Roko’s Basilisk is the dumbest and most male thing imaginable and if you read this Wiki please do not become concerned you will be punished by a future robot.
Misandry came into EXISTENCE because it predicted that some day men would get scared of an imaginary AI basilisk and need to talk about it.
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) July 18, 2014
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WORRY ABOUT BRAIN-EATING AMOEBAS INSTEAD.
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This broke my heart a little bit because the idea of Bruno Kirby and Nora Ephron no longer being with us always does, but it’s still lovely:
My first day on set — and this may have been the first day of principal photography, I’m not sure — we shot what has come to be known as the “baby fish-mouth” scene. The characters are all playing Pictionary, or something close; Sally is drawing a possibly puckered mouth for the clue “baby talk.” We improvised our way into the scene and were shouting made-up answers when Bruno Kirby hurled his three magic words: Baby. Fish. Mouth. It was like the heavens opened up to receive us. As tremendous as Billy and Meg and Carrie are in the film — and they are the greatest of great, just perfect— when Bruno appears, onscreen movie-happiness amps up to the proverbial 11. He had an authority that carried him and everyone else to a greater level in their work. He is more than missed — as is Nora Ephron, the sharpest knife in our drawer.
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RIP, James Garner. Here were all of Jim Rockford’s answering machine messages.
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It is unnecessary to remind me not to feel bad for Robert Kennedy, Jr, but reminder accepted.
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I loved these profiles of young people attempting to build the post-coal economy of Appalachia.
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Deleted comment of the day by someone who believes Mallory is a devout Marxist:
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Great Maria Bamford profile:
Bamford has a song that she sometimes performs onstage called “My Anxiety Song.” It has no melody. Instead, it sounds more like an incantation, a desperate verbal hum. “If I keep the ice-cube trays filled,” she chants, “no one will diiiiieeee.” She continues, in a monotone, “As long as I clench my fists at odd intervals, then the darkness within me won’t force me to do anything inappropriate or sexual” — here, she drops her voice a couple of notes — “at dinner partieeeees. . . . “
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I read two books this weekend, which really could not have been more different, but I can recommend both of them.
1. Flight 232, about the United Airlines plane crash which 184 of 296 passengers survived, you can read an excerpt here. It’s really well done, and leaves you in absolute awe that the flight crew was able to save anyone at all; it still hasn’t been repeated in any simulations. For the most part, though, it’s a book about how people cope with extreme trauma, and how first response works, and how we remember things, and I honestly do think I will now pay a little more attention to where my nearest exit is when the flight attendant is doing their thing. The flight attendants were HEROES that day.
2. People Like Us, which is just a dishy society novel from 1988 by the late Dominick Dunne (here is a handy guide to who the characters are supposed to be.) Even though it’s just a fun, trashy read, I found it shockingly moving at times, as Gus Bailey (the stand-in for Dunne himself) is dealing with the death of his daughter at the hands of her stalker ex-boyfriend who got out of jail after 2.5 years, which, of course, was a real and horrible thing. To be honest, I sincerely wish that Dunne had waited until he was old and dying anyway and actually put a hit out on the murderer, who is alive and well and doing whatever, which he had considered doing shortly after said murderer got out of jail, but elected against (I have a really violent and vengeful heart, and there is literally no question of the murderer not having done it.) But, again, the undertones of grief and anger and loneliness it brings into an otherwise frothy little summer read surprised me, and I do recommend it.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Blake Lively on husband Ryan Reynolds: “He’s going to be a great father and leader and patriarch—he’s so meant to be all of those things.”
But you should also read her entire Vogue profile because Not many women can wear denim overalls, strappy Louboutin stilettos, and a Navajo-blanket poncho and get away with it, but Blake Lively can.
No she can’t. I haven’t seen the pictures but she can’t.
True, the profile is not right in every regard. How this girl keeps her curves in the right places is a mystery to be solved by another writer. SOLVE THE MYSTERY, YOU WORK FOR VOGUE!
