The Age Of Machines Sneaked Up On Us. Steadily Over The Past Century, The World Has Been Increasingly

What do you think happens first: the last human dies, or the last machine gives out?

doing the obligatory atla rewatch rn, and so far the main rewatch-value takeaway has been Uncle POV Unlocked 

sapphic saturday

the ship of theseus wikipedia article in 2003. 20 years later, after 1792 total edits, 0% of its original phrasing remains. (x)

There's an open pit in the middle of our office plan that drops down into a bunch of very sharp spikes that kill you instantly. This is bad. People keep falling in there and dying. Someone put a sign up, the other day, all bright yellow so you can't miss it, that says "Beware!!! Spikes!!!"

The office immediately split into two factions over it. One says that if anyone falls in the spike pit it's their own fault for being so stupid and not watching where they're walking, so we should remove the sign. The other says that the sign is an insult, there shouldn't be a spike pit in our office at all, and having the sign up like that is just normalising the existence of the spike pit, so we should remove the sign.

We ended up removing the sign. Probably for the better. Still... for a while there it looked like it might have worked...

In the first years, herds of over a hundred pigs would sweep through the farms and homesteads of Indian territory in eastern Oklahoma, devastating the land and driving rural people into nearby towns. They quickly armed themselves and formed militias to fight the hogs, but progress was slow. Over the next decade they pushed herds out of open land and into more vegetated areas. The hogs found enough shelter and forage in the forests and shrubland to breed at still alarming rates. Hunting parties started regularly scouting open ground for any pigs daring enough to venture out of cover. Over time these parties became more systematic and economical, figuring out how to anticipate and capture entire herds. Although they still had no usable farmland, the people developed efficient butchering and processing techniques and found safe routes through the landmine fields to trade for Texan crops. Initially devastated by the hog invasion, the east Oklahoma nations eventually fought back and carved out a niche for themselves in the new American order.

The US government, hollowed out, has all but collapsed. The east coast states down to Georgia have mostly held together and still recognize the authority of Washington DC. California, Oregon, and Washington have formed an independent coalition on the west coast. Texas' influence captures the whole coast of the Gulf of Mexico, now called the Gulf of Texas by several hundred million people. The Great Lakes states have merged with Canada. And the Great Plains in the middle of the continent are overrun by feral hogs, and war.

Local goat discovers joy of painting

For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, then, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that middle-class home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies”’ dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.

The Way We Never Were, Stephanie Coontz. 2016 edition.

Wojtek was a Syrian brown bear adopted by the Polish II Corps during World War II. He was officially enlisted as a soldier to ensure he could travel with the unit and was given the rank of private. He became famous for helping carry artillery shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino. Wojtek was also known for drinking beer, eating cigarettes, and wrestling with soldiers.

After the war, he was taken to Scotland, where he lived at the Edinburgh Zoo until his passing in 1963.

when Brennan said "The first rule of existence is: as above, so below. People are fractal images of the universe. You are as we are. In the same way your heart feels and your mind thinks, you, mortal beings are the instrument by which the universe cares. If you choose to care, then the universe cares. If you don't, then it doesn't."

when Brennan said "It is a horrifying responsibility to think because things cannot remain the same, each and every one of us must shoulder some responsibility for how they will become different."

when Brennan said "Sometimes decisions are not difficult. Sometimes they are just hard."

when Brennan said "There is no moral. The Wolf eats you one day and until it does, the forest is beautiful."

when Brennan said "I always felt the fundamental substance of the universe is creation. None of this makes any sense, when you really break it down. It's like, none of this had to happen, but it's beautiful and art is the definition of 'this didn't have to happen, but it's beautiful.' [...] It resonates with the universe because the universe is consciousness playing with itself."

when Brennan said

when Brennan said