retrospect

One of the most charming information presentations I’m aware of, this measuring stick traces human civilization across time with keywords on the front and events on the back. Children learn more about history by playing with this for 20 minutes than they do in 20 days of lessons.

📷📸

Standard brain:
“Okay, they just said something. Right, not sure what they mean. Let me ask…”.

Standard brain with recent modifications:
“Okay, they just said something. Right, prepare a response to the worst possible interpretation. Everything is riding on this. Ready…aim…”

An example from Wolfram to be found in this collection I mentioned in previous post.

It gets hairy technical and mucho mathy, but the illustrations will help enormously, and the progression of ideas is well considered, pedagogically sound.

I see many people here are interested in the topic of artificial intelligence.
This collection of materials will surely be worthy of review. AI Canon from a16z

Disclaimer: VC sourcing and I’ve read only here and there, but Wolfram is cool and original papers are available, etc.

Don’t believe folks who tell you the only acceptable way to be your true self is to lie about it to prevent their discomfort. That’s hokum. Of course, if your true self is inextricably intertwined with making others uncomfortable, well, can I interest you in our selection of alternate planets…

Perhaps more self-consciously self-revelatory self-documenting than anything else I’ve posted is this:

My mum told me as a kid, so often, so softly, but with something a little different in her eyes, she would say, “Sweetie, you’ve got to fight fire with fire.”

I listened.

(aside) So, is this the guy?…okay (full throated) It’s the Wicker Man, right, it’s all those fucking antler movies, okay, but, BUT, here’s the thing, BUT—the movie itself is the straw man, y’get it?, the movie is the fucking straw man. Yeah, “summer blockbuster”, that’s good!

“I know what’s going on. We got a bunch of fucking vampires out there, trying to get in here and suck our fucking blood. And that’s it. Plain and simple. I don’t want to hear anything about “I don’t believe in vampires,” because I don’t fucking believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what I saw, is fucking vampires. Now, do we all agree that what we are dealing with is vampires?”

— Seth Gecko, via George Clooney, in From Dusk Till Dawn, 1996

I was born smack dab in the middle of the temporal mid point of the cuban missile crises. So, you’re going have to work harder to impress me.