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Education in Weirdtopia
General | Posted 9 years agoMy caseworker, Jerome, was considerate enough to express his desire to meet through a medium I was familiar and comfortable with - email - instead of any of the more recent variations on instant messaging. I'd actually died some time after the creation of IRC, AIM, and later such protocols, but some other cryonicists hadn't, and since I found asynchronous forms of communication less stressful than conversations demanding instant responses, I was willing to ride along with the habits he'd developed to handle other people. Even when I was using such forms to plan the most quintessential form of synchronous, instant communication: a face-to-face conversation.
Since I didn't have to worry about my pale skin sunburning, just staying within my chassis's fairly generous recommended operating temperatures, I drove Lexx (as I'd dubbed my RV-conversion maid-bot) through the local public transportation system (which consisted of sending something like a text-message indicating where I wanted to arrive and when, and having directions automatically sent to Lexx's autopilot about where to wait for a motorized vehicle), and ended up at a park with a view of a modest waterfall (Okay, /I/ thought it was modest, but I'd used to live ten miles from Niagara Falls.) where Jerome was already passing the time by passing a frisbee back and forth with a Golden Retriever, who bid him goodbye at my arrival and trotted off. I set Lexx's autopilot to 'walk and talk' with Jerome as the indicated conversational partner, and trusting that the newfangled algorithms of The Future had been sufficiently bug-proofed, pulled myself out of Lexx's head-cockpit and perched on her shoulder, so I could gab without having to do so through her eye-windows.
After exchanging a few pleasantries, we began the interesting part of the conversation.
"I can see you've been studying and trying to catch up with modern educational standards, which is good and praiseworthy. But I've also seen your test scores, and frankly, I have to admit that I'm concerned with your rate of progress."
"Well, birch."
"Pardon?"
"I don't like swearing, especially in public, and apparently just about everywhere is public these days. But the urge still occasionally exists, so I'm trying out swearing by trees - they're supposed to be fairly reliable."
"I understand. And you needn't worry; remedial programs are available that can help you achieve the peak performance you're capable of, no matter what form of brain damage was unable to be corrected during your revival."
I managed to avoid face-palming, but only just. "That's not what I was swearing about."
"Hm?"
"An idea from my time that I still think is useful, even if it seems to have less cachet today, is that there is a good amount of social good by giving people the opportunity to try things, and fail at those things, in a way where they won't have any social consequences for that failure."
"I'm afraid I don't follow."
"I thought I was taking those practice tests in /private/."
"Why would you think that?"
"Because the whole point of a practice test is to fail in private so you can figure out how to succeed in public?"
"Then why did you take them on an external server?"
"Because... that's where they were?"
We paused for a moment, having achieved a certain level of mutual incomprehension. Eventually, Jerome said, "Okay. I'm here to provide whatever help I can, that you think you can use. Is there anything in particular that you feel you're having trouble with, education-wise?"
"Eh, it's not hard to pin down my troubles to two things, one more obvious than the other. The obvious one is that I'm decent enough at any topic that existed before I died, or that I can work out the specifics of from general principles. That mostly leaves out the unpredictable twists and turns of the events of history since I died, and getting a better hold of that is mostly going to be a matter of taking the time to read up on it all."
"That's understandable," he soothed. "And the other thing?"
"I don't know if it's some sort of extension of the Flynn effect, or the mental-social shifts that accompanied movie scenes getting shorter over decades, but any tests that involve time limits on answers barely seem to give me enough time to read the question, let alone think about which answer to pick. ... Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but only a bit."
"That's interesting. Without breaking any confidences, I don't recall any other revivals having a similar issue. By any chance, did you deal with anything of the sort before you were preserved?"
"Not particularly. I'd even say the opposite - when I was in school, at least in some subjects, I could often finish a test well before anyone else did. Sometimes I even lost marks because I'd work out the answer in my head and just write it down, instead of showing the work on paper the way the teacher wanted. I've gotta admit, after being used to school going that way, I'm... not happy about discovering that, by current standards, I seem to simply be... slow-minded."
"Speed isn't everything," Jerome conciliated. "Depth of understanding is also valuable."
"Tell that to the non-private practice tests I've been taking."