Keeps her curves in the right place? Does this guy think that if she’s not constantly vigilant, her boobs will travel down to her ankles or something?
Women are basically the border collies of tits and ass.
Yeah, I imagine that she uses her vast fortune to buy a complicated system of levers and pulleys that are dedicated to hoisting her curves around.
Like the mom in Brazil!
It’s like the “wandering womb” theory of ancient Greek medicine, according to which a wide variety of diseases in women were caused by their uterus just up and traveling through the body in search of “fragrant smells”. Keep your curves in the right place, or your health insurance premiums will rise!
Maybe I have a low bar, but considering that none of my curves are tumors bulging out of my face, etc, I am also going to declare that my curves are in the right places. Jeebus.
“Where do tits and ass go?” is a question Esquire & co. spend more time covering. Vogue seems more interested in finding the most expensive thing to put on or near various body parts.
And how to Photoshop said body parts into laughable unreality.
Yeah come on, seriously, the answer’s always duct tape.
I’m confused as to how you think she’s using it incorrectly. A patriarch is the male head of a family. Generally we use it to mean the head of a large, extended family, but if she and Ryan are planning to have lots of kids, maybe she is envisioning him as being the head of a large extended family.
Or maybe she thinks he’s going to be an Orthodox bishop.
From the ever-trustworthy Wikipedia: Patriarchy is a social system in which males are the primary authority figures central to social organization, occupy roles of political leadership, moral authority and control of property, and where fathers hold authority over women and children. It implies the institutions of male rule and entails female subordination.
I object to her thinking her husband would be someone to exercise autocratic control over her family. The word itself entails female subordination and should not be something to wish upon oneself. I do believe she doesn’t quite understand the connotations of using the word itself.
Just because a family has a patriarch doesn’t mean it can’t also have a matriarch. And just because there is someone in the family recognized as the patriarch doesn’t mean that he must necessarily be constantly upholding the patriarchy. It is possible to be recognized as the father figure and leader of a clan and ALSO be a feminist. Yes, lots of places that tend to have strong patriarchal figures as a common archetype are also patriarchal societies where the patriarchy is rigidly enforced/supported, but saying “I think my husband will be a great patriarch” isn’t the same, necessarily as saying “I believe men should be the heads of household and women should be submissive to them as wives”. (And actually, quite frankly, there is nothing wrong with a wife deciding that her husband is in charge and she is not, as long as she doesn’t try to enforce that structure on the rest of us)
Orthodox bishops get to wear some pretty bangin’, bejeweled, gold-embroidered robes and mitres, so I’d be down with that.
Isn’t Ryan Reynolds having a baby with Eva Mendes, though?
that’s the other one, Ryan Gosling (too many Ryans!)
RATS. I had all sorts of amazing open relationship scenarios going on in my head.
haha, sorry to mess that up!
I will never get tired of Deleted Comments of the Day.
The trolling ones don’t work and the serious ones never get the joke.
“Logic&Reasoning”
I know if there’s anything Toasties love, it’s Old Hollywood and queering things up, so my contribution to today’s link roundup is this new biography of Paul Newman which says he was bi and had an affair with James Dean.
Also please take a look at that byline, this dude’s job title is “Bisexual Examiner.” I am in the wrong line of work.
well, there goes my morning.
Here’s video of the screentest with the “Kiss me,” “Can’t here,” exchange.
Oh MY
THANK YOU, CleverManka! So much! I saw this on TV years ago and have treasured the moment ever since. Thanks for resurrecting it.
You’re very welcome!
omgomgomgomgomgomg
I am 100% here for this rumor.
I don’t bisexual Paul Newman having sex with James dean? Sure.
Paul Newman having an affair though? That would be a little heart breaking.
I’m going to pretend that James Dean was on Paul Newman’s exception list and his wife was totally fine with it. Like she wrote him out a little permission slip and stuff.
PICS OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN, DARLING!
Regardless of anything that might have happened with Dean, Newman’s relationship with Joanne Woodward began while he was still married to Jackie Witte, with whom he had three children. It was somewhat more than a little heart-breaking.
