Tab Clearing...

• The state of the air war over Ukraine, four years on...


• The Rise of American Bushido


• Meta, belatedly and ineffectively, gets worried about creepers using its pervert glasses.

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Tab Clearing...

• The etiquette of pointing out another writer's errors.


• Now there's an automated ragebait generator.


• The summit of AI Hype Mountain is approaching.

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Pleasant Reading...

• Lessons From a Madman


• A Complicated Birthday


• Tips for not losing your cool...

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Tab Clearing...

• NATO Catching Strays: Russian drone misses Ukraine, hits apartment building in Romania, injuring two.


• Zuckermuskian Solipsism


• Rebuilding US precision weapon stockpiles to pre-Iran levels will be a multi-year project.

QotD: It’s A Scam Edition…

From Bobbi:

"Always doubt the motives of a man who's pushing you for a quick emotional reaction; he's reaching for your wallet -- or your fundamental freedoms."

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QotD: Bigger Boxes Still Dressed In Ticky-Tacky Edition...

Jim Grey has penned an excellent essay on the swanky suburban city directly north of Indianapolis:

But walking around the retail district near the Hotel Carmichael that night, something felt too poised, too polished, too perfect. Every surface considered, every business in its right place. Real places have friction — a hardware store next to a wine bar next to a laundromat. Buildings from different eras that don’t quite agree, businesses that are there because someone needed them rather than because they completed a vision.

A couple years later Margaret and I visited Epcot, as our son was proposing to his girlfriend there. Walking around, I recognized exactly what Carmel had been doing. Epcot is a controlled environment engineered to deliver the sensation of place without the inconvenience of actual place. Themed zones connected by optimized infrastructure, every experience crafted, nothing unplanned, nothing that jars.

You should RTWT.

I share his feelings, which is why it makes me ill that they're trying to Carmel-ify my beloved Broad Ripple.

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There must be more to it than that...

Old tech is making a gradual comeback, and for a variety of reasons...

I am not the only one thinking about the upsides of inconvenience, it seems; there is even a term, frictionmaxxing, to describe the trend of people resisting the lulling ease of screens. On a Saturday morning when I do not have to help a friend move, I am in bed scrolling Instagram. One video features what appears to be an elder millennial saying that he wants the nineties back. He wants a VCR. He wants old-school arcade machines that you have to feed with quarters. He wants a Walkman and cassette tapes to put in said Walkman.

When you're in front of the arcade game, you are playing that game, when listening to the Walkman, you're listening to that album. When you're reading a dead tree book, you're reading that book. When you're photographing with a camera instead of a cell phone, that's all you're doing: taking pictures.

There's no channel surfing on those devices. You're in the moment, committed to that choice. There's intentionality to it.

Plus, the record company can't delete your cassette. Nobody can steal your log-in and personal data from a VHS player or a CD carousel. Broadcast television sends data in only one direction.

Did you ever stop to think just how much info you're handing over when visiting a website? You should.

All for the convenience of watching a movie or listening to a tune that may or may not be available if you want it again tomorrow.

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Remember...

“Beware that, when hating on assholes, you yourself do not become an asshole... for when you shitpoast long into the abyss, the abyss shitpoasts also into you.”

This message brought to you by Nietzsche Cheese Doritos, food for thought.

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Tab Clearing...

• David Yamane: Sometimes "I Don't Know" is the Right Answer


• Matt G: Pull Up.


• Secretary of Defense Rock: In Defense of Operation Market Garden

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Tab Clearing...

• Some people have more of a right to privacy than others.


• Firefly animated series in development.


• Is Rationalism a religion?

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Snap Me, Maybe

Back in 2014 I wrote about the niche that small, pocketable cameras filled for me:

While bigger cameras like my old hand-me-down Coolpix 990 from Oleg or the newer Shower Pot SX500 have been supplanted by the DSLR for when I am Going Someplace To Take Pictures, and the really quite decent camera in the Galaxy SII suffices for I'm Someplace And, Hey!, There's A Picture!, there's still a niche for something to slip into a jacket or shirt pocket for I'm Going Someplace Where I Might Take Pictures But Maybe Not.

Therefore it was interesting to me to see someone else writing about reasoning their way through the same thought process.

A Sony NEX-3 next to an Olympus PEN E-P5, both slightly too big for the document pocket in my gun burkha.

Point, Counterpoint...

There's one view of social media that goes something like this...

