[redacted] enthusiast, robot combat enjoyer, distressingly Appalachian, father of ninjas
“…this particular bad thing shouldn’t happen to someone like me! it must be that no one else tried hard enough to fix it till now…”
Ugh, but also, good point. It’s like Engineer’s Disease fucked The Secret and made something even worse.
Jesus Christ.
This guy is a classic example of kook magnetism with a side of Dunning-Kreuger.
Job history is sus as hell too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Barsky
Some dweeb with a journalism degree gets a job at a hedge fund right out of grad school, bombs out, “goes back to” journalism. Newspapers can’t get enough of this kind of guy; not surprised TERF Island’s paper of record picked him up nor am I surprised that they think RFK Jr might be good actually.
prediction 1: he dies halfway through. funniest way would be another pandemic gets him
I’m anticipating an Elvis re-enactment.
I hear you. I should clarify, because I didn’t do a good job of saying why those things bothered me and nerd-vented instead. I understand that an author doesn’t necessarily believe the things used as plot devices in their books. Blindsight a horror/speculative fiction book that asks “what if these horrible things were true” and works out the consequences in an entertaining way. And, no doubt there’s absolutely a place for horror in spec fic, but Blindsight just feels off. I think @Soyweiser explained the vibes better than I did. Watts isn’t a bad guy. Maybe it’s just me. To me, it feels less Hellraiser and more Human Centipede i.e. here’s a lurid idea that would be tremendously awful in reality, now buckle up and let’s see how it goes to an uncomfortable extent. That’s probably just a matter of taste, though.
Unfortunately, the kind of people who read these books don’t get that, because media literacy is dead. Everyone I’ve heard from (online) seems to think that it is saying big deep things that should be taken seriously. It surfaces in discussions about whether or not ChatGPT is “alive” and how it might be alive in a way different from us. Eric Schmidt’s recent insane ramblings about LLMs being an “alien intelligence,” which don’t call Blindsight out directly, certainly resonate the same way.
Maybe I’m being unfair, but it all just goes right up my back.
Oh man where to begin. For starters:
It just feeds right into all of the TESCREAL nonsense, particularly those parts that devalue the human part of humanity.
Peter Watts’s Blindsight is a potent vector for brain worms.
oh no, nothing is protecting us, you’re 100% right there. Eating food is about to become a much more dicey proposition.
It is still safe to assume that the ghouls who run Pfizer and ConAgra will bend their resources to protecting the bag from a disposable nutjob.
It’s like an old-timey quilt. You have to build in an imperfection to show humility.
I did not expect Ed to have such a great stage presence. a++ would get mad again
Hot Take: the damage from RFK Jr will be limited by the fact that he’s messing with the money for several large industries, particularly agriculture and pharmaceuticals. They have bottomless pockets and aren’t afraid to bribe the bribable. There will be damage, but he’ll be crushed like a bug in the end.
Also, he clearly annoys the orange guy, can offer him nothing in return now that the election is over, and has already been the victim of a ritual humiliation (e.g. being forced to partake in a McDonald’s meal for the camera), which is the first sign of a Trump guy being de-emphasized.
gentlemen, this means war
-me imagining myself paying to sit through that
Effective Altruism Declares War on the Entire State of Louisiana
If you’re in the mood for a novel that dunks on these nerds, I highly recommend Jason Pargin’s If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_This_Book_Exists,_You're_in_the_Wrong_Universe
At least their shirts will accessorize nicely
I feel like we could solve a lot of the left’s problems in the US by building a time machine and giving 13 year old Aaron Sorkin about 10 lbs of 2024 weed.
Tired: Rust Evangelism Strike Force
Wired: Kagi Jihadi
If you liked Wordpress Matt wearing a hat, then you’ll love Kagi Guy in your replies.
hackernews having a normal one (EDIT: Then things got worse)
HN Title: The evolution of nepotism in academia, 1088-1800
In the top comments:
dash2 55 minutes ago | next [–]
Here’s an interesting extract:
We find evidence of nepotism for 5–6.6% of scholars’ sons in Protestant and for 29.4% in Catholic universities and academies. Catholic institutions relied more heavily on intra-family human capital transfers. We show that these differences partly explain the divergent path of Catholic and Protestant universities after the Reformation.
This relates to an important paper providing evidence that indeed Protestantism was associated with scientific progress: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4389708
red016 3 minutes ago | parent | next [–]
i’d be more interested in jewish numbers than protestant or catholic
Buy a defense ai system with a cool GUI but that absolutely doesn’t fucking work
PRESS RELEASES
Leave the source code+model weights somewhere that your enemies will find it, preferably next to a big data pipe
Watch them copy it and try to use it on the battlefield
lol
Just have to avoid naming it something that would give the game away like WIM-PLOW or whatever
The word “deranged” is getting a workout lately, ain’t it?