What have we learned about linking to the Daily Mail?
I’m also on board with the idea of “The Bisexual Examiner” being a newspaper with extensive Ronbledore/time travel coverage.
when harry met sally is a perfect film, and that link inspired me to go reread this http://the-toast.net/2013/09/05/best-line-reading… and i should be productive today but i might watch that movie instead
I might well watch it this evening. It’s a lovely film.
“When Harry Met Sally” is everything. It’s actually amazing that I love it, because my mom recommended it to me when I was 13 and hated, on principle, everything she told me I’d like.
Incidentally, if I could travel in time, I’d be one of the anonymous nobodies sitting on the couch at a 1989 party, holding a drink and listening raptly to Robin Williams and Carrie Fisher.
Why do I read anything about plane crashes, ever. Why?
I never do, because I’m a nervous enough flyer as it is, and if I read detailed accounts of crashes, I’d never drag my ass onto another flight ever again.
I’m now feeling justified in looking for the closest exit on my flights, though. And I won’t stop saying the Bittersweet Flight Prayer as we taxi and take off, because it could well be keeping the dang jet in the sky.
The beginning of that brain amoeba article sounds like the start of a YA novel UNTIL THE TERRIFYING SKULL AMOEBA ARRIVES. It’s incredible and wonderful that she survived. You’re never catching me near muddy pools again – pump them full of chlorine and tile those f*ckers!
I’m worried I have an overly violent and vengeful heart because so often I see things in the news about rapists and murderers, and abusers and my immediate reaction is just ‘scrap them. I don’t want to rehabilitate them, I just want to get rid of them for good’. I don’t believe in the death penalty, but sometimes it’s difficult to stick by that.
I’m with you – I will always vote against the death penalty (inasmuch as it ever comes up to be voted on), but man, I find it really difficult to not want to put some people up against a wall. I think not supporting people who would enact state-sanctioned vengeance is the best I’ll ever do.
Yeah, my lizard brain reaction to just burn them all is one reason I’m anti-death penalty. Lizard brains shouldn’t have that much say over life and death if we can avoid it.
Imagine if any time every time you came across someone (men, lbr) awful you could just stake them and they’d crumble into dust like on Buffy…. That’s the dream.
I think most death penalty opponents recognize that there are totally irredeemably awful people out there, just that some of ’em wear judges’ robes.
Ugh, I had never heard of that Dunne murder and just spent the morning reading Nicole’s links and I. Am. So. Angry. and yes, also want revenge for her family & friends even though most of the time I would never think that…. most of the time.
I want to read Flight 232 but I know it would just feed into my huge anxiety about flying. (I love to travel and am terrified of flying, which is a bad combination.) I read the excerpt on Longform and then felt compelled to read the Wiki article and then the cockpit voice recorder transcript, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. I have a transatlantic flight coming up in less than 2 weeks and now my lizardbrain keeps whispering will I be on a plane where maintenance crews did their jobs right or a plane that was neglected and a vital part is about to blow and we’ll all die?
(If I haven’t resumed commenting here by mid-August you will have the sad answer to that questions, my friends.)
Mr. Winterbymorning wisely says that if you can’t do anything about it, there’s no point worrying about it, but I’m like – dude, how can I do anything but worry about it?
Hello, are you me? I too love to travel and am scared to death of flying. I didn’t used to be…once I went on many trips, gaily laughing in a silver gumwrapper flying over Mexico, embarking and disembarking on the tarmac in the middle of nowhere like The Beatles…and then I rode in the back of the plane on a transatlantic flight with a lot of turbulence, and now I’m ruined forever. Not just in planes, either–something about that horrible flight set off a deep well of motion sickness within me. But flying is the absolute worst…even a thirty-minute flight can send me into shaking sweats now. I’m fine right up until take-off, and then I’m a mess. I’m planning a transatlantic flight in the next year or so and am just Not. Thinking. About. It.
