Attentive Dragon

So even if historicists are right (I do believe there probably was a historical guy) he's not the guy in the books and wouldn't recognize himself if he read them. The Jesus of the books IS a myth. Maybe based on a real guy to a greater or lesser extent, but we have no way to know how accurately.

I always feel the mythicist/historicist debate misses the point. Even if there was a guy, the gospels were so long after he died they're not reliable. We can't know they report what he actually said or did. Maybe a rabbi was killed whose followers made up a bunch of extra shit. That's all we have.

We're all so fucking obsessed with judging what other people are doing all the time?? What the hell is up with this furry nsfw art discourse???

I'm tapping the signnn:
"If it's not harming anyone, you shut the fuck up"

""I'm afraid I could be arrested if I travel to that state for your wedding and need to use the restroom at the venue ..."

Pretty crazy how important the blockade of a trade route is right now

They look like they’re about to launch into a musical number

a video game character says me ? gongaga .. Alt: Zack Fair, a character from the game “Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, turns to the viewer and says “Me? Gongaga.”

The TV at the restaurant was showing a basketball game and they kept advertising the upcoming game between Santa Clara and Gonzaga, and my doofus brain was like:

OK, but the way he starts just channeling Robert Carlyle from OUAT there

I fucking love writing so much.

Goodnight, Bluesky. 🥰

I'll theorize it's a financial scandal. Turns out those waffle photo-shoots were WAY more expensive than she expected, and embezzling seemed like the obvious solution at the time.

韋禮安 WeiBird《不用告訴我 Don't Tell》Official Music Video - 東森戲劇台韓劇「巧克力」片尾曲 YouTube video by 韋禮安 WeiBird

This one's been stuck in my head again recently. Kind of want to record a cover someday.

Weibird - 不用告訴我

Harry Brewis, aka HBomberguy, from his video "Climate Denial: A Measured Response." He is angrily shouting through a hole that he just chopped in his own wall with an axe. He shouts: "Just one small problem! Sell their houses to who, Ben? Fucking Aquaman?"

Just one small problem. Style those eyebrows with WHAT, Ben? Fucking AQUANET?

Hilary Duff has reflected on filming the iconic “That’s So Gay” PSA, saying the experience still makes her emotional years later.

Speaking to Gay Times, Duff said the campaign was deeply personal to her and addressed language she felt was harmful to LGBTQ+ young people.

a man in a suit and tie is smoking a cigarette while sitting at a table . Alt: Animated gif of Peter Falk as Columbo walking and talking while gesturing with his hand.

"Ah, Mr. Video, just one more thing. You said you didn't see the Radio Star on the night he was killed, but Buggles says he saw you in the abandoned studio. Can you explain that, sir?"

"It slipped my mind , Lieutenant, but I had no motive!"

"Ah, but you took credit for his second symphony, sir!"

It was seeing how so many Christians behave. My faith taught that belief made us better, "comformed" us to Christ, and I never saw that. Good people were already good, and found good in the Bible. Bad people used the Bible in the same way. It started the ball rolling on a much longer journey out.

My partner: "Who downloaded a bunch of Karl Marx stuff to the Kindle?"

Me: "It wasn't... not... me?"

(Also, aside, back to the first post in this thread: I really hate the analogy of DNA to computer code, because creationists love to misuse that analogy to argue for design. It’s an awful argument, but it seems compelling to folks who don’t understand the weakness of the analogy.)

There’s more to it than that, but this highlights the current state of the technology and why claims of consciousness are premature. Currently the most advanced LLM is nothing more than the old Dr. Sbaitso, just with exponentially more potential responses available to make it seem more “real.”

As to where that line is, between conscious and unconscious? I couldn’t even begin to guess. I’m certainly no expert in this field. But I’d say integrating new information is part of it. Show me an LLM that can learn to accurately consistently count letters in words and we’re (only) part way there.

Could software someday be conscious, or even sentient? Maybe. LLMs won’t. They’re only predictive autocomplete machines, ultimately the most complicated if-then we’ve seen. It’s why they’re often wrong. THEY DON’T THINK. They just assemble predictions based on what other people wrote previously.

That’s where analogies break down. LLMs are far more complicated than if-than, but fundamentally they are of the same class. No one would make the mistake of calling a simple if-then conscious. LLMs are just good at pretending they’re different, because they’ve been programmed to behave that way.

Consciousness is an emergent property of biology. It’s not a binary thing: bacteria are conscious in how they respond to their environment, but not sentient: they’re not aware that they’re aware. By that logic: is a simple “if/then”’statement conscious? I think few would argue that one is.

I think we’ve been badly served by using analogies where we compare brains to computers (and likewise DNA to code.) DNA is not a computer code. Brains are not computers. Consciousness is not analogous to software. The analogies can be useful, but they can lead to misunderstandings like this.

I also downloaded the English translations of the first two parts of “Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism” which @noncompete.bsky.social links to in several videos. Looking forward to reading those soon.

I’ve been working on educating myself on actual theory and the history of the movement. This list has been really useful.

Lion body AND the head of a man? I’ve had it with these unrealistic beauty standards.

“It’s an invented culture war scare”

As if that in any way lessens the harm to trans people. Of course it’s invented, by some of the worst people around. Those people are still trying to kill us. Our survival isn’t a fucking distraction.

The Daicon IV opening animation is legendary, and if you’ve never seen it before, you really should check it out. This incredible short was a fan project by future giants of the industry.

I wrote a bunch in my "Yellow Earring" edit today, so I rewarded myself by borrowing a smut book my partner was reading. Now I want to write smut. But I don't want to lose momentum in my non-smut book. A true dilemma.

Listening to the VOD of last night's stream, and while using the Elgato Chat Link Pro there is a noticeable constant high-pitched whine. This is even with the isolater turned on. I have some ideas as to what might have been causing this, and I'll work on that tonight before trying to stream again.