From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 1 00:30:44 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2022 17:30:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] 3 axis accelerometers Message-ID: <00ac01d8d52d$0bed5f20$23c81d60$@rainier66.com> Hey cool, my son rigged up this three-axis accelerometer with three-axis angular accelerometer. He was fooling with it and claims it is accurate enough to use with a self-riding bicycle: I am so amazed with this technology. This tiny chip contains the three linear and three angular accelerometers: spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 25217 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 15766 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 1 18:51:40 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 11:51:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] real estate Message-ID: <000d01d8d5c6$d8a0b000$89e21000$@rainier66.com> Perhaps someone here who knows from real estate can comment. We have seen how Amazon.com revolutionized retailing. The job changed dramatically when anyone can browse the web, find a deal, order or go locally and buy. The consumer was handed control over a process the retailers once mostly controlled. Consider real estate. With the arrival of Zillow.com, now the consumer can look around at what is available, what has sold for how much and when, all very easily. Previous to Zillow, the real estate agent was paid for facilitating a deal, so the agent was at an advantage by controlling information carefully. Now the consumer is empowered by having access to a lot of useful information. Real estate agents uniformly despise Zillow, for it has taken much of the profit out of the business (they are forced to charge a smaller commission on what is a now a much smaller job) while simultaneously in a sense making the job more difficult. Facilitating a deal when both parties control more information is more difficult in a way, for it takes away the agent's advantage over both the buyer and seller. The job itself is smaller for it requires less driving clients around to show them properties they can discover on their own are unsuitable. So it pays less while becoming harder. So. real estate agents hate Zillow.com. Do we have real estate hipsters among us who wish to comment? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Oct 1 19:25:47 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 20:25:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Cruise robot taxis in San Francisco Message-ID: BBC TV have just shown one of their reporters having a ride in one of the Cruise Bolt self-driving taxis. His trip visited three locations in SF and returned to the start successfully. That's the good news. But the reporter didn't enjoy the trip. He found it unnerving because the car didn't drive like a human. Sometimes it stopped, hesitated, then decided how to proceed. Some movements were jerky and he thought some route choices were strange. There have also been news reports of Cruise cars stopping in the middle of the road and putting their hazard lights on until rescued by an engineer from the base station. Cruise said that the car AI is designed to be extra safe. That's why it hesitated sometimes. If there is a fault, or it really can't work out what to do then it is designed to just stop and put the hazard lights on. Safety first! So it seems that more work is needed to make these robot cars acceptable to mixing with human traffic. BillK From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 1 20:40:35 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 13:40:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cruise robot taxis in San Francisco In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <005f01d8d5d6$0f246270$2d6d2750$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] Cruise robot taxis in San Francisco >...BBC TV have just shown one of their reporters having a ride in one of the Cruise Bolt self-driving taxis. ...! ... >...So it seems that more work is needed to make these robot cars acceptable to mixing with human traffic. BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, this is cool but an understatement. My realization of the real problem is what led me to not invest in the companies doing this. Currently pedestrians know how to act in the city and know what happens if you walk out in front of somebody out of turn. Best case, nothing, good case, the driver shrieks a few obscenities and offers a commentary on your parentage, average case, driver gets out and beats you utterly beyond recognition, and if you are unlucky, the driver is armed and willing: that becomes your last day on this earth, adios a-freaking-migo. Self-drivers are a tech novelty now, so people will treat them with the same respect they would give a human or even more because it is new and cool. However... what happens if you walk out in front of it? No obscenities, no sizzling nine millimeter thru your goddam brain, it just politely stops and waits for you go across. Ja? So... what happens when most of the traffic is self-driving? I'll tell ya what happens: it trains the proles to just walk across and let the car stop for the pedestrian, along with all the traffic behind it. If ya think it is a pain in the ass to drive across San Francisco NOW, just wait'll they figure out self drivers will just stop and not shoot your silly well-deserving ass if you walk across in front of it. They will figure it out. It can take an hour to drive across SF now. It will get worse, until... they will realize this isn't going to work. I pondered this scenario last time this topic came up on ExI, decided to run right out and not buy the stock. Still won't. spike From atymes at gmail.com Sat Oct 1 20:46:53 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 13:46:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cruise robot taxis in San Francisco In-Reply-To: <005f01d8d5d6$0f246270$2d6d2750$@rainier66.com> References: <005f01d8d5d6$0f246270$2d6d2750$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 1, 2022 at 1:42 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > So... what happens when most of the traffic is self-driving? I'll tell ya > what happens: it trains the proles to just walk across and let the car stop > for the pedestrian, along with all the traffic behind it. If ya think it > is > a pain in the ass to drive across San Francisco NOW, just wait'll they > figure out self drivers will just stop and not shoot your silly > well-deserving ass if you walk across in front of it. They will figure it > out. It can take an hour to drive across SF now. It will get worse, > until... they will realize this isn't going to work. > The volume of pedestrian traffic is not nearly high enough to bring car traffic to a standstill by itself. Also, jaywalking is still illegal; if pedestrians get abusive about this, severely inconveniencing people who have the police chief's ear, expect arrests until the problem goes back down. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Oct 1 21:03:57 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 22:03:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Cruise robot taxis in San Francisco In-Reply-To: References: <005f01d8d5d6$0f246270$2d6d2750$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 1 Oct 2022 at 21:49, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat wrote: > > The volume of pedestrian traffic is not nearly high enough to bring car traffic to a standstill by itself. Also, jaywalking is still illegal; if pedestrians get abusive about this, severely inconveniencing people who have the police chief's ear, expect arrests until the problem goes back down. > _______________________________________________ I was just thinking that! :) On one of my tours of USA we were in Houston to visit the Space Center and I left the hotel early on a Sunday morning to see if anywhere was open for breakfast. The roads were empty, so I just strolled across like we do in London. There was a load shout and this huge Texas cop called me over to explain emphatically about the Walk, Don't Walk signals. I thought I was going to be arrested, but I guess my accent and debonair charm got me off with a caution! :) BillK From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 1 21:21:00 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 14:21:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cruise robot taxis in San Francisco In-Reply-To: References: <005f01d8d5d6$0f246270$2d6d2750$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <007e01d8d5db$b46ff5a0$1d4fe0e0$@rainier66.com> >? On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Cruise robot taxis in San Francisco On Sat, Oct 1, 2022 at 1:42 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: So... what happens when most of the traffic is self-driving?... It will get worse, until... they will realize this isn't going to work. >?The volume of pedestrian traffic is not nearly high enough to bring car traffic to a standstill by itself. Also, jaywalking is still illegal; if pedestrians get abusive about this, severely inconveniencing people who have the police chief's ear, expect arrests until the problem goes back down? Adrian you have far more faith than I do in the legal system. In a time when San Francisco is still trying to decide if shoplifting is still illegal, it isn?t clear to me they will care about jaywalking. That being said? After posting the previous, I realized having omitted two plausible outcomes of intentionally walking out assuming the self-driver will politely stop. The chariot is operated by a human who can fail to detect the wayward pedestrian, striking same, or the human driver has a dash cam and maliciously pretends to fail to detect the hapless victim, again striking the silly presumptuous twit. I would estimate about a 2% chance of injury or serious fatality with each against-the-light crossing now. Do you feel lucky? Neither do I. Nor do I expect the number of arrests to go up in San Francisco until sheer frustration ignites a proletariat revolt there which results in a neo-Nazi dictator being elected mayor. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 1 21:27:35 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 14:27:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cruise robot taxis in San Francisco In-Reply-To: References: <005f01d8d5d6$0f246270$2d6d2750$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <008701d8d5dc$9ff75ea0$dfe61be0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Sent: Saturday, 1 October, 2022 2:04 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] Cruise robot taxis in San Francisco On Sat, 1 Oct 2022 at 21:49, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat wrote: > > The volume of pedestrian traffic is not nearly high enough to bring car traffic to a standstill by itself. Also, jaywalking is still illegal; if pedestrians get abusive about this, severely inconveniencing people who have the police chief's ear, expect arrests until the problem goes back down. > _______________________________________________ >...I was just thinking that! :) On one of my tours of USA we were in Houston to visit the Space Center and I left the hotel early on a Sunday morning to see if anywhere was open for breakfast. The roads were empty, so I just strolled across like we do in London. There was a load shout and this huge Texas cop called me over to explain emphatically about the Walk, Don't Walk signals. I thought I was going to be arrested, but I guess my accent and debonair charm got me off with a caution! :) BillK _______________________________________________ Hey do let me assure you sir, it works. The local constables will cut you a loooootta lotta slack if you turn on the British accent and point out that you are a tourist. We like the British. It works even better if you can do Scottish: constable Oates from Wooster and Jeeves was Scottish along with I think all of the force. Oh they kept us laughing. Those two guys were comedy genius. BillK, is there some inside joke in England about the bobbies being Scottish? I woulda thought Irish. Perhaps I am missing something in the accents? Note to our non-Yanks: if you are in the USA and accidentally offend the local authorities, turn on the accent to full. They will let ya go. I don't think that principle works for yanks abroad however. spike From atymes at gmail.com Sat Oct 1 21:31:29 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 14:31:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cruise robot taxis in San Francisco In-Reply-To: <007e01d8d5db$b46ff5a0$1d4fe0e0$@rainier66.com> References: <005f01d8d5d6$0f246270$2d6d2750$@rainier66.com> <007e01d8d5db$b46ff5a0$1d4fe0e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 1, 2022 at 2:22 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Adrian you have far more faith than I do in the legal system. In a time > when San Francisco is still trying to decide if shoplifting is still > illegal, it isn?t clear to me they will care about jaywalking. > Shoplifting does not directly and personally inconvenience the mayor, heads of major tourism locations that generate most of San Francisco's tax revenues, et cetera. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 1 21:33:43 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 14:33:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cruise robot taxis in San Francisco In-Reply-To: <008701d8d5dc$9ff75ea0$dfe61be0$@rainier66.com> References: <005f01d8d5d6$0f246270$2d6d2750$@rainier66.com> <008701d8d5dc$9ff75ea0$dfe61be0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <008901d8d5dd$7b52c3e0$71f84ba0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: spike at rainier66.com > _______________________________________________ >...I just strolled across like we do in London. There was a load shout and this huge Texas cop called me over to explain emphatically about the Walk, Don't Walk signals. ...BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, I will point out the obvious since it isn't clear you realized it: Texas is a second amendment state. Plenty of people are concealed carrying there, which means they don't have a lotta crime, which means the local authorities have little do besides enforce jaywalking and occasionally collecting of the corpse when some feller catches the jerk down the street bird dogging his chick. Texas people treat each other with respect. I love Texas. You started with leaving the hotel looking for breakfast. I already know how that turned out: you had a most excellent meal, ja? They don't know how to make bad food in that state. It never occurred to them to try making bad food. I love Texas. Don't go there to do crime however. It just doesn't pay there. spike From ben at zaiboc.net Sat Oct 1 21:41:13 2022 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 22:41:13 +0100 Subject: [ExI] fake news again was: ian came home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 29/09/2022 19:25, Spike optimistically wrote: > We catch the phony nonsense offered to us as news. I don't know, Spike. If that was the case, people would also be getting wise to the phony nonsense that religion feeds them, and I don't see much evidence of that happening. I may be wrong, and hope I am, but I'm skeptical of a large number of people learning to be skeptical. Dumbness and gullibility seem to be as widespread as ever (I wonder if there is some way of accurately measuring this?). Ben -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 1 22:08:13 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 15:08:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] fake news again was: ian came home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00bc01d8d5e2$4d138640$e73a92c0$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] fake news again was: ian came home On 29/09/2022 19:25, Spike optimistically wrote: >>?We catch the phony nonsense offered to us as news. >?I don't know, Spike. If that was the case, people would also be getting wise to the phony nonsense that religion feeds them, and I don't see much evidence of that happening. I may be wrong, and hope I am, but I'm skeptical of a large number of people learning to be skeptical. Dumbness and gullibility seem to be as widespread as ever (I wonder if there is some way of accurately measuring this?). Ben Ben thanks for mentioning this, for I would suggest that most ?believers? don?t really believe in the sense of? hmmm, words fail me? believing. There are peripheral reasons for being a ?believer.? There really are, and you would get it if you ever entered a closed society such as LDS (apologies to any LDS true believers among us) or Seventh Day Adventist. Being part of that really does have benefits and I can confidently say they really are nice people in those outfits. If you don?t let it cramp your style but generally live by their principles, live right, do right, sleep in your own bed every night, etc, you will likely have a good happy life in general. You can carry it uncomfortably far by saying something like: you will likely have a happy life if you hitch up with a believer and just play along, even if you personally know it is nonsense. That comment worries me, for it comes dangerously close to saying an illusion is beneficial. I have personally witnessed people who have completely messed up their lives and were desperately unhappy to the point where their biggest decision each day was whether to end it or allow themselves to live until tomorrow. One particular person wasn?t fooling. He got to that point and decided to try some outlandish religion that he didn?t believe, but decided perhaps the old fake it till you make it notion might work. It did in his case. He met the right girl, who was herself a true believer. She gave him a happy life. They raised three children. I refuse to second-guess that guy?s life choices. Think about it: what if a someone really just wants a stable home life with lots of children? Some religions are well-designed and well-adapted for that sorta thing. I know a guy who was a true believer but was gay. He knew it, I suspected it only because he was my college roommate. He struggled against it an never did have a sweetheart. It is late in the day for that now (mid 60s) so one might suppose religion ruined his life by preventing him from having a husband, I don?t know. I have struck a workable compromise with religion: crack that oyster, find the pearls, toss the rest of it. There are pearls in there in most cases. Be open and honest: I am an atheist, since about late college years, but I do not try to make converts to my thinking. I answer questions about that honestly and sincerely. Ben to your point: some dumbness and gullibility is intentional to some extent. It can also only appear to be dumbness and gullibility, but in reality is lightly-disguised pragmatism. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 1 22:22:51 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 15:22:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] fake news again was: ian came home In-Reply-To: <00bc01d8d5e2$4d138640$e73a92c0$@rainier66.com> References: <00bc01d8d5e2$4d138640$e73a92c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00d501d8d5e4$589c55d0$09d50170$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com Subject: RE: [ExI] fake news again was: ian came home ?> On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] fake news again was: ian came home On 29/09/2022 19:25, Spike optimistically wrote: >>?We catch the phony nonsense offered to us as news. >?I don't know, Spike. If that was the case, people would also be getting wise to the phony nonsense that religion feeds them, and I don't see much evidence of that happening. ?Ben Ben do allow me to carry this a bit further please. The other day I posted about the earliest known recorded rap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpUsQq4Kv90 These fellers are rapping about a children?s story. OK now next time you hear a rapper has perished, go into google, enter that rapper?s name followed by the word ?lyrics.? Whatever comes up, read that. OK now, compare to these four guys rapping about Noah building a boat. Ben what do you conclude? Me too: the modern rappers are hopelessly lost in drugs and murder. But the old-timers were not. Did an illusion save the old ones? I dunno. I am ready to say for some people who can tolerate a degree of cognitive dissonance, it works for them. I cannot tolerate even a trace of cognitive dissonance, none. So? I can?t go there with them, but I can share some of their values, and I do: the ones that work. Some of their views do work. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at gmail.com Sat Oct 1 22:41:57 2022 From: brent.allsop at gmail.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2022 16:41:57 -0600 Subject: [ExI] real estate In-Reply-To: <000d01d8d5c6$d8a0b000$89e21000$@rainier66.com> References: <000d01d8d5c6$d8a0b000$89e21000$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I'm clueless about all this, but what you are saying sounds right, and I think having more information, and a far less costly process is always good. A few times I saw a house for sale I was interested in checking out on Zillow. I was happy to see the option to take, if you wanted to see the house. I assumed this would put me in touch with the listing agent. I was very upset when I finally realized Zillow was matching me up with an agent for me, who would then contact the listing agent on my behalf, of course then expecting an additional cut of any resulting deal. I guess that is the way Zillow makes money? They get some sort of commission? Now I know better. You need to look up and contact the listing agent, on your own. On Sat, Oct 1, 2022 at 12:52 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > Perhaps someone here who knows from real estate can comment. > > > > We have seen how Amazon.com revolutionized retailing. The job changed > dramatically when anyone can browse the web, find a deal, order or go > locally and buy. The consumer was handed control over a process the > retailers once mostly controlled. > > > > Consider real estate. With the arrival of Zillow.com, now the consumer > can look around at what is available, what has sold for how much and when, > all very easily. Previous to Zillow, the real estate agent was paid for > facilitating a deal, so the agent was at an advantage by controlling > information carefully. Now the consumer is empowered by having access to a > lot of useful information. Real estate agents uniformly despise Zillow, > for it has taken much of the profit out of the business (they are forced to > charge a smaller commission on what is a now a much smaller job) while > simultaneously in a sense making the job more difficult. > > > > Facilitating a deal when both parties control more information is more > difficult in a way, for it takes away the agent?s advantage over both the > buyer and seller. The job itself is smaller for it requires less driving > clients around to show them properties they can discover on their own are > unsuitable. So it pays less while becoming harder. So? real estate agents > hate Zillow.com. > > > > Do we have real estate hipsters among us who wish to comment? > > > > spike > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 11:24:46 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 06:24:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] fake news again was: ian came home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: google credulousness - bill w On Sat, Oct 1, 2022 at 4:45 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On 29/09/2022 19:25, Spike optimistically wrote: > > We catch the phony nonsense offered to us as news. > > > I don't know, Spike. If that was the case, people would also be getting > wise to the phony nonsense that religion feeds them, and I don't see much > evidence of that happening. I may be wrong, and hope I am, but I'm > skeptical of a large number of people learning to be skeptical. Dumbness > and gullibility seem to be as widespread as ever (I wonder if there is some > way of accurately measuring this?). > > Ben > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Oct 2 21:17:05 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 14:17:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] self-riding bicycle test board Message-ID: <009301d8d6a4$531252c0$f936f840$@rainier66.com> Hey cool, so we integrated an SD shield so this Arduino can write files to external memory. The adapter came today so now we can use the micro SD cards. It works on the desktop: So far we have a three-axis accelerometer with three-axis gyro. Here's the plan, kind of a crazy ass idea we cooked up. Do feel free to point out if we are crazy, but if so be more specific than a simple: spike, yer crazy, lad. We get this thing working to our satisfaction on the bench, then transfer our code over to Seeeduino, which is smaller, then solder the interface wires. Test to make sure everything still works. Then we package the Seeeduino with the three-axis accelerometers and gyros into a matchbox or condiment cup or something, attach it to our quadrotor drone with Velcro. Then we fly the drone around the local softball field while the accelerometers gather data, starting at home plate and trying to fly over each base. Run a few laps around the bases. Take out the SD card, dump the data into a spreadsheet, double integrate to see if the resulting position data agrees you flew a pattern that looks like a player running the bases. Follow me so far? So if the double integration of acceleration data notion works better than I expect, we are ready to move up to the self-riding bicycle idea. Plan: 1. Mount this gyro/accelerometer package on our bicycle, start the program, ride the bicycle down the hill until it stops 2. Double integrate the acceleration data the same way we did with the drone flights 3. Use the resulting position information as an input to the self-riding bicycle as a guide for where it is supposed to go Note this is a bit different from the original idea. This isn't actually a feedback control system as I envisioned, but rather it's a programmable bicycle. You hafta ride it down the hill before it knows where the road is. This might not work (I ha' me doots, Captain) but we are having fun. Adrian do you suppose this approach will work? Or will the bike drift off and crash spectacularly? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 16055 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 22:21:08 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 23:21:08 +0100 Subject: [ExI] self-riding bicycle test board In-Reply-To: <009301d8d6a4$531252c0$f936f840$@rainier66.com> References: <009301d8d6a4$531252c0$f936f840$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 2 Oct 2022 at 22:20, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > Hey cool, so we integrated an SD shield so this Arduino can write files to external memory. > > The adapter came today so now we can use the micro SD cards. It works on the desktop: > So far we have a three-axis accelerometer with three-axis gyro. > Here?s the plan, kind of a crazy ass idea we cooked up. Do feel free to point out if we are crazy, but if so be more specific than a simple: spike, yer crazy, lad. > We get this thing working to our satisfaction on the bench, then transfer our code over to Seeeduino, which is smaller, then solder the interface wires. Test to make sure everything still works. > Then we package the Seeeduino with the three-axis accelerometers and gyros into a matchbox or condiment cup or something, attach it to our quadrotor drone with Velcro. > Then we fly the drone around the local softball field while the accelerometers gather data, starting at home plate and trying to fly over each base. Run a few laps around the bases. > Take out the SD card, dump the data into a spreadsheet, double integrate to see if the resulting position data agrees you flew a pattern that looks like a player running the bases. > Follow me so far? So if the double integration of acceleration data notion works better than I expect, we are ready to move up to the self-riding bicycle idea. > > Plan: > Mount this gyro/accelerometer package on our bicycle, start the program, ride the bicycle down the hill until it stops > Double integrate the acceleration data the same way we did with the drone flights > Use the resulting position information as an input to the self-riding bicycle as a guide for where it is supposed to go > Note this is a bit different from the original idea. This isn?t actually a feedback control system as I envisioned, but rather it?s a programmable bicycle. You hafta ride it down the hill before it knows where the road is. > > This might not work (I ha? me doots, Captain) but we are having fun. > > Adrian do you suppose this approach will work? Or will the bike drift off and crash spectacularly? > > spike > _______________________________________________ Won't you need some powered system to turn the handlebars to go round the bases? BillK From spike at rainier66.com Sun Oct 2 22:35:02 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 15:35:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] self-riding bicycle test board In-Reply-To: References: <009301d8d6a4$531252c0$f936f840$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <010801d8d6af$36b545a0$a41fd0e0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat ... > Note this is a bit different from the original idea. This isn?t actually a feedback control system as I envisioned, but rather it?s a programmable bicycle. You hafta ride it down the hill before it knows where the road is. > > This might not work (I ha? me doots, Captain) but we are having fun. > > Adrian do you suppose this approach will work? Or will the bike drift off and crash spectacularly? > > spike > _______________________________________________ >...Won't you need some powered system to turn the handlebars to go round the bases? BillK _______________________________________________ Clarification: we mount the gyro package to a quadrotor drone and fly it around the bases. Then we double integrate the acceleration data to see if it describes a drone flying around a baseball field, or if it looks more like a panicked bat on fentanyl. I fear the latter, but if the former, then we mount the gyro package on a bicycle, ride the bike down the last slope coming off of the back side of Mount Hamilton while collecting data. Then we double integrate that acceleration data, use the resulting position data to tell the bicycle where it should go. BillK, for powering the stepper motor on the steering crown, we would just use a small gel-cell 12 volt which I already own. What I don't know is if this approach would be even close to accurate enough to keep the bicycle on the pavement. I fear it isn't. spike From atymes at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 22:45:44 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 15:45:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] self-riding bicycle test board In-Reply-To: <009301d8d6a4$531252c0$f936f840$@rainier66.com> References: <009301d8d6a4$531252c0$f936f840$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Oct 2, 2022 at 2:19 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > This might not work (I ha? me doots, Captain) but we are having fun. > > > > Adrian do you suppose this approach will work? Or will the bike drift off > and crash spectacularly? > It may work for the objective of having fun. As to controls, though, it's not modeling the motors it's supposed to be controlling. You are not whatever mechanized system you will attach to the bicycle. You can use raw positional data to try to determine how to change the acceleration - indeed, novice human riders often start off with this very approach - but it takes some learning and adjustment - as it does for human riders to become non-novices. In the end, the gimmick will likely be effectively discarded en route to making a working control system, which you can do anyway whether or not you claim it to have been based on or incorporate this gimmick. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Oct 2 22:47:42 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 15:47:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] self-riding bicycle test board In-Reply-To: <010801d8d6af$36b545a0$a41fd0e0$@rainier66.com> References: <009301d8d6a4$531252c0$f936f840$@rainier66.com> <010801d8d6af$36b545a0$a41fd0e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <010f01d8d6b0$fbab3800$f301a800$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: spike at rainier66.com ? >?Clarification: we mount the gyro package to a quadrotor drone and fly it around the bases. Then we double integrate the acceleration data to see if it describes a drone flying around a baseball field, or if it looks more like a panicked bat on fentanyl...spike What I don?t know is if our little toy drone is sincere enough to hoist 155 grams, which is the mass of the circuit card, the Tupperware and the power source: spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 20443 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Oct 2 23:06:16 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 16:06:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] self-riding bicycle test board In-Reply-To: <010f01d8d6b0$fbab3800$f301a800$@rainier66.com> References: <009301d8d6a4$531252c0$f936f840$@rainier66.com> <010801d8d6af$36b545a0$a41fd0e0$@rainier66.com> <010f01d8d6b0$fbab3800$f301a800$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <013501d8d6b3$93e02520$bba06f60$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com >?What I don?t know is if our little toy drone is sincere enough to hoist 155 grams, which is the mass of the circuit card, the Tupperware and the power source? spike Well dang, I was right. We are still 120 grams from liftoff with this Arduino, the breadboard, the altimeter and the gyros, with the Tupperware. We could lose about 25 grams by removing the camera, but good chance we will be looking around for a more manly drone next. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 32983 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun Oct 2 23:24:31 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2022 00:24:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] self-riding bicycle test board In-Reply-To: <013501d8d6b3$93e02520$bba06f60$@rainier66.com> References: <009301d8d6a4$531252c0$f936f840$@rainier66.com> <010801d8d6af$36b545a0$a41fd0e0$@rainier66.com> <010f01d8d6b0$fbab3800$f301a800$@rainier66.com> <013501d8d6b3$93e02520$bba06f60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 3 Oct 2022 at 00:08, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > Well dang, I was right. We are still 120 grams from liftoff with this Arduino, the breadboard, the altimeter and the gyros, with the Tupperware. > We could lose about 25 grams by removing the camera, but good chance we will be looking around for a more manly drone next. > > spike > _______________________________________________ How about scrapping the drone idea? Can't you map a route somehow? 30 seconds, turn. 30 seconds, turn ..... etc.? BillK From spike at rainier66.com Sun Oct 2 23:25:42 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 16:25:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] self-riding bicycle test board In-Reply-To: <013501d8d6b3$93e02520$bba06f60$@rainier66.com> References: <009301d8d6a4$531252c0$f936f840$@rainier66.com> <010801d8d6af$36b545a0$a41fd0e0$@rainier66.com> <010f01d8d6b0$fbab3800$f301a800$@rainier66.com> <013501d8d6b3$93e02520$bba06f60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <016601d8d6b6$4b0d89c0$e1289d40$@rainier66.com> >?Well dang, I was right. We are still 120 grams from liftoff with this Arduino, the breadboard, the altimeter and the gyros, with the Tupperware? spike All is not lost. These little Seeeduinos have mass of only 3.047 grams with header pins, less than copper pennies minted before 1982. We hard-wire the gyro package and stack a coupla watch batteries, we will still come in at less than 10 grams. The micro SD interface might be a bit more tricky, but we are still not busted: the Seeeduino has 256k onboard memory which might be enough for a short flight. If this approach works, then we hardwire the SD card without the interface structure. That might work. Wouldn?t bet on it, but maybe. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 24812 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Oct 2 23:37:30 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 16:37:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] self-riding bicycle test board In-Reply-To: References: <009301d8d6a4$531252c0$f936f840$@rainier66.com> <010801d8d6af$36b545a0$a41fd0e0$@rainier66.com> <010f01d8d6b0$fbab3800$f301a800$@rainier66.com> <013501d8d6b3$93e02520$bba06f60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <016e01d8d6b7$f0fd21f0$d2f765d0$@rainier66.com> >...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat _______________________________________________ >...How about scrapping the drone idea? Can't you map a route somehow? 30 seconds, turn. 30 seconds, turn ..... etc.? BillK _______________________________________________ Ja, well I just talked this over with my software guy. We could just mount the Arduino package on a bicycle, and ride around the neighborhood. But it turns out he is far more interested in developing a rocket control system than he is in a ghost bicycle, so he wants to move to the Seeeduino and reduce the package mass. Well OK. The bicycle notion was my nocturnal dream, not his. Besides that, his goal makes more sense than a ghost bicycle anyway, and would be waaaay easier and safer to test. I don't know how fast a free-flight bicycle would go down a 5% grade, but I suspect it would get kiting, and I haven't figured out an emergency braking system. Once I turn her loose, that bike would be on her own. Then it is good luck to us, please ghost bike don't cream some hapless prole down there somewhere. spike From spike at rainier66.com Sun Oct 2 23:49:47 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 16:49:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cruise robot taxis in San Francisco In-Reply-To: <008701d8d5dc$9ff75ea0$dfe61be0$@rainier66.com> References: <005f01d8d5d6$0f246270$2d6d2750$@rainier66.com> <008701d8d5dc$9ff75ea0$dfe61be0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001401d8d6b9$a7cca490$f765edb0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: spike at rainier66.com >>.Also, jaywalking is still illegal; if pedestrians get abusive about this, severely inconveniencing people who have the police chief's ear, expect arrests until the problem goes back down.. Adrian >.Adrian you have far more faith than I do in the legal system. In a time when San Francisco is still trying to decide if shoplifting is still illegal, it isn't clear to me they will care about jaywalking. spike Yesterday when I was writing on this topic, I knew nothing of this headline that just appeared minutes ago: _______________________________________________ I am truly puzzled with regard to what jaywalking has to do with racial profiling, but hey. California. Aside: by linking jaywalking to racial profiling (by whatever mysterious line of reasoning) it makes it forever. At no point in the future have they any means of making jaywalking punishable, for this has already been identified as racism. Making it a misdemeanor means the functional equivalent of perfectly legal. San Francisco has just surrendered forever its pedestrian traffic law. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 20932 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Oct 5 16:48:38 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2022 17:48:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government? Really? Message-ID: The Onion Files Hilarious Amicus Brief In An Important Case, And Actually Makes A Key Point In The Best Way Possible Tue, Oct 4th 2022 10:45am - Mike Masnick Quote: The case goes back to 2016 when Parma, Ohio resident Anthony Novak (who enjoys writing comedy skits for fun) created a parody Facebook page for the Parma Police Department. It was pretty obviously a parody, talking about how the department ?strongly discourages minorities? from applying for jobs at the police department. It also offered ?free abortions? in a police van, and promoted a ?pedophile reform event.? In short, it was a parody page mocking the Parma Police. In response, the Parma police arrested Novak, claiming the parody page disrupted public services. Really. Novak spent four days in jail and then was tried but thankfully acquitted by a jury. Novak then sued the city of Parma for violating his civil rights. That case has bounced around the courts, but the rulings have not been great. The district court granted qualified immunity to the police. The 6th Circuit rolled that back in 2019 with what seemed like a good ruling at the time (with the court rightly noting ?The First Amendment does not depend on whether everyone is in on the joke.?) However, on remand, the lower court again decided that the cops get qualified immunity, saying that because some people didn?t get the joke, it violated the law. Novak has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether or not a police officer is entitled to qualified immunity for arresting someone solely for speech parodying the government. It also asks the court to reconsider the entire doctrine of qualified immunity. -------------- The Onion brief is quite funny in places, but it makes the point that satirical parodies depend on initially fooling people, then them realising it is a joke. The Supremes have not yet decided whether to take the case. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Oct 5 17:05:51 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2022 12:05:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government? Really? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: saying that because some people didn?t get the joke, it violated the law. bill k I cannot believe that a judge (in this day and age, blah, blah, blah) would say such a thing. Many art cases have been adjudicated, and the artist can satirize anything at all, period. FREE SPEECH unless causing riots bill w On Wed, Oct 5, 2022 at 11:51 AM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The Onion Files Hilarious Amicus Brief In An Important Case, And > Actually Makes A Key Point In The Best Way Possible > Tue, Oct 4th 2022 10:45am - Mike Masnick > > < > https://www.techdirt.com/2022/10/04/the-onion-files-hilarious-amicus-brief-in-an-important-case-that-actually-makes-a-key-point-in-the-best-way-possible/ > > > > Quote: > The case goes back to 2016 when Parma, Ohio resident Anthony Novak > (who enjoys writing comedy skits for fun) created a parody Facebook > page for the Parma Police Department. It was pretty obviously a > parody, talking about how the department ?strongly discourages > minorities? from applying for jobs at the police department. It also > offered ?free abortions? in a police van, and promoted a ?pedophile > reform event.? In short, it was a parody page mocking the Parma > Police. > > In response, the Parma police arrested Novak, claiming the parody page > disrupted public services. Really. Novak spent four days in jail and > then was tried but thankfully acquitted by a jury. Novak then sued the > city of Parma for violating his civil rights. That case has bounced > around the courts, but the rulings have not been great. The district > court granted qualified immunity to the police. The 6th Circuit rolled > that back in 2019 with what seemed like a good ruling at the time > (with the court rightly noting ?The First Amendment does not depend on > whether everyone is in on the joke.?) > > However, on remand, the lower court again decided that the cops get > qualified immunity, saying that because some people didn?t get the > joke, it violated the law. > > Novak has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether or not a > police officer is entitled to qualified immunity for arresting someone > solely for speech parodying the government. It also asks the court to > reconsider the entire doctrine of qualified immunity. > -------------- > > The Onion brief is quite funny in places, but it makes the point that > satirical parodies depend on initially fooling people, then them > realising it is a joke. > The Supremes have not yet decided whether to take the case. > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Wed Oct 5 22:24:13 2022 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2022 15:24:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government? Really? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20221005152413.Horde.wfeIq6e3mW6O372ACYMyaya@sollegro.com> Quoting BillK: > > The Onion Files Hilarious Amicus Brief In An Important Case, And > Actually Makes A Key Point In The Best Way Possible > Tue, Oct 4th 2022 10:45am - Mike Masnick > > > > Quote: > The case goes back to 2016 when Parma, Ohio resident Anthony Novak > (who enjoys writing comedy skits for fun) created a parody Facebook > page for the Parma Police Department. It was pretty obviously a > parody, talking about how the department ?strongly discourages > minorities? from applying for jobs at the police department. It also > offered ?free abortions? in a police van, and promoted a ?pedophile > reform event.? In short, it was a parody page mocking the Parma > Police. > > In response, the Parma police arrested Novak, claiming the parody page > disrupted public services. Really. Novak spent four days in jail and > then was tried but thankfully acquitted by a jury. Novak then sued the > city of Parma for violating his civil rights. That case has bounced > around the courts, but the rulings have not been great. The district > court granted qualified immunity to the police. The 6th Circuit rolled > that back in 2019 with what seemed like a good ruling at the time > (with the court rightly noting ?The First Amendment does not depend on > whether everyone is in on the joke.?) > > However, on remand, the lower court again decided that the cops get > qualified immunity, saying that because some people didn?t get the > joke, it violated the law. > > Novak has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether or not a > police officer is entitled to qualified immunity for arresting someone > solely for speech parodying the government. It also asks the court to > reconsider the entire doctrine of qualified immunity. > -------------- > > The Onion brief is quite funny in places, but it makes the point that > satirical parodies depend on initially fooling people, then them > realising it is a joke. > The Supremes have not yet decided whether to take the case. > > BillK Parodying the government is protected by the 1st amendment but impersonating the police is a felony in all 50 states. I am not sure whether there is enough of a difference between pretending to be a cop on a public highway and pretending to be a cop on Facebook. https://www.newsweek.com/woman-pulled-over-fake-officer-noticed-something-off-before-calling-911-1695530 If we let "joking around" become a defense for pretending to be police officers and pulling young ladies over on lonely stretches of highway to frisk and detain them "for fun", then that could lead to a lot of problems. I think the guy in the article got lucky that the police didn't throw the book at him. I don't like cops but I like people who are not cops but pretend to be even less. Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Thu Oct 6 12:31:25 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2022 13:31:25 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government? Really? In-Reply-To: <20221005152413.Horde.wfeIq6e3mW6O372ACYMyaya@sollegro.com> References: <20221005152413.Horde.wfeIq6e3mW6O372ACYMyaya@sollegro.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 5 Oct 2022 at 23:29, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat wrote: > > Parodying the government is protected by the 1st amendment but > impersonating the police is a felony in all 50 states. I am not sure > whether there is enough of a difference between pretending to be a cop > on a public highway and pretending to be a cop on Facebook. > > https://www.newsweek.com/woman-pulled-over-fake-officer-noticed-something-off-before-calling-911-1695530 > > If we let "joking around" become a defense for pretending to be police > officers and pulling young ladies over on lonely stretches of highway > to frisk and detain them "for fun", then that could lead to a lot of > problems. I think the guy in the article got lucky that the police > didn't throw the book at him. I don't like cops but I like people who > are not cops but pretend to be even less. > > Stuart LaForge > _______________________________________________ >From the case description he personally wasn't impersonating a cop. He set up on Facebook a parody copy of the Parma police website with mocking articles joking about the Parma police. He was arrested and charged with a felony under an Ohio law that criminalizes using a computer to ?disrupt? ?police operations.? He spent four days in jail and then after a full criminal trial was acquitted by a jury. The police also searched his home and confiscated computers, phones, etc. It took over a year for his property to be returned to him. That case is finished. What is now in dispute is that Novak filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the police, for violating his First and Fourth Amendment rights?those protecting his freedom of speech and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. After several hearings stretching over five years, the latest decision was to grant the police qualified immunity and reject his lawsuit. Qualified immunity is interesting. It is discussed in detail here: Quotes: Qualified immunity is found nowhere in the Constitution or the federal civil-rights statute. Instead, it was made up by the Supreme Court in 1982 for policy reasons. The doctrine shields government officials from constitutional accountability, even if they act in bad faith, unless an earlier case ruled that the same sort of conduct was unconstitutional. The Sixth Circuit?s opinion effectively enables law enforcement to censor speech they don?t like by arresting the speakers. After all, most normal people would choose not to speak at all if their speech could land them in jail. But other federal courts of appeal have arrived at the opposite conclusion. Down in the Fifth Circuit, the court recently denied qualified immunity to police officers who arrested a woman under strikingly similar circumstances to Novak?s.[vii] In that case, police arrested a citizen journalist known for her criticisms of law enforcement based on a Texas statute that criminalized obtaining information from government officials. In other words, the journalist was arrested for asking questions?one of the most routine ways journalists obtain newsworthy information to publish. In an opinion that quoted IJ?s amicus brief in the case, Judge James Ho wrote that because it should have been obvious to any reasonable police officer that the First Amendment protects the right of people, in particular journalists, to ask government officials questions, it should likewise have been obvious that arresting a journalist based for asking questions is a blatant violation of the Constitution. For the Fifth Circuit, it did not matter that the police were enforcing a statute or that their actions were blessed by the judge who issued a warrant. ?We don?t just ask?we require?every member of law enforcement to avoid violations of the Constitution,? he wrote, ?[a]nd when the violation is as obvious as it is here, we don?t grant qualified immunity.?[viii] Because of this circuit split, if Anthony had posted his Facebook parody while sitting at a computer in Texas (in the Fifth Circuit) rather than in Ohio (in the Sixth Circuit), he would have been able to hold the police officers who arrested him accountable for their unconstitutional actions. Anthony and IJ are now asking the Supreme Court to weigh in and resolve this split. Judge Ho is right: government officials shouldn?t be entitled to qualified immunity when they arrest someone based on speech that is obviously protected by the First Amendment. The purposes of the First Amendment are more important than the purposes of qualified immunity. For the same reasons, Anthony and IJ are asking the Supreme Court to overturn qualified immunity and restore constitutional accountability across the country. ---------------- I wonder if the Supreme Court will take this case? BillK From dsunley at gmail.com Thu Oct 6 14:55:59 2022 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2022 08:55:59 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government? Really? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Making powerful enemies (and your local cops are powerful, at least locally) is a dangerous pastime, no matter what some "constitution" says. Some people seem to have a very weird sense of entitlement about this. On Wed, Oct 5, 2022 at 11:07 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > saying that because some people didn?t get the > joke, it violated the law. bill k > > I cannot believe that a judge (in this day and age, blah, blah, blah) > would say such a thing. Many art cases have been adjudicated, and the > artist can satirize anything at all, period. FREE SPEECH unless causing > riots bill w > > > On Wed, Oct 5, 2022 at 11:51 AM BillK via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> The Onion Files Hilarious Amicus Brief In An Important Case, And >> Actually Makes A Key Point In The Best Way Possible >> Tue, Oct 4th 2022 10:45am - Mike Masnick >> >> < >> https://www.techdirt.com/2022/10/04/the-onion-files-hilarious-amicus-brief-in-an-important-case-that-actually-makes-a-key-point-in-the-best-way-possible/ >> > >> >> Quote: >> The case goes back to 2016 when Parma, Ohio resident Anthony Novak >> (who enjoys writing comedy skits for fun) created a parody Facebook >> page for the Parma Police Department. It was pretty obviously a >> parody, talking about how the department ?strongly discourages >> minorities? from applying for jobs at the police department. It also >> offered ?free abortions? in a police van, and promoted a ?pedophile >> reform event.? In short, it was a parody page mocking the Parma >> Police. >> >> In response, the Parma police arrested Novak, claiming the parody page >> disrupted public services. Really. Novak spent four days in jail and >> then was tried but thankfully acquitted by a jury. Novak then sued the >> city of Parma for violating his civil rights. That case has bounced >> around the courts, but the rulings have not been great. The district >> court granted qualified immunity to the police. The 6th Circuit rolled >> that back in 2019 with what seemed like a good ruling at the time >> (with the court rightly noting ?The First Amendment does not depend on >> whether everyone is in on the joke.?) >> >> However, on remand, the lower court again decided that the cops get >> qualified immunity, saying that because some people didn?t get the >> joke, it violated the law. >> >> Novak has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether or not a >> police officer is entitled to qualified immunity for arresting someone >> solely for speech parodying the government. It also asks the court to >> reconsider the entire doctrine of qualified immunity. >> -------------- >> >> The Onion brief is quite funny in places, but it makes the point that >> satirical parodies depend on initially fooling people, then them >> realising it is a joke. >> The Supremes have not yet decided whether to take the case. >> >> BillK >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Oct 6 20:07:49 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2022 15:07:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government? Really? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The problem, as is so often the case, is overgeneralization: a few bad cops and unnecessary shooting and suddenly all cops are bad (like the overgeneralization by the cops that all blacks are criminals). This is the brain we are stuck with, folks. So many errors. bill w On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 9:58 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Making powerful enemies (and your local cops are powerful, at least > locally) is a dangerous pastime, no matter what some "constitution" says. > > Some people seem to have a very weird sense of entitlement about this. > > On Wed, Oct 5, 2022 at 11:07 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> saying that because some people didn?t get the >> joke, it violated the law. bill k >> >> I cannot believe that a judge (in this day and age, blah, blah, blah) >> would say such a thing. Many art cases have been adjudicated, and the >> artist can satirize anything at all, period. FREE SPEECH unless causing >> riots bill w >> >> >> On Wed, Oct 5, 2022 at 11:51 AM BillK via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> The Onion Files Hilarious Amicus Brief In An Important Case, And >>> Actually Makes A Key Point In The Best Way Possible >>> Tue, Oct 4th 2022 10:45am - Mike Masnick >>> >>> < >>> https://www.techdirt.com/2022/10/04/the-onion-files-hilarious-amicus-brief-in-an-important-case-that-actually-makes-a-key-point-in-the-best-way-possible/ >>> > >>> >>> Quote: >>> The case goes back to 2016 when Parma, Ohio resident Anthony Novak >>> (who enjoys writing comedy skits for fun) created a parody Facebook >>> page for the Parma Police Department. It was pretty obviously a >>> parody, talking about how the department ?strongly discourages >>> minorities? from applying for jobs at the police department. It also >>> offered ?free abortions? in a police van, and promoted a ?pedophile >>> reform event.? In short, it was a parody page mocking the Parma >>> Police. >>> >>> In response, the Parma police arrested Novak, claiming the parody page >>> disrupted public services. Really. Novak spent four days in jail and >>> then was tried but thankfully acquitted by a jury. Novak then sued the >>> city of Parma for violating his civil rights. That case has bounced >>> around the courts, but the rulings have not been great. The district >>> court granted qualified immunity to the police. The 6th Circuit rolled >>> that back in 2019 with what seemed like a good ruling at the time >>> (with the court rightly noting ?The First Amendment does not depend on >>> whether everyone is in on the joke.?) >>> >>> However, on remand, the lower court again decided that the cops get >>> qualified immunity, saying that because some people didn?t get the >>> joke, it violated the law. >>> >>> Novak has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether or not a >>> police officer is entitled to qualified immunity for arresting someone >>> solely for speech parodying the government. It also asks the court to >>> reconsider the entire doctrine of qualified immunity. >>> -------------- >>> >>> The Onion brief is quite funny in places, but it makes the point that >>> satirical parodies depend on initially fooling people, then them >>> realising it is a joke. >>> The Supremes have not yet decided whether to take the case. >>> >>> BillK >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Thu Oct 6 20:27:31 2022 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2022 14:27:31 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government? Really? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Our brains are convinced there are only 150-300 people in our tribe, and that that's the entire world. Dunbar's Number, dontcha know? So when we hear 5-10 stories per year about police brutality and gross injustice, it's a pretty big percentage. The clear solution is to nationalize and dissolve all national media companies. On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 2:10 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > The problem, as is so often the case, is overgeneralization: a few bad > cops and unnecessary shooting and suddenly all cops are bad (like the > overgeneralization by the cops that all blacks are criminals). This is the > brain we are stuck with, folks. So many errors. bill w > > On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 9:58 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Making powerful enemies (and your local cops are powerful, at least >> locally) is a dangerous pastime, no matter what some "constitution" says. >> >> Some people seem to have a very weird sense of entitlement about this. >> >> On Wed, Oct 5, 2022 at 11:07 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> saying that because some people didn?t get the >>> joke, it violated the law. bill k >>> >>> I cannot believe that a judge (in this day and age, blah, blah, blah) >>> would say such a thing. Many art cases have been adjudicated, and the >>> artist can satirize anything at all, period. FREE SPEECH unless causing >>> riots bill w >>> >>> >>> On Wed, Oct 5, 2022 at 11:51 AM BillK via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>>> The Onion Files Hilarious Amicus Brief In An Important Case, And >>>> Actually Makes A Key Point In The Best Way Possible >>>> Tue, Oct 4th 2022 10:45am - Mike Masnick >>>> >>>> < >>>> https://www.techdirt.com/2022/10/04/the-onion-files-hilarious-amicus-brief-in-an-important-case-that-actually-makes-a-key-point-in-the-best-way-possible/ >>>> > >>>> >>>> Quote: >>>> The case goes back to 2016 when Parma, Ohio resident Anthony Novak >>>> (who enjoys writing comedy skits for fun) created a parody Facebook >>>> page for the Parma Police Department. It was pretty obviously a >>>> parody, talking about how the department ?strongly discourages >>>> minorities? from applying for jobs at the police department. It also >>>> offered ?free abortions? in a police van, and promoted a ?pedophile >>>> reform event.? In short, it was a parody page mocking the Parma >>>> Police. >>>> >>>> In response, the Parma police arrested Novak, claiming the parody page >>>> disrupted public services. Really. Novak spent four days in jail and >>>> then was tried but thankfully acquitted by a jury. Novak then sued the >>>> city of Parma for violating his civil rights. That case has bounced >>>> around the courts, but the rulings have not been great. The district >>>> court granted qualified immunity to the police. The 6th Circuit rolled >>>> that back in 2019 with what seemed like a good ruling at the time >>>> (with the court rightly noting ?The First Amendment does not depend on >>>> whether everyone is in on the joke.?) >>>> >>>> However, on remand, the lower court again decided that the cops get >>>> qualified immunity, saying that because some people didn?t get the >>>> joke, it violated the law. >>>> >>>> Novak has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether or not a >>>> police officer is entitled to qualified immunity for arresting someone >>>> solely for speech parodying the government. It also asks the court to >>>> reconsider the entire doctrine of qualified immunity. >>>> -------------- >>>> >>>> The Onion brief is quite funny in places, but it makes the point that >>>> satirical parodies depend on initially fooling people, then them >>>> realising it is a joke. >>>> The Supremes have not yet decided whether to take the case. >>>> >>>> BillK >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Oct 6 22:31:40 2022 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2022 18:31:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government? Really? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 6, 2022, 4:30 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Our brains are convinced ... > > The clear solution is to nationalize and dissolve all national media > companies. > "Solution" mhm Seems like the cure is worse than the disease > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 7 00:10:37 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2022 17:10:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government? Really? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <05d301d8d9e1$3aebf1c0$b0c3d540$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government? Really? >?Our brains are convinced there are only 150-300 people in our tribe, and that that's the entire world. Dunbar's Number, dontcha know? >?So when we hear 5-10 stories per year about police brutality and gross injustice, it's a pretty big percentage. >?The clear solution is to nationalize and dissolve all national media companies? Dissolving national media companies doesn?t change the demand, Darin. News media companies are learning to specialize. Currently in the USA, they are becoming specialized by political party. Crime stories sell like hotcakes. Any threatening anything sells bigtime. The marketing people put it this way: sex sells, but death sells better. sike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 7 15:09:46 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2022 08:09:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ianic thoughts Message-ID: <009601d8da5e$d6b9ee40$842dcac0$@rainier66.com> While hiking in the Sierras this week, I spoke with my climbing companion and discovered in him some views on storms I found must puzzling. He thought this was one of the worst storm seasons in American history. It isn't. It is one of the mildest storm seasons in the 56 years since we have had satellites to establish comparable metrics. Note that we are approaching the end of Atlantic storm season and there is nothing out there currently. Julia was just named in the last hour, currently a tropical storm. These are the storms so far this 2022 season. http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/index.php?loc=northatlantic My hiking companion heard that Ian was the fifth largest hurricane to hit the continental USA in history. So I asked biggest how? How biggest? Fifth most costly? It might end up being the most costly, but that's different. That doesn't make it the biggest. It doesn't even make it to the top of the list this mild season, depending on how it is measured. By the metric which can be measured by a satellite, which has no news stories to sell or global action to promote, Ian was the second biggest this mild season. By that metric, Ian doesn't show up on the top 30 hurricanes in the past 56 years since satellites. OK so not that one. If we look at hurricanes this season by duration as a named storm, Ian makes fourth place of nine. If sorted by duration as a hurricane, second of four. If sorted by duration as a major hurricane, second of two this season. By total accumulated cyclone energy, second place of nine with two others right there. News agencies must sell stories which means selling exciting dangerous stuff if they can. So they need to find a way to make Ian sound unusually severe. But Ian really wasn't unusually severe. It hit right down there in the rich kids' neighborhood, so it wrecked a lotta yachts and planes, which really is good stuff when selling news. It flooded a lotta nice houses, which also sells news stories like hotcakes. But as storms go, it was only big, not unusual at all. Ian was certainly expensive because of where it made landfall and one of the very best news story salesmen in American history. In some ways, the Ian story was a grand illusion. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 66690 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 8 04:35:09 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2022 21:35:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] arduino progress Message-ID: <001301d8dacf$59af8470$0d0e8d50$@rainier66.com> My Arduino experimentation was put temporarily on hold by a Sierra hiking trip, but I had an idea. Go out to the beach, scoop up a bucket of seawater. Failing that, make a bucket of simulated seawater with salt, just plain table salt and water. Get an old used Tesla battery pack, charge it to the max, submerge it in the seawater for an hour. Remove it, instrument the battery pack with thermocouples, have the Arduino take temperature measurements every 30 minutes, or if it has one of those nifty 256k onboard memory units, take a reading every 5 minutes. Goal, see if there is any corrosion from the seawater that compromises the seal on those batteries. If so, the batteries will get warmer than their surroundings. The test rig has to stay outside, far from anything flammable, such as inside your barbeque grill. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Sat Oct 8 06:18:05 2022 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2022 23:18:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] arduino progress Message-ID: <20221007231805.Horde.kBzMSiDDMUP1PgsBu9ovJIe@sollegro.com> Quoting Spike: > My Arduino experimentation was put temporarily on hold by a Sierra hiking > trip, but I had an idea. > Go out to the beach, scoop up a bucket of seawater. Failing that, make a > bucket of simulated seawater with salt, just plain table salt and water. > Get an old used Tesla battery pack, charge it to the max, submerge it in the > seawater for an hour. Remove it, instrument the battery pack with > thermocouples, have the Arduino take temperature measurements every 30 > minutes, or if it has one of those nifty 256k onboard memory units, take a > reading every 5 minutes. > Goal, see if there is any corrosion from the seawater that compromises the > seal on those batteries. If so, the batteries will get warmer than their > surroundings. > The test rig has to stay outside, far from anything flammable, such as > inside your barbeque grill. This sounds like a really bad idea to me especially during fire season. I am not sure what kind plastic Tesla's lithium ions batteries are packaged in but if there are any tiny cracks in the seal, the lithium will, on contact with water, heat up and evolve hydrogen gas. If enough hydrogen gas builds up before it ignites, then you might get a full on explosion sending burning plastic and lithium everywhere. The burning lithium will not be able to put out with water Even if it doesn't explode, your bucket would likely melt, spilling the water and the lithium will then proceed to turn your barbeque to slag. Lithium burns at 3600 deg F while steel melts 2500 deg F. I suggest you start with individual Li-ion cells and gradually work your way up as you get a feel for how exothermic the reaction is going to be. I am not discouraging your pyromania, I am simply cautioning you to start small and work your way up. Baby steps. ;) Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Sat Oct 8 10:04:14 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 8 Oct 2022 11:04:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] arduino progress In-Reply-To: <001301d8dacf$59af8470$0d0e8d50$@rainier66.com> References: <001301d8dacf$59af8470$0d0e8d50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 8 Oct 2022 at 05:38, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > My Arduino experimentation was put temporarily on hold by a Sierra hiking trip, but I had an idea. > > Go out to the beach, scoop up a bucket of seawater. Failing that, make a bucket of simulated seawater with salt, just plain table salt and water. Get an old used Tesla battery pack, charge it to the max, submerge it in the seawater for an hour. Remove it, instrument the battery pack with thermocouples, have the Arduino take temperature measurements every 30 minutes, or if it has one of those nifty 256k onboard memory units, take a reading every 5 minutes. > > Goal, see if there is any corrosion from the seawater that compromises the seal on those batteries. If so, the batteries will get warmer than their surroundings. > > The test rig has to stay outside, far from anything flammable, such as inside your barbeque grill. > spike > _______________________________________________ So, when did you start having these suicidal thoughts? :) Quotes: Firefighters in western Florida are responding to numerous calls concerning electric vehicle fires after they've been stuck in the flood waters caused by Hurricane Ian, according to a state official. On Twitter, Jimmy Patronis, Florida's state fire marshal and chief financial officer, shared videos of fire crews putting out electric vehicle fires. He said when the batteries corrode after contacting salt water, they can start fires that can be difficult to put out. "It was a natural disaster," Patronis told NewsNation. "And we learn something from every single natural disaster. We truly do. And what we are learning from this one is EVs are not compatible with salt water. When they become inoperable, when they have shorts, when they have corrosion and they are in your garage, as a lot of cars were because of this storm surge event, they become now a fire hazard for your house." -------------- So EVs are not suitable for flood-prone areas. Who'd have thought?!!!! BillK From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 8 14:20:33 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 8 Oct 2022 07:20:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] arduino progress In-Reply-To: <20221007231805.Horde.kBzMSiDDMUP1PgsBu9ovJIe@sollegro.com> References: <20221007231805.Horde.kBzMSiDDMUP1PgsBu9ovJIe@sollegro.com> Message-ID: <007101d8db21$20eff4b0$62cfde10$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat ... > The test rig has to stay outside, far from anything flammable, such as > inside your barbeque grill... >...This sounds like a really bad idea to me especially during fire season.... then you might get a full on explosion sending burning plastic and lithium everywhere. The burning lithium will not be able to put out with water... Hey cool, explosions! >... I am not discouraging your pyromania, I am simply cautioning you to start small and work your way up. Baby steps. ;)Stuart LaForge ___________________________________________ Ja, what I meant was submerge the batteries for about an hour, then take them out of the water. I don't know how those things are packaged but I was not aware the individual cells are impermeable. I thought they had jillions of 18650s which were exposed to air for cooling but inside a case which itself isn't water tight. Does anyone here know from Tesla batteries? Guess I could research it, no worries. Another possibility, just instrument some charged bare 18650s. Then soak them, see what they do over a coupla months. The best we could get is a small boom outta those. Stuart here's where I am going with this experiment. I went thru a hurricane in Florida when I was age 5. The streets flooded but most of the houses didn't. Ours didn't. Our neighbors in back did. What I remember is when the water was the highest, some people had cars in their driveways. The water partially submerged some cars, typically the back ends, but that didn't wreck the cars. You could replace the carpet and in most cases they were still OK, but they would rust quickly if they had been partially submerged. When Hurricane Katrina hit LA in 2005, a lotta cars were completely submerged. It became profitable to find new salvageable cars, hire a bunch of proles to replace the upholstery and seats, flush out the engine, detail it carefully, then haul it to California where we don't really have floods and sell it to some unsuspecting used car buyer with an investment of a few thousand bucks labor. High end cars were profitably salvageable, but submerged cars tend to be problem children forever, because of hidden corrosion. OK what about a Tesla which has been partially submerged? Now these Tesla drivers cannot trust these cars to put the explosive bahstids in their garages. So... they haul them to California, where Telsas are popular, charging stations are common, the air is dry so they seldom burst into flames, unless... they were temporarily submerged in seawater during Hurricane Ian? What if they were? Is a Telsa battery submerged for an hour in seawater more likely to explode eventually? Anyone here in the market for a used Telsa? Do you feel lucky? spike From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 8 14:40:13 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 8 Oct 2022 07:40:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] arduino progress In-Reply-To: References: <001301d8dacf$59af8470$0d0e8d50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <007f01d8db23$e0b9a230$a22ce690$@rainier66.com> ...