#Literary dystopias are entertaining but destructive. They have crowded positive visions of the future out of the narrative and out of our minds. We might not manifest every future we imagine, but we can't create a #future without imagining it.
Mass visualizations like 1984, The Handmaid's Tale, Blade Runner, The Matrix, or even Avatar have hurt social progress. We need visualizations of what we want.
What #SpeculativeFiction have you read/seen that offers #hope for the future?
social meta, language, insult usage, capitalism, ranty
I'm not sure that we should be using “man baby”, “man child”, etc. Not only because it's one of the primary insults used against bronies, but also because, what, everycreature is supposed to Grow Up when they turn eighteen? What does that mean? Stop enjoying things? Become a miserable Adult in the sense of being a cog in the capitalist machine and nothing more? Just a husk of the former self? And with how it's inevitably gendered masculine, there's probably an element of toxic masculinity in there too. To say nothing of the littles and ageplayers, who are totally valid by the way.
In defense of CWs. Anxiety vs actionable change. (death, -)
There is this line of thought against CWs that: “This topic is an ISSUE, I care about it, therefor asking to put a content warning on it is unreasonable!”
I’ll deconstruct why this is mistaking anxiety with caring and action.
Recent years of eg twitter became full of this, showing things that no one denies are actually important.
But that’s the thing: important is not sufficient by itself! It has to be actionable, otherwise…
I will never understand why people are so averse to diversity.
I like seeing trans people speaking to each other with idioms I don't get, cute girls speaking a language I can't recognize, or gay dudes priming and posing in random pics.
Seeing shit that is not for me makes me feel like I'm part of a much bigger world that still has space for me to learn and grow.
That's a big place of comfort for me. The bottomless nature of the human experience means we all have space to be fully who we are.
That's pretty cool.
designing social networks
We're so at the beginning of trying to build social networks online.
The closest analogy that comes to my mind is medicine/biology.
For socials, we're in the victorian era of "unscrupulous proprietor puts radioactive material in it, because it glows neatly".
This thread by an ex-twitter designer reminds me of that: https://social.lot23.com/@jon/109372257422277945
It's worth a read to go through what they wrote - you need data to really mislead yourself after all.
@prehensile I love the mix of this is a very very serious algebraic topology thing, also death to capitalism, by the way this is a realtime kernel driver for a teledildonic device, oh and I’m a cat meow meow.
We can all do with a reminder that we all contain multitudes, and the fedi certainly does that.
We're all gonna need this sooner than expected so here is my proposed APA 7 style citation format for citing a Mastodon post
Lastname, F.M. [@mastodon@handle.tld] (20XX, Month DD). Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut ... [Mastodon post]. Name of instance. [URL of post]
As with the format for citing a Twitter post, the correct reference list title is the first 20 words of the post, and the correct short title is the first 5, both using an ellipsis if necessary.
I've been using #AnnotatedEquations in my recent papers. I think it really adds to the readability and understanding of the math.
Here are some examples. It uses #tikz in #latex.
Let me know if you like it. Happy for any feedback.
I'm pretty sure the story of Albert Einstein having bad grades in school is false. The good thing is that we can still tell the inspirational story of Alan Turing, whose report card once read: "I can forgive his writing, though it is the worst I have ever seen, and I try to view tolerantly his unswerving inexactitude and slipshod, dirty, work, inconsistent though such inexactitude is in a utilitarian; but I cannot forgive the stupidity of his attitude towards sane discussion on the New Testament." (Source: https://www.turing.org.uk/scrapbook/early.html)
Here we go, after 1.5 years and a pile of c++ code later I'm pleased to announced my basilisk story is FINISHED!
"Basilisk collection - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"
https://suricrasia.online/unfiction/basilisk/
I keep seeing lots of long-time #fediverse users saying 'don't favourite posts it does nothing' but actually when you favourite my posts it makes me smile and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
A wishlist for trans*feminist servers at #atnofs in Athens!
The text is also available here https://etherpad.mur.at/p/tfs
Programmer and researcher,. Ended up working with all the current buzzwords: #ai #aisafety #ml #deeplearning #cryptocurrency
Other interests include #sewing, being #lesswrong, reading #hardsf, playing #boardgames and omitting stuff on lists.
Oh, and trans rights, duh.
Header image by @WhiteShield@livellosegreto.it .
Heheh, gentoo, heh, nonbinary, heheheh... I'm so easily amused sometimes.