anarchic aesthete

Only Serious Astrologers Need Apply - BYO Astrolabe

It blew my mind last year when I learned how late any evidence for knitting shows up. So many "simple" technologies we don't even think of as technologies that needed to be invented, refined over long periods and slowly spread.

Zero Marginal Satiation

@vcdgf555.bsky.social is good for ongoing events, strong on aircraft tracking and discerning on what else to boost

@slair.bsky.social does good work too, focused on well sourced video+satellite missile analysis, example article from last summer: www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1220...

(Blue Labour)

Labour with Tory characteristics

*stares in Kuang's Poppy War*

YOU - (Look at your wrist.) “It's apocalypse o' clock. Time to commence the Gloaming.”

Today we celebrate twine

Other way around I think, X-Files was such a hit because it tapped every preexisting conspiratorial strain the writers could get their hands on. The blend of skepticism and complete credulity nailed the American craving for the "real" explanation of our chaotic, too complex to understand world

Not that assigning offices to particular groups is a great way to set-up a pluralist democracy, but it's certainly better than apartheid and an ethno-state.

Where there's a whip, there's a way! YouTube video by NTorch

And by those who haven't heard the orcish anti-war protest song. What a banger.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXQ...

Some of mine fished, breaks up the monotony a bit

I try not to think about the overlap too much.

physically and digitally our world has become kippilized, people are champing at the bit to create ghoulish shadows of (non)dead people so that you can avoid ever accepting your loved one is gone, parasocial relationships with, and vicarious living through, faddish media/online figures

On the other hand, Philip K Dick’s novels (not any of the film adaptations) absolutely nailed the aesthetic and vibe of the present, which is decidedly not cool unlike what is presented in most cybernetic fiction.

I already spent too much time fighting with software doing invisible, undocumented things in the background (apparently my library's discovery layer truncates searches at commas, who knew!), but even that way too low bar isn't met by the products I've seen.

Vendors and devs aren't interested in communicating what of this exists. I asked the Elsevier "product owner" of a new AI for how they evaluated the quality of article summaries and I couldn't even get a vague list of criteria, let alone a meaningful metric.

This is where I hit a wall when actually trying these systems as they're being sold by vendors or used by patrons. The evaluation criteria, methods, error rates, all the information necessary to meaningfully evaluate or use a tool intentionally are not available.

As usual we can blame the Brits, blocking Qajar Persia from reasserting control of Herat and eastern Khorasan to protect colonial India. Didn't want another Nadr Shah situation. The Great Game at it again.

Best to confuse everyone and put it in cis-Oxania

I only half remember what mine was about, but pretty sure it was mostly about how video games made me a strategic thinker. Got me into a upper-middling polytech and a couple obscure liberal arts colleges, so I guess it worked out

Now the AI are stealing the jobs from the Ruler's Scheming Advisor

clear before/after

Read Theory

AT&T Room 641a didn't just appear with no governmental intervention.

Always has, the US just used to be quieter about it.

Google ngrams certainly aren't definitive, but there's a few interesting bumps before the takeoff in the 80s/90s. Google books search has some false positives, but lots of examples to look at before the 90s

books.google.com/ngrams/graph...

www.google.com/search?q=%22...

The OED has its first example from 1871:

1871 Blood-moons, and such a wealth of stars in the heavens, and such feather-fringed azure clouds as made the heart beat to think of them.
B. L. Farjeon, Joshua Marvel vol. I. v. 92