The US State Department Under Donald Trump Has Been Accused Of Instigating What Amounts To A Travel Ban

"There was an exchange on Twitter a while back where someone said, ‘What is artificial intelligence?' And someone else said, 'A poor choice of words in 1954'," he says. "And, you know, they’re right. I think that if we had chosen a different phrase for it, back in the '50s, we might have avoided a lot of the confusion that we're having now." So if he had to invent a term, what would it be? His answer is instant: applied statistics. "It's genuinely amazing that...these sorts of things can be extracted from a statistical analysis of a large body of text," he says. But, in his view, that doesn't make the tools intelligent. Applied statistics is a far more precise descriptor, "but no one wants to use that term, because it's not as sexy".

'The machines we have now are not conscious', Lunch with the FT, Ted Chiang, by Madhumita Murgia, 3 June/4 June 2023

sharing this here for no particular reason …

Engels on “Social Murder”

I’ll never understand the reasoning behind the whole “Darcy was never a jerk! He was just shy/anxious/overwhelmed” argument because… none of that justifies his actions towards those of Meryton. Even if he was shy, he would know better than to insult people he hardly knows!

And why would you even want to gloss over it?!? So much of Darcy’s appeal is that he realizes that he has been proud and rude and actively chooses to change and better himself.

There is such a difference between “wow, she’s right. My behavior has been terrible and I don’t want to be like that. I will learn from this and readjust how I move about the world” and “ohhh no but I’m so shyyy, I didn’t mean to be rude :( aw shucks”

After much introspection and soul searching I've turned over a new leaf and have decided to continue making poison swamps 😌

"cozy game" maybe for YOU. I have spreadsheets

being nonchalant is overrated, spam me, send me all the videos that made you laugh, show me you care, send me your silly jokes and random thoughts, no need to hide your enthusiasm to come over as uninterested

you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.

send in the puppy. dont bother, they’re here