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat ... > >>... The test rig has to stay outside, far from anything flammable, such as inside your barbeque grill. spike > _______________________________________________ >...So, when did you start having these suicidal thoughts? :) I didn't! I have work to do yet in this life. Such as educating proles online! As in... all of you. Besides this is just plain fun, and I have a place to set this up safely, away from buildings and stuff. That article you sent is what gave me the idea to try this foolishness BillK. >...... as a lot of cars were because of this storm surge event, they become now a fire hazard for your house." -------------- >...So EVs are not suitable for flood-prone areas. Who'd have thought?!!!! BillK _______________________________________________ Ja, and here's the deal. That storm was mind-numbing expensive, not because it was a particularly big or unusual storm (it wasn't) but because it hit and caused the surge in a really expensive neighborhood with lots of 80 thousand dollar Teslae which why the rich proles who owned them now don't trust them in their garages attached to multimillion dollar homes. BillK, would you trust it if it had been partially submerged in seawater for an hour? Neither would I, and my home isn't nearly as grand as yours. Hey I saw the homes in Britain, on Downton Abbey. I wouldn't park a Tesla anywhere near one of those. You Brits really know how to live! So, Ian created a market for unethical investors to buy up a bunch of these Teslae in Port Charlotte or Cayo Costa or Cape Coral for a song, replace the upholstery and seats, falsify the documentation for where the car grew up, sell it in California, unsuspecting EV buyer puts it in her garage, burns her house to the ground with it. If you buy a used Tesla in California, do find a way to verify its origins. There are ways that can't easily be fooled I am told. spike From max at maxmore.com Mon Oct 10 16:21:21 2022 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2022 16:21:21 +0000 Subject: [ExI] LA Times piece on Extropians, transhumanism, longtermism and the writer's mental illness Message-ID: Someone sent me today?s LA Times op-Ed piece referencing Extropianism. There?s a lot wrong with it. Below are some brief comments I sent in reply: Guerrero: I once fell for the fantasy of uploading ourselves. It's a dangerous myth - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com) It's about what I'd expect from the L.A. Times! The writer admits to mental problems and wants to blame transhumanism for them. She is one of the weak thinking critics who position transhumanists as people who despise their bodies. She digs back into early issues of Extropy but fails to note any of my pieces arguing against that view. I even touched on this with philosopher David Chalmers at the recent Alcor-50 conference. The goal is not to be rid of all embodiment; it's to expand our senses (both internal and external) and to have more options. It's all about embracing the possibilities of expanded experience, not about cutting off experiences. She also goes wrong in presenting longtermism as synonymous with transhumanism. I have strong disagreements with longtermism, especially its moral base of utilitarianism. (If you accept utilitarianism then it may be hard to resist the logic of longtermism.) And, of course, there is the predictable criticism that transhumanism is all about white men. Funny that, when she's also arguing that we don't care about our biology. Does the L.A. Times print letters to the editor? If so, maybe I'll write a response. --Max -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Oct 10 17:40:29 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2022 10:40:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] LA Times piece on Extropians, transhumanism, longtermism and the writer's mental illness In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <004e01d8dccf$63ff0cf0$2bfd26d0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Max More via extropy-chat >. today's LA Times op-Ed piece referencing Extropianism. There's a lot wrong with it. Below are some brief comments I sent in reply: Guerrero: I once fell for the fantasy of uploading ourselves. It's a dangerous myth - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com) It's about what I'd expect from the L.A. Times! --Max Thanks Max. As soon as she started talking about swallowing pills and relationships with violent men, her credibility with me dropped by two orders of magnitude. I don't understand the reasoning of one who claims that the notion of uploading leads to those things. Uploading appeals to me. That other stuff, even if I substitute my favorite gender, not. My reasoning goes thus: if uploading is ever a possibility, it will be after the singularity which hasn't happened (as far as we know) but is in the future. It follows that if we pay very close attention to basic and well-known health principles, eat light, exercise, live right, sleep in your own bed every night, the fundamental stuff, then we are likely to live longer, and if so, more likely to live to see the singularity and upload. Strategy: put away the damn pills, and that violent men business, oy, do part company with violent anyone of any gender forth-freaking-with (ja I have long since lost track of how many genders there are now (but no matter (for we are not here to convert me to being a mod hipster.))) If we don't live long enough, well, you still get better health out of the deal anyway, a longer life. At no real cost! Sheesh this is simple. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Oct 10 18:27:31 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2022 19:27:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] LA Times piece on Extropians, transhumanism, longtermism and the writer's mental illness In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 10 Oct 2022 at 17:24, Max More via extropy-chat wrote: > > Someone sent me today?s LA Times op-Ed piece referencing Extropianism. There?s a lot wrong with it. Below are some brief comments I sent in reply: > > Guerrero: I once fell for the fantasy of uploading ourselves. It's a dangerous myth - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com) > > > Does the L.A. Times print letters to the editor? If so, maybe I'll write a response. > > --Max > _______________________________________________ Yes, the LA Times does print Letters. See: In her article she mentions that in the early 2000s she tried to type her life into a computer in the hope that her life would be resurrected later. She was 20 years too early. You can do that now. AI chatbots can imitate dead humans when trained on their history and speak in their voice after sampling some speech records, Even holograms can be created. Voice and video fakes are now good enough to be becoming a security problem. BillK From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 11 00:25:46 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2022 17:25:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] photos of asteroid surface Message-ID: <007201d8dd08$02382360$06a86a20$@rainier66.com> Hey cool, I always wanted to see one of these babies close up: https://www.popsci.com/ryugu-color-photo-asteroid/ Thanks Japan! Well done indeed. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 11 03:07:53 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2022 20:07:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] temperature module Message-ID: <002c01d8dd1e$a7c23670$f746a350$@rainier66.com> Hey cool, my temperature module arrived. If I decide to go ahead with the absurd notion of soaking a lithium battery in seawater then watch over it 24/7 using an Arduino, I don't even need to rig up a homebrew thermocouple. I just plug in this three-dollar device to the processor, use the SD card module, then. hope it doesn't burst into flame in any particularly destructive, expensive or spectacular way. I think I can do this safely enough if I put it inside my grill, but I am still pondering the whole silly idea. I really don't want to start a lithium fire, even if I can contain it. Might wreck my grill. Whether or not I do this, I am still wondering if that hurricane in Florida turned hundreds of Teslas into ticking timebombs. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 9836 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 11 16:45:17 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 09:45:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] remote learning In-Reply-To: <002701d8dd87$c69f9420$53debc60$@rainier66.com> References: <002701d8dd87$c69f9420$53debc60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003a01d8dd90$d8518580$88f49080$@rainier66.com> My son received an invitation to apply for a university I had not heard of, so I researched and discovered it is a new remote learning accredited for granting degrees university. OK then. Just so ya know what you are buying, no worries. This has me pondering, for I realized the covid lockdown changed everything. It made us all realize that remote learning is possible and practical. Many of us or perhaps most, have seen content like this (free, online, excellent) from which you can choose any video and view just a few minutes of it: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm5mt-A4w61lknZ9lCsZtBw Engineers among us, whooda thunk material of this sophistication and quality would be available free? I haven't seen all these, but the Controls Bootcamp is excellent material, better than I had in grad school on that topic. Steve Brunton is indistinguishable from god. He's an engineering god. I am convinced that if a smart motivated prole were to view this kind of video for about a year, she could pass the Engineer In Training EIT exam, and a coupla more years of it, the Professional Engineer's state boards exams. I passed the PE on the first try without a master's degree, with almost no post grad classes. One is not required to have even a bachelor's degree. OK then. So. I have a part 2 for all this, a yuuuge business opportunity. But will let you comment first. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Oct 11 17:09:52 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 18:09:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] remote learning In-Reply-To: <003a01d8dd90$d8518580$88f49080$@rainier66.com> References: <002701d8dd87$c69f9420$53debc60$@rainier66.com> <003a01d8dd90$d8518580$88f49080$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 11 Oct 2022 at 17:48, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > My son received an invitation to apply for a university I had not heard of, so I researched and discovered it is a new remote learning accredited for granting degrees university. > OK then. Just so ya know what you are buying, no worries. > > This has me pondering, for I realized the covid lockdown changed everything. It made us all realize that remote learning is possible and practical. Many of us or perhaps most, have seen content like this (free, online, excellent) from which you can choose any video and view just a few minutes of it: > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm5mt-A4w61lknZ9lCsZtBw > > Engineers among us, whooda thunk material of this sophistication and quality would be available free? I haven?t seen all these, but the Controls Bootcamp is excellent material, better than I had in grad school on that topic. Steve Brunton is indistinguishable from god. He?s an engineering god. > > I am convinced that if a smart motivated prole were to view this kind of video for about a year, she could pass the Engineer In Training EIT exam, and a coupla more years of it, the Professional Engineer?s state boards exams. I passed the PE on the first try without a master?s degree, with almost no post grad classes. One is not required to have even a bachelor?s degree. > > OK then. So? I have a part 2 for all this, a yuuuge business opportunity. But will let you comment first. > > spike > _______________________________________________ OK, so remote learning is wonderful, but won't he miss out on all the wild parties, alcohol, drugs and hot young women? There's book learning and then there's learning about life. BillK From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Oct 11 17:18:12 2022 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 13:18:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] remote learning In-Reply-To: References: <002701d8dd87$c69f9420$53debc60$@rainier66.com> <003a01d8dd90$d8518580$88f49080$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Oct 11, 2022, 1:12 PM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > OK, so remote learning is wonderful, but won't he miss out on all the > wild parties, alcohol, drugs and hot young women? > There's book learning and then there's learning about life. > With all the money you save on tuition+room&board, you can afford to host the rest yourself. ;) > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gadersd at gmail.com Tue Oct 11 17:53:52 2022 From: gadersd at gmail.com (Gadersd) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 13:53:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] remote learning In-Reply-To: <003a01d8dd90$d8518580$88f49080$@rainier66.com> References: <002701d8dd87$c69f9420$53debc60$@rainier66.com> <003a01d8dd90$d8518580$88f49080$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I am an interesting case as 90% of all my knowledge was learned by myself on my own time. My career is in programming and AI and I did attend university but found that it didn?t help me one bit. Everything I needed for my career was learned for free on the internet before I even graduated high school. The university lectures were so bad compared to the online resources I had been using all my life that when I began to rely on the course materials for learning instead of the internet I felt stupid for the first time in my life. When I switched back completely to self learning, learning became much easier. I don?t even talk about my degree and try not to even mention that I have one because of how worthless it has been for me compared to my self learning ventures. I would have been much farther in life by now had I skipped university altogether. Of course everyone is different but this has been my experience. > On Oct 11, 2022, at 12:45 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > > My son received an invitation to apply for a university I had not heard of, so I researched and discovered it is a new remote learning accredited for granting degrees university. > > OK then. Just so ya know what you are buying, no worries. > > This has me pondering, for I realized the covid lockdown changed everything. It made us all realize that remote learning is possible and practical. Many of us or perhaps most, have seen content like this (free, online, excellent) from which you can choose any video and view just a few minutes of it: > > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm5mt-A4w61lknZ9lCsZtBw > > Engineers among us, whooda thunk material of this sophistication and quality would be available free? I haven?t seen all these, but the Controls Bootcamp is excellent material, better than I had in grad school on that topic. Steve Brunton is indistinguishable from god. He?s an engineering god. > > I am convinced that if a smart motivated prole were to view this kind of video for about a year, she could pass the Engineer In Training EIT exam, and a coupla more years of it, the Professional Engineer?s state boards exams. I passed the PE on the first try without a master?s degree, with almost no post grad classes. One is not required to have even a bachelor?s degree. > > OK then. So? I have a part 2 for all this, a yuuuge business opportunity. But will let you comment first. > > spike > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Tue Oct 11 18:11:33 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 11:11:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] remote learning In-Reply-To: References: <002701d8dd87$c69f9420$53debc60$@rainier66.com> <003a01d8dd90$d8518580$88f49080$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: In many technical fields, computer science definitely included, a BS degree has been compared to a union card: it gives you the ability to get a job (at least, the higher paying ones) and not much else. On Tue, Oct 11, 2022 at 10:56 AM Gadersd via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > I am an interesting case as 90% of all my knowledge was learned by myself > on my own time. My career is in programming and AI and I did attend > university but found that it didn?t help me one bit. Everything I needed > for my career was learned for free on the internet before I even graduated > high school. The university lectures were so bad compared to the online > resources I had been using all my life that when I began to rely on the > course materials for learning instead of the internet I felt stupid for the > first time in my life. When I switched back completely to self learning, > learning became much easier. I don?t even talk about my degree and try not > to even mention that I have one because of how worthless it has been for me > compared to my self learning ventures. I would have been much farther in > life by now had I skipped university altogether. Of course everyone is > different but this has been my experience. > > On Oct 11, 2022, at 12:45 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > My son received an invitation to apply for a university I had not heard > of, so I researched and discovered it is a new remote learning accredited > for granting degrees university. > > OK then. Just so ya know what you are buying, no worries. > > This has me pondering, for I realized the covid lockdown changed > everything. It made us all realize that remote learning is possible and > practical. Many of us or perhaps most, have seen content like this (free, > online, excellent) from which you can choose any video and view just a few > minutes of it: > > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm5mt-A4w61lknZ9lCsZtBw > > Engineers among us, whooda thunk material of this sophistication and > quality would be available free? I haven?t seen all these, but the > Controls Bootcamp is excellent material, better than I had in grad school > on that topic. Steve Brunton is indistinguishable from god. He?s an > engineering god. > > I am convinced that if a smart motivated prole were to view this kind of > video for about a year, she could pass the Engineer In Training EIT exam, > and a coupla more years of it, the Professional Engineer?s state boards > exams. I passed the PE on the first try without a master?s degree, with > almost no post grad classes. One is not required to have even a bachelor?s > degree. > > OK then. So? I have a part 2 for all this, a yuuuge business > opportunity. But will let you comment first. > > spike > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 11 20:35:01 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 13:35:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] remote learning In-Reply-To: References: <002701d8dd87$c69f9420$53debc60$@rainier66.com> <003a01d8dd90$d8518580$88f49080$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00b201d8ddb0$f0f8a800$d2e9f800$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Sent: Tuesday, 11 October, 2022 10:10 AM To: ExI chat list Cc: BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] remote learning On Tue, 11 Oct 2022 at 17:48, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > >>... My son received an invitation to apply for a university I had not heard of, so I researched and discovered it is a new remote learning accredited for granting degrees university. > OK then. Just so ya know what you are buying, no worries.... > > OK then. So? I have a part 2 for all this, a yuuuge business opportunity. But will let you comment first. > > spike > _______________________________________________ >...OK, so remote learning is wonderful, but won't he miss out on all the wild parties, alcohol, drugs and hot young women? There's book learning and then there's learning about life. BillK _______________________________________________ Ja, he would miss those things and a mountain of debt, so true. My own college didn't have wild parties, alcohol or drugs that I know of, but it did have plenty of hot young women. I married one of them. Thanks for that BillK. spike From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 11 20:38:36 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 13:38:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] remote learning In-Reply-To: References: <002701d8dd87$c69f9420$53debc60$@rainier66.com> <003a01d8dd90$d8518580$88f49080$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00b301d8ddb1$70579ed0$5106dc70$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Gadersd via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] remote learning I am an interesting case as 90% of all my knowledge was learned by myself on my own time. My career is in programming and AI and I did attend university but found that it didn?t help me one bit. Everything I needed for my career was learned for free on the internet before I even graduated high school. The university lectures were so bad compared to the online resources I had been using all my life that when I began to rely on the course materials for learning instead of the internet I felt stupid for the first time in my life. When I switched back completely to self learning, learning became much easier. I don?t even talk about my degree and try not to even mention that I have one because of how worthless it has been for me compared to my self learning ventures. I would have been much farther in life by now had I skipped university altogether. Of course everyone is different but this has been my experience? Gadersd Cool thx for that, Gadersd. Why are you so quiet here? You sound like a most interesting life form. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 11 21:33:14 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 14:33:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] remote learning In-Reply-To: References: <002701d8dd87$c69f9420$53debc60$@rainier66.com> <003a01d8dd90$d8518580$88f49080$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00cb01d8ddb9$12aff7c0$380fe740$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] remote learning >?In many technical fields, computer science definitely included, a BS degree has been compared to a union card: it gives you the ability to get a job (at least, the higher paying ones) and not much else? Adrian Ja. In earlier historic times, college was for the economic elite. After world war 2, the returning troops had the GI Bill, on which the average person could go to college. I have heard descriptions of battle-hardened veterans in class with students four years their junior who had seen nothing. The veterans were in a hurry. They had already seen all the liberal arts they cared for, fighting for survival across Europe. They wanted a practical education, forthwith. College changed from teaching students how to think into job training. The rapid rise of STEM education to support industry replaced much of the traditional curriculum. OK then, if we are going to use colleges to provide STEM training, for those majors, we really can do that more effectively online at a fraction of the cost and greater effectiveness. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Oct 12 15:42:53 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2022 16:42:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] remote learning In-Reply-To: <00b201d8ddb0$f0f8a800$d2e9f800$@rainier66.com> References: <002701d8dd87$c69f9420$53debc60$@rainier66.com> <003a01d8dd90$d8518580$88f49080$@rainier66.com> <00b201d8ddb0$f0f8a800$d2e9f800$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 11 Oct 2022 at 21:38, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > Ja, he would miss those things and a mountain of debt, so true. > My own college didn't have wild parties, alcohol or drugs that I know of, but it did have plenty of hot young women. I married one of them. > > spike > _______________________________________________ Maybe your son might soon be wanting to meet lots of hot young women in an adult-free environment ?????? :) I just discovered that the US has No-Loan Schools, including some famous names that even I have heard of. e.g. Princeton, Stanford, MIT etc. Tuition costs are usually covered by endowments plus some student part-time work on campus. See: As you are a retired pensioner your son might be able to get into the system. BillK From spike at rainier66.com Wed Oct 12 23:19:04 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2022 16:19:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] remote learning In-Reply-To: References: <002701d8dd87$c69f9420$53debc60$@rainier66.com> <003a01d8dd90$d8518580$88f49080$@rainier66.com> <00b201d8ddb0$f0f8a800$d2e9f800$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00f001d8de91$05b98c60$112ca520$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Sent: Wednesday, 12 October, 2022 8:43 AM To: ExI chat list Cc: BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] remote learning On Tue, 11 Oct 2022 at 21:38, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > Ja, he would miss those things and a mountain of debt, so true. > My own college didn't have wild parties, alcohol or drugs that I know of, but it did have plenty of hot young women. I married one of them. > > spike > _______________________________________________ Maybe your son might soon be wanting to meet lots of hot young women in an adult-free environment ?????? :) I just discovered that the US has No-Loan Schools, including some famous names that even I have heard of. e.g. Princeton, Stanford, MIT etc. Tuition costs are usually covered by endowments plus some student part-time work on campus. See: As you are a retired pensioner your son might be able to get into the system. BillK _______________________________________________ We are on that BillK. The trick is getting admitted. No small task. spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Oct 13 21:09:54 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2022 16:09:54 -0500 Subject: [ExI] book Message-ID: >From our friends at the Cato Institute: https://www.cato.org/books/superabundance?utm_medium=email -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 14 22:13:03 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2022 15:13:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] history of fashion Message-ID: <003f01d8e01a$215304d0$63f90e70$@rainier66.com> Do pardon, for I am surely asking the wrong crowd, but I am doing a bit of genetic detective work. We can solve a mystery if we can get an approximate date on this photo. I know not diddley about fashion, but this photo to me can't be much earlier than about 1970, because I just don't recall men wearing plaid trousers before then. The photo was taken we think in Virginia at a family reunion but all of these people have passed on now. Are there any among us who can ask their local fashion experts using skirt length, collar styles, belt width, cloth patterns, shoes, hair styles, who can offer us a reasonable estimate of the date on this photo? When I hear back I will offer why we need a date, within a year or two if at all possible. It's cool. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 27099 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Oct 15 00:08:23 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2022 01:08:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] history of fashion In-Reply-To: <003f01d8e01a$215304d0$63f90e70$@rainier66.com> References: <003f01d8e01a$215304d0$63f90e70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 14 Oct 2022 at 23:16, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > Do pardon, for I am surely asking the wrong crowd, but I am doing a bit of genetic detective work. We can solve a mystery if we can get an approximate date on this photo. I know not diddley about fashion, but this photo to me can?t be much earlier than about 1970, because I just don?t recall men wearing plaid trousers before then. > > The photo was taken we think in Virginia at a family reunion but all of these people have passed on now. > > Are there any among us who can ask their local fashion experts using skirt length, collar styles, belt width, cloth patterns, shoes, hair styles, who can offer us a reasonable estimate of the date on this photo? > When I hear back I will offer why we need a date, within a year or two if at all possible. It?s cool. > > spike > _______________________________________________ I don't think you will be able to get a date. Fashions change by age of the people (no trendy youngsters in your photo) and by whether it is a more conservative area of the country. I might call those trousers 'checks' rather than more colourful plaids. Hemlines started moving above the knee in the 1960s though there are no youngsters wearing mini-skirts in your photo. If you search for photos of Virginia 1970 family reunions some look quite similar to yours. I would guess at 1972 plus or minus 5 years. BillK From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 15 00:56:22 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2022 17:56:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] history of fashion In-Reply-To: References: <003f01d8e01a$215304d0$63f90e70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009701d8e030$f20efc30$d62cf490$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] history of fashion On Fri, 14 Oct 2022 at 23:16, spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Do pardon, for I am surely asking the wrong crowd, but I am doing a bit of genetic detective work. We can solve a mystery if we can get an approximate date on this photo. I know not diddley about fashion, but this photo to me can?t be much earlier than about 1970, because I just don?t recall men wearing plaid trousers before then. > > The photo was taken we think in Virginia at a family reunion but all of these people have passed on now. > > Are there any among us who can ask their local fashion experts using skirt length, collar styles, belt width, cloth patterns, shoes, hair styles, who can offer us a reasonable estimate of the date on this photo? > When I hear back I will offer why we need a date, within a year or two if at all possible. It?s cool. > > spike > _______________________________________________ >...I don't think you will be able to get a date. Fashions change by age of the people (no trendy youngsters in your photo) and by whether it is a more conservative area of the country. I might call those trousers 'checks' rather than more colourful plaids. Hemlines started moving above the knee in the 1960s though there are no youngsters wearing mini-skirts in your photo. If you search for photos of Virginia 1970 family reunions some look quite similar to yours. I would guess at 1972 plus or minus 5 years. BillK _______________________________________________ THANKS BillK, that is exactly what I was hoping someone could verify. If that photo is interpreted as 9 women and four men, then it would need to have been taken before 1961, and one of the men was missing for unknown reasons. But the photo was annotated as "Mom and all the children" with no mention of anyone missing. After 1961, there were only 8 remaining daughters alive. So... I theorized the photo was taken at some later date, based on the observation that the checked trousers were something I just don't recall seeing before about 1970. They looked stupid then and still do now. But men wore them around that timeframe. OK then. We see in the photo (posted previously) eight women and four men, not including their mother in the blue dress, plus one person in back mostly obscured, who I thought was another woman. But if that is a woman, the photo must have been taken before 1961, and skirts were longer then, women hadn't really started in with the big helmet hair, and men hadn't yet started wearing trousers that look stupid. So... I theorized that all the children did show up, that the person obscured in back is a man. Here's the kick, and why I am doing all this. This month, two new people showed up on AncestryDNA, neither one knew the identity of their biological father. One of the two only found out this month, when in his late 70s, that the man he knew as his father isn't his biological father. His half sibling showed up. Neither knew about the other. So... I started digging, because both are third cousins to me. I found this photo, did the detective work, identified each of the men in that photo except the one in back. Found their descendants on AncestryDNA, and by process of elimination, figured out the father of our two new cousins is that guy in back. Second kick: he never married, so there are no known preserved photographs of him. He was a man of the world, always away from the family and as far as we know, this is the only reunion he attended. That person in back I initially interpreted at a woman, but by the early 70s, some hipster men in their 40s were doing the whole poofy froofy hair thing, not caring if it looks... stupid. Consequentemente? this photo, where most of his face is obscured... is now the only photographic record we have of the man. We don't even know where he is buried. We have nothing. Just that one photograph where you can't even see him really. I hafta tell his two biological children: this is the only known image of your bio-father: Hell of a note, ja? Is this what you want to leave behind, to inform your descendants? Now take some photos of yourself and post them somewhere please. Upload your innermost thoughts to the internet! Upload, forthwith! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 7485 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 15 01:38:02 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2022 18:38:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] history of fashion In-Reply-To: References: <003f01d8e01a$215304d0$63f90e70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00e501d8e036$c4580bf0$4d0823d0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat ? > _______________________________________________ >?I don't think you will be able to get a date. Fashions change by age of the people (no trendy youngsters in your photo) and by whether it is a more conservative area of the country. I might call those trousers 'checks' rather than more colourful plaids. Hemlines started moving above the knee in the 1960s though there are no youngsters wearing mini-skirts in your photo. If you search for photos of Virginia 1970 family reunions some look quite similar to yours. I would guess at 1972 plus or minus 5 years. BillK _______________________________________________ Here?s a big clue BillK: a vintage clothing site offered trousers that looked like the ones in the reunion photo: The song which starts ?Everybody was kung fu fighting? was released by Carl Douglas in 1974. (BillK, did that particular silliness make it to Britain?) The site sounded like it knew its vintage clothing. So? probably 1974, which makes it even easier to explain thr poofy goofy hair. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 11101 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 15 03:13:09 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2022 20:13:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? Message-ID: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> NOVA is usually a carefully-researched science program, which I like. But I noticed they worded this program in such a way to make Hurricane Ian sound like it was an extraordinarily large storm. But it wasn't. It was a large storm at the time it happened to make landfall, and it happened to make landfall right where there were a lot of expensive homes, cars, boats and planes to destroy, which is why Ian, the second biggest storm this season, cost 50 billion in damage, while the biggest storm of 2022, Fiona, almost half again bigger than Ian, cost less than 3 billion in damage. Fiona did its thing out at sea. Ian happened to hit land right where the rich and famous live. Check out NOVA's wording for their program. Ian was certainly one of the most destructive storms to hit land in the USA, but the storm itself was not extraordinarily powerful. It was a category 4 at its peak, which happened right as it made landfall. But Fiona was a category 4 as well, and there are category 5 hurricanes which happen on average more often than every other year. Note the wording: The 2022 season was off to a quiet start until a number of storms emerged in September, including Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful and destructive storms to ever make landfall in the U.S. Ian brought storm surge of up to 15 feet in some parts of Florida. Water is generally the deadliest component of a hurricane, and storm surge is responsible for nearly half of all hurricane deaths. Part of Florida's Gulf Coast is particularly vulnerable to storm surge because of its geography and proximity to warm tropical water. "Hurricanes derive their energy from warm ocean water," James Marshall Shepherd, director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia, told NOVA. Not only are storm surges highly dangerous and unpredictable, they are likely to intensify with climate change. Learn how storm surge forms and why it's so dangerous: NOVA. It appears that NOVA wants to blame global warming for people building expensive stuff where Ian happened to land. I would blame the people building expensive stuff right down at sea level. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Sat Oct 15 06:49:29 2022 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2022 08:49:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] A conversation with Rizwan Virk on the simulation hypothesis Message-ID: Turing Church podcast. A conversation with Rizwan Virk. Moravec and Everett meet Borges and Dick in a multiverse of many simulated worlds. https://www.turingchurch.com/p/podcast-a-conversation-with-rizwan From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Oct 15 13:26:38 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2022 08:26:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I would blame the people building expensive stuff right down at sea level. spike Those people don't care. Probably have more than one house here or there (Winter in Florida; summer in Vermont). Rich and insured - not looking for handouts from the Red CRoss. bill w On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 10:15 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > > > > > NOVA is usually a carefully-researched science program, which I like. But > I noticed they worded this program in such a way to make Hurricane Ian > sound like it was an extraordinarily large storm. But it wasn?t. It was a > large storm at the time it happened to make landfall, and it happened to > make landfall right where there were a lot of expensive homes, cars, boats > and planes to destroy, which is why Ian, the second biggest storm this > season, cost 50 billion in damage, while the biggest storm of 2022, Fiona, > almost half again bigger than Ian, cost less than 3 billion in damage. > Fiona did its thing out at sea. Ian happened to hit land right where the > rich and famous live. > > > > Check out NOVA?s wording for their program. Ian was certainly one of the > most destructive storms to hit land in the USA, but the storm itself was > not extraordinarily powerful. It was a category 4 at its peak, which > happened right as it made landfall. But Fiona was a category 4 as well, > and there are category 5 hurricanes which happen on average more often than > every other year. > > > > Note the wording: > > > > > > The 2022 season was off to a quiet start until a number of storms emerged > in September, including Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful and > destructive storms to ever make landfall in the U.S. Ian brought storm > surge of up to 15 feet in some parts of Florida. Water is generally the > deadliest component of a hurricane, and storm surge is responsible for > nearly half of all hurricane deaths. > > Part of Florida?s Gulf Coast is particularly vulnerable to storm surge > because of its geography and proximity to warm tropical water. ?Hurricanes > derive their energy from warm ocean water,? James Marshall Shepherd, > director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia, > told NOVA. Not only are storm surges highly dangerous and unpredictable, > they are likely to intensify with climate change. > > Learn how storm surge forms and why it's so dangerous: NOVA. > > It appears that NOVA wants to blame global warming for people building > expensive stuff where Ian happened to land. I would blame the people > building expensive stuff right down at sea level. > > > > spike > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 15 14:11:56 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2022 07:11:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] et tu, nova? >>?I would blame the people building expensive stuff right down at sea level. spike >?Those people don't care. Probably have more than one house here or there (Winter in Florida; summer in Vermont). Rich and insured - not looking for handouts from the Red CRoss. bill w BillW, since you mentioned rich and insured, something occurred to me. Consider hurricanes. They don?t move very fast, they are very visible, you can easily see them coming. They are nature?s own zombies: dangerous if they catch you, but zombies don?t move fast either. You never saw a zombie running, ja? They just kinda amble and? you know the rest? eat your damn brains if they catch you. But why do zombies and hurricanes catch people? In the Ian news, we saw plenty of dramatic photos of wrecked planes and yachts, flooded streets with Teslas bobbing about and so forth, fifty billlllion dollars damage, oh mercy. But why? I get it with the homes: you can?t move those and the fools already built them where they are vulnerable to flood damage. Well now, how vulnerable? How often does a hurricane ocean surge? Not very! You can build there and count on rebuilding or extensive repair on the average of about twice a century on average. About a 2% chance of serious flooding each year. Well hell, you and I are here only about once a century, so? OK then, take your chances. Now? what about the boats and planes and Teslas? I have an idea: you can buy insurance against storm damage to all these things, and you can be sure that a lotta rich people did. So? storm?s on the way, any good yacht can easily outrun the nature?s zombie, the hurricane, and of course any plane can be flown to safety on short notice, the Teslas can be easily driven inland. My theory is that plenty of aircraft owners and yacht owners and even Tesla owners? quietly chose to leave them in place, collect the insurance payouts on their expensive toys. I am open to counter-suggestion on that notion please. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Oct 15 14:23:45 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2022 09:23:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Problem with idea: insurance companies will raise their rates if you file a claim. I filed a small claim and they raised my rates so high that they got their money back in a year! So you can't play that game. Ach! Now I remember- one more small claim and they cancelled me! Had to pay premium rates to get insurance at all. Those boys know what's going on. bill w On Sat, Oct 15, 2022 at 9:13 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] et tu, nova? > > > > >>?I would blame the people building expensive stuff right down at sea > level. spike > > > > >?Those people don't care. Probably have more than one house here or > there (Winter in Florida; summer in Vermont). Rich and insured - not > looking for handouts from the Red CRoss. bill w > > > > BillW, since you mentioned rich and insured, something occurred to me. > > Consider hurricanes. They don?t move very fast, they are very visible, > you can easily see them coming. They are nature?s own zombies: dangerous > if they catch you, but zombies don?t move fast either. You never saw a > zombie running, ja? They just kinda amble and? you know the rest? eat your > damn brains if they catch you. > > But why do zombies and hurricanes catch people? > > In the Ian news, we saw plenty of dramatic photos of wrecked planes and > yachts, flooded streets with Teslas bobbing about and so forth, fifty > billlllion dollars damage, oh mercy. > > But why? I get it with the homes: you can?t move those and the fools > already built them where they are vulnerable to flood damage. Well now, > how vulnerable? How often does a hurricane ocean surge? Not very! You > can build there and count on rebuilding or extensive repair on the average > of about twice a century on average. About a 2% chance of serious flooding > each year. Well hell, you and I are here only about once a century, so? OK > then, take your chances. > > Now? what about the boats and planes and Teslas? > > I have an idea: you can buy insurance against storm damage to all these > things, and you can be sure that a lotta rich people did. So? storm?s on > the way, any good yacht can easily outrun the nature?s zombie, the > hurricane, and of course any plane can be flown to safety on short notice, > the Teslas can be easily driven inland. > > My theory is that plenty of aircraft owners and yacht owners and even > Tesla owners? quietly chose to leave them in place, collect the insurance > payouts on their expensive toys. > > I am open to counter-suggestion on that notion please. > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Oct 15 14:26:57 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2022 09:26:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] millions of plants Message-ID: Let's hear a round for AI! https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2022/10/11/human-genome-project-for-our-diets-heres-how-bioactive-compounds-could-overcome-a-dearth-of-vegetables-in-americans-health/ ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Sat Oct 15 20:40:41 2022 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2022 13:40:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20221015134041.Horde.kch7qy6_GRIwW9Y6hIDPNDy@sollegro.com> Quoting Spike: > NOVA is usually a carefully-researched science program, which I like. But I > noticed they worded this program in such a way to make Hurricane Ian sound > like it was an extraordinarily large storm. But it wasn't. It was a large > storm at the time it happened to make landfall, and it happened to make > landfall right where there were a lot of expensive homes, cars, boats and > planes to destroy, which is why Ian, the second biggest storm this season, > cost 50 billion in damage, while the biggest storm of 2022, Fiona, almost > half again bigger than Ian, cost less than 3 billion in damage. Fiona did > its thing out at sea. Ian happened to hit land right where the rich and > famous live. Yeah, I concur it is bullshit. Ian pales in comparison to Katrina. Katrina was a cat 5, Ian a measly cat 4 at its most powerful. Head to head: Measure | Ian | Katrina ------------------------ Deaths | 137 | 1836 Damage |$50 B| $125 B The damage is $125 billion in 2005 dollars versus $50 billion in 2022 dollars. > "Part of Florida's Gulf Coast is particularly vulnerable to storm surge > because of its geography and proximity to warm tropical water. "Hurricanes > derive their energy from warm ocean water," James Marshall Shepherd, > director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia, > told NOVA. Not only are storm surges highly dangerous and unpredictable, > they are likely to intensify with climate change." The average global temperature today is about 13.9 degree's Celsius. For comparison, when plants first started to colonize land, during the beginning of the Carboniferous Period 359 Mya, the average global temperature was 20 degrees Celsius. As the vast coal forests spread over land, the trees gradually cooled the Earth until at the end of the Carboniferous Period 299 Mya, the global average temperature was 10 degrees Celsius. The Earth has alternated between greenhouse periods and glaciation periods throughout its history. This tells me three things: 1. The average global temperature is unlikely to exceed 20 degrees Celsius because that is like having no plants at all with almost all the CO2 in the atmosphere. For similar reasons, sea level will never be more than 200 meters above present levels. 2. The climate was never not changing, but we are only recently starting to participate in changing it. 3. Anything that we can change, we can learn to control. > It appears that NOVA wants to blame global warming for people building > expensive stuff where Ian happened to land. I would blame the people > building expensive stuff right down at sea level. Yes. I think that is pretty good description of the global warming lobby: rich people with beach-front property that expect me to stop driving and eating meat so that they don't have to move. These are the same people that would be the first to complain if we took the engineering steps to climate control the planet and cool it down. Also, while people like to blame climate change for an increase in the destructiveness of storms in recent years, I think inflation has played an even larger role. After all the houses at risk by hurricane Andrew 30 years ago are probably worth twice as much now. Stuart LaForge From atymes at gmail.com Sun Oct 16 06:20:37 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2022 23:20:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 15, 2022 at 7:13 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > You never saw a zombie running, ja? > Ja, in the Left 4 Dead series among others. They're rare, but depictions of "fast zombies" exist. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun Oct 16 09:23:38 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2022 10:23:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 16 Oct 2022 at 07:23, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat wrote: > > On Sat, Oct 15, 2022 at 7:13 AM spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: >> You never saw a zombie running, ja? > > > Ja, in the Left 4 Dead series among others. They're rare, but depictions of "fast zombies" exist. > _______________________________________________ That's right! The original Hollywood zombies were slow but are now out-of-date. Modern Zombies can indeed run. Quote: Zombies have gotten fast because the world has gotten faster. There?s nothing this decade that can?t be done quicker than it would have been in the decade before. ------------------- BillK From spike at rainier66.com Sun Oct 16 14:01:38 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2022 07:01:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004701d8e167$d0741820$715c4860$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] et tu, nova? On Sat, Oct 15, 2022 at 7:13 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: You never saw a zombie running, ja? >?Ja, in the Left 4 Dead series among others. They're rare, but depictions of "fast zombies" exist. Cool thx. I am not an expert on zombies, my experience being limited to Michael Jackson?s excellent Thriller video. They can?t run but oh they can dance. Here it is, my young friends, the video which launched MTV. This cat had TALENT! Both the tunes and the moves! https://youtu.be/sOnqjkJTMaA This is how we had fun 40 years ago. Truly he was one of the ultra talents of our lifetime. Regarding actual zombies, they really exist, according to a non-fiction book by Harvard anthropologist Wade Davis. I read his book, where he describes going to Haiti to learn the craft of the witch doctors there, which was a mixture of superstition and? he wanted to find out the rest of the story. The witch doctors figured out how to extract the venom of the poisonous tree frog, along with the nasty chemicals in other indigenous creepy crawlers, and distill a chemical Davis took back to Harvard and managed to analyze. It binds to the nerves of the victim making her completely immobilized, even though still alive, a kind of universal body-wide novacaine. The witch doctors also figured out an antidote of sorts. It didn?t completely undo what the tetradotoxin had done, but the patent could walk (after a fashion) and remember what had happened. The witchdoctor convinced the victim that he had killed her and that he had brought her back to life, and he could kill her again if she repeated the transgression that led to her death sentence. She was banished to live in the cemetery. Sounds crazy, ja? Davis wrote about it in The Serpent and the Rainbow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Davis_(anthropologist) In the Serpent and the Rainbow, Dr. Davis made a side comment that has gained more attention than anything else in the book. He said the Haitians had discovered a particular type of marijuana or perhaps an additive, that resulted in the most astonishing high he had ever felt, in spite of many years? experience with grass. This one comment led to a cult fad of trying to figure out what Dr. Davis smoked in Haiti, and perhaps Americans could get some of that stuff. As far as I know, Davis? Haitian weed was never found. But as with zombies, I am no expert on these matters. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sun Oct 16 15:51:24 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2022 08:51:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: <004701d8e167$d0741820$715c4860$@rainier66.com> References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> <004701d8e167$d0741820$715c4860$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Oct 16, 2022, 7:03 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Regarding actual zombies, they really exist, according to a non-fiction > book by Harvard anthropologist Wade Davis. > Well yeah. The legend came from Haiti, as you described. There are also parasites that take over insects, sometimes larger animals such as mice, and control their bodies to further their reproductive cycles (such as by encouraging mice to enter a cat's stomach). > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Oct 16 16:39:49 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2022 11:39:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Who remembers the award-winning ad lib song 'Zombie Jamboree'? bill w On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 1:23 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Sat, Oct 15, 2022 at 7:13 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> You never saw a zombie running, ja? >> > > Ja, in the Left 4 Dead series among others. They're rare, but > depictions of "fast zombies" exist. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Oct 16 16:48:00 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2022 09:48:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> <004701d8e167$d0741820$715c4860$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00bc01d8e17f$0d8d7460$28a85d20$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] et tu, nova? On Sun, Oct 16, 2022, 7:03 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: Regarding actual zombies, they really exist, according to a non-fiction book by Harvard anthropologist Wade Davis. >?Well yeah. The legend came from Haiti, as you described. There are also parasites that take over insects, sometimes larger animals such as mice, and control their bodies to further their reproductive cycles (such as by encouraging mice to enter a cat's stomach). I could clarify that statement that zombies really exist. Davis claims that came from these witchdoctors forming the defacto law enforcement, in a sense, perhaps analogous to how the Godfather Vito Corleone maintained outlaw and order in the 1940s mafia families. The Haitian existence is ruled by superstition. The witchdoctor had ?supernatural? powers from the POV of the terrified locals, so they damn well did as he said. If a serious transgression occurred in the ?community? Corleone and the witchdoctor had thier ways of dealing with it. We know what Corleone did. The witchdoctor introduced a toxin to the victim, she was presumed dead (they don?t really have coroners there) and was buried. The victim was still partially conscious and even had memories of being buried. After they all went home, the witchdoctor would dig up the victim, still alive, administer the antidote, after which the victim was alive but likely with brain damage of various degrees of severity. According to Davis, the witchdoctor would tell the victim/perpetrator: I am the witchdoctor, I see all, I am a master of voodoo. I killed you with my spell, because you raped Corleone?s young daughter so you deserve it. I brought back to life because I am such a merciful and kind but powerful witchdoctor. And I can kill you again, if you come around the village or do anything else wrong, and this time I will not dig your ass up! Believing all this, the ?zombie? would stay out there and hope someone brought food, but of course the locals were afraid of zombies, who were of course about half braindead and hungry as all hell, so they would just leave the food, sometimes in the form of a carcass of racoon or some revolting beast, which the zombie would devour raw, rather than starve. The imagination can provide a visage of what that musta looked like. That, according to Dr. Wade Davis, is the origin of the zombie notion: a grossly exaggerated myth popularized by a cool song and dance video with a grain of truth. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Oct 16 17:42:33 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2022 10:42:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <011a01d8e186$ac3c2640$04b472c0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Sent: Sunday, 16 October, 2022 9:40 AM To: ExI chat list Cc: William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] et tu, nova? >?Who remembers the award-winning ad lib song 'Zombie Jamboree'? billw Billw! This is priceless! We all thought that music video started in the 1980s. This is from 1969. Notice it also features Belefonte twerking at 1:20. If that ain?t a man twerking, I don?t know what to call it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdRI2Y8fGcI That is great video Billw! Note the gently implied nekkidness at 2:07. Understated sexuality it is! But very effective. Hey, it worked on me. There ya go, the value of those more experienced among us, for we, especially Billw, have a kind of societal corporate memory, containing odd fun trivia. On a scouting trip we had the cubs making a campout treat called banana boats, which is a one-off of a banana split when one has no ice cream on account of having no refrigeration available. It starts out with a split banana, then goodies are added. We taught them the Banana Boat song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5dpBWlRANE Oh that man had a beautiful voice. He was just concentrated cool. There is a fun dance that goes with the Banana Boat song, but I couldn?t find it on the internet. A couple of us scout leaders knew the moves so we had 20 cub scouts out there singing about 6 ft, 7 ft, 8 ft bunch, doing the dance, having not a clue why or bunch of whats. OK so much for a productive Sunday morning, as all these smart people are searching the internet for logically inexplicable but pure joyful silliness. Last note on Zombie Jamboree. Note the subtle anti-war message in this verse, which isn?t in most versions of the ad-lib song I could find: Back to back, belly to belly Don't give a damn, I done dead already Back to back, belly to belly At the Zombie Jamboree? I think people what drums in Cango And he thinks what drums in Cango So its up to us you and me To put an end to Catastrophe We must appeal to their goodness of heart To put them all do their part Cause if this Atomic war begin They wont even have a part to breech in Back to back, belly to belly Don't give a damn, I cold dead already Back to back, belly to belly At the Zombie Jamboree? Over half a century ago yet most relevant to today?s world, ja? Thanks Billw, you made my day. spike On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 1:23 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat > wrote: On Sat, Oct 15, 2022 at 7:13 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: You never saw a zombie running, ja? Ja, in the Left 4 Dead series among others. They're rare, but depictions of "fast zombies" exist. _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sun Oct 16 18:00:45 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2022 11:00:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 9:41 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Who remembers the award-winning ad lib song 'Zombie Jamboree'? bill w > I remember it from the Carmen Sandiego kids' game show. On review now, it seems like Rockapella was an underappreciated band used to spice up the show. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sun Oct 16 20:59:08 2022 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2022 16:59:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Oct 16, 2022, 2:02 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 9:41 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> Who remembers the award-winning ad lib song 'Zombie Jamboree'? bill w >> > > I remember it from the Carmen Sandiego kids' game show. On review now, it > seems like Rockapella was an underappreciated band used to spice up the > show. > I thought it was a Kingston Trio original -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Oct 17 15:56:25 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 10:56:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] good news for old folks Message-ID: Buying hearing aids OTC is now legal. Watch the big prices, thousands of dollars, come way down. An audiologist told me that if they were legal and good aid would cost around $350. Won't affect me - I buy used ones from eBay. I urge everyone over 60 to get tested. Hearing loss comes on very gradually. Could save your life. Many men are big on denial of the loss of any ability. Get tested and find out how wrong you are. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com Mon Oct 17 17:47:10 2022 From: ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com (ilsa) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 10:47:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: My grandson is dressing up as a zombie this year at Halloween, it was announced at dinner on Friday night. Reading the string is just been such an entertainment! Thank you for being in the planet and being friends and having this list. Integrating music is such a delight! I am all smiles! Such Halloween fun fun Thank you, ilsa On Sun, Oct 16, 2022, 2:00 PM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Sun, Oct 16, 2022, 2:02 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 9:41 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> Who remembers the award-winning ad lib song 'Zombie Jamboree'? bill w >>> >> >> I remember it from the Carmen Sandiego kids' game show. On review now, >> it seems like Rockapella was an underappreciated band used to spice up the >> show. >> > > I thought it was a Kingston Trio original > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Oct 17 18:04:20 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 11:04:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] et tu, nova? In-Reply-To: References: <001601d8e044$0dff4220$29fdc660$@rainier66.com> <008e01d8e0a0$15daf550$4190dff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001f01d8e252$e25cd540$a7167fc0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of ilsa via extropy-chat Sent: Monday, 17 October, 2022 10:47 AM To: ExI chat list Cc: ilsa Subject: Re: [ExI] et tu, nova? >?My grandson is dressing up as a zombie this year at Halloween, it was announced at dinner on Friday night. Reading the string is just been such an entertainment! Cool that sounds like a lotta fun Ilsa. Best wishes to him. My son is dressing up as? Rick Astley. He looks a lot like Rick did when he made the famous Rickroll video. He found a yellow and black horizontal stripe shirt for the occasion. >?Thank you for being in the planet? Wait, WHAT? No way Jose! I am an extra-terrestrial alien! On the planet but not OF the planet, dontchaknow? >? and being friends and having this list? Likewise Ilsa! We are glad you are here pal. We would have you post more often, even if it is a mere cheerful greeting with news of your grandzombie. >?Integrating music is such a delight! Integrating music now? Is this something you young math hipsters are doing? I am a musician and tutored calculus students doing integration, but I have never integrated music. Do elaborate please. Oh wait? retract. You were referring to Zombie Jamboree. I learned a cool new thing from that fun distraction: there are a bunch of different versions of that song, and all of them are slightly (or even radically) different with their words. Belefonte had that verse about ?if de atomic war begin, they have no part to breech in? which the Kingston Trio and the others didn?t do. I think there is a Peter, Paul and Mary version of this song somewhere which might have that. They were fearless anti-war protestors. >?I am all smiles! Such Halloween fun fun Thank you, ilsa Please post more often Ilsa. We need more upbeat sorts here. spike On Sun, Oct 16, 2022, 2:00 PM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat > wrote: On Sun, Oct 16, 2022, 2:02 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat > wrote: On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 9:41 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > wrote: Who remembers the award-winning ad lib song 'Zombie Jamboree'? bill w I remember it from the Carmen Sandiego kids' game show. On review now, it seems like Rockapella was an underappreciated band used to spice up the show. I thought it was a Kingston Trio original _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Oct 17 18:19:54 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 19:19:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Nuclear Fusion - Friend or Foe? Message-ID: Apologies for yet another depressing article. Sorry! I've just read a long article (translated from the Italian) by a retired nuclear researcher. We have been hoping that nuclear fusion might provide lots of cheap energy and solve our energy problems. He is concerned that the research is supported by the search for military applications. Quote: Basically, research on nuclear fusion, sometimes touted as a benign technology able to produce energy "too cheap to meter," is mainly justified by its military applications. The search is for an "inertial confinement device," something that would detonate without the need for a trigger in the form of a conventional fission bomb. These devices could cover a range of destructive power that could go from tactical warheads to planet-bursting weapons. ------------------ Why does everything have to made into weapons for destruction? Does humanity have an irresistible desire to commit suicide? BillK From dsunley at gmail.com Mon Oct 17 20:11:31 2022 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 14:11:31 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Nuclear Fusion - Friend or Foe? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: No, humanity has an irresistible desire to control, dominate, and thereby protect itself from the outgroup, grounded in the empirically correct observation that the outgroup has an irresistible desire to do the same. "Suicide" as you call it, to the extent that it is a plausible outcome of war at all, is an unprecedented and novel potential side effect to "mere" war, which has been an integral part of the human environment and evolved neural architecture for so long it literally predates opposable thumbs. On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 12:22 PM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Apologies for yet another depressing article. Sorry! > > I've just read a long article (translated from the Italian) by a > retired nuclear researcher. > We have been hoping that nuclear fusion might provide lots of cheap > energy and solve our energy problems. > He is concerned that the research is supported by the search for > military applications. > > < > https://www.senecaeffect.com/2022/10/the-dark-side-of-nuclear-fusion-new.html > > > > Quote: > Basically, research on nuclear fusion, sometimes touted as a benign > technology able to produce energy "too cheap to meter," is mainly > justified by its military applications. The search is for an "inertial > confinement device," something that would detonate without the need > for a trigger in the form of a conventional fission bomb. These > devices could cover a range of destructive power that could go from > tactical warheads to planet-bursting weapons. > ------------------ > > Why does everything have to made into weapons for destruction? > Does humanity have an irresistible desire to commit suicide? > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Oct 17 22:28:46 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 23:28:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] good news for old folks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 17 Oct 2022 at 16:59, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote: > > Buying hearing aids OTC is now legal. Watch the big prices, thousands of dollars, come way down. > An audiologist told me that if they were legal and good aid would cost around $350. > > Won't affect me - I buy used ones from eBay. > > I urge everyone over 60 to get tested. Hearing loss comes on very gradually. Could save your life. Many men are big on denial of the loss of any ability. Get tested and find out how wrong you are. bill w > _______________________________________________ News article just published. They talk about the price of a pair of hearing aids because it is unusual for hearing to deteriorate in only one ear. Though each hearing aid may require different settings. Quote: ?It is very common for people to try two or three different types of hearing aids before they settle on the one they think is best,? Cherukuri says. Because of this, carefully reading return or trial period policies is crucial. ---------------- BillK From atymes at gmail.com Tue Oct 18 05:52:05 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 22:52:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Nuclear Fusion - Friend or Foe? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Fusion, if and when it becomes commercially viable, will have military and non-military applications. This is inescapable, and quite common among "dual use" technologies. But just because the military applications are there, does not mean they are the only ones that will matter, or even that they will dwarf the non-military applications into insignificance. The ability to destroy has quite limited applications compared to everything else one could do with commercially viable fusion. The truly power mad, lust at the possibilities of creation that new technologies promise to unlock. On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 11:22 AM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Apologies for yet another depressing article. Sorry! > > I've just read a long article (translated from the Italian) by a > retired nuclear researcher. > We have been hoping that nuclear fusion might provide lots of cheap > energy and solve our energy problems. > He is concerned that the research is supported by the search for > military applications. > > < > https://www.senecaeffect.com/2022/10/the-dark-side-of-nuclear-fusion-new.html > > > > Quote: > Basically, research on nuclear fusion, sometimes touted as a benign > technology able to produce energy "too cheap to meter," is mainly > justified by its military applications. The search is for an "inertial > confinement device," something that would detonate without the need > for a trigger in the form of a conventional fission bomb. These > devices could cover a range of destructive power that could go from > tactical warheads to planet-bursting weapons. > ------------------ > > Why does everything have to made into weapons for destruction? > Does humanity have an irresistible desire to commit suicide? > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Tue Oct 18 09:29:20 2022 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 11:29:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Nuclear Fusion - Friend or Foe? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 8:21 PM BillK via extropy-chat wrote: > > Apologies for yet another depressing article. Sorry! > > I've just read a long article (translated from the Italian) by a > retired nuclear researcher. > We have been hoping that nuclear fusion might provide lots of cheap > energy and solve our energy problems. > He is concerned that the research is supported by the search for > military applications. > Name one important technology that isn't or hasn't been supported by the search for military applications. > > > Quote: > Basically, research on nuclear fusion, sometimes touted as a benign > technology able to produce energy "too cheap to meter," is mainly > justified by its military applications. The search is for an "inertial > confinement device," something that would detonate without the need > for a trigger in the form of a conventional fission bomb. These > devices could cover a range of destructive power that could go from > tactical warheads to planet-bursting weapons. > ------------------ > > Why does everything have to made into weapons for destruction? > Does humanity have an irresistible desire to commit suicide? > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From pharos at gmail.com Tue Oct 18 10:15:19 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 11:15:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Nuclear Fusion - Friend or Foe? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Oct 2022 at 10:32, Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat wrote: > > Name one important technology that isn't or hasn't been supported by > the search for military applications. > _______________________________________________ Yes, but now that technology is reaching the limits of humanity destroying (AI, biological warfare) or planet destroying (nuclear fusion missiles), perhaps we should be reconsidering the search for ever-greater destruction capabilities. BillK From pharos at gmail.com Tue Oct 18 10:26:29 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 11:26:29 +0100 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Happy_numbers_-_lucky=2C_mersenne=2C_kaprekar=2C?= =?utf-8?b?IG5hcmNpc3Npc3RpYywg4oCm?= Message-ID: Rockstar numbers of math ? lucky, mersenne, kaprekar, narcissistic, self, abundant, deficient ? Erman Akdogan Oct 18, 2022 Quote: A number is special if it has a unique mathematical property that makes it interesting or useful. There are many special numbers in mathematics, including prime numbers, Fibonacci numbers, and Pi. Let?s take a deeper look at some lesser known constants and special numbers: -------------- Interesting article - (to maths geeks). :) I've never heard of some of these unusual numbers...... BillK From pharos at gmail.com Tue Oct 18 10:54:30 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 11:54:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Digital clones of the people we love could forever change how we grieve. Message-ID: Technology that lets us speak to our dead relatives has arrived. Are we ready? Digital clones of the people we love could forever change how we grieve. By Charlotte Jee October 18, 2022 Quote: StoryFile?s CEO, Stephen Smith, demonstrated the technology on a video call, where we were joined by his mother. She died earlier this year, but here she was on the call, sitting in a comfortable chair in her living room. For a brief time, I could only see her, shared via Smith?s screen. She was soft-spoken, with wispy hair and friendly eyes. She dispensed life advice. She seemed wise. Smith told me that his mother ?attended? her own funeral: ?At the end she said, ?I guess that?s it from me ? goodbye!? and everyone burst into tears.? He told me her digital participation was well received by family and friends. And, arguably most important of all, Smith said he?s deeply comforted by the fact that he managed to capture his mother on camera before she passed away. --------------- The latest advanced chatbots plus training on someone?s text messages, emails, and voice conversations can now build very realistic recreations of individuals. It is a considerable leap in technology that some people may find difficult to cope with. BillK From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 18 14:23:41 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:23:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Nuclear Fusion - Friend or Foe? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <006101d8e2fd$39952ab0$acbf8010$@rainier66.com> ?.> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Nuclear Fusion - Friend or Foe? >?Fusion, if and when it becomes commercially viable, will have military and non-military applications. This is inescapable, and quite common among "dual use" technologies. >?But just because the military applications are there, does not mean they are the only ones that will matter, or even that they will dwarf the non-military applications into insignificance. The ability to destroy has quite limited applications compared to everything else one could do with commercially viable fusion. The truly power mad, lust at the possibilities of creation that new technologies promise to unlock? A wise man has spoken this. Thanks Adrian. We already have fusion power for military purposes. Using fusion to blow up stuff is way easier than using it to build stuff. For that reason I consider the fact that the military is kicking in the funding as nearly irrelevant, and while I do so, consider that DARPA funds a looootta stuff that otherwise is questionable with regard to economic viability. Example: the DARPA challenge in 2004 with the robot cars racing thru the desert: businesses will not take that on. But the military put up a million bucks, universities started sniffing around, now less than 20 yrs later, they exist. War bucks did that. Regarding military? it is easy enough to see that he who figured out how to extract power in arbitrary quantities at low cost? rules the world. You can get Simon bar Sinister syndrome just imagining it: if you, YOU? had arbitrarily much energy, which you could do with as you please?hell think of all the problems you could solve with that. You could use it to convert plentiful coal to natural gas, liquify it and send it to Germany, get them outta their fix while they repair the pipe, get that problem straightened around, you could make enough fertilizer to grow food to feed everybody, you could take that chump Bill Gates to Africa to rid that joint of mosquitoes, hell you could solve everything, every damn problem. So ja? if we could get fusion harnessed, everybody wins. ?------------------ >>?Why does everything have to made into weapons for destruction? Does humanity have an irresistible desire to commit suicide? BillK _______________________________________________ Eh, BillK, I see it as evidence we are all avatars in a big computer simulation. I am an engineer by training but I spent much of my career writing software. Some of it doesn?t suck. What I noticed is that software doesn?t write itself. In fact, it fights to stay dead. As I get closer and closer to having it work and come to life, if finds ever more creative ways to break and stay dead. My software hates itself. It hates doing what I created it to do. It sometimes finds ways to die or barf up the wrong answers long after I had it going. My software is so creative in finding ways to die. The more powerful and intelligent my software, the more creative ways it finds to die. Well, humanity is accumulating knowledge, becoming ever more powerful and collectively more intelligent. Simultaneously we are drawing ever closer to nuclear self-annihilation. Conclusion: we are software. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 18 14:34:49 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:34:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Happy_numbers_-_lucky=2C_mersenne=2C_kaprekar=2C?= =?utf-8?b?IG5hcmNpc3Npc3RpYywg4oCm?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <006801d8e2fe$c7394760$55abd620$@rainier66.com> COOL! Thanks BillK! I have discovered my own constant, but before I publish that, I must point out that I don't think it can be derived from any known mathematical process. It can only be estimated by experiment. More on that later. spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Oct 18 15:37:09 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 10:37:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] book review Message-ID: If you enjoyed The Martian, you will love Hail Mary. It is as full of technical detail as his first book, and in addition is the best ever meeting between humans and aliens I have EVER read. bil w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Oct 18 15:53:21 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 10:53:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Simon bar sinister Message-ID: Totally non PC. Refers to a bastard, of course. One wonders how many children got that. Or was that name telling us that the show wasn't really written for children? Or even the average adult. Nowadays that term is usually not taken literally, but just refers to someone who acts in an aggravating way. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 18 16:23:21 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:23:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Simon bar sinister In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <006401d8e30d$f500a5d0$df01f170$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] Simon bar sinister >?Totally non PC. Refers to a bastard, of course. One wonders how many children got that. Or was that name telling us that the show wasn't really written for children? Or even the average adult. >?Nowadays that term is usually not taken literally, but just refers to someone who acts in an aggravating way. bill w No way! Oh this is so cool. Aside: I have never thought of the term bastard as referring to the offspring of an unwed mother, however I encountered that usage in Hawthorne?s Scarlet Letter, so I have no doubt it is an antiquated term that was adapted for a general bad guy, usually male (but of course in the antiquated context it could any gender (so long as it was one of the two most common ones.)) When I saw Lionel Barrymore as the evil Mr. Henry F. Potter (what does the F stand for, Mr. Capra?) I busted up laughing but none of my companions in the room understood why. They had never seen Underdog, so they didn?t know the ambitious mad scientist Simon Bar Sinister. I thought Barrymore did a PERFECT spot-on impersonation of Bar Sinister, and of course the two characters shared the desire to rule the world. Every time Bar Sinister showed up, he had some kind of invention that would give him unlimited POWER! Only afterwards did I realize it was the creators of Underdog who were doing Barrymore rather than the other way around, but it occurred to me that old cartoons are filled with adult humor, insider stuff, particularly Bugs Bunny, all of which went over our youthful heads. My grandfather saw Bugs for the first time when he was in about 60 and I was a young child. He thought that was the funniest show, enjoying it far more than I did. Later I asked him about it, and he explained that Bugs is the caricature of the 1920s teenage hipster, with the attitude and sayings that were common in those days, including his signature ??Ehhh?What?s up, Doc.? My grandfather knew a lot about that subject because he was a 1920s hipster. Elmer Fudd was the caricature of the hapless grownup who had power (symbolized by Fudd?s ever-present shotgun) but not brains, allowing the peaceful Bugs to outwit him every time. The creator of Bugs Bunny and my grandfather were born the same year. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed Oct 19 02:05:25 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 19:05:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] i don't get it Message-ID: <001101d8e35f$4138a820$c3a9f860$@rainier66.com> The Swedes leaked to the press this photo of the NS2 pipeline. Notice something: that looks to me like the explosion would need to come from within the pipe to make that weld failure pattern. If you have insights but would prefer to not discuss this matter on ExI, do feel free to post offlist. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 6256 bytes Desc: not available URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Oct 19 20:25:55 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2022 15:25:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] book review Message-ID: 'How the Scots Invented the Modern World' Arthur Herman Very interesting. At times too much history detail and at times too much philosophy detail. I don't think he left any Scot out. Or anyone married to a Scot, or descended from a Scot, or was educated in Scotland............ Of course there is some exaggeration and some halo effects, but overall I think he made a good case for his thesis. trivia: some executives traveled with a bagpiper- why don't we see that anymore? more trivia: no Scot invented the tartan/clan association. Englishman. even more - whisky started as a peasant drink. william wallace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Oct 20 17:11:28 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 18:11:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans Message-ID: Computers now play chess far better than humans. So young players train by using computers and now play more and more like computers. But this applies not only to chess. Computer assistance is changing humans in many areas. A Good Chess Cheater Might Never Be Caught The line between human and computer play is very hard to find. By Matteo Wong October 20, 2022, Quotes: Chess is flipping our intuitions about creativity and automation inside out: Computers don?t just execute ideas but conceive them, such that to describe a human player as ?machinelike? doesn?t only mean they exhibit great speed and accuracy, like a calculator?the adjective also implies a qualitative change in how they think. And it?s not just happening in chess. Humans are starting to take their cues from machines in many other creative endeavors: Grammarly assists writers, DALL-E 2 makes art, AI writes code, programs design clothing. And maybe chess, a small and nerdy subdomain of human culture, happens to be at the vanguard of a bigger shift?from the time when computers could merely improve cognition to the time when they can change it. --------------- BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Oct 20 17:59:52 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 12:59:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I don't know about others, but the programs Google uses for spell checks and grammar are pretty stupid and incomplete. bill w On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 12:15 PM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Computers now play chess far better than humans. So young players > train by using computers and now play more and more like computers. > But this applies not only to chess. Computer assistance is changing > humans in many areas. > > < > https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/10/hans-niemann-chess-cheating-artificial-intelligence/671799/ > > > > A Good Chess Cheater Might Never Be Caught > The line between human and computer play is very hard to find. > By Matteo Wong October 20, 2022, > > Quotes: > Chess is flipping our intuitions about creativity and automation > inside out: Computers don?t just execute ideas but conceive them, such > that to describe a human player as ?machinelike? doesn?t only mean > they exhibit great speed and accuracy, like a calculator?the adjective > also implies a qualitative change in how they think. > > And it?s not just happening in chess. Humans are starting to take > their cues from machines in many other creative endeavors: Grammarly > assists writers, DALL-E 2 makes art, AI writes code, programs design > clothing. > > And maybe chess, a small and nerdy subdomain of human culture, happens > to be at the vanguard of a bigger shift?from the time when computers > could merely improve cognition to the time when they can change it. > --------------- > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Oct 20 20:01:50 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 13:01:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00a701d8e4be$cb45d460$61d17d20$@rainier66.com> On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 12:15 PM BillK via extropy-chat > wrote: Computers now play chess far better than humans. So young players train by using computers and now play more and more like computers. But this applies not only to chess. Computer assistance is changing humans in many areas. A Good Chess Cheater Might Never Be Caught The line between human and computer play is very hard to find. By Matteo Wong October 20, 2022, ? --------------- BillK____________________________________________ BillK, you may recall the discussion here about 20 years ago when the Brazilian chess championship where they allowed a computer to play, but not as in the running for the prize: it was not eligible for that, but would still be in the cross-table and play as a regular competitor. This competition included two grandmasters. Final result: the computer had the highest score at 13 wins, two draws. It was 1.5 games ahead of its nearest human rival, which was a remarkable result for software at the time. The kicker: it was running on a cell phone. A standalone cell phone processor was running that software. This demonstrated that to play at grandmaster strength required clever software rather than the brute strength of a supercomputer. This caused a big discussion on this forum at the time in which I (and others) speculated that sooner or later a human will work out some kind of interface that could not be detected or defeated by electromagnetic field scrambling or jamming. The computing device would need to somehow be internal (so metal detectors could not find it) and would need to somehow interface in both directions. Talking to the computer was simple enough, but it isn?t clear how it would talk back to the human. At the time, many chess followers including me, speculated about how we would spot the cheating. A signature of such a thing would be a player who refused review his game afterwards, which is exactly what Hans Niemann did, and was defacto proof of his perfidy. He flatly refuses to analyze his game immediately afterwards because he cannot. He can talk about it a coupla days later, after he has had time to figure out why he did what he did. But at the time, he would not and cannot because he doesn?t know. spike ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Oct 20 22:20:52 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 15:20:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com Sent: Thursday, 20 October, 2022 1:02 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Cc: spike at rainier66.com Subject: RE: [ExI] Computers are changing humans On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 12:15 PM BillK via extropy-chat > wrote: Computers now play chess far better than humans. ? ? ? --------------- BillK____________________________________________ >?BillK, you may recall the discussion here about 20 years ago when the Brazilian chess championship where they allowed a computer to play, but not as in the running for the prize: it was not eligible for that, but would still be in the cross-table and play as a regular competitor. This competition included two grandmasters?spike ? There was something else as well. In 2013, Borislav Ivanov was playing in a money tournament and performing in a suspicious way. He was searched but refused to remove his shoes, choosing to withdraw from a tournament in which he was tied for the lead. He retired from chess after that tournament, at age 26. We didn?t hear of him again until four years later when he was caught forging drivers? licenses and selling them on the internet. That kicked off another round of discussion here, again about interfaces. Apparently Ivanov had figured out how to communicate with a computer in his shoes. So now? the tournament players must have their shoes inspected. OK then, that trick doesn?t work anymore, but we also realized it creates a new and interesting challenge for swindlers: can a computer be worked out such that one can hide it within one?s body and communicate with it by some means? The latest go-around with Hans Niemann tells me he figured out a way to do it. If one wanted to do this completely without external moving parts, it would need to be up his ass. I can imagine an IO device of some sort, where the input would be thru clinching one?s butthole (which happens plenty during a normal tournament chess game anyway) but it isn?t clear to me how the device could respond. Interface hipsters, any suggestions? NO dammit I don?t intend to try it, but I want to suggest it on an internet chess forum. spike -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 5470 bytes Desc: not available URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Oct 20 23:07:28 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 16:07:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 3:22 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Interface hipsters, any suggestions? NO dammit I don?t intend to try it, > but I want to suggest it on an internet chess forum. > I am surprised you make no mention of female anatomy, how a player with that would have ready access to something motorized that fits down there, and how some such players - if found with it - could try to pass off wearing it during a match as a mere focusing aid, pretending it had no ability to communicate (which capability is already available in certain models) or to host a computer. Or just use a hearing aid. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu Oct 20 23:25:43 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 16:25:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Sent: Thursday, 20 October, 2022 4:07 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] Computers are changing humans On Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 3:22 PM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: Interface hipsters, any suggestions? NO dammit I don?t intend to try it, but I want to suggest it on an internet chess forum. I am surprised you make no mention of female anatomy, how a player with that would have ready access to something motorized that fits down there, and how some such players - if found with it - could try to pass off wearing it during a match as a mere focusing aid, pretending it had no ability to communicate (which capability is already available in certain models) or to host a computer. Or just use a hearing aid. Adrian I thought of that, as did pretty much every chess player, but declined to comment for lack of knowledge on how such a device located way you implied could have a workable I/O system. One can fairly easily imagine the O, but not the I part of that notion. Ladies here might not wish to comment online perhaps. With regard to a hearing aid, same situation: I see how it could communicate in the device-to-human direction, but I don?t see how the human to device channel would work. The chess online community of course is in mourning for what appears to be the long-anticipated end of the road for tournament chess forever. I am among those who conjectured on this 20 yrs ago. Chess forum participants are gleefully enjoying use of the terms ?chess tournament? and ?vibrating anal beads? in the same sentence of course, something none of us expected we would ever see. Adrian, if a technologically sophisticated swindler wanted to create a perfectly covert small computing device in which the I/O requirement is very small, how would it be done? Anyone? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Oct 20 23:51:59 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2022 00:51:59 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 21 Oct 2022 at 00:28, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > Adrian I thought of that, as did pretty much every chess player, but declined to comment for lack of knowledge on how such a device located way you implied could have a workable I/O system. One can fairly easily imagine the O, but not the I part of that notion. Ladies here might not wish to comment online perhaps. With regard to a hearing aid, same situation: I see how it could communicate in the device-to-human direction, but I don?t see how the human to device channel would work. > > The chess online community of course is in mourning for what appears to be the long-anticipated end of the road for tournament chess forever. I am among those who conjectured on this 20 yrs ago. Chess forum participants are gleefully enjoying use of the terms ?chess tournament? and ?vibrating anal beads? in the same sentence of course, something none of us expected we would ever see. > > Adrian, if a technologically sophisticated swindler wanted to create a perfectly covert small computing device in which the I/O requirement is very small, how would it be done? Anyone? > > spike > _______________________________________________ The suspect would not necessarily cheat in every tournament game, or for every move in a game. If the game is broadcast, or the outside helper can watch the game, then the suspect only needs a receiver for perhaps a few computer suggested moves. I would expect normal hearing aid type devices to be checked for before a game. Bone conduction receivers are available which could be concealed in a bushy hairstyle. But there are thousands of chess fans discussing this, so I doubt that we could think of something unique that nobody else has suggested. :) BillK From gsantostasi at gmail.com Thu Oct 20 23:58:24 2022 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 16:58:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: The solution is not obvious? It is time to allow in competition human-AI collaboration. The challenge would be then how this can be optimized where one player is better than another in using AI together with his own skills and understanding of how the AI works. I'm pretty sure that a human-AI combination can be better than only humans or AI. This is the future anyway, in particular when neuro links would be common and widespread in a few years. It is the same thing I feel any time use of drugs in sports is called cheating. I agree that very dangerous drugs should be forbidden but not because they help performance but because they are dangerous (I'm sure there is a dividing line somewhere there). This is a transition time where we still hope to separate what is just human and what is "artificial" but that separation is artificial anyway. Soon that transition will be over and we will be the AI anyway. Then what? No competitions or sports? I don't think so. We are already using AI to train chess players so why not let them use it during a competition? Or any human can go to these competitions use the AI in a very noncreative way and have zero input in the process (so it would make competing meaningless) or some humans will figure out how to work together with an AI and be better than anybody else and that would prove a point and be very interesting. I don't understand this idea of making the competition more fun and fair by limiting the available possibilities a modern human has at his disposal. Would a match of soccer be more fun if the players had only one leg? There are Paralympics and they have a place but weirdly enough in these Olympics prosthetics can make you run faster than humans with normal limbs for example. So let people do whatever they want within the only limits that make sense that is they should not damage themselves or others. Giovanni On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 4:27 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat > *Sent:* Thursday, 20 October, 2022 4:07 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Cc:* Adrian Tymes > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Computers are changing humans > > > > On Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 3:22 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > Interface hipsters, any suggestions? NO dammit I don?t intend to try it, > but I want to suggest it on an internet chess forum. > > > > I am surprised you make no mention of female anatomy, how a player with > that would have ready access to something motorized that fits down there, > and how some such players - if found with it - could try to pass off > wearing it during a match as a mere focusing aid, pretending it had no > ability to communicate (which capability is already available in certain > models) or to host a computer. > > > > Or just use a hearing aid. > > > > > > > > Adrian I thought of that, as did pretty much every chess player, but > declined to comment for lack of knowledge on how such a device located way > you implied could have a workable I/O system. One can fairly easily > imagine the O, but not the I part of that notion. Ladies here might not > wish to comment online perhaps. With regard to a hearing aid, same > situation: I see how it could communicate in the device-to-human direction, > but I don?t see how the human to device channel would work. > > > > The chess online community of course is in mourning for what appears to be > the long-anticipated end of the road for tournament chess forever. I am > among those who conjectured on this 20 yrs ago. Chess forum participants > are gleefully enjoying use of the terms ?chess tournament? and ?vibrating > anal beads? in the same sentence of course, something none of us expected > we would ever see. > > > > Adrian, if a technologically sophisticated swindler wanted to create a > perfectly covert small computing device in which the I/O requirement is > very small, how would it be done? Anyone? > > > > spike > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gsantostasi at gmail.com Fri Oct 21 00:09:11 2022 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 17:09:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: " And it?s not just happening in chess. Humans are starting to take their cues from machines in many other creative endeavors: Grammarly assists writers, DALL-E 2 makes art, AI writes code , programs design clothing . Perhaps one day we won?t compare natural-language programs with Didion or music-composing software with Bach , but the other way around." Exactly. I started to play with DALLE-2 and Midjourney and I can see how the lazy way to use this tech can produce interesting to look at, silly or whimsical results but if you want to create something really amazing and make new forms of art it requires a lot of work and time (even if the process of creating is streamlined for sure). It can be done with AI art and this opens incredible possibilities. This should be a group where we envision these things and embrace them. I don't care if a person won a chess competition using AI assistance (in particular if they did it in a way that implied some kind of "merger" with the AI). Good for him. As I said the challenge is how can I use AI to do the best work possible in this field. Why not art competitions where you use AI as much as you want? Let's see how the results compare. Same with chess or anything else. I don't see the problems at all if not in the imagination of people that think this is a problem. Giovanni On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 4:58 PM Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > The solution is not obvious? > It is time to allow in competition human-AI collaboration. The challenge > would be then how this can be optimized where one player is better than > another in using AI together with his own skills and understanding of how > the AI works. I'm pretty sure that a human-AI combination can be better > than only humans or AI. This is the future anyway, in particular when neuro > links would be common and widespread in a few years. > It is the same thing I feel any time use of drugs in sports is called > cheating. I agree that very dangerous drugs should be forbidden but not > because they help performance but because they are dangerous (I'm sure > there is a dividing line somewhere there). > This is a transition time where we still hope to separate what is just > human and what is "artificial" but that separation is artificial anyway. > Soon that transition will be over and we will be the AI anyway. Then what? > No competitions or sports? I don't think so. > We are already using AI to train chess players so why not let them use it > during a competition? > Or any human can go to these competitions use the AI in a very noncreative > way and have zero input in the process (so it would make competing > meaningless) or some humans will figure out how to work together with an AI > and be better than anybody else and that would prove a point and be very > interesting. > I don't understand this idea of making the competition more fun and fair > by limiting the available possibilities a modern human has at his disposal. > Would a match of soccer be more fun if the players had only one leg? There > are Paralympics and they have a place but weirdly enough in these Olympics > prosthetics can make you run faster than humans with normal limbs for > example. > So let people do whatever they want within the only limits that make sense > that is they should not damage themselves or others. > Giovanni > > > > > On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 4:27 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> >> >> *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf >> Of *Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat >> *Sent:* Thursday, 20 October, 2022 4:07 PM >> *To:* ExI chat list >> *Cc:* Adrian Tymes >> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Computers are changing humans >> >> >> >> On Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 3:22 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >> Interface hipsters, any suggestions? NO dammit I don?t intend to try it, >> but I want to suggest it on an internet chess forum. >> >> >> >> I am surprised you make no mention of female anatomy, how a player with >> that would have ready access to something motorized that fits down there, >> and how some such players - if found with it - could try to pass off >> wearing it during a match as a mere focusing aid, pretending it had no >> ability to communicate (which capability is already available in certain >> models) or to host a computer. >> >> >> >> Or just use a hearing aid. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Adrian I thought of that, as did pretty much every chess player, but >> declined to comment for lack of knowledge on how such a device located way >> you implied could have a workable I/O system. One can fairly easily >> imagine the O, but not the I part of that notion. Ladies here might not >> wish to comment online perhaps. With regard to a hearing aid, same >> situation: I see how it could communicate in the device-to-human direction, >> but I don?t see how the human to device channel would work. >> >> >> >> The chess online community of course is in mourning for what appears to >> be the long-anticipated end of the road for tournament chess forever. I am >> among those who conjectured on this 20 yrs ago. Chess forum participants >> are gleefully enjoying use of the terms ?chess tournament? and ?vibrating >> anal beads? in the same sentence of course, something none of us expected >> we would ever see. >> >> >> >> Adrian, if a technologically sophisticated swindler wanted to create a >> perfectly covert small computing device in which the I/O requirement is >> very small, how would it be done? Anyone? >> >> >> >> spike >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gsantostasi at gmail.com Fri Oct 21 00:30:29 2022 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 17:30:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/oct/16/dune-subreddit-group-bans-ai-generated-art-for-being-low-effort And this article makes an extremely good point. What if went the opposite way and limited people in an absurd way, would their efforts in any field be evaluated differently because of these artificial restrictions? Yes, there is a space for that and it is usually a kind of side road show where somebody is chained upside down and is going to shoot an arrow with their mouth or something. But it is just a form of entertainment and not a serious way to make humans compete with each other. Competitions should be all about pushing our limits and seeing what the most trained, motivated humans can do in a given field. Using AI to enhance ourselves should be an essential part of that pushing the limits. Giovanni On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 5:09 PM Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > " And it?s not just happening in chess. Humans are starting to take their > cues from machines in many other creative endeavors: Grammarly assists > writers, DALL-E 2 makes art, AI writes code > , > programs design clothing > . > Perhaps one day we won?t compare natural-language programs with Didion > or > music-composing software with Bach > , > but the other way around." > > Exactly. I started to play with DALLE-2 and Midjourney and I can see how > the lazy way to use this tech can produce interesting to look at, silly or > whimsical results but if you want to create something really amazing and > make new forms of art it requires a lot of work and time (even if the > process of creating is streamlined for sure). It can be done with AI art > and this opens incredible possibilities. This should be a group where we > envision these things and embrace them. I don't care if a person won a > chess competition using AI assistance (in particular if they did it in a > way that implied some kind of "merger" with the AI). Good for him. As I > said the challenge is how can I use AI to do the best work possible in this > field. Why not art competitions where you use AI as much as you want? Let's > see how the results compare. Same with chess or anything else. > I don't see the problems at all if not in the imagination of people that > think this is a problem. > Giovanni > > On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 4:58 PM Giovanni Santostasi > wrote: > >> The solution is not obvious? >> It is time to allow in competition human-AI collaboration. The challenge >> would be then how this can be optimized where one player is better than >> another in using AI together with his own skills and understanding of how >> the AI works. I'm pretty sure that a human-AI combination can be better >> than only humans or AI. This is the future anyway, in particular when neuro >> links would be common and widespread in a few years. >> It is the same thing I feel any time use of drugs in sports is called >> cheating. I agree that very dangerous drugs should be forbidden but not >> because they help performance but because they are dangerous (I'm sure >> there is a dividing line somewhere there). >> This is a transition time where we still hope to separate what is just >> human and what is "artificial" but that separation is artificial anyway. >> Soon that transition will be over and we will be the AI anyway. Then what? >> No competitions or sports? I don't think so. >> We are already using AI to train chess players so why not let them use it >> during a competition? >> Or any human can go to these competitions use the AI in a very >> noncreative way and have zero input in the process (so it would make >> competing meaningless) or some humans will figure out how to work together >> with an AI and be better than anybody else and that would prove a point and >> be very interesting. >> I don't understand this idea of making the competition more fun and fair >> by limiting the available possibilities a modern human has at his disposal. >> Would a match of soccer be more fun if the players had only one leg? There >> are Paralympics and they have a place but weirdly enough in these Olympics >> prosthetics can make you run faster than humans with normal limbs for >> example. >> So let people do whatever they want within the only limits that make >> sense that is they should not damage themselves or others. >> Giovanni >> >> >> >> >> On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 4:27 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> *From:* extropy-chat *On >>> Behalf Of *Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat >>> *Sent:* Thursday, 20 October, 2022 4:07 PM >>> *To:* ExI chat list >>> *Cc:* Adrian Tymes >>> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Computers are changing humans >>> >>> >>> >>> On Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 3:22 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: >>> >>> Interface hipsters, any suggestions? NO dammit I don?t intend to try it, >>> but I want to suggest it on an internet chess forum. >>> >>> >>> >>> I am surprised you make no mention of female anatomy, how a player with >>> that would have ready access to something motorized that fits down there, >>> and how some such players - if found with it - could try to pass off >>> wearing it during a match as a mere focusing aid, pretending it had no >>> ability to communicate (which capability is already available in certain >>> models) or to host a computer. >>> >>> >>> >>> Or just use a hearing aid. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Adrian I thought of that, as did pretty much every chess player, but >>> declined to comment for lack of knowledge on how such a device located way >>> you implied could have a workable I/O system. One can fairly easily >>> imagine the O, but not the I part of that notion. Ladies here might not >>> wish to comment online perhaps. With regard to a hearing aid, same >>> situation: I see how it could communicate in the device-to-human direction, >>> but I don?t see how the human to device channel would work. >>> >>> >>> >>> The chess online community of course is in mourning for what appears to >>> be the long-anticipated end of the road for tournament chess forever. I am >>> among those who conjectured on this 20 yrs ago. Chess forum participants >>> are gleefully enjoying use of the terms ?chess tournament? and ?vibrating >>> anal beads? in the same sentence of course, something none of us expected >>> we would ever see. >>> >>> >>> >>> Adrian, if a technologically sophisticated swindler wanted to create a >>> perfectly covert small computing device in which the I/O requirement is >>> very small, how would it be done? Anyone? >>> >>> >>> >>> spike >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Oct 21 00:47:48 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2022 01:47:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 21 Oct 2022 at 01:33, Giovanni Santostasi via extropy-chat wrote: > > https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/oct/16/dune-subreddit-group-bans-ai-generated-art-for-being-low-effort > And this article makes an extremely good point. What if went the opposite way and limited people in an absurd way, would their efforts in any field be evaluated differently because of these artificial restrictions? > Yes, there is a space for that and it is usually a kind of side road show where somebody is chained upside down and is going to shoot an arrow with their mouth or something. But it is just a form of entertainment and not a serious way to make humans compete with each other. Competitions should be all about pushing our limits and seeing what the most trained, motivated humans can do in a given field. Using AI to enhance ourselves should be an essential part of that pushing the limits. > Giovanni > _______________________________________________ I agree that using AI to enhance human performance is the way of the future. But not for solvable problems like chess or Go. Chess and Go programs can now consistently beat the human world champion in *every* game. If the human player tries to improve on the chess program suggested moves, they will make worse suggestions. The most successful method for chess is to let the computer play the whole game without human interference. BillK From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 21 01:15:16 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 18:15:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00be01d8e4ea$94a28a30$bde79e90$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Sent: Thursday, 20 October, 2022 5:48 PM To: ExI chat list Cc: BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] Computers are changing humans On Fri, 21 Oct 2022 at 01:33, Giovanni Santostasi via extropy-chat wrote: > > https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/oct/16/dune-subreddit-group-bans > -ai-generated-art-for-being-low-effort > And this article makes an extremely good point. What if went the opposite way and limited people in an absurd way, would their efforts in any field be evaluated differently because of these artificial restrictions?... > _______________________________________________ >...I agree that using AI to enhance human performance is the way of the future. But not for solvable problems like chess or Go. Chess and Go programs can now consistently beat the human world champion in *every* game. If the human player tries to improve on the chess program suggested moves, they will make worse suggestions. The most successful method for chess is to let the computer play the whole game without human interference. BillK _______________________________________________ That's right BillK. We have computer chess tournaments going on constantly, where the best software plays the best software. I will freely admit they play some astonishing games, but I don't follow it much. I do follow the top humans however. Note that sports betting is becoming more accepted over time. The betting on the human chess is way higher on all axes: volume of shares traded, number of people betting, and amounts bet. The top software not so much. This tournament where Niemann apparently somehow hid a computing device up his ass was a big money tournament. So it does matter, and it also is likely the end for money human vs human tournaments. Sigh. That being said, I still want to see robot motorcycle races, which as far as I know still don't exist, but they are coming: https://youtu.be/miZ2lAKG9Fc Humans such as Rossi are still comfortably faster, a lot faster, but that 1:17 is likely faster than I can ride that lap. I would like to try however. I just noticed this race with Motobot was five years ago. I also noted that Motobot was racing on an unmodified stock bike that ordinary proles can buy at the local shop. This is gonna be a lotta fun when they get these mechanical beasts on a good AMA superbike or race it at Isle of Man TT, oh mercy that will be just wicked cool. spike From pharos at gmail.com Fri Oct 21 01:40:54 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2022 02:40:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: <00be01d8e4ea$94a28a30$bde79e90$@rainier66.com> References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> <00be01d8e4ea$94a28a30$bde79e90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 21 Oct 2022 at 02:17, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > That's right BillK. We have computer chess tournaments going on constantly, > where the best software plays the best software. I will freely admit they > play some astonishing games, but I don't follow it much. I do follow the > top humans however. > > Note that sports betting is becoming more accepted over time. The betting > on the human chess is way higher on all axes: volume of shares traded, > number of people betting, and amounts bet. The top software not so much. > This tournament where Niemann apparently somehow hid a computing device up > his ass was a big money tournament. So it does matter, and it also is > likely the end for money human vs human tournaments. Sigh. > > > spike > _______________________________________________ Chess grandmaster Hans Niemann sues champion Magnus Carlsen, others for $100 million over cheating claim Published Thu, Oct 20 2022 Now it looks as though they have to prove how the cheating was done. BillK From gsantostasi at gmail.com Fri Oct 21 02:00:13 2022 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 19:00:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> <00be01d8e4ea$94a28a30$bde79e90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I'm not sure that a human trained to work with an AI to improve its performance would do worse than AI alone. The existing competitions in both fields do not allow for such a combination if I understand correctly. Also if that is the case then let's invent a better game where humans and AI can work together and enhance each other capabilities. Some things just become obsolete and while I love chess if it is time to make it something that it can be enjoyed at the hobby level without making it a profession then let it be. I don't see all this fuss about making sure nobody cheats. I think it is pretty ridiculous. Giovanni On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 6:43 PM BillK via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > On Fri, 21 Oct 2022 at 02:17, spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: > > > > That's right BillK. We have computer chess tournaments going on > constantly, > > where the best software plays the best software. I will freely admit > they > > play some astonishing games, but I don't follow it much. I do follow the > > top humans however. > > > > Note that sports betting is becoming more accepted over time. The > betting > > on the human chess is way higher on all axes: volume of shares traded, > > number of people betting, and amounts bet. The top software not so much. > > This tournament where Niemann apparently somehow hid a computing device > up > > his ass was a big money tournament. So it does matter, and it also is > > likely the end for money human vs human tournaments. Sigh. > > > > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > > > Chess grandmaster Hans Niemann sues champion Magnus Carlsen, others > for $100 million over cheating claim > Published Thu, Oct 20 2022 > > < > https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/20/chess-grandmaster-hans-niemann-files-100-million-defamation-suit-over-cheating-accusation.html > > > > Now it looks as though they have to prove how the cheating was done. > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Oct 21 02:13:57 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 19:13:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 4:27 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Adrian I thought of that, as did pretty much every chess player, but > declined to comment for lack of knowledge on how such a device located way > you implied could have a workable I/O system. One can fairly easily > imagine the O, but not the I part of that notion. Ladies here might not > wish to comment online perhaps. With regard to a hearing aid, same > situation: I see how it could communicate in the device-to-human direction, > but I don?t see how the human to device channel would work. > The easy answer involves a collaborator watching the game, so the device itself need only relay information to the wearer. A harder answer involves fine control of groin muscles, of the sort that should likely not be detailed on this list. A hearing aid could hear the moves being called out. Perhaps the cheater mutters the moves, within the range of innocent verbal tics. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 21 02:23:13 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 19:23:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> <00be01d8e4ea$94a28a30$bde79e90$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00e401d8e4f4$12fb6c90$38f245b0$@rainier66.com> ...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Computers are changing humans On Fri, 21 Oct 2022 at 02:17, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > ... > This tournament where Niemann apparently somehow hid a computing > device up his ass was a big money tournament. So it does matter, and > it also is likely the end for money human vs human tournaments. Sigh. > > > spike > _______________________________________________ >...Chess grandmaster Hans Niemann sues champion Magnus Carlsen, others for $100 million over cheating claim Published Thu, Oct 20 2022 >...Now it looks as though they have to prove how the cheating was done. >...BillK _______________________________________________ Niemann's case is weakened considerably by the fact that he has been caught cheating by Chess.com twice before, in online tournaments. They reviewed his games more carefully, using a collection of different software packages and showed that he has cheated in over 100 games, as recently as 2020. When a jury hears that evidence above by any expert witness (or in my case A-rated witness (expert only in my wettest dreams)) this case is oooooverrrrrrrr... spike From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 21 02:38:12 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 19:38:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computers are changing humans In-Reply-To: References: <00ac01d8e4be$cbe65a20$63b30e60$@rainier66.com> <001201d8e4d2$375e6d70$a61b4850$@rainier66.com> <002301d8e4db$470a7cb0$d51f7610$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <010101d8e4f6$2a44f680$7ecee380$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] Computers are changing humans >?The easy answer involves a collaborator watching the game, so the device itself need only relay information to the wearer? Perhaps. I thought of one that might work: using orthodontic bands around molars 17 and 32 (or perhaps 18 and 33 if the wisdom teeth are not yet present) the player could perhaps enter the requisite 12 bits using the tongue. Bluetooth could send the signal to the computing device perhaps. Are there Bluetooth hipsters among us who can tell us if that signal could be detected? I would think it could. >?A harder answer involves fine control of groin muscles, of the sort that should likely not be detailed on this list? Ja. Although it could be enormously entertaining and even informative, such a discussion could distract from the subject at hand. Chess followers are loving all this of course, or would be if it didn?t ring an ominous death knell for our beloved sport, as well as carry discomforting implications for mankind in general. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon Oct 24 01:38:11 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2022 18:38:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the end is not nigh Message-ID: <005101d8e749$479b5260$d6d1f720$@rainier66.com> I am feeling a sense of calm relief from the recent data. Some inflation models suggested the Big Rip could happen as soon as 22 billion years in the future. This has been bothering the hell outta me since the first time the theory was published: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip The convincing Brout et.al. analysis has now suggested not only that the Big Rip is much farther away, it will not happen at all. I will provide links when they appear in something other than the popular press. But I sure hope the Harvard team is right. I don't want it all to end that way. The Big Rip is just too sad. Now. smart people say it isn't coming that soon, if at all. Whew, such a relief. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Mon Oct 24 05:46:44 2022 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 07:46:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] SpaceX fans should stand behind NASA and support the Artemis program Message-ID: Turing Church newsletter. SpaceX fans should stand behind NASA and support the Artemis program. Also, review of "The Consolation" by Lincoln Cannon. https://www.turingchurch.com/p/spacex-fans-should-stand-behind-nasa From pharos at gmail.com Mon Oct 24 18:48:23 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 19:48:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] the end is not nigh In-Reply-To: <005101d8e749$479b5260$d6d1f720$@rainier66.com> References: <005101d8e749$479b5260$d6d1f720$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 24 Oct 2022 at 02:41, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > I am feeling a sense of calm relief from the recent data. Some inflation models suggested the Big Rip could happen as soon as 22 billion years in the future. This has been bothering the hell outta me since the first time the theory was published: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip > > The convincing Brout et.al. analysis has now suggested not only that the Big Rip is much farther away, it will not happen at all. > I will provide links when they appear in something other than the popular press. But I sure hope the Harvard team is right. I don?t want it all to end that way. The Big Rip is just too sad. Now? smart people say it isn?t coming that soon, if at all. Whew, such a relief. > > spike > _______________________________________________ Rather a long-term worry, though?? ;) The alternative is watching all the stars gradually burn out as they reach the end of their life. That is expected to take longer than the Big Rip, so that's a benefit. But perhaps our AI assisted descendants will manage an alternative in billions of years. Assuming they are not just playing around in virtual universes. :) BillK From spike at rainier66.com Mon Oct 24 23:03:43 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 16:03:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the end is not nigh In-Reply-To: References: <005101d8e749$479b5260$d6d1f720$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004701d8e7fc$dd942cc0$98bc8640$@rainier66.com> ...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip > >>... The convincing Brout et.al. analysis has now suggested not only that the Big Rip is much farther away, it will not happen at all... spike > _______________________________________________ >...Rather a long-term worry, though?? ;) ...BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, it's all a matter of perspective. I think we can all agree that the Big Rip is absolutely the very worst thing that can happen, ja? Well, let's do a little thought experiment. Fellers our age often go to the doctor every year or two even if we have nothing specifically wrong: just go for a kind of check up, a blood test, that sorta thing. We always worry however, for what she might tell us. As a thought experiment, let me imagine I go, she tests, tells me: Spike, bad news, lad, sorry to hafta tell ya, but you have cancer up the kazoo, literally, and it's gone everywhere, and you know the drill, we fill you with toxins, zap the hell outta ya and maybe you will be OK, but good chance within a year it will be adios amigo. OK damn, and I paid good money to hear that (in the thought experiment I did.) So that would be bad old no-good rotten day. So... imagine I come home, seeking solace, get one of my favorite calming activities, reading Astronomy magazine. Nice, calming, restful, stars and planets and galaxies and stuff. Imagine I read that a bunch of type A1 supernova measurements just came back and the analysis is bad news: the Big Rip is coming in as little as ten billion years, oh dear. If all that happened... if aaaalllll thaaat happened...in one very bad day... I would be more concerned about that cancer up the kazoo business than even the Big Rip. So it's all in how you look at it. spike From spike at rainier66.com Mon Oct 24 23:20:17 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 16:20:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] worked on me Message-ID: <005601d8e7ff$2df88c90$89e9a5b0$@rainier66.com> We are seeing climate change protestors doing various acts of civil disobedience, climbing bridge towers, hurling soup or mashed potatoes at oil paintings (to protest oil) and that sorta thing. I didn't pay much attention to it really until they figured out a protest which reeeeaaaalllly riveted my full and undivided attention: they glued themselves to the floor of the Porsche dealer. Oh that worked. It damn sure worked on me. For instance. One guy glued himself next to a really tasty looking 718 boxter, with its sleek handsome looks and road-holding aplomb unmatched in the sports car world! Another guy glued himself in front of the new Panamera, the unmistakable luxury sedan which is equally at home on the race track and the Autobahn, delivering its passengers in comfort while providing the driver with unmatched excitement! Another glued himself next to the new Cayman, and oh what a piece of German engineering that is, oh my, a mid-range sports car with just enough compromise for road use such that the corners just surrender to its effortless handling characteristics! Another guy glued himself next to that yummy turbo Taycan, with its blistering acceleration and superlative luxury providing both comfort and exhilaration! I hadn't even heard of the new 2023 Porsche line until the climate protestors advertised them for free. They should hit the Mercedes dealer next, then BMW after that. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbb386 at main.nc.us Tue Oct 25 00:27:24 2022 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 20:27:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] worked on me In-Reply-To: <005601d8e7ff$2df88c90$89e9a5b0$@rainier66.com> References: <005601d8e7ff$2df88c90$89e9a5b0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <3f3932cc-8124-a92c-b822-72df77be5df6@main.nc.us> Did the dealership leave them glued there? Over the weekend? Regards, MB spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > We are seeing climate change protestors doing various acts of civil > disobedience, climbing bridge towers, hurling soup or mashed potatoes at > oil paintings (to protest oil) and that sorta thing.? I didn?t pay much > attention to it really until they figured out a protest which > reeeeaaaalllly riveted my full and undivided attention: they glued > themselves to the floor of the Porsche dealer.? Oh that worked.? It damn > sure worked on me.? For instance > > One guy glued himself next to a really tasty looking 718 boxter, with > its sleek handsome looks and road-holding aplomb unmatched in the sports > car world! > > Another guy glued himself in front of the new Panamera, the unmistakable > luxury sedan which is equally at home on the race track and the > Autobahn, delivering its passengers in comfort while providing the > driver with unmatched excitement! > > Another glued himself next to the new Cayman, and oh what a piece of > German engineering that is, oh my, a mid-range sports car with just > enough compromise for road use such that the corners just surrender to > its effortless handling characteristics! > > Another guy glued himself next to that yummy turbo Taycan, with its > blistering acceleration and superlative luxury providing both comfort > and exhilaration! > > I hadn?t even heard of the new 2023 Porsche line until the climate > protestors advertised them for free.? They should hit the Mercedes > dealer next, then BMW after that. > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 25 00:54:24 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 17:54:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] worked on me In-Reply-To: <3f3932cc-8124-a92c-b822-72df77be5df6@main.nc.us> References: <005601d8e7ff$2df88c90$89e9a5b0$@rainier66.com> <3f3932cc-8124-a92c-b822-72df77be5df6@main.nc.us> Message-ID: <00b301d8e80c$54208aa0$fc619fe0$@rainier66.com> > ...On Behalf Of MB via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] worked on me >...Did the dealership leave them glued there? Over the weekend? Regards, MB I don't know. But it looks to me like the dealership was in a position to cash in bigtime. They know the protestors must eventually unglue themselves and leave. Good chance they will need to think of an alternative strategy to call attention to their cause, after they discovered they managed to call attention to fine German engineering as exhibited in those marvelous luxury sports cars. No matter what one thinks of Germans, one is compelled to recognize they have done some damn fine automotive engineering. spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Oct 25 14:05:01 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 09:05:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] worked on me In-Reply-To: <00b301d8e80c$54208aa0$fc619fe0$@rainier66.com> References: <005601d8e7ff$2df88c90$89e9a5b0$@rainier66.com> <3f3932cc-8124-a92c-b822-72df77be5df6@main.nc.us> <00b301d8e80c$54208aa0$fc619fe0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Let's hear it for the Japanese: their Toyotas are more reliable than German cars and cost less to fix. According to Consumer Reports. bill w On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 7:56 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > ...On Behalf Of MB via extropy-chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] worked on me > > >...Did the dealership leave them glued there? Over the weekend? > > Regards, > MB > > > I don't know. But it looks to me like the dealership was in a position to > cash in bigtime. They know the protestors must eventually unglue > themselves > and leave. Good chance they will need to think of an alternative strategy > to call attention to their cause, after they discovered they managed to > call > attention to fine German engineering as exhibited in those marvelous luxury > sports cars. > > No matter what one thinks of Germans, one is compelled to recognize they > have done some damn fine automotive engineering. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 25 14:42:30 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 07:42:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] worked on me In-Reply-To: References: <005601d8e7ff$2df88c90$89e9a5b0$@rainier66.com> <3f3932cc-8124-a92c-b822-72df77be5df6@main.nc.us> <00b301d8e80c$54208aa0$fc619fe0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001b01d8e880$036fb4e0$0a4f1ea0$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] worked on me >?Let's hear it for the Japanese: their Toyotas are more reliable than German cars and cost less to fix. According to Consumer Reports. bill w Billw, that depends on how you compare them. If you wish to compare cars, you must compare them in classes of similar performance. Consumer reports tends to miss this persistently. If you get a Japanese car that performs similarly to its German counterpart, it is similar in initial cost, in repair and maintenance costs and in depreciation. If you measure that way, American performance cars meet and often beat both Japanese and German. The venerable corvette does well in performance per dollar competitions. Regarding performance per dollar in cars: the Chinese are coming. They are not here yet, but they are coming. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Oct 25 19:52:55 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 14:52:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] worked on me In-Reply-To: <001b01d8e880$036fb4e0$0a4f1ea0$@rainier66.com> References: <005601d8e7ff$2df88c90$89e9a5b0$@rainier66.com> <3f3932cc-8124-a92c-b822-72df77be5df6@main.nc.us> <00b301d8e80c$54208aa0$fc619fe0$@rainier66.com> <001b01d8e880$036fb4e0$0a4f1ea0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I was thinking mostly of frequency of repair costs and there the Toyota beats them all. Honda in second place and Subaru way up there. No German cars near the top. Nor AMerican. Jeep the lowest of all. Just griping: my white car had the dashboard take a dive: new computer = $1000. Now the 'gold' car needs new ball joints - $1000. Dry rot on the tires : michelin = $650. Still, many years of no car payments, very little maintenance, and so I think I am still ahead. We have enough in reserve so that we don't have to cut back on spending (the first time in my post-divorce life that that is true) - a good feeling. Town cars forever!! bill w On Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 9:44 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *?*> *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] worked on me > > > > >?Let's hear it for the Japanese: their > > Toyotas are more reliable than German > > cars and cost less to fix. According to > > Consumer Reports. bill w > > > > > > Billw, that depends on how you compare them. If you wish to compare cars, > you must compare them in classes of similar performance. Consumer reports > tends to miss this persistently. If you get a Japanese car that performs > similarly to its German counterpart, it is similar in initial cost, in > repair and maintenance costs and in depreciation. > > > > If you measure that way, American performance cars meet and often beat > both Japanese and German. The venerable corvette does well in performance > per dollar competitions. > > > > Regarding performance per dollar in cars: the Chinese are coming. They > are not here yet, but they are coming. > > > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Oct 25 21:43:09 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 22:43:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] California 5.1 Earthquake 25 Oct Message-ID: While many people in California felt a moderate earthquake Tuesday, some smartphone users actually got a heads-up before it happened thanks to technology developed at the University of California, Berkeley. Axios reports: --------- Looks like it was near Spike. Probably not enough to shake him out of bed though! :) BillK From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 25 22:02:16 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 15:02:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] California 5.1 Earthquake 25 Oct In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <008901d8e8bd$72261130$56723390$@rainier66.com> ..> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Subject: [ExI] California 5.1 Earthquake 25 Oct >.While many people in California felt a moderate earthquake Tuesday, some smartphone users actually got a heads-up before it happened thanks to technology developed at the University of California, Berkeley. Axios reports: < https://slashdot.org/story/22/10/25/2120235/android-users-alerted-just-befor e-california-earthquake> --------- Looks like it was near Spike. Probably not enough to shake him out of bed though! :) BillK _______________________________________________ Well, coupla things BillK. The shake didn't happen until after noon because we are already taking a lunch break at the time. That quake happened in Joseph Grant park east of San Jose. By sheer coincidence, my bride and I, along with another friend, had decided to go hiking in Grant Park today. The photo above shows them heading back down after the quake. We texted our son who was in school to see how it went down there. They made them do duck and cover, then a few minutes later, made them go out onto the ball field. He said nothing fell over as far as he could tell. None of us have that Berkeley app. But all three of us got pings within about a minute after the quake estimating where the epicenter was, and estimating accurately the 5.1 magnitude. The epicenter was about 4 miles south of where we were hiking. This is cool however, for now I will get that Berkeley app, see if it really can give me even a few seconds notice. I don't think it coulda done it from where we were however, because we were too close: the waves travel at the speed of sound in rock, so it woulda only taken a coupla seconds to get there. Adrian was farther away from the epicenter, so he is likely OK. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 30410 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 25 22:10:37 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 15:10:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] California 5.1 Earthquake 25 Oct In-Reply-To: <008f01d8e8bd$731664a0$59432de0$@rainier66.com> References: <008f01d8e8bd$731664a0$59432de0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009701d8e8be$9d026600$d7073200$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com ... >...This is cool however, for now I will get that Berkeley app, see if it really can give me even a few seconds notice...spike Heh we just had an aftershock. If that software works, it is getting plenty of chances to be tested today. spike -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 3466 bytes Desc: not available URL: From atymes at gmail.com Tue Oct 25 22:22:58 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 15:22:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] California 5.1 Earthquake 25 Oct In-Reply-To: <008901d8e8bd$72261130$56723390$@rainier66.com> References: <008901d8e8bd$72261130$56723390$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 3:03 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Adrian was farther away from the epicenter, so he is likely OK. > Didn't feel it myself, but I got that ping on my phone with the alert. My sister-in-law was out front at the time. She said the sofa she was on moved, "and then these moved." Cue stares and a meow from the cats in front of her hand. (She meant to indicate some venetian blinds.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue Oct 25 23:38:33 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 16:38:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] worked on me In-Reply-To: References: <005601d8e7ff$2df88c90$89e9a5b0$@rainier66.com> <3f3932cc-8124-a92c-b822-72df77be5df6@main.nc.us> <00b301d8e80c$54208aa0$fc619fe0$@rainier66.com> <001b01d8e880$036fb4e0$0a4f1ea0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00d601d8e8ca$e60ab990$b2202cb0$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] worked on me >?I was thinking mostly of frequency of repair costs and there the Toyota beats them all? However, Toyota doesn?t really have anything in the Corvette/Porsche911/BMW M4/Mercedes AMG class. I don?t know what these companies build that is in the Camry class, which is Toyota?s low repair cost champion. >?Just griping: my white car had the dashboard take a dive: new computer = $1000? Why does a car need a computer? Will it run without it? Let it go. >?Now the 'gold' car needs new ball joints - $1000. Find a new shop BillW: https://repairpal.com/estimator/lincoln/town-car/suspension-ball-joint-replacement-cost >?Are all four going bad simultaneously? Does not that seem a bit too coincidental? >?Town cars forever!! bill w I have had terrific luck with my Town Car, which brings up a question. If one does not buy cars new, but rather about 4 to 6 years old, how do you compare them then? The magazines only compare new cars. But the Towner used is better than most competitors used, both in cost and maintenance costs. When comparing cars, there are far too many imponderables. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Oct 26 14:25:30 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2022 09:25:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] worked on me In-Reply-To: <00d601d8e8ca$e60ab990$b2202cb0$@rainier66.com> References: <005601d8e7ff$2df88c90$89e9a5b0$@rainier66.com> <3f3932cc-8124-a92c-b822-72df77be5df6@main.nc.us> <00b301d8e80c$54208aa0$fc619fe0$@rainier66.com> <001b01d8e880$036fb4e0$0a4f1ea0$@rainier66.com> <00d601d8e8ca$e60ab990$b2202cb0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Computer - runs the dashboard lights and headlights. I could do without it, maybe, if I did not drive at night - no headlights. These are the best people but expensive - $95 an hour. Isn't the Lexus Toyota's entry into the upper class cars? Maybe comparable to the Acura? Anyhow, I am not going to be buying anything unless both Town cars bite the dust. At worst I'll have to make one of them a parts car. And buy a Camry to replace it for Roz to drive. She has never liked how big the Town cars are. White car - had to replace the key mechanism too. bill w On Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 6:41 PM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *?*> *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] worked on me > > > > >?I was thinking mostly of frequency of repair costs and there the Toyota > beats them all? > > > > However, Toyota doesn?t really have anything in the > Corvette/Porsche911/BMW M4/Mercedes AMG class. I don?t know what these > companies build that is in the Camry class, which is Toyota?s low repair > cost champion. > > > > >?Just griping: my white car had the dashboard take a dive: new > computer = $1000? > > > > Why does a car need a computer? Will it run without it? Let it go. > > > > > > >?Now the 'gold' car needs new ball joints - $1000. > > > > Find a new shop BillW: > > > > > > > https://repairpal.com/estimator/lincoln/town-car/suspension-ball-joint-replacement-cost > > > > > > >?Are all four going bad simultaneously? Does not that seem a bit too > coincidental? > > > > >?Town cars forever!! bill w > > > > I have had terrific luck with my Town Car, which brings up a question. If > one does not buy cars new, but rather about 4 to 6 years old, how do you > compare them then? The magazines only compare new cars. But the Towner > used is better than most competitors used, both in cost and maintenance > costs. > > > > When comparing cars, there are far too many imponderables. > > > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Oct 27 13:46:56 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2022 14:46:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] California 5.1 Earthquake 25 Oct In-Reply-To: <009701d8e8be$9d026600$d7073200$@rainier66.com> References: <008f01d8e8bd$731664a0$59432de0$@rainier66.com> <009701d8e8be$9d026600$d7073200$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 25 Oct 2022 at 23:13, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > >...This is cool however, for now I will get that Berkeley app, see if it > really can give me even a few seconds notice...spike > > spike > _______________________________________________ Wired has an article out now about Shake Alert and the MyShake app, explaining how it all works. Quote: Tuesday?s Android alert was powered by data from ShakeAlert, which detects when an earthquake begins on the West Coast and provides the information to state government agencies and third parties. And Google has taken steps to make that information more readily available in those precious seconds. ------------------- BillK From spike at rainier66.com Thu Oct 27 14:08:12 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:08:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] California 5.1 Earthquake 25 Oct In-Reply-To: References: <008f01d8e8bd$731664a0$59432de0$@rainier66.com> <009701d8e8be$9d026600$d7073200$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <008901d8ea0d$8d7689a0$a8639ce0$@rainier66.com> ...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] California 5.1 Earthquake 25 Oct On Tue, 25 Oct 2022 at 23:13, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > >...This is cool however, for now I will get that Berkeley app, see if > >it really can give me even a few seconds notice...spike > > spike > _______________________________________________ Wired has an article out now about Shake Alert and the MyShake app, explaining how it all works. ------------------- BillK _______________________________________________ A few seconds of warning is most useful in an earthquake. The ground shaking itself is harmless as a kitten. The risk is some heavy object falling off the shelf and clobbering your ass. On Tuesday's adventure, we were out in the open at a park, so we knew there was zero risk, but my son was in a chemistry lab at the high school, perhaps the worst place to be on campus. They made them go outside for about half an hour. Even a few seconds warning would give them a chance to get away from the storage cabinets, dive under a desk if they have human dignity to spare (granted most high schoolers have zero excess in that resource) or repent of their sins if they haven't been thru an earthquake before and don't realize the phenomenon will not harm them, assuming they are not as stupid as I was in the 1989 event. spike From spike at rainier66.com Thu Oct 27 23:20:57 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2022 16:20:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] indeed? let's go! Message-ID: <004d01d8ea5a$c5140750$4f3c15f0$@rainier66.com> Iranian leader Qassem Soleimani's daughter uttered the dire warning, that if the Iranian regime is overthrown. there will be nudity, drinking and dancing. Kewalllll. How much for a plane ticket to Tehran? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Oct 27 23:33:05 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:33:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] indeed? let's go! In-Reply-To: <004d01d8ea5a$c5140750$4f3c15f0$@rainier66.com> References: <004d01d8ea5a$c5140750$4f3c15f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 at 00:24, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > Iranian leader Qassem Soleimani?s daughter uttered the dire warning, that if the Iranian regime is overthrown? there will be nudity, drinking and dancing. > > Kewalllll? > How much for a plane ticket to Tehran? > > spike > _______________________________________________ Will videos be available of your nude dancing? :) BillK From spike at rainier66.com Thu Oct 27 23:46:54 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2022 16:46:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] indeed? let's go! In-Reply-To: References: <004d01d8ea5a$c5140750$4f3c15f0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005c01d8ea5e$655a45f0$300ed1d0$@rainier66.com> ...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] indeed? let's go! On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 at 00:24, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > Iranian leader Qassem Soleimani?s daughter uttered the dire warning, that if the Iranian regime is overthrown? there will be nudity, drinking and dancing. > > Kewalllll? > How much for a plane ticket to Tehran? > > spike > _______________________________________________ >...Will videos be available of your nude dancing? :) BillK _______________________________________________ Horror films are big this time of year. spike From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 28 13:28:56 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 06:28:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter Message-ID: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> OK so Elon owns Twitter now. If you and I bought that outfit, we would do the same thing Elon is doing: working towards automating the content moderation. Isn't that a perfectly obvious thing to do? If software can drive a car, is there any reason to think it can't moderate content? Couldn't you have something like the way car automation works, where a human still hasta sit behind the wheel to kinda watch over it? You could have humans (way fewer of them probably) to just supervise the software. You could make the software filters public. Wouldn't you do the same if you owned Twitter? Humans are expensive, software is cheap. That has nothing to do with politics. Nothing personal, just business. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Fri Oct 28 15:54:34 2022 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 09:54:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: With Twitter, the political motivation of the moderators was the point. The previous management team was very open about that. I have no doubt said moderation was definitely heavily automated, and that management had a serious interest in developing and expanding said moderation. The politically motivated moderation was a sideshow compared to the real issue though: Twitter's business model has been selling advertising based on viewer and membership numbers that, it is gradually coming out, may have been massively overinflated. This fraud [not to put too fine a point on it] served not only to dramatically exaggerate Twitter's social and political influence as a social media outlet, but to vastly overstate the platform's attractiveness as a commercial advertising platform. Even the full-on "bluecheck Bolsheviks" should be p*ssed at the previous management if they spent any significant advertising dollars chasing an echo chamber full of 'bot accounts. [I just read that sentence back and realized how bizarrely cyberpunk-science-fiction yet completely predictable this above sentence would have seemed if you sent it back through time to this list in the mid-90s.] On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 7:32 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > OK so Elon owns Twitter now. If you and I bought that outfit, we would do > the same thing Elon is doing: working towards automating the content > moderation. Isn?t that a perfectly obvious thing to do? If software can > drive a car, is there any reason to think it can?t moderate content? > Couldn?t you have something like the way car automation works, where a > human still hasta sit behind the wheel to kinda watch over it? You could > have humans (way fewer of them probably) to just supervise the software. > You could make the software filters public. > > > > Wouldn?t you do the same if you owned Twitter? Humans are expensive, > software is cheap. That has nothing to do with politics. Nothing > personal, just business. > > > > spike > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Oct 28 16:20:19 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 09:20:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: > If software can drive a car, is there any reason to think it can?t moderate content? Recognizing what words mean is a different sort of task, and rather more difficult, than recognizing safe physical conditions on the road. In theory it could someday be done effectively, but not without a lot more work than has gone into Tesla - and once it was, we would be much closer to "true" AI. > That has nothing to do with politics. The political angle is, as has been famously put, "Reality has a liberal bias." Or to put it more accurately, many so-called "conservative" politicians rely on outright lies, far more on average than so-called "liberal" politicians these days, to the point that anything enforcing truth in politics is going to be seen as having an anti-conservative-politician bias. Twitter's moderation tries to veer toward verified truth. On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 6:32 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > OK so Elon owns Twitter now. If you and I bought that outfit, we would do > the same thing Elon is doing: working towards automating the content > moderation. Isn?t that a perfectly obvious thing to do? If software can > drive a car, is there any reason to think it can?t moderate content? > Couldn?t you have something like the way car automation works, where a > human still hasta sit behind the wheel to kinda watch over it? You could > have humans (way fewer of them probably) to just supervise the software. > You could make the software filters public. > > > > Wouldn?t you do the same if you owned Twitter? Humans are expensive, > software is cheap. That has nothing to do with politics. Nothing > personal, just business. > > > > spike > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Fri Oct 28 16:26:46 2022 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 10:26:46 -0600 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Historically, "enforcing truth" has not been a good look. On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 10:22 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > If software can drive a car, is there any reason to think it can?t > moderate content? > > Recognizing what words mean is a different sort of task, and rather more > difficult, than recognizing safe physical conditions on the road. In > theory it could someday be done effectively, but not without a lot more > work than has gone into Tesla - and once it was, we would be much closer to > "true" AI. > > > That has nothing to do with politics. > > The political angle is, as has been famously put, "Reality has a liberal > bias." Or to put it more accurately, many so-called "conservative" > politicians rely on outright lies, far more on average than so-called > "liberal" politicians these days, to the point that anything enforcing > truth in politics is going to be seen as having an > anti-conservative-politician bias. Twitter's moderation tries to veer > toward verified truth. > > On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 6:32 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> >> >> OK so Elon owns Twitter now. If you and I bought that outfit, we would >> do the same thing Elon is doing: working towards automating the content >> moderation. Isn?t that a perfectly obvious thing to do? If software can >> drive a car, is there any reason to think it can?t moderate content? >> Couldn?t you have something like the way car automation works, where a >> human still hasta sit behind the wheel to kinda watch over it? You could >> have humans (way fewer of them probably) to just supervise the software. >> You could make the software filters public. >> >> >> >> Wouldn?t you do the same if you owned Twitter? Humans are expensive, >> software is cheap. That has nothing to do with politics. Nothing >> personal, just business. >> >> >> >> spike >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 28 16:59:07 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 09:59:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat >?Even the full-on "bluecheck Bolsheviks" should be p*ssed at the previous management if they spent any significant advertising dollars chasing an echo chamber full of 'bot accounts. >?[I just read that sentence back and realized how bizarrely cyberpunk-science-fiction yet completely predictable this above sentence would have seemed if you sent it back through time to this list in the mid-90s.] {8^D Thanks for that Darin. So why not just have all the same blue-check Bolsheviks write software to do their job? Let them know they can still moderate to their hearts? content but they must write the software to do it rather than capricious human judgment, then make the software public. Then, we can download their moderation software and use it for other platforms, such as this one. I heard so many Twitter users say they were being shadow banned, well OK then, this should make it to where all that is visible, ja? Let sunlight be the disinfectant. That?s the libertarian way: nothing political there, ja? Is it partisan to let everyone have their say? I think not. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Fri Oct 28 17:12:38 2022 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 11:12:38 -0600 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: That's my point. Twitter's moderation already is and has been extensively automated. The previous management did have software written, extensive amounts of bleed-ing edge text analysis software, to do that job. And it does it well. Not that they'd want it made public. Human moderators serving as the face of the software can tailor their presentation to be more palatable to the public. Source code, inconveniently, tends to speak for itself Libertarianism, unfortunately, is as intrinsically political in one direction as "censorship is awesome as long as it's the good guys doing it" is in the other. Power may flow from the barrel of a gun ultimately, but downstream of that, it flows from control of communication. It is /absolutely/ partisan, indeed even counterrevolutionary, to let everyone have their say. At least where any significant number of people can hear them. And that's where shadowbanning comes in. On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 11:01 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *?*> *On Behalf Of *Darin Sunley via extropy-chat > > > > >?Even the full-on "bluecheck Bolsheviks" should be p*ssed at the previous > management if they spent any significant advertising dollars chasing an > echo chamber full of 'bot accounts. > > >?[I just read that sentence back and realized how bizarrely > cyberpunk-science-fiction yet completely predictable this above sentence > would have seemed if you sent it back through time to this list in the > mid-90s.] > > > > > > {8^D > > > > Thanks for that Darin. So why not just have all the same blue-check > Bolsheviks write software to do their job? Let them know they can still > moderate to their hearts? content but they must write the software to do it > rather than capricious human judgment, then make the software public. > > > > Then, we can download their moderation software and use it for other > platforms, such as this one. > > > > I heard so many Twitter users say they were being shadow banned, well OK > then, this should make it to where all that is visible, ja? Let sunlight > be the disinfectant. That?s the libertarian way: nothing political there, > ja? Is it partisan to let everyone have their say? I think not. > > > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 28 17:15:21 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 10:15:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00b801d8eaf0$dd0e6b70$972b4250$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat >>? That has nothing to do with politics. >?The political angle is, as has been famously put, "Reality has a liberal bias." Or to put it more accurately, many so-called "conservative" politicians rely on outright lies, far more on average than so-called "liberal" politicians these days, to the point that anything enforcing truth in politics is going to be seen as having an anti-conservative-politician bias. Twitter's moderation tries to veer toward verified truth? Adrian Excellent, now Twitter under the leadership of Musk gets a chance to prove that contention about reality. The censorship on Twitter becomes open, public domain, so we can see what has been censored and why. Create a folder for censored material that Twitter didn?t allow. Make that folder public domain, stuff that you can get to, but isn?t allowed on Twitter. Then the public gets a chance to decide if reality has a liberal bias. From my point of view, there is burden of proof required which is not being carried. My notion is that truth has a libertarian bias. Libertarians would not censor Twitter content at all, or if so, only very lightly, which is the way we have always done business on this forum. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 28 17:20:13 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 10:20:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00ca01d8eaf1$8aac3870$a004a950$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] elon on twitter >?Historically, "enforcing truth" has not been a good look? Darin Darin what if? we find that the US government really did meet with the industry titans in communications such as FaceBook and Twitter, then enforced ?truth? by proxy thru those platoforms? If that is proven, it goes way beyond not a good look, deep into illegal and a violation of American citizens? constitutional and civil rights. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 28 17:31:01 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 10:31:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] elon on twitter >?That's my point. Twitter's moderation already is and has been extensively automated? Good, then we don?t need all those humans in the loop. They can be released into other industries where they can develop automation to do those jobs too. >?Libertarianism, unfortunately, is as intrinsically political in one direction as "censorship is awesome as long as it's the good guys doing it" is in the other. Power may flow from the barrel of a gun ultimately, but downstream of that, it flows from control of communication. It is /absolutely/ partisan, indeed even counterrevolutionary, to let everyone have their say. At least where any significant number of people can hear them. And that's where shadowbanning comes in? Darin OK so how about this: make everything open to scrutiny. If the software wants to shadow ban someone, then that person?s posts drop into a public domain folder where the public can see what these big lies were that got the silly prole banned. Reason: rumor has it that a lot of shadow banning in the USA were from posting three years ago that the Steele dossier is fake and Hunter?s laptop is real. OK then. What about all that, Twitter? Can we go back and look at who was shadow banned and why? Did those two notions get people shadow banned? If so, what now? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Fri Oct 28 17:37:45 2022 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 11:37:45 -0600 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: The entire point of shadowbanning is that it's /shadowed/. The plausible deniability is the most important part. If it's done properly, the victim doesn't know it's happening, and it can be done or undone as necessary and convenient. The beginning of the end for the current media regime was when the term "shadowbanning" entered the popular lexicon. Once people know about it and can recognize it, it's just censorship. Meet the new Party media officer, saem as the old Party media officer. On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 11:32 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *?*> *On Behalf Of *Darin Sunley via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] elon on twitter > > > > >?That's my point. Twitter's moderation already is and has been > extensively automated? > > > > Good, then we don?t need all those humans in the loop. They can be > released into other industries where they can develop automation to do > those jobs too. > > > > > > >?Libertarianism, unfortunately, is as intrinsically political in one > direction as "censorship is awesome as long as it's the good guys doing it" > is in the other. Power may flow from the barrel of a gun ultimately, but > downstream of that, it flows from control of communication. It is > /absolutely/ partisan, indeed even counterrevolutionary, to let everyone > have their say. At least where any significant number of people can hear > them. And that's where shadowbanning comes in? Darin > > > > > > > > OK so how about this: make everything open to scrutiny. If the software > wants to shadow ban someone, then that person?s posts drop into a public > domain folder where the public can see what these big lies were that got > the silly prole banned. > > > > Reason: rumor has it that a lot of shadow banning in the USA were from > posting three years ago that the Steele dossier is fake and Hunter?s laptop > is real. > > > > OK then. What about all that, Twitter? Can we go back and look at who > was shadow banned and why? Did those two notions get people shadow > banned? If so, what now? > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Fri Oct 28 17:45:16 2022 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 11:45:16 -0600 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I think I'm in love with how the Wikipedia article for shadowbanning describes accusations of Twitter engaging in shadowbanning as a conspiracy theory, then in the very next paragraph goes on to soberly describe Twitter engaging in precisely this behavior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 11:37 AM Darin Sunley wrote: > The entire point of shadowbanning is that it's /shadowed/. The plausible > deniability is the most important part. If it's done properly, the victim > doesn't know it's happening, and it can be done or undone as necessary and > convenient. > > The beginning of the end for the current media regime was when the term > "shadowbanning" entered the popular lexicon. Once people know about it and > can recognize it, it's just censorship. Meet the new Party media officer, > saem as the old Party media officer. > > On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 11:32 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > >> >> >> >> >> *?*> *On Behalf Of *Darin Sunley via extropy-chat >> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] elon on twitter >> >> >> >> >?That's my point. Twitter's moderation already is and has been >> extensively automated? >> >> >> >> Good, then we don?t need all those humans in the loop. They can be >> released into other industries where they can develop automation to do >> those jobs too. >> >> >> >> >> >> >?Libertarianism, unfortunately, is as intrinsically political in one >> direction as "censorship is awesome as long as it's the good guys doing it" >> is in the other. Power may flow from the barrel of a gun ultimately, but >> downstream of that, it flows from control of communication. It is >> /absolutely/ partisan, indeed even counterrevolutionary, to let everyone >> have their say. At least where any significant number of people can hear >> them. And that's where shadowbanning comes in? Darin >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> OK so how about this: make everything open to scrutiny. If the software >> wants to shadow ban someone, then that person?s posts drop into a public >> domain folder where the public can see what these big lies were that got >> the silly prole banned. >> >> >> >> Reason: rumor has it that a lot of shadow banning in the USA were from >> posting three years ago that the Steele dossier is fake and Hunter?s laptop >> is real. >> >> >> >> OK then. What about all that, Twitter? Can we go back and look at who >> was shadow banned and why? Did those two notions get people shadow >> banned? If so, what now? >> >> >> >> spike >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsunley at gmail.com Fri Oct 28 18:00:44 2022 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 12:00:44 -0600 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <00ca01d8eaf1$8aac3870$a004a950$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <00ca01d8eaf1$8aac3870$a004a950$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: No one watches broadcast tv any more. The cable news outlets wouldn't carry it. Except Fox, who are already comfortably marginalized. If it doesn't show up in your Google News feed, did it ever /really/ happen? Shadowbanning. On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 11:25 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > > > > *?*> *On Behalf Of *Darin Sunley via extropy-chat > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] elon on twitter > > > > >?Historically, "enforcing truth" has not been a good look? Darin > > > > > > Darin what if? we find that the US government really did meet with the > industry titans in communications such as FaceBook and Twitter, then > enforced ?truth? by proxy thru those platoforms? If that is proven, it > goes way beyond not a good look, deep into illegal and a violation of > American citizens? constitutional and civil rights. > > > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 28 18:11:18 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 11:11:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003401d8eaf8$ad6201e0$082605a0$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] elon on twitter >?The entire point of shadowbanning is that it's /shadowed/. The plausible deniability is the most important part. If it's done properly, the victim doesn't know it's happening, and it can be done or undone as necessary and convenient? Darin OK no worries Darin, we can deal. Offer the fired Twitter content moderators a job making a software shadow ban detector with some kind of verification receipt by the intended recipients. Then if shadow banning is detected by a shortage of receipts, the software makes public the person or software what did the suspected shadow banning. If it is real, let us rip this whole shadow banning out of the shadows by shining a bright light upon the unwholesome and distasteful notion. It just feels wrong to me. I don?t see the disadvantage of any of this openness. Elon Musk owning Twitter looks to me like a good thing. He doesn?t like censorship either. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 28 18:16:30 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 11:16:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004401d8eaf9$677d2280$36776780$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Darin Sunley via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] elon on twitter >?I think I'm in love with how the Wikipedia article for shadowbanning describes accusations of Twitter engaging in shadowbanning as a conspiracy theory, then in the very next paragraph goes on to soberly describe Twitter engaging in precisely this behavior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning Darin, just because something is a conspiracy theory, it doesn?t mean it can?t be true. Gravity and evolution are theories. Conspiracies damn well do happen, and are real as we have seen, in both business and government. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 28 19:33:21 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 12:33:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> Go on Google, notice how hard it is to find Musk?s comment on why he bought Twitter. Every news agency wants to quote him, then offer their own commentary on his statement. But it is difficult to find his actual statement. Do feel free to repeat the experiment: find Musk?s statement without a news commentary along with it. Perhaps ?news? agencies are uncomfortable with the public having access to information that didn?t get channeled thru them first. If you give up, here it is: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728/photo/1 Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Anyone else wish to comment on it? spike -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 3490 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Oct 28 20:05:45 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 21:05:45 +0100 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 at 20:36, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > Go on Google, notice how hard it is to find Musk?s comment on why he bought > Twitter. Every news agency wants to quote him, then offer their own > commentary on his statement. But it is difficult to find his actual > statement. > > Do feel free to repeat the experiment: find Musk?s statement without a news > commentary along with it. Perhaps ?news? agencies are uncomfortable with > the public having access to information that didn?t get channeled thru them > first. > > If you give up, here it is: > https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728/photo/1 > > Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Anyone else wish to comment on it? > > spike > _______________________________________________ It seems that Twitter is the problem. Search engines don't index every tweet. For various reasons, some historical, some by design. BillK From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 28 20:53:29 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 13:53:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009f01d8eb0f$55efdf10$01cf9d30$@rainier66.com> ...> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat > If you give up, here it is: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728/photo/1 > > Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Anyone else wish to comment on it? > > spike > _______________________________________________ >...It seems that Twitter is the problem. Search engines don't index every tweet. For various reasons, some historical, some by design. BillK _______________________________________________ They wouldn't need to, BillK. Not all of us have Twitter, nor want it. One would think one could find one of the news biggies who would just offer the entire comment without yielding to the savage urge to give their own spin on it, or injecting three paragraphs of their own commentary into every one of his. To me this verifies a huge inferiority complex. We don't care what the news commentators have to say. We care about what Elon Musk has to say. We don't need their silly commentary, they don't own Twitter, or anything else. We care about the guy who now has the ability to do unto others that which was done unto him. spike From spike at rainier66.com Fri Oct 28 21:21:29 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2022 14:21:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <009f01d8eb0f$55efdf10$01cf9d30$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> <009f01d8eb0f$55efdf10$01cf9d30$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00a601d8eb13$3f6fff00$be4ffd00$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: spike at rainier66.com ... https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585619322239561728/photo/1 >>...It seems that Twitter is the problem. Search engines don't index every tweet. For various reasons, some historical, some by design. BillK _______________________________________________ >...They wouldn't need to, BillK. Oh BillK, I am so pissed off at myself, I could shriek at the mirror until it cracks. I could chew my ass like Senior Drill Sergeant Hartman on the new recruits for missing it. There was a MONSTER opportunity this morning, a once in a LIFETIME opportunity... to pull off an EPIC gag. And I didn't think of it. Now it is too late. Get a cardboard box, put some papers and desk debris in there, go stand around outside the Twitter headquarters in Sa Francisco, looking forlorn, talking on my cell phone, wait for a reporter to come up, grant an interview, choose my words carefully so I don't say anything that isn't literally true, but let them assume. For instance I could say "I don't know WHAT I am going to do, I was a software developer, now, damn Elon Musk, I am out of a JOB!" I don't actually say I ever worked at Twitter or what kind of software I developed, or for what company, or that I retired voluntarily 13 years ago, or that Elon Musk had anything to do with it, just damn Elon Musk, I am out of a job and don't know what I am going to do (which is kinda true in a literal sense (I don't know what I will do (none of us knows what we will do tomorrow (for we cannot see the future.)))) I will let THEM assume I was working for Twitter and I am one of the hapless proles fired that morning. If I could pull this off with a straight face (no guarantee) I can imagine my former colleagues seeing that, and falling off their chairs laughing at the goofy news people I pwned. They would realize old Spike finally composed his magnum opus gag. He has arrived! If I could get one of the news biggies to run that, oh my life would have meant something. spike From giulio at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 07:57:55 2022 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 09:57:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The extropian roots of cryptoeconomics. Message-ID: Turing Church newsletter. The extropian roots of cryptoeconomics. I'm persuaded that other Extropian ideas will have a huge impact when their time comes. https://www.turingchurch.com/p/the-extropian-roots-of-cryptoeconomics From giulio at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 08:06:57 2022 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 10:06:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: I for one welcome Elon's takeover. Here's to Elon, Capt'n of Twitter and Spaceship Earth. Content moderation must use exactly the same criteria for all political camps. We can't have some users punished for legal opinionated posts that the moderators dislike, and other users tolerated even when they post death threats. That must go. On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 3:31 PM spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > > > > > OK so Elon owns Twitter now. If you and I bought that outfit, we would do the same thing Elon is doing: working towards automating the content moderation. Isn?t that a perfectly obvious thing to do? If software can drive a car, is there any reason to think it can?t moderate content? Couldn?t you have something like the way car automation works, where a human still hasta sit behind the wheel to kinda watch over it? You could have humans (way fewer of them probably) to just supervise the software. You could make the software filters public. > > > > Wouldn?t you do the same if you owned Twitter? Humans are expensive, software is cheap. That has nothing to do with politics. Nothing personal, just business. > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From pharos at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 10:57:40 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 11:57:40 +0100 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <009f01d8eb0f$55efdf10$01cf9d30$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> <009f01d8eb0f$55efdf10$01cf9d30$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 28 Oct 2022 at 21:56, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > > Not all of us have Twitter, nor want it. One would think one could find one of the news biggies who would just offer the entire comment without yielding to the savage urge to give their own spin on it, or injecting three paragraphs of their own commentary into every one of his. > To me this verifies a huge inferiority complex. We don't care what the news commentators have to say. We care about what Elon Musk has to say. We don't need their silly commentary, they don't own Twitter, or anything else. We care about the guy who now has the ability to do unto others that which was done unto him. > > spike > _______________________________________________ Elon has good intentions, but he really doesn't know about all the complexities of moderation in a huge world-wide social network. Some of his USA biased ideas will break laws in other countries, with possible fines and jail sentences being applied. Some countries have strict censorship laws - should Twitter comply? What is free speech in some places is harassment and encouraging terrorism elsewhere. Stopping anonymous tweeting could put opposition people at risk in some countries. An article here discusses these problems - Quote: Elon Musk doesn?t know what it takes to make a digital town square Before making big changes, he should ask the global pro-democracy activists who do. By Jillian C. York October 29, 2022 ------------------ BillK From pharos at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 12:52:36 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 13:52:36 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fun - Backyard Squirrelympics 3.0- The Summer Games Message-ID: Long video - 23 minutes of squirrel antics and problem-solving. Squirrels are really smart! Worth watching! :) BillK From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 29 12:53:26 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 05:53:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> <009f01d8eb0f$55efdf10$01cf9d30$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <001e01d8eb95$703dea70$50b9bf50$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat _______________________________________________ >...Elon has good intentions, but he really doesn't know about all the complexities of moderation in a huge world-wide social network. Some of his USA biased ideas will break laws in other countries, with possible fines and jail sentences being applied. Some countries have strict censorship laws - should Twitter comply? What is free speech in some places is harassment and encouraging terrorism elsewhere. Stopping anonymous tweeting could put opposition people at risk in some countries. >...An article here discusses these problems - Quote: Elon Musk doesn?t know what it takes to make a digital town square Before making big changes, he should ask the global pro-democracy activists who do. By Jillian C. York October 29, 2022 ------------------ BillK _______________________________________________ All good points, thx BillK. In a country where free speech is codified in a document which acknowledges natural rights that predate and supersede government, we are still struggling to define the differences and similarities between a publisher and a platform. It is all about who takes responsibility for content. Regarding anonymous posting, if that is allowed, it is a path to destroy a platform. We are seeing it already, with some apparently anti-Musk Twitter users anonymously struggling to get their accounts frozen or suspended by making Twitter a hellscape, posting pro-Nazi transphobic tweets. It is clear enough to me what they are doing. Any platform can be vandalized. Any publisher will require power that will be abused. The difference is who is accountable. Knowing it comes with a severe cost, I must side with ending anonymous posting. If Twitter is to be a platform, the content providers must bear responsibility for their own posts. Otherwise it becomes a publisher. spike From pharos at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 13:20:57 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 14:20:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <001e01d8eb95$703dea70$50b9bf50$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> <009f01d8eb0f$55efdf10$01cf9d30$@rainier66.com> <001e01d8eb95$703dea70$50b9bf50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 29 Oct 2022 at 14:01, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: > > In a country where free speech is codified in a document which acknowledges natural rights that predate and supersede government, we are still struggling to define the differences and similarities between a publisher and a platform. It is all about who takes responsibility for content. > > Regarding anonymous posting, if that is allowed, it is a path to destroy a platform. We are seeing it already, with some apparently anti-Musk Twitter users anonymously struggling to get their accounts frozen or suspended by making Twitter a hellscape, posting pro-Nazi transphobic tweets. > > It is clear enough to me what they are doing. Any platform can be vandalized. Any publisher will require power that will be abused. The difference is who is accountable. > > Knowing it comes with a severe cost, I must side with ending anonymous posting. If Twitter is to be a platform, the content providers must bear responsibility for their own posts. Otherwise it becomes a publisher. > > spike > _______________________________________________ In many countries the anonymous posters are the good guys. Surely your advanced automatic content moderation should stop Nazi posts before they are published? Attack the content - not the poster! If bad behaviour persists the anon poster can be banned. Though if the country has a fascist inclined government where Nazi posts are approved, perhaps the only solution is to remove Twitter from that country. BillK From sparge at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 14:00:26 2022 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave S) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 10:00:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <001e01d8eb95$703dea70$50b9bf50$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> <009f01d8eb0f$55efdf10$01cf9d30$@rainier66.com> <001e01d8eb95$703dea70$50b9bf50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 29, 2022 at 9:01 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > > In a country where free speech is codified in a document which > acknowledges natural rights that predate and supersede government, we are > still struggling to define the differences and similarities between a > publisher and a platform. It is all about who takes responsibility for > content. > That's not true. There's no legal distinction/protection applied to "platforms": *We?ll say it plainly here: there is no legal significance to labeling an online service a ?platform? as opposed to a ?publisher.? Yes. That?s right. There is no legal significance to labeling an online service a ?platform.? Nor does the law treat online services differently based on their ideological ?neutrality? or lack thereof.* https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/publisher-or-platform-it-doesnt-matter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 29 14:07:40 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 07:07:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> <009f01d8eb0f$55efdf10$01cf9d30$@rainier66.com> <001e01d8eb95$703dea70$50b9bf50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004601d8eb9f$cf0fdb80$6d2f9280$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat On Sat, 29 Oct 2022 at 14:01, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote: ... > >>... It is clear enough to me what they are doing. Any platform can be vandalized. Any publisher will require power that will be abused. The difference is who is accountable. > > Knowing it comes with a severe cost, I must side with ending anonymous posting. If Twitter is to be a platform, the content providers must bear responsibility for their own posts. Otherwise it becomes a publisher. > > spike > _______________________________________________ >...In many countries the anonymous posters are the good guys. Surely your advanced automatic content moderation should stop Nazi posts before they are published? Attack the content - not the poster! If bad behaviour persists the anon poster can be banned. Though if the country has a fascist inclined government where Nazi posts are approved, perhaps the only solution is to remove Twitter from that country. BillK _______________________________________________ Of course, and I agree BillK. The real heart of the matter is this: in the states, we have legal protections for platforms that do not apply to publishers. Twitter has enjoyed the legal protections of a platform while simultaneously wielding the power of a publisher. Ja? This goes on as long as the publisher publishes according to the wishes of the US government, specifically the legislature. However... we have an election in ten days, in which the party in power is likely to change. Then what? Does Twitter become a platform which allows the other party to do unto others as was done unto them? Is that where this is heading? Is everyone OK with that? spike From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 29 14:30:48 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 07:30:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> <009f01d8eb0f$55efdf10$01cf9d30$@rainier66.com> <001e01d8eb95$703dea70$50b9bf50$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <006101d8eba3$0aa212a0$1fe637e0$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Dave S via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] elon on twitter On Sat, Oct 29, 2022 at 9:01 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: In a country where free speech is codified in a document which acknowledges natural rights that predate and supersede government, we are still struggling to define the differences and similarities between a publisher and a platform. It is all about who takes responsibility for content. >?That's not true. There's no legal distinction/protection applied to "platforms": We?ll say it plainly here: there is no legal significance to labeling an online service a ?platform? as opposed to a ?publisher.? Yes. That?s right. There is no legal significance to labeling an online service a ?platform.? Nor does the law treat online services differently based on their ideological ?neutrality? or lack thereof. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/publisher-or-platform-it-doesnt-matter Dave, precedent matters. Jack Dorsey was never held liable for anything posted on Twitter. If they start leaning on Musk now, it will be clear that Twitter is an extension of government power. If Twitter is a defacto extension of government, then the first amendment applies to Twitter, in which case it cannot legally censor views it doesn?t like. It is a complicated question, I will certainly grant you that. If Twitter users make death threats or posts an illegal form of porno for instance, the user is liable, not the company. If someone posts that stuff here, ExImod isn?t liable for it, the person who posted is. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 14:39:28 2022 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 09:39:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Mama was right! Message-ID: https://neurosciencenews.com/olfaction-nose-alzheimers-21742/ bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 15:13:21 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 08:13:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <006101d8eba3$0aa212a0$1fe637e0$@rainier66.com> References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> <009f01d8eb0f$55efdf10$01cf9d30$@rainier66.com> <001e01d8eb95$703dea70$50b9bf50$@rainier66.com> <006101d8eba3$0aa212a0$1fe637e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 7:32 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Dave, precedent matters. Jack Dorsey was never held liable for anything > posted on Twitter. If they start leaning on Musk now, it will be clear > that Twitter is an extension of government power. > By what logic is this true? Jack Dorsey was not government for First Amendment purposes. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 29 15:32:44 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 08:32:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: References: <003d01d8ead1$3ba84ea0$b2f8ebe0$@rainier66.com> <008601d8eaee$986b1420$c9413c60$@rainier66.com> <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> <004901d8eaf9$67f6bf50$37e43df0$@rainier66.com> <007e01d8eb04$23dcf770$6b96e650$@rainier66.com> <009f01d8eb0f$55efdf10$01cf9d30$@rainier66.com> <001e01d8eb95$703dea70$50b9bf50$@rainier66.com> <006101d8eba3$0aa212a0$1fe637e0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009e01d8ebab$b1469ec0$13d3dc40$@rainier66.com> ?> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat Subject: Re: [ExI] elon on twitter On Sat, Oct 29, 2022, 7:32 AM spike jones via extropy-chat > wrote: Dave, precedent matters. Jack Dorsey was never held liable for anything posted on Twitter. If they start leaning on Musk now, it will be clear that Twitter is an extension of government power. >?By what logic is this true? Jack Dorsey was not government for First Amendment purposes? Good question Adrian. I don?t know, but plenty of us see a big change coming soon to the US federal government. The betting public sees it clearly. I noticed the share prices regarding the week from Tuesday?s elections. I cut my losses in this market a few weeks ago: https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/6874/Which-party-will-control-the-Senate-after-2022-election If the power structure in DC changes hands, will the other guys treat Elon differently than Jack was treated? What about Google? In an important way, Google functionally wields more political power than either Face Book or Twitter. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 15:35:34 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 16:35:34 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Texti AI Writing aid Message-ID: Texti is a free chrome extension powered by AI. According to the developer, it is developed on Nestjs and it interacts with Open.ais GPT3 DaVinci algorithm. The possibility of this extension is limitless. In simple words, it feels like Amazon Alexa/Google Assistant. You just ask it to write an article for you. This extension works with all browsers that use the Chrome Web store. e.g.Chrome. Chromium, Vivaldi, etc. You can also use the website directly in any browser. BillK From max at maxmore.com Sat Oct 29 15:55:15 2022 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 15:55:15 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The extropian roots of cryptoeconomics. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Really great piece, Giulio! Here's one that fits well and that I found fascinating if not entirely convincing: https://jongulson.medium.com/19-reasons-john-f-nash-jr-was-satoshi-nakamoto-14a291355b86 [https://miro.medium.com/focal/1200/632/42/47/1*LqlfjH1pSAb2_W-41NlhRw.jpeg] 19 Reasons John F Nash Jr. was Satoshi Nakamoto - Medium Following on from the idea of ?proto-Extropian? ? and given Nash?s work in cryptography, mathematics, game theory, and economics ? there are 19 compelling reasons to believe Nash was Satoshi:. 1. The shared characteristic of decentralisation in Nash and Satoshi systems. A quirk of bitcoin is it?s commonly championed for the characteristic of decentralisation, yet its white paper ... jongulson.medium.com ________________________________ From: extropy-chat on behalf of Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2022 12:57 AM To: turingchurch at googlegroups.com ; ExI chat list ; extropolis at googlegroups.com Cc: Giulio Prisco Subject: [ExI] The extropian roots of cryptoeconomics. Turing Church newsletter. The extropian roots of cryptoeconomics. I'm persuaded that other Extropian ideas will have a huge impact when their time comes. https://www.turingchurch.com/p/the-extropian-roots-of-cryptoeconomics _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 15:56:00 2022 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 08:56:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] elon on twitter In-Reply-To: <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> References: <00dd01d8eaf3$0ce534d0$26af9e70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <80697444-AA17-4C72-A138-31E4D557EA09@gmail.com> Might be relevant: https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitter-acquisition-problems-speech-moderation Bit of a rant, but makes good points about the nature of Twitter as a business. Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 16:03:30 2022 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 17:03:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Texti AI Writing aid In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, 29 Oct 2022 at 16:35, BillK wrote: > > Texti is a free chrome extension powered by AI. According to the > developer, it is developed on Nestjs and it interacts with Open.ais > GPT3 DaVinci algorithm. The possibility of this extension is > limitless. In simple words, it feels like Amazon Alexa/Google > Assistant. > You just ask it to write an article for you. > > This extension works with all browsers that use the Chrome Web store. > e.g.Chrome. Chromium, Vivaldi, etc. > > You can also use the website directly in any browser. > > > BillK It now looks like I got confused. The website only shows a demo and offers to download the extension to a Chrome-type browser. But the extension seems to work OK. BillK From giulio at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 16:30:01 2022 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 18:30:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The extropian roots of cryptoeconomics. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 2022. Oct 29., Sat at 17:56, Max More via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Really great piece, Giulio! > Thanks Max! > > Here's one that fits well and that I found fascinating if not entirely > convincing: > > > https://jongulson.medium.com/19-reasons-john-f-nash-jr-was-satoshi-nakamoto-14a291355b86 > As you say, fascinating but not entirely convincing. John Nash was 80 in 2008. I can see that, at 65, I?m less smart than I used to be, and I guess this is everyone?s case (but I hope I?m wrong). Also, Nash was of course very familiar with the maths of crypto, but less so with modern computer and internet systems, without which it would be very difficult to even conceive of bitcoin. I guess Satoshi Nakamoto was/is a hidden genius or a group. The fact that Satoshi has never used their bitcoin wealth may indicate that Satoshi is/are dead. Or maybe they are still waiting to cash in or use their wealth. However, I think there?s a good chance that Satoshi, or one of Satoshi, or all, was/were on our mailing list. > > > 19 Reasons John F Nash Jr. was Satoshi Nakamoto - Medium > > Following on from the idea of ?proto-Extropian? ? and given Nash?s work in > cryptography, mathematics, game theory, and economics ? there are 19 > compelling reasons to believe Nash was Satoshi:. 1. The shared > characteristic of decentralisation in Nash and Satoshi systems. A quirk of > bitcoin is it?s commonly championed for the characteristic of > decentralisation, yet its white paper ... > jongulson.medium.com > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* extropy-chat on behalf > of Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat > *Sent:* Saturday, October 29, 2022 12:57 AM > *To:* turingchurch at googlegroups.com ; ExI > chat list ; extropolis at googlegroups.com < > extropolis at googlegroups.com> > *Cc:* Giulio Prisco > *Subject:* [ExI] The extropian roots of cryptoeconomics. > > Turing Church newsletter. The extropian roots of cryptoeconomics. I'm > persuaded that other Extropian ideas will have a huge impact when > their time comes. > https://www.turingchurch.com/p/the-extropian-roots-of-cryptoeconomics > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 29 16:50:42 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 09:50:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] they beat me to it Message-ID: <003c01d8ebb6$95cb6620$c1623260$@rainier66.com> An offlister pointed out this was already done: https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/10/28/2339204/pranksters-posing-as-laid-o ff-twitter-employees-trick-media-outlets Damn those guys, I will totally SUE, for stealing my idea before I had it. I have been entertaining myself to no end, figuring out how I would state things such that my answers were all technically "true" but of course knowingly and very intentionally misleading as all hell. Oh the lengths I will go to for a gag. So tragic it is. I could shake my head and make sentence fragment comments such as "...the Tesla payments, how shall I cope?" which does not explicitly claim that I own a Tesla or that I cannot cope. In the literal sense, I don't actually "know" how I shall cope in the future, for neither I nor anyone else knows what tragedies we need to cope with. I could go on and on. A pained grimace, along with "... I am ruined, RUINED!" without specifying how I will be (ruined)^2, for all of us will eventually perish, at which time we can all agree our fun is literally ruined: Game over, Red Rover! Ruined! What else? "...Where the hell am I going to go next?" without actually defining the term "next." Next what? Next decade? I really don't know where the hell I will go in that timeframe. What else? "...I should have left this damn place a year ago..." again literally true, for I went to San Francisco backpacking to Angel Island with a group of scouts, and when we returned, I should have left there, and did. .heeeeeeheheheheheheeeee... Oh damn I coulda had such fun with the presumptuous reporters, all without saying anything literally false. I honestly don't know if I coulda pulled off the whole thing with a straight face. But had I lost control and busted out laughing, I could perhaps fake temporary insanity, and try to shape it into a maniacal Frankensteinish bwaaaahaahahaaahahahaaa.... These opportunities come along once in a long while. I just need to be alert. If I had been alert, I wouldn'ta missed it. America needs more lerts. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 29 17:02:36 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 10:02:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The extropian roots of cryptoeconomics. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <005f01d8ebb8$3f23a4c0$bd6aee40$@rainier66.com> Here's one that fits well and that I found fascinating if not entirely convincing: https://jongulson.medium.com/19-reasons-john-f-nash-jr-was-satoshi-nakamoto-14a291355b86 Note where John Forbes Nash was from: Bluefield, Mercer County, West Virginia. With very little sound or fury, but also signifying nothing: I did AncestryDNA and discovered that I am a fifth cousin to John Forbes Nash Jr. Beyond the trace of shared DNA, the family resemblance ends there. We both inherited the crazy, but he got the brains. Oh what I could have done had I been given those brains instead of John, who wasted it on? like? science and stuff. The gags could have gone far beyond epic. Nash is known for his revolutionary Nash Equilibrium notion, but less known is his work in differential equations. That man blows my mind. How the hell he did that stuff he did, I shall never know. Further info on DNA available on request. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat Oct 29 17:57:42 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 10:57:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] they beat me to it In-Reply-To: <004101d8ebb6$96590020$c30b0060$@rainier66.com> References: <004101d8ebb6$96590020$c30b0060$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00ae01d8ebbf$f1efb8d0$d5cf2a70$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com Subject: they beat me to it https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/10/28/2339204/pranksters-posing-as-laid-o ff-twitter-employees-trick-media-outlets >...Damn those guys, I will totally SUE, for stealing my idea before I had it... spike Hey maybe there is still time. Adrian you and I might need to work together perhaps. We make up some protest signs, maybe costume up in shabby hobo clothing, go down to the Twitter HQ Monday. Signs would say "Elon is literally Satan" and "Will censor for food" and "Censored everything in sight, fired just the same" and "I censored my ass off! ...which is why I look this way" and fun stuff like that. Monday is Halloween, so people might be in the spirit of the game. Trick or treating dressed as an unemployed former content moderator? I am literally an unemployed former content moderator. I sheepishly grant that I never actually moderated anyone. I only urged them to knock it off, at which time they usually ignored my sincere requests. Hey cool a donation can! Wait, the new political correctness movement is sure to accuse us of appropriating poverty culture or something. spike -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 4594 bytes Desc: not available URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Oct 29 19:30:02 2022 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2022 12:30:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] they beat me to it In-Reply-To: <00ae01d8ebbf$f1efb8d0$d5cf2a70$@rainier66.com> References: <004101d8ebb6$96590020$c30b0060$@rainier66.com> <00ae01d8ebbf$f1efb8d0$d5cf2a70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Oct 29, 2022 at 10:59 AM spike jones via extropy-chat < extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote: > Adrian you and I might need to work together > perhaps. > Nah. I've got some sci-fi to write, about the consequences of destroying a FTL starship by playing a version of volleyball aboard the ship. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun Oct 30 12:16:07 2022 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2022 05:16:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: 1/2 of nano singularity not figured out pertaining to IQ and ideal population In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <002601d8ec59$642c9f00$2c85dd00$@rainier66.com> ExI, do you suppose this was machine-generated? s From: Phillip Huggan Sent: Sunday, 30 October, 2022 12:42 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: 1/2 of nano singularity not figured out pertaining to IQ and ideal population I've plotted out how to administer a nano-singularity. There are two groups of actors in the future I see. Humans and 60 IQ actors, mammals unable to make AI. What we didn't see 15 yrs ago is administration on Earth is boring and dangerous. I can sensor for AI but not bio-risks. Earth is lost and a half dozen ice moons are needed economically and assassination is always a risk. So I'll distribute nanotech to a dozen States and Provinces. I'll make a finance in space modelled on my psychology. I'll bring in smart people to bring society to my fiance. An inflation ship will eventually need custom people, for radiation hazards needing a less than seconds response. Eventually lots of people, but for a few million years or whenever, less than ten. The finance makes asteroids, planets and stars over 100, 100000, 1 million yrs. In between 60 IQ and 180 IQ humans, how many conscious actors should be made for every ten or twenty IQ points? I can assess this on risks, but in terms of Q-ofL I think it takes a society to make a judgment call about what creates day-to-day worth. Awareness of mortality, career and activities ambitions, architecture, space competancy, these all have value at a certain IQ point. We don't have hominid archeology much, but those little island people of 100000 yrs ago were 80 IQ and maybe had Robin Hood towns minus the metallurgy. Maybe they were capable of 1/2 our Q-of-L? -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 4442 bytes Desc: not available URL: