reservoir was at the base of sandstone/conglomerate cliffs. Almost no services in the canyon, a small cafe, post office, real estate. IIRC, one fire station. Always struck me as an extremely irrational neighborhood. One good earthquake, and you’re trapped. One good fire, and…well…
re:
“The funds were diverted to help MIGRANTS!!!!”
Migrants who used those funds to buy houses in Granada Hills and build pirate duplexes on the properties. Granada Hills is San Fernando Valley, upstream from much of LA. The area is (has been for my lifetime!) overextended on water infrastructure. That’s just one of many self-inflicted gutshots from which the region suffers.
@phoenixvoice re: culture cycles
Interesting bit, thanks. Reminds that ’80s had the debauchery of yuppies and cocaine, with a Springstein/Mellenkamp callback.
All is spectrum. Even in late 19th C, barbarism, with white explorers allaying with one side or other, as convenience dictates.
Name a human-loving AI Colossus.
Name the first robotic surgeon Ash?
I’m sure that dude read Simak. For the love of dog, can he please call it Jenkins? Yeah, there’s a software tool already named that, but I’m sure they’d give it up if we explain that it’s just a new, fancy body for Jenkins, the trade-up.
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re: ‘Can no one rid me of this troublesome priest???’
HA! I was named after that troublesome priest.
@Dr D re: “…they’re only words, which we adults tell them, but the words are immediately injected into them with no walls or barriers…”
There are invisible realms to unpack behind such interaction. Even if the person receiving the lie is aware of it’s non-truth, and can shrug off the insult, it opens considerations of what the liar intended. What is the liar’s internal state that such an act isn’t inhibited (dopamine and/or adrenaline involved?). Some empathy for what damage may have caused the liar to start doing that. Or maybe psych/soc with no empathy, so lie like taking a piss. Thinking about the others the liar may have ‘injured’ or hoodwinked along the way. Sadness that such a hideous flaw is visible in a fellow being, someone you might otherwise befriend or at least respect.
Now, sidle up to the TV, dive into the alpha waves, and allow this to be poured in without even the rudimentary filters that are engaged when speaking or reading. “To see is to believe” is just how we’re wired. Animated speakers seem to speak more convincingly? Hmmm…
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Addendum re: TV
I’ve been trying (10+ yrs now) to unwind the damage from TV. Here’s another observation: we are trained as spectators. None of us viewers can ever resolve the conflict of the episode, because we’re not the scripted protagonist. We merely view, and can do nothing, because it’s always the protag or someone else who resolves the conflict, for our pleasure. In real life, see a car crash, think naught because the protag probably already called the services, or maybe the script says the wreck is the tragedy in the plot.
Maybe this is why Dr D needs to scream ‘WORK’ so much. We’re trained that almost everything else in our lives is somebody else’s job.