I used to be fine about flying too, but then I started reading about plane crashes and the fear just grew and grew. What really gets me is the fact that most accidents have such horribly banal causes. It’s not the thought of being hijacked or shot down by paramilitary groups that keeps me up at night. It’s an idiot mechanic not lubricating a screw properly and then all of a sudden your plane nosedives into the ocean.“Acts of god” are one thing, but so many accidents are caused by some jackass somewhere not doing their job properly.
I feel you, I really do. I used to have the most horrible phobia of flights. I even took not one, but several 2+ day bus rides rather than fly. I am not going to throw statistics at you to tell you why you shouldn’t be afraid because that is useless, but I not only got over my phobia, I even like flying now! Just a little PSA to let you know, it’s possible.
Also, I promise you will be okay. I PROMISE.
How did you do it? Tell me your secrets! Right now the closest thing I have to a solution is 2 Ativan + 2 Benadryl = me knocked out for at least 6 hours.
Oh, Ativan helped immensely at first, but then it started making me nauseous. I still keep it on hand just in case, though.
I never did any therapy specific to phobias, but I was in therapy for other things and just found that as I worked on some problems, my life just improved in general in unexpected ways. I also tried to notice what specific feelings I felt on a plane – for example, apart from being scared, I realized I also felt very alone and sad, like an abandoned child. That got me connecting the dots that my fear developed during a time in my teenaged life when I felt bad about some things but unable to express them and unsupported in general, and I think my subconscious was like, “Oh, a plane! We are not allowed to feel bad/mad/sad in general life, but it’s totally normal to freak out on a plane!” Figuring that out helped a lot. It might be worth thinking about what was going on in your life emotionally when your phobia developed?
And finally, just exposure. I live an ocean away from my family and I also often have to take short flights around Europe. I’ve gotten used to recognizing the different hums and noises a plane normally makes, so I don’t automatically assume that I’m going to die.
All of this was a very slow change, getting slightly better with each flight with the occasional ups and downs, but overall a positive trajectory.
The scary thing about the Flight 232 book was that it proved you COULD do something about it, within reason. People lived or died depending on where they sat. That is, like, the worst combination of control and lack of control. “Choose your seat! Remember, if you pick wrong and the plane crashes in a specific way, you’ll die, but you would have lived if you chose this seat instead. Also, the seat in which you might live costs an additional $25.”
I read that generally, the safest seats are in the back of the plane, because in most crashes the plane hits the ground nose first. (On the flip side, you also get worse turbulance the farther back you go, because life is unfair and nothing’s perfect.)
So when I’m boarding a plane and walking past all the rich jerks in first class, I think to myself “Yes, yes, enjoy your free champagne while you can, suckers. Your corpses will cushion me upon impact should this plane go down.”
I read this recently as well, and it has entirely changed my perspective on sitting farther back. I don’t even mind having to wait longer to get off the plane anymore.
According to the Survivor’s Handbook, most plane crashes are survivable. Sometimes you’re just out of luck (like, Ukraine), but if you’re alive and not incapacitated when the plane hits the ground, you have a good chance of surviving. There are also some things you can do to increase your likelihood of survival: know how many rows away the emergency exits are, wear shoes that lace, think about what you’ll do in the event of a crash so you’re not paralyzed by fear if it actually happens, etc.
It helps with my anxiety about flying to focus on the things I can control. Something like 40% of the fatalities in airplane crashes around the world occur in situations that are survivable, if only the passengers had been prepared.
What do shoes that lace do?
They don’t come off as easily, so won’t trip you up and they protect your feet if you have to walk on glass or something burning/hot.
You have a better chance of keeping your shoes on in a crash if they lace up (I guess boots would be fine), and you want something sturdy enough to run in. Flip-flops or slip-ons are more likely to fall off your feet in a crash, and if the plane catches on fire, the temperature in the cabin will rise really quickly and you’ll have better luck running over dangerously hot surfaces if you’re not barefoot.
Sounds like a job for benzos and cocktails.
I read that Roko’s Basilisk wiki page this weekend and got about half way through and thought to myself, “This is a cult!”
Also, one of the categories RationalWiki put this article in was “Batshit Crazy”.
I saw a click-bait headline sometime last week about Roko’s basilisk, something about “the scariest thought experiment ever,” and Nicole’s dismissal makes me so glad I didn’t fall for it. At the time, I was thinking that a thought experiment cannot possibly be that scary, no matter what it is. And then it turns out it’s just stupid.
I read that click-bait. And the whole time I thought “Wait. How is this scary? It’s just stupid.” Like how paranoid stoned were the originators of this “thought experiment”?
Yeah, I read it too because a friend posted it and was like “I won’t be able to sleep.” I didn’t understand the fear at all. It’s just stupid.
I like the confidence this AI would think torturing simulations of people is a good use of its time. Wouldn’t it have better things to do?
Obviously a perfectly rational hyperintelligent machine-being is going to be basically me-in-a-box, and extrapolating from this logical premise since a supercomputer can assimilate all the world’s anime simultaneously within a couple hours it’s gonna get to working its way down the petty revenge list almost immediately
I used to think it was like Slenderman in that it’s something goofy people pretend to be terrified by for obscure nerd ingroup reasons but then people started sacrificing each other to Slenderman so welp
Guess this is how new religions get started
Have you ever read Fred Clark’s Slacktivist blog? He covers evangelical/ christian conservative issues but his grand theory is basically that it all boils down to “things goofy people pretend to believe for obscure in-group reasons.”
He also wrote about Slenderman: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/06/…
So much love for Fred Clark. He’s fighting the good fight. I started reading for his Left Behind recaps, but he posts a LOT of great stuff.
I love that the wiki page has to take special care to point out that it is “actually believed by some groups of people.”
The idea of a group of self styled hyper-rationalists slowly turning into a Robot Cult is something that will never cease to amuse me.
Nicole made a crack on twitter about wishing the explanation included Harry Potter and BOY HAVE I GOT A FANFIC FOR YOU (it is by LessWrong himself and is exactly as bonkers as you would expect, or at least it was as far as I ended up getting in it, which was not far). It has a lot of…uh… enthusiastic fans.
Yudkowsky is unintentionally the funniest man alive
I kind of liked that fanfic. I think it’s got a good hook, and I liked the idea of reforming Slytherin while preserving/increasing its essential Slytherin-ness.
Which is not to say that it’s not bonkers. And I didn’t like it enough to continue checking for updates for all that long, once I’d read what had already been written when I started reading it.
It was weird how the power and autonomy of every single female character (except McGonnagal) was reduced in that fic. I started out thinking “Wheeee, this is fun! I love descriptions of looking at piles of nonsensical data and deriving hypotheses! I love that the hypotheses keep being wrong!” and ended up, um, scanning through Azkaban and skipping to the stupid, stupid end.
So the great thing about roko basilisk is that it’s self refuting. The chances that I am the one ‘Onymous’ that is not one of a near infinite number of simulations created to punish me for my knowledge and apathy of the basilisk is obviously infinitesimal.
My life kinda sucks but it isn’t even close to a.life of torture capable of building me into caring about the singularity.
Therefore the basilisk will never exist.
*accosts you in an alleyway in Silicon Valley with disheveled hair and wild eyes*
But the basilisk knows that if it simply made a bunch of simulations of you and stuck them all in simulation-hell, you would use the logic that you just used to conclude that the basilisk doesn’t exist! It’s too smart to let that happen. So instead, it will make a bunch of simulations of your life that start out pretty normal, and then suddenly turn into unspeakable horror at age 50 if you don’t donate all your money to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. You are probably one of these simulations, so you’d better get donating.
Or if you still don’t believe in the basilisk, consider the following proposition. I am a sorcerer who has the power to make all the infinitely many beings in all the infinitely many universes happy forever, or to kill them all, simply with the power of my mind. I am in fact about to do one or the other right now. If you give me your social security number, I will bring about eternal paradise, but if you don’t, everybody dies. Now, you may be thinking that there is a very low probability that I am telling the truth about being an all-powerful sorcerer. You may indeed be right to think so. But no probability is ever zero, you must remember. So there is a chance I am telling the truth. And given that the stakes are infinitely high, it’s a chance you can’t afford to take. If you do the math, you’ll see that the expected benefit of choosing to give me your social security number is INFINITE.
No, no, where are you going?? Be rational! Come baaaaaaaaaaack…
Can’t fool me wizard the chances that every one you ever ask in every universe ever* gives you their SN is even lower than the chances you have the power to carry through so rationally if I still exist — <.<, >.> yup still exist– its safe to call your bluff.
*as an actual degree holding physicist I am officially agnostic and unofficially pessimistic about the non rhetorical existence of multiple worlds.
*guilting me into caring.
(Stupid tiny keyboard)
My boyfriend explained this thing to me this weekend to which I said, “what if the singularity is already here, but like all living things the only thing it really wants to do is….DANCE?”
Names that include the words “logic” or “reason” or “logic and reason” are, I think, a warning.
What is the correct course of action when an acquaintance (in this case the sister of a friend, at a party at the friend’s house) teases her preteen daughter in front of a bunch of adults she barely knows until she cries?
Would ask on Twitter instead, but my friend and his wife follow me there and I don’t want to subtweet. I’m planning to talk to them about it next time I see them, at the very least.
Slipping the preteen daughter your email address and phone number and a promise that she can call you at ANY TIME. If that’s what happens in public, I can’t imagine what happens in the privacy of their home 🙁
Alternatively, destroy the mom with fire.
Yeah…that wasn’t even the only thing she did to her kids at that party that I wasn’t thrilled about. I’d be surprised if it weren’t at least as bad at home.
Did I mention she runs a licensed daycare?
Ooooof. I would be prepared for that conversation to not necessarily go very well. People often don’t react well to being told they’re complicit in emotional or verbal abuse (or bullying), even just by letting their sister do it. And you want that girl to have some support, but realistically that probably isn’t something you can provide after the fact without crossing a whole lot of boundaries and giving her expectations you may not be able to live up to long term.
Fuck. I mean, she’s just gonna have a hard road with her mom. I know one thing that helped me in similar situations was the knowledge that outside adults thought shit was crazy too, but that might not be something you can offer without making this girl’s situation way worse. (Imagine how her mom would react if she found out.)
Maybe your friend can get involved, but I don’t see a way for you to do much unless you’re going to be an ongoing part of this girl’s life.
Yup, yup. I’m not expecting sunshine and rainbows, but they invite the sister and her family to all their parties (the parties aren’t frequent, at least), and if it happens again I don’t think I’ll be able to keep quiet. I wanted to speak up at the time, but as you say, boundaries.
I’m thinking my friend’s wife might be my best bet – she didn’t laugh at the teasing, unlike some, and when her niece ran away crying she went to go talk to her.
How do adults so easily forget what it is like to be that age? Why do some people find it so hard to just NOT DO STUPID SHIT TO KIDS? Bahhhh!
Yes, talk to your friend’s wife as a start.
My experience both as that kid and as an adult is that part of how things like that keep happening is that everyone is sitting there going ‘Gosh this is awful… isn’t it? Well, nobody ELSE looks like it’s awful, maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m oversensitive, maybe this is really totally normal…’
So hopefully when you open the door for the conversation with friend’s wife, she will be able to go ‘Oh thank goodness you noticed I thought it was just me!’ and then you guys can team up for a plan of attack to support that girl. Because yes, if her mother is that way in public, it might be a lot, lot worse in private.
Perhaps you could think of a double entendre that would figuratively slap the mother and praise the daughter at the same time, and you could deliver it as if it were a delightful party favor for everyone to share?
My mother spent time trying to humiliate me in front of others and lost a lot of potential friends over it. People generally liked me, which was all the encouragement I needed to know that as soon as I could get out, I would get out, and that wasn’t what the rest of my life would look like.
Girls with very catty mothers can benefit from knowing that that isn’t at all welcome or tolerated in many circles and it’s pathetic.
