Snippets

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Things to use or delete. See also Road notes.


Heart Shaped World, Fine-tuned universe -- whatever it takes.

Xenophobia is the biological heritage of all living things. If our ancestors were not afraid of the unknown, they would be eaten by it.

I reject [X] as mere triumphalism, unworthy of an enlightened people.

I'd do it all over again right now if it had happened yet. (Re: streaking the World Cup; "No national flag ever flew with greater pride than the pride of my genitals waving to crowd as I dash across the field ...")

When you're fishing for pike it's not wrong to net some smelt. But really, smelt netting is a separate matter.

Conflate:

I posit that Creation works something like this:

From Chaos emerges Hunger, whence Courage and Fear.

These qualities sufficed for simple organisms such as self-replicating protein molecules, single-cell organisms, maybe nematodes.

... ignorance ... superstition ... religion ... mathematics ... physics ... quantum physics ... Gnomon algorithm theory.


Peed so hard, I damn near got friction burn of the urethra.

Facebook post: 911 calls.

Called 911 twice already today.

It's gotten so bad, I wake up in the morning and look out the front second floor porch window for the first 911 call of the day, the daily routine. Which do I get first: coffee, or 911? Seriously. Seriously.

Today is much much worse: dealers parking their cars on Bloomington Avenue, right outside my place, spending a few minutes doing what might be shooting up, then rolling down the window and calling out for customers. Two incidents, different cars same crowd, called 911 both times. I knew dealing had to be happening within a block or two, but this time I got a good look at it right outside my place for the first time, and I tell you, I am shook up.

I am committed to no personal confrontation, calling 911 as often as it takes.

After calling I try to forget about it. I don't wait around to see if the cops arrive -- sure I want to know, but too much of my life is already wasted on calls for help, I've got a life to lead, work to do.

So I try to go back to my desk at my home office, sit down at the computer, and write more code for my employer, resolved to "wait two hours" until I cautiously look out the front porch again.

On top the dealing and the using, today I eavesdropped on two kids, teenagers, using the basement window well of the adjacent subdivided rental house to brush their teeth.

I mean that's their campsite stash, where they do their personal hygiene, hunched over a basement window well.

Two kids. Teenagers. Camping rough in the city. And then meeting up with their friends.

Hard days for all of us here at 26th and Bloomington.

"Intellectual Debt": It's bad enough when AI gets its predictions wrong, but it's potentially WORSE when AI gets it right @ Boing Boing

""Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." - J. R. R. Tolkien Comment

Death penalty - "I think most Americans are unaware that the U.S. is one of the very few nations that still has capital punishment. All of the EU has abolished it, along with Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America. The remaining countries that have it tend to be authoritarian one-party states (China and North Korea for example) and/or theocracies (Iran for example). World opinion has gone towards abolition, for all kinds of good reasons." (Kiki)

SORM - technical specification for lawful interception interfaces of telecommunications and telephone networks operating in Russia. The current form of the specification enables the targeted surveillance of both telephone and Internet communications. Initially implemented in 1995 to allow access to surveillance data for the FSB, in subsequent years the access has been widened to other law enforcement agencies.

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/26/comic-code-comics-sans-but-m.html

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/25/adventuron-online-text-advent.html

Needless Overfitting

https://watabou.itch.io/procgen-mansion

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/12/random-mansion-generator.html

Facebook post about weird food

Spoon Falls Baby Calls

Artificial Palmistry

Apple Perfume: "OS X for Men" https://boingboing.net/2019/06/27/jony-ive-leaves-apple-but-wil.html

Zacharoon

Tallow sapiens - Organic golem - sentient fatberg

In the beginning was the Word, and in due course -- allowing for tragicomic delays such as QWERTY -- came the word processor. From there is was a short hop to databases and web pages. Why not a wiki?

By topic:

Brain Homage

Brain Homage

Caps

I was three, four years old when a family friend showed me how to caps:

1. Unroll, suspend for windowsill (outdoors), light match and set fire to bottom of strip. Big disadvantage: I was too young for matches. (Also, don't set fire to the house.) Still, a lesson I remembered for later.

2. Use thumbnail to ignite individual cap with quick *snap* -- !! Ouch!! You have to be quick or it burns, a lesson I took to heart on the spot. Good times.

Dude also gave me a drag on his Camel cigarette once, sitting in the front seat of his convertible. This would have been summer of '64, possibly '65 ... I'm pretty sure it was one of those "scared straight" things.

https://www.facebook.com/ann.l.fritz/posts/2515428561829900?comment_id=2515523565153733

Disperse eye floaters with gold

Got eye floaters? Researchers have created gold nanoparticles that bust them up @ Boing Boing

Canvas

5x7 stretched canvas, artist archival quality.

  • 8 ounce cotton duck
  • Acrylic gesso triple primed
  • For acrylics and oils
  • 1.5" staple-free edges
  • Kiln dried, beveled stretcher bars
  • Professional frame construction
  • Removable for restretching
  • Hangs with or without frame

Manufactured by Art Alternatives.

Extreme Ditches

Boing Boing reports on the Panama Canal:

For more than a century, the Panama Canal has helped move shit by ship around the world. It's acted as a pinch point in international diplomacy, made vast sums of money off of the vessels that pass through it and, is so important to some shipping routes that many cargo vessels are designed specifically to fit within the canal's locks. This video breaks down the canal's importance and history into easily digestible facts that may bore folks at a party, but absolutely fascinated me.

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/08/the-panama-canal-the-worlds.html

To do: Extreme Ditches, a reality television show about terraforming.

Project A119

Project A119, also known as A Study of Lunar Research Flights, was a top-secret plan developed in 1958 by the United States Air Force. The aim of the project was to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon, which would help in answering some of the mysteries in planetary astronomy and astrogeology. If the explosive device detonated on the surface, not in a lunar crater, the flash of explosive light would have been faintly visible to people on Earth with their naked eye, a show of force resulting in a possible boosting of domestic morale in the capabilities of the United States, a boost that was needed after the Soviet Union took an early lead in the Space Race and was also working on a similar project.

The project was never carried out, being cancelled primarily out of a fear of a negative public reaction, with the potential militarization of space that it would also have signified, and because a Moon landing would undoubtedly be a more popular achievement in the eyes of the American and international public alike. A similar project by the Soviet Union also never came to fruition.

The existence of the US project was revealed in 2000 by a former executive at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Leonard Reiffel, who led the project in 1958.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119

Two Chessboards Fighting

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Slurry-Eyed

"She was so, how do you say, slurry-eyed, so beguiling I could not resist."

"Sloe-eyed. I think you mean sloe-eyed."

He sighed. "Well, it could be. We were drinking gin."

Sarah glared at them mildly. "Doe-eyed."

Science

Putting science in the category of the supernatural seems like a dangerous rhetorical move to make. It would put science in the same category as religion. Or, it would be dangerous if people like this actually cared about such things.

“It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works.” - Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“The priests of science can blatantly, publicly, verifiably walk on the Moon as a faith-based miracle, and your priests’ faith can’t do the same.” -Eliezer Yudkowsky

See also 1 Kings 18:20-40, from a time when priests and prophets were willing to subject their faith to controlled experiment and abide by the results.

https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/texas-republican-says-vaccines-are-sorcery/143927/133

Joey Diaz on Donald Trump

"Donald Trump ... I could not believe it ... just what he did in New York ... in New York in the Eighties when he was ... doing all that developing ... somewhere along the line this Trump was in bed with organized crime ... had to be ... Trump Plaza, Atlantic City, just look at the locations ..."

Humans

therobotmonster:

Humans do not have biological castes. Kill their commander and another will take its place. Soldiers left alone on a planet will start farming and manufacturing to survive. Farmers and manufacturers will take up arms and kill you if pressed. Just because two humans look different doesn’t mean they cannot do each other’s jobs.

Breeding does not kill them. A single human can mate dozens or hundreds of times in a lifetime. They often do so as recreation. Xenobiology team six believes they do not have a mating season but this is too strange to be true.

Their appendages are not designed for hitting, so they developed special training to make them very good at hitting anyhow.

The proteins making up their bodies are toxic and cause prion disease. Do not touch anything humans have touched. Do not consume earth foods. Fire does not adequately remove this contamination.

Humans perceive sixteen times the colors we do. Do not hide in bushes or vines from humans. They can distinguish your pelt from the foliage with ease.

We tried venting waste gas into the tunnels to kill the humans when they attacked. Turns out they breathe it.

Everything on their planet came from a single biological strain. They developed comprehensive genetics BEFORE they developed space travel.

They lack radio receptors and cannot be brought into compliance with right-thought simply by broadcasting to them. Even after we learned how to translate it into sound-waves one of their hatchlings drove the Great Authority mad by responding to every demand with a single question: “Why?”

https://what-are-even-humans.tumblr.com/post/165260088885/artifactrix-sorcyress-silentstep/embed

See also Reading list (nonfiction).

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