NaibofTabr

AI is a surveillance technology.

There’s this quote attributed to Rabbi Yisrael Salanter:

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.

Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

There are two lessons here. First - the best way to affect meaningful change is to start local. Rather than spending a lot of time agonizing over national politics, get involved in your community - your neighborhood, your town, your apartment building, even just the house you share with your family. Your community will take better care of you and the other people that you care about than any national government ever will.

Second - ultimately the only person whose behavior you can change is your own. Don’t be too harsh with other people when they don’t behave the way that you believe they should. Be a more stringent judge of your own behavior.

But temper that with this:

Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much. Or berate yourself too much either.

Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Baz Lurhmann

Ostensibly, that’s what it’s for.

Of course, the online features are bait on the hook.

No, no one should do this.

First off, definitely don’t mail anything hazardous. You’re mostly putting postal workers at risk.

Second, the instructions in it were written by an angsty 19-year old, not a chemist or weapons expert or bomb technician. Trying to actually make these things puts you at risk.

Third, if you’re going to talk about this book then it really is necessary to talk about the historical context that the author wrote it in and how he regretted it after, and what the consequences were:

[…] and the incidents where the book was found among the belongings of the perpetrators, including, but not limited to, the Columbine High School massacre, the Arapahoe High School shooting, and the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting, as well as a number of assassination attempts on government officials.

In which case anyone who wants to can read the message traffic and make changes to it before passing it on to the receiver.

No, you can’t conduct business this way.

AI is surveillance tool.

No one can bank online without reliable encryption. No one can transact business online without reliable encryption.

OK… could you just drop everything in your life, all your belongings, your job, and more importantly the people you know and care about, your community, and pick up and leave with just what you can carry on a flight?

It’s not the cost of travel that keeps people where they are. I’ve got three siblings, a niece and a nephew, and a bunch of extended family that are worth more to me than the cost of any kind of political strife or economic difficulty.

Darths and Droids - Star Wars rewritten as a TTRPG campaign, started in 2007, still regularly updating, fantastic (ab)use of the source material

Also check out Dr. McNinja. It ended years ago but the entire series can be downloaded from archive.org (legally).

The spear in the Other’s heart
is the spear in your own:
you are he.

There is no other wisdom,
and no other hope for us
but that we grow wise.

-attributed to Surak

as written by Diane Duane in Spock’s World

Empathy is not some mere emotion that you feel - a fleeting reaction to some external sensation. Empathy is an intentional shifting of perspective, where you experience another’s circumstances as if they were your own.

This is a skill, meaning that it is something which you learn through practice, and that you do on purpose, until the doing of it becomes instinctive and no longer requires intent.

To say “I do not feel empathy” is to give yourself an excuse not to practice. This is a cop-out, used by weak people. Do not wait to “feel” it before you practice. Always remember you do not practice only for the sake of other people, but for the sake of your own growth and edification.

There’s a problem that occurs when a lot of economic sanctions have been placed against a country - that country’s economy becomes so disconnected from everything else that whatever is left of it is basically independent from international influence. There are no economic or political levers left to pull that will have any impact on that country, so it’s difficult to do anything to change their behavior short of direct military action.

We have a similar problem when the federal interest rate is at or near 0% - there is no more adjustment room in the economic system, so the overall behavior can’t be adjusted effectively. There has to be some wiggle room if you want to influence the system’s behavior. Once the brake pedal is on the floor it can’t go any further down.

Uni Jetstream:

Yeah people here are overlooking the Sharpie pen, it’s quite nice.

I’ve read a bit about Teflon. My understanding is that the big health hazard is during the application process, primarily for the factory workers - you really don’t want to breath aerosolized uncured Teflon, or get it in your eyes. It’s not the most hazardous industrial chemical out there, I don’t think there’s any particular ethical issue with manufacturing products with Teflon as long as workers are provided PPE. If it’s a sweatshop product well then there are obviously a lot of ethical issues.

Once it’s cured it’s chemically inert (which is kind of the whole point) - I’m not aware of any research showing that the human body can absorb any harmful chemicals from cured Teflon - basically your stomach acid and digestive tract bacteria can’t do anything to it. You shouldn’t worry overmuch about being harmed by cooking in a Teflon-coated pan, it’s not a heavy metal or anything like that.

That said, a deteriorating Teflon coating can be a hazard. The material is fairly stiff and again, your digestive system can’t break it down. Any small particles should (hopefully) pass through, but larger flakes could get stuck somewhere and then… well your body can’t break it down. It’s going to be there causing a blockage until something dislodges it, it’s not going to bend very much, and it might have sharp enough edges to irritate or damage the surrounding tissue.

And yeah, nothing breaks it down naturally, so it is just going to be in the world forever, gradually eroding into smaller and smaller particles along with all of the other plastic pollution, so yay.

I can’t point to any specific sources on this, it’s from reading various articles over two decades, I’m definitely not an authority.

This concept is inherently flawed. There is no static form of ‘true’ self.

Who you are now is different from who you were five years ago, and who you are tomorrow will be different from who you are now. Who you are changes depending on who is in the room with you, because your relationship with that person changes the context of your actions and interactions.

This is not to say that personality or identity is fungible, but that it is not fixed and there is no end state (no goal).

We do tend to reflect and repeat behaviors that we observe, and I think there’s some truth in the idea that you become the average of the people you spend the most time with. With this in mind, think about who you feel most comfortable with in your life - the people who, when you spend time with them, you feel most at peace with yourself - then try to arrange your life to spend more time with those people.

In regard to “masking”, I’ll just point out that privacy implies that some things are not shared with others. Therefore, to have any privacy in your life some things must be hidden, including some thoughts, feelings and opinions. Having a private life is healthy and normal and doesn’t mean that you are suppressing your “true self”.

some BOFH energy

DuPont. Here’s just a little tidbit:

Between 2007 and 2014 there were 34 accidents resulting in toxic releases at DuPont plants across the U.S., with a total of eight fatalities.[93] Four employees died of suffocation in a Houston, Texas, accident involving leakage of nearly 24,000 pounds (11,000 kg) of methyl mercaptan.[94] As a result, the company became the largest of the 450 businesses placed into the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s “severe violator program” in July 2015.

Monsanto:

In Anniston, Alabama, plaintiffs in a 2002 lawsuit provided documentation showing that the local Monsanto factory knowingly discharged both mercury and PCB-laden waste into local creeks for over 40 years.[220] In 1969 Monsanto dumped 45 tons of PCBs into Snow Creek, a feeder for Choccolocco Creek, which supplies much of the area’s drinking water, and buried millions of pounds of PCB in open-pit landfills located on hillsides above the plant and surrounding neighborhoods.

These are the kind of companies that inspired the cartoon villains of the 1980s that just dump pollution because.

weird socks

Why are we taking this so seriously?

Because it’s funnier that way.

I don’t want to actually be the Borg.

I totally did say “I’d be a Borg”

You seem very confused. Join the link, the Collective will bring you clarity!

I meant a socialist cyborg.

Don’t let your dreams stay dreams!

And this is why anyone who suggests that machine learning systems can be used to make social decisions of any kind should be laughed out of the room. Even when the system programs itself, its goals are set by people and it is trained on data generated and selected by people.