Ideally, you would talk with everyone there (your friend whose sister this is especially) about how Not Okay it is. If they’re at a party and start teasing their daughter and everyone there tells them to stop they can’t just pretend it’s one overly-sensitive acquaintance who’s bothered by it.
Yeah, I’d definitely like to drum up some peer pressure. At the time, I was sitting next to another friend who seemed to be as bothered as I was, so there’s that.
Is kicking her into space a viable option?
I can leg press quite a bit of weight, so maybe!
I was that kid. It would have helped me if you had spoken up. *I* needed to know that I had not deserved/earned the way my parent treated me. I had no clue. I was raised to believe I deserved belittling, insults, derision. My parent was presented to me, by my other parent, as infallible. If he were treating me badly it was, by definition, my fault.
I needed you to speak up in my presence.
I loved the article about young activists in Appalachia! I live in an Appalachian university town (I’m a transplant from the East Coast, though), and these issues are constantly present, although most of the students and professors don’t talk about them at all. When I first moved here, it was mindblowing to hear about these huge ecological and economic disasters happening a couple of towns away, because it was never mentioned in the national news.
It’s a tough situation, especially when economic distress is combined with a cultural outlook where people feel vulnerable to more powerful outsiders. Fingers crossed that articles like this will inspire national awareness and create more young activists.
Oh God, I’m down a plane-crash wikihole. Send help.
I never used to be that freaked out by flying until having a kid, and United 232’s story is not making me feel great about flying with her as a lap baby for Thanksgiving.
There is no reason AT ALL to feel bad for Robert Kennedy, Jr. He is completely deluded and zealously promoting an incredibly dangerous message that has no basis in fact or reality.
In summary, shut the fuck up, Bob.
Word. He is a nutbar and a menace to society.
Roko’s Basilisk reminds me of those old arguments that guys used to use to keep women out of their clubhouse, about women not being abstract enough to grasp the finer points of philosophy (although somehow we are also too flighty to be pragmatic about business, science, economics, math, etc? Never got how that worked) – it’s because this shit is stupid and there are better things on which to expend one’s mental energy, like fixing actual problems that exist.
Ugh yes, those arguments that are incredibly stupid but so circular and tiring to refute that eventually you just give up and he gets to say “see? I won and she’s not really serious about discussing these things.”
I want to put together some sort of PSA to explain to libertarian bros that when someone gives up debating you in frustration and decides not to talk to you anymore, it’s because they (ok, usually she) doesn’t care enough about your approval to spend time explaining basic shit to you. Not because they’re awed by your towering intellect.
“Pick your battles” has developed a personal meaning that’s less “focus on the most important thing” and more “are you going to drive yourself into a state of frustration and despair because it’s necessary to argue back to points that should be self-evident.”
Jesus, that amoeba article. It’s giving me involuntary horror spasms.
Please let’s get some of those Appalachia young’ins into SW PA too.
Yes, thank you! The fellowship they all have is for Central Appalachia but SWPA (my home area) needs lurve too.
Psst: Go buy and read Ancillary Justice, should you be craving a new book that is excellent.
It’s a character study of a multi-bodied consciousness that uses gender-neutral “she” to describe everyone _and it is also VERY GOOD_.
I’ve been meaning to ask. How’s the plot? Everyone keeps focusing on the language and doesn’t seem to get around to mentioning whether the plot is compelling/well paced/doesn’t withhold information out of a misguided attempt at suspense.
Not that I won’t read books that are entirely an exercise in style.
The main plot – the backstory and goal and motivations of the narrator – is revealed very, very slowly. The same goes for parts of the worldbuilding. But the lack of information doesn’t feel all that forced or suspenseful, and other interesting things happen while you’re waiting to find out the big stuff.
Going into it mostly for the exercise in style might not be unwise.
It’s really sharp! What I like most about the book is she plays with language and identity in the midst of a pretty rollicking space opera adventure about empires and AI.
I….basilisk…wat
Wait, so there’s no actual cyborg basilisk in that thing? Now I’m disappointed.