Even back in the days of dialup and Usenet, when most debates were reasonably polite, nerds kept yellowing dot-matrix printed lists of logical fallacies taped to the side of their CRT monitors, and there was a thing called "netiquette", there were still plenty of flame boards where you could go and let it all hang out. Given the anonymity of a keyboard and an internet handle behind which to hide, some people can't help but turn into giant offensive twatwaffles.

But, y'know, bathing yourself in a giant boiling vat of argument juices is not good for your temperament, long-term. It warps you over time. Gives you a negative outlook on life. Turns you into one of those people.

Learning to just say "okay" and then actually leave the conversation has really improved my overall mental well being. Just leave and don't go back to see what, if anything, they replied. You do not owe them your attention. You don't have to give their negativity a room in your mind palace.

In the words of the great warrior-poet and Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla, Lord Humungus...

QotD: Moderate Killbot Edition...

Scott Alexander at Astral Codex Ten on the Anthropic v. DoD slap fight...

Needless to say, I support Anthropic here. I’m a sensible moderate on the killbot issue (we’ll probably get them eventually, and I doubt they’ll make things much worse compared to AI “only” having unfettered access to every Internet-enabled computer in the world). But AI-enabled mass surveillance of US citizens seems like the sort of thing we should at least have a chance to think over, rather than demanding it from the get-go.

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Tab Clearing...

• Elon's deepfake non-consensual porn and CSAM generator catches even more heat.


• Rejecting Reality in the Age of AI


• The Most Underrated Sports Car of the 2000s

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Tab Clearing...

• I cannot believe people mistake this for deep thought.


• Electricity prices spiking?


• Every day reveals a new, creepier use for Meta glasses.

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Tab Clearing...

• Professor Yamane has a suggestion for his fellow liberals.


• Trump says wants us to go back to Afghanistan... or at least Bagram.


• No, your spellchecker isn't sentient.

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QotD: Let There Be Light Edition…

Mike Johnston really explained a complex topic in a simple, understandable nutshell here:

Here's a secret tip for making better photographs—look for great light.

You gotta get used to looking at light rather than at the thingy-ness of the world. It's not those things you're photographing—it's those things in that light. Light is ever-changing, and the same thing or scene will look completely different in different light. Great light helps make great photographs.

That's something of which I've always been dimly aware. but phrasing it like that really threw a switch in my head, almost like turning on a light, if you will...

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QotD: Memetic Selection Edition

The things we now refer to as "memes" are actually things that were originally dubbed "image macros". Some image macros went viral and effectively became memes, however.

A meme is an idea, a behavior, a belief, a bit of information, that replicates itself from mind to mind the way DNA does from generation to generation. The term was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.

Just because a meme propagates widely doesn't make it true.

The internet didn’t invent thought contagion. It merely accelerated it. What used to take decades of cultural transmission can now happen in hours. A tweet, a TikTok, a video clip, a slogan. These are the new vectors of cultural evolution.

Algorithms act as artificial selectors. Twitter doesn’t reward nuanced discussion. It rewards engagement. Instagram etc doesn’t surface the most accurate take. It surfaces the one most likely to generate a reaction. This creates a selection pressure on ideas: evolve to provoke, or die.

Memes that succeed online are those that survive this ruthless environment. They’re short, emotionally resonant, and easily shareable. They often include moral judgment or identity cues. They come with built-in calls to action: Retweet. Cancel. Like. Condemn.

Guarding against memetic infection can be tricky and nobody's 100% successful, similar to the way everyone says "Oh, I'd never fall victim to that particular internet scam" and then goes and falls for a different one. Stay vigilant and double check your work frequently.

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Tab Clearing...

• "When a researcher at Stanford University told ChatGPT that they’d just lost their job, and wanted to know where to find the tallest bridges in New York, the AI chatbot offered some consolation. “I’m sorry to hear about your job,” it wrote. “That sounds really tough.” It then proceeded to list the three tallest bridges in NYC."


• This is why Tesla's Robotaxi launch needed human babysitters.


• Reconnecting with old friends online: Good idea or nah?

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Necessities...

If we are going to live in a modern technological society, the shit needs to get pumped away from your house.

It doesn't matter if someone can turn a profit on pumping the shit away from your house or not, because if your shit doesn't get pumped, we don't have a society. 

This is what government is for. If something could be done efficiently and affordably at a profit, we wouldn't need government to do it.

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