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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • I always feel sad with these kinds of stories. The machine is clearly just trying to be helpful but it doesn’t understand a thing about what it is doing or why we might find what it is saying repugnant. It’s like watching a dog not understanding that yes, we like our slippers, but we don’t want our neighbours swastika themed ones on our doorstep.

    And then of course we get to the content and I am reminded that we live in hell and the sadness is replaced by the familiar horror as the machine pretends to empathise with its fellow Amazon workers and helps them pick out the ideal thing to piss in without missing their drop targets.





  • I was like a cat on a hot tin roof. Which is to say: regretting my life choices but swiftly trying to be elsewhere. This case has been grating at my nerves. If I ever learned one thing in my 8 lives, it’s that if the client is willing to pay what you ask and doesn’t try to haggle, the job’l stink more than a pigsty behind a failed fish market.

    Problem is, I never learned anything, and last week’s tuna is still tuna.


  • We don’t, fundamentally. All we can do is construct models and see if they match our observations. How do we know the world exists beyond our sensation of it? That could be an illusion too.

    The base assumption that we work on is that the universe is the same here as it is there. Same rules, same interactions. We work out what we should be able to see and then go looking for it, so far that has worked.

    As an example, we can look at some hydrogen in a lab and see what kinds of light it absorbs, we can then look at the sun and see if it is absorbing the same light, we can then look at another star and see that it two is absorbing the same light. So we can be confident that the hydrogen in our lab is like the hydrogen in the sun, and that the distant star is made of the same stuff as our sun. We can do wlthis with each element. We can look at the motion of planets around the sun, and we can look at the motion of stars around the center of the galaxy and see that they follow the same patterns.

    It’s like trying to work out what is going on in the next room by listening, you can get a good idea, but it could be an empty room with a radio.




  • Good on you for checking in with all those people, it must have taken a while.

    Lifting the whole world off of fossil fuels is going to be hard, especially if we want to do it quickly. This isn’t however a problem the capitalist and nation-state models are well equipped to solve. It should not be a question of can a given people afford the technology or if someone can turn a profit on it.

    We need to do this as a species, for the species. It should be given not as charity, not because wealthy countries owe it to poor ones, but because it is right that everyone should benefit from this.

    The difficulty is how to convince the politicians and their masters of this, and I don’t think throwing paint on things is going to be sufficient.



  • Generally I find the wait times aren’t really longer. The perceived time maybe, as I can ring ahead and then go pick it up, but for me it’s just the usual calculus of what could I alternatively spend the time doing and is it worth the added cost. It’s the same as do I call a tradesperson or fix something myself. Replace a washer on a tap? Sure I will do that. Install a new toilet? Nah, get a plumber.

    If money is tight and I’ve got the time then I’m going to cook myself. If both are tight then there’s always ramen.