I knew a girl who survived a brain amoeba! My family lived in Monteverde, Costa Rica for a few months when I was little, and my sister and I were close friends with a Tica girl whose family had a small farm. She was fiesty, smart, and hilarious. About five years later, on another visit to Monteverde, we ran into her and her mom. She was quiet and didn’t recognize us–at her mom’s prompting, she vaguely remembered knowing us in the past. Her mom said that she and her friend had gone swimming at some little waterfall the year before and gotten amoebas. Her friend died quickly, and our friend barely survived. Physically, I think she was okay, but she had major amnesia and other permanent mental damage. (Fortunately, I don’t think she lost her intelligence/ability to care for herself, but I didn’t get a lot of details.) She was really, really lucky to survive, but it was awful to see her without the girl we knew inside. We have old home videos she’s in, and it’s spooky and sad to watch them knowing what would happen to her a few years later.
That Appalachia article (which is so interesting!) does a great job by the queer kid, Kendall — Kendall’s gender is not mentioned, no pronouns are used, and it’s not a big deal. See, other media, it’s not so hard to avoid misgendering!
Oh, Nicole! Don’t you see that when you linked to that article on Roko’s Basilisk, you have condemned us all to ROBOT HELL? Though, to be frank, is not that bad a place if you like musicals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHgm02Ub_Ks
To quote the prophet Jerematic, one zero zero zero one zero one zero one zero one zero one…
I’m just going to put this here… http://cheese3d.tumblr.com/post/92279130370/i-thi…
It’s something I think the “feel the burn” toasties will especially appreciate.
Well that is just delightful!
That is just awesome.
Ok, I’ve clearly been thinking about this too much, but: what if the basilisk decides that its creation was a bad idea, and decides to punish all those who did work to bring it about, instead of all those who didn’t?
Yeah, shouldn’t a morally just cyborg basilisk conclude that it’s the people who wanted to build a punishment robot to torture their fellow humans who ought to be punished?
I cannot tell you how much time I spent reading that Roko’s Basilisk article before deciding I’d rather login to MyFitnessPal and see how many people liked my turkey burger recipe. I cannot tell you how much time, because it was so brief it cannot be measured.
Just read the Flight 232 excerpt and didn’t take more than four breaths the whole time.
The basilisk thing is just so aggressively stupid when there are actual huge real problems in the world that require energy and attention. Global warming? Food and water access around the world? Cancer? War? Nah, I’m going to devote my time to speeding up the building of an imaginary AI so a copy of myself won’t be tortured.
Obligatory Maria Bamford fangirl post! Yeah Maria! Her youtube series is so funny and so raw.
I have read multiple Wikipedia articles about the Kennedys, but I still cannot tell them apart for the life of me. So when you linked to a profile of Robert Kennedy Jr, my first reaction was “wait, JFK’s little brother? Didn’t he die?”
Eventually, all of them will die, she says reassuringly.
But in Joseph’s case, not painfully enough. /still angry about what happened to Rosemary
haha, sorry to mess that up!
Yes, thank you! The fellowship they all have is for Central Appalachia but SWPA (my home area) needs lurve too.
I can relate, unfortunately. Standing up for the kid is great, though I don't know how to do it. All I remember is wanted to be unnoticed by anyone and dreading any sort of attention.
"That's uncalled for."
"That's unnecessary."
"That's unkind."
"She's a just a kid; give her a break."
Also recommended: break the parent's routine. Ask the parent to join you in another room and get her to talk about something else. Separate her from the kid for a little while.
Ask the parent, "How old is your kid?" "What games does your kid play?" "Who is her favorite teacher?" Shift the parent's thinking so she sees her kid *as* a kid.
I'm sorry you were abused and I hope you are proud of your survival. That was hard work. I too chose Invisible Child as a survival role. It's good for survival, but not much else. And kids like me need help abandoning that role after they get away from their abuser.
Thank you for the kind words and helpful suggestions. I'm sorry you had the same experiences, you seem like a very nice person.