TechTakes

i want to slap each and every one of the people of X replying with something about autism

bad faith is actually incredibly easy to detect with a little practice if you're not a bad faith idiot yourself

see why i never hang out in berkeley these days

Aella last seen shouting 'but it is in the dictionary, I dont understand why yall keep telling me it isnt!?'

“Oh well, time to learn absolutely nothing from this and continue to be terrible people,” said Grimes and Aella mentally, and unbeknownst to them, because they each have one brain cell quantum-entangled* with the other’s, simultaneously

*I finished the three body problem trilogy recently! Where do I sign up for the ETO

aww, look at the little collaborators trying to pretend they both got duped instead of both having been active and enthusiastic enablers

I'd swear I've seen that exact same "realization" from Aella before, when she posted something like "I got really into tradcath practices for [the writer's barely disguised fetish] reasons, and now I'm shocked that they really actually do hate sex work."

Edit to add:

ok what the FUCK is goin on with the neo-trads? I was just over here enjoying this free life, individualism, subversive, unwoke cultural movement and I thought everybody was on board but suddenly BAM we've got a a bunch of them spawning into sex-negative tradcaths or whatever [...] i'm just sad cause i thought this section of culture were my allies. we both were like 'leave me alone, authoritarian government/culture', and were appropriately skeptical of novel identity movements, willing to say the weirdo things.

https://xcancel.com/Aella_Girl/status/1630875718518456321#m

Over on Bluesky, Mike Drucker sneers this as "German scientists in 1945 filling out their job application for Operation Paperclip".

I’ve been trying to avoid inundating people with US politics, but it’s extremely bad. Like constitutional crisis, rise of techno-fascism, dismantling of the administrative state, transgender extermination, put career roadblocks in front of minorities bad.

I posted this on masto just before reading this

https://mathstodon.xyz/@sc_griffith/113935375805048449

and honestly reading what you wrote here, I'm tearing up. the constant downplaying for almost a decade has really worn me down, and it's getting worse and worse. that I see more and more people plainly describing the situation is so cathartic, such a relief

Not clicking those HN links, decided years ago already that site should not be part of my life anymore at all. The few times I have deviated from that rule since, I regretted it.

As for the more general topic, I feel so bad for all trans people with everything that is unfolding. It's horrible. But be assured that there are many peope in this world who are on your side on this. Wish I could say something more useful, but I'm at a loss of words.

An account-only platform that sometimes bans US citizens for being cool

Not just that, but a site that, if you are bot logged in shows an accounts posts not chronologically, but most popular first. Making it totally incapable to be used as a gov communication platform. Imagine looking at a gov storm warning system for your area and seeing the list of most virally named storms first, and nothing about how you should evacuate right now.

Amd yes it is quite horrible that the usa is in the book burning and building (more) concentration camps stages of the gearing up for genocide stages. Up next, taking away passports (which they are already not issuing anymore) and any guns (not that these help, historically speaking, iirc the Jewish people had guns in Germany at first).

I've been trying to avoid inundating people with US politics, but it's extremely bad. Like constitutional crisis, rise of techno-fascism, dismantling of the administrative state, transgender extermination, put career roadblocks in front of minorities bad.

yep. haven’t been posting about it here because not sure where here we’d put it (while a lot of it is well within the orbit of regular content and posters) and it’s not quite entirely anything I can do anything about but offer words of comfort and keeping watch on the nasty shit, but been speaking a lot with friends in places (signal generally, or some other spaces we actually control (i.e. not discord, etc))

I feel moderately confident that at least for a bit of the foreseeable future we’ll be okay this side of the world, but I also know enough history and context to know how vacuous that is by itself. these fuckers won’t stop.

I also wish I could just make people understand that none of this is by mistake, none of this is these fuckers just finding some shit they disagree with under the seat cushions. I wish I could make them understand the depth and extent of planning and preparation that went into this, the sheer commitment behind it all. but too often such concerns would all be received as this toot put it

there’s so much more I could say but I guess I’ll leave it there for now

I saw (via Stross) a mention that passport issuance was already starting to hit weirdness too

e: this one

A random walk, in retrospect, looks like like directional movement at a speed of √n.

I aint clicking on LW links on my day off (ty for your service though). I am trying to reverse engineer wtf this poster is possibly saying though. My best guess: If we have a random walk in Z_2, with X_i being a random var with 2 outcomes, -1 or +1 (50% chance left at every step, 50% chance for a step to the right), then the expected squared distance from the origin after n steps E[ (Σ_{i=1}^n X_i)^2 ] = E[Σ_{i=1}^n X_i^2}] + E[Σ_{i not = j, i,j both in {1,2,...n}} X_i X_j}]. The expectation of any product E[X_i X_j] with i not = j is 0, (again 50% -1, 50% +1), so the 2nd expectation is 0, and (X_i)^2 is always 1, hence the whole expectation of the squared distance is equal to n => the expectation of the nonsquared distance should be on the order of root(n). (I confess this rather straightforward argument comes from the wikipedia page on simple random walks, though I swear I must have seen it before decades ago.)

Now of course, to actually get the expected 1-norm distance, we need to compute E[Σ_{i=1}^n |X_i| ]. More exciting discussion here if you are interested! https://mathworld.wolfram.com/RandomWalk1-Dimensional.html

But back to the original posters point... the whole point of this evaluation is that it is directionLESS, we are looking at expected distance from the origin without a preference for left or right. Like I kind of see what they are trying to say? If afterwards I ignored any intermediate steps of the walker and just looked at the final location (but why tho), I could say "the walker started at the origin and now is approx root(2n/pi) distance away in the minus direction, so only looking at the start and end of the walk I would say the average velocity is d(position)/(d(time)) = ( - root(2n/pi) - 0) /( n ) -> the walker had directional movement in the minus direction at a speed of root(2/(pi*n)) "

wait, so the "speed" would be O(1/root(n)), not root(n)... am I fucking crazy?

Aaaah my eyes

The Great City was built on a modular grid system designed to eliminate geography.

This future doesn't have hexagon city so I already hate it. Hexagons are the bestagons.

My understanding was that 21st-century psychiatrists didn't speak Baseline nor thought that precisely

Ah a dystopian story. (Not sure if it is intended as much bte, but for me 'ha the past was foolish, as we now have a perfect way of talking/thinking that uses math! (No you are not allowed to see it dear reader)' is quite dystopian coded. Prob why I read Starship Troopers not as it was intended. (E: and yes prob the intention here, in this science fiction story which hypes up the writings of Scott)

Am I reading this right? Is he suggesting doing experiments on the suicidally depressed?

L. Ron Hubbard says new "high-voltage" e-meters set to enter testing with Sea Org volunteers, possibly capable of purging body thetans at an unlimited rate

Is there anything written up anywhere about these AI book summaries? I know they were doing "AI" audiobooks.

It definitely has that old sci-fi weirdness to it, but the earliest edition I'm seeing on goodreads was in '03.

That is indeed troubling, casts a shadow on Project Gutenberg's judgement. Now I wonder how long until Wikipedia falls too :( Gosh, I miss being excited about new tech. Now new tech is just making things worse.

About that book, so it is more "good bad" instead of "bad bad"? Maybe I'll take a look, some light/weird reading might be better than doomscrolling (and these days there's so much doom to scroll).

Days since tech bro tried to reinvent religion so they could javascript faster: 0. We have sold the 1 sign and donated the money.

on a side note I found out what "agile" is a few months ago and I think I'd rather go back to working retail than do the little morning circlejerk thing. dehumanizing