"Hm. ... Do you mind if I try asking a few questions?"
"Shoot."
"What caused the American Civil War?"
"Depending how far back you want to track the chain of causation - geology, in that some of the Cretaceous inland seas left behind soils which were exceptionally good for certain types of agriculture, which eventually led to the so-called 'Black belt', heavily planted in cotton, which led to the cotton-plantation owners finding it in their own self-interests to promulgate an economic system based around extracting value from workers in the form of chattel slavery, with sufficient wealth to continue to push their perceived self-interest to the point that it annoyed their industrial-focused neighbours through such mechanisms as the Fugitive Slave Act requiring those neighbours to actively assist in maintaining the slave system, at the point when industry became a more important factor to war-winning than simple manpower. Certain aspects of primate hierarchy impulses led to urges which, also later in the form of the Jim Crow laws-"
Jerome coughed. "... I was looking for more of a one-word answer."
"Ah. Then you were also probably looking for the word 'slavery'."
"Okay, let's try more of an essay question. Say that you had a brilliant new idea you wanted to bring to market. What would you do?"
"I'd avoid assuming that I was somehow the first person to assemble the pre-existing ideas, given that there's been plenty of incentive while I was dead for anyone else wanting to make a buck to look for better ways to put together any business plans based on the limited information I have access to. That said, if I could figure out some way to perform basic online searches without everyone and their cousin reading what I'm looking up, I just might try to double-check what sorts of business /had/ arisen from that idea, to try to calibrate how much I should trust myself when I come up with what seems like a brilliant new idea worth bringing to market. And given your previous question, you're probably looking for something a bit more direct, like 'file a business plan to prepare to apply for a loan'."
"Something, yes. Okay - here's a nice, easy, simple one. What's the proper way to greet a visiting Priapic Columnist?"
"Assuming that's some sort of person: Nod my head, say something along the lines of, 'It's a pleasure to meet you. Is there anything I can help you with?', and respond to whatever overtures are made appropriately."
"What?"
"Are you saying that, if I behaved that way, I would insult the person or suffer significant negative consequences?"
"Well - no, I guess not. It's just that the first answer in the FAQ is something else entirely - why would you /pick/ that answer?"
"A rule of thumb called 'pie with a fork', which derives in part from an idea similar to the Unix philosophy of being conservative in what you emit and being liberal in what you accept, in parallel with idea that there are certain baseline forms of politeness that have become widely accepted, and those forms can be estimated based on the idea that new ideas about purity have been becoming increasingly informed by our knowledge of how disease transmission can be limited by proper hygiene."
"... What's the square root of two hundred?"
"Fourteen point, mm, one and change - what's the number to be used for, how many decimal places do you need?"
"You're not even /trying/ to look any of this up, are you?"
"I left my phone inside Lexx. Want me to go get it?"
"Other than what's actually here, what's your overlay showing you right now?"
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"You... how... hrm. Okay. Have you plugged yourself in at least once to recharge, or have you been, I don't know, conserving your battery power like crazy?"
"I've recharged, yes. More than once."
"Hrm. Then I'm confused."
"So am I, I'll admit. This body only stores eighteen kilojoules - I've been thinking of essentially bolting on some armored plates around the ribcage, and stuffing ten or more times that much inside the empty space in there. And who builds a robot so that the only recharging socket also transmits data? There's no way to maintain a proper air-gap without going to all sorts of complicated trouble. The first time I charged, I literally had to nibble the cable and bite the data-lines in half, leaving just the power-carrying lines, before I built myself a decent adaptor-"
"Wait," Jerome lifted a hand. "You're saying that, when you've recharged, you haven't gotten any menu options at all. And all you see is what's in front of you. And nobody's bothered to ask you about your overlays, since you're obviously a robot already."
"To the extent I understand that, yes."
"Right. /I/ understand, now. Hm, gimme a sec, I'm going to take your practice tests, and put together a new scoring algorithm, based on the premise that you took them at iron-man difficulty... whew."
"What?"
"Well, let's just say that you're not going to have to worry about failing to achieve whatever educational certification you seek. But for now, let me check your manuals about how to activate your built-in augmented-reality overlays, which, yes, you can use to a certain degree without hurting your so-called 'air gap', and then we should probably talk a bit about how necessary that particular sort of defensive measure really is in your case..."
Since I didn't have to worry about my pale skin sunburning, just staying within my chassis's fairly generous recommended operating temperatures, I drove Lexx (as I'd dubbed my RV-conversion maid-bot) through the local public transportation system (which consisted of sending something like a text-message indicating where I wanted to arrive and when, and having directions automatically sent to Lexx's autopilot about where to wait for a motorized vehicle), and ended up at a park with a view of a modest waterfall (Okay, /I/ thought it was modest, but I'd used to live ten miles from Niagara Falls.) where Jerome was already passing the time by passing a frisbee back and forth with a Golden Retriever, who bid him goodbye at my arrival and trotted off. I set Lexx's autopilot to 'walk and talk' with Jerome as the indicated conversational partner, and trusting that the newfangled algorithms of The Future had been sufficiently bug-proofed, pulled myself out of Lexx's head-cockpit and perched on her shoulder, so I could gab without having to do so through her eye-windows.
After exchanging a few pleasantries, we began the interesting part of the conversation.
"I can see you've been studying and trying to catch up with modern educational standards, which is good and praiseworthy. But I've also seen your test scores, and frankly, I have to admit that I'm concerned with your rate of progress."
"Well, birch."
"Pardon?"
"I don't like swearing, especially in public, and apparently just about everywhere is public these days. But the urge still occasionally exists, so I'm trying out swearing by trees - they're supposed to be fairly reliable."
"I understand. And you needn't worry; remedial programs are available that can help you achieve the peak performance you're capable of, no matter what form of brain damage was unable to be corrected during your revival."
I managed to avoid face-palming, but only just. "That's not what I was swearing about."
"Hm?"
"An idea from my time that I still think is useful, even if it seems to have less cachet today, is that there is a good amount of social good by giving people the opportunity to try things, and fail at those things, in a way where they won't have any social consequences for that failure."
"I'm afraid I don't follow."
"I thought I was taking those practice tests in /private/."
"Why would you think that?"
"Because the whole point of a practice test is to fail in private so you can figure out how to succeed in public?"
"Then why did you take them on an external server?"
"Because... that's where they were?"
We paused for a moment, having achieved a certain level of mutual incomprehension. Eventually, Jerome said, "Okay. I'm here to provide whatever help I can, that you think you can use. Is there anything in particular that you feel you're having trouble with, education-wise?"
"Eh, it's not hard to pin down my troubles to two things, one more obvious than the other. The obvious one is that I'm decent enough at any topic that existed before I died, or that I can work out the specifics of from general principles. That mostly leaves out the unpredictable twists and turns of the events of history since I died, and getting a better hold of that is mostly going to be a matter of taking the time to read up on it all."
"That's understandable," he soothed. "And the other thing?"
"I don't know if it's some sort of extension of the Flynn effect, or the mental-social shifts that accompanied movie scenes getting shorter over decades, but any tests that involve time limits on answers barely seem to give me enough time to read the question, let alone think about which answer to pick. ... Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but only a bit."
"That's interesting. Without breaking any confidences, I don't recall any other revivals having a similar issue. By any chance, did you deal with anything of the sort before you were preserved?"
"Not particularly. I'd even say the opposite - when I was in school, at least in some subjects, I could often finish a test well before anyone else did. Sometimes I even lost marks because I'd work out the answer in my head and just write it down, instead of showing the work on paper the way the teacher wanted. I've gotta admit, after being used to school going that way, I'm... not happy about discovering that, by current standards, I seem to simply be... slow-minded."
"Speed isn't everything," Jerome conciliated. "Depth of understanding is also valuable."
"Tell that to the non-private practice tests I've been taking."
"Hm. ... Do you mind if I try asking a few questions?"
"Shoot."
"What caused the American Civil War?"
"Depending how far back you want to track the chain of causation - geology, in that some of the Cretaceous inland seas left behind soils which were exceptionally good for certain types of agriculture, which eventually led to the so-called 'Black belt', heavily planted in cotton, which led to the cotton-plantation owners finding it in their own self-interests to promulgate an economic system based around extracting value from workers in the form of chattel slavery, with sufficient wealth to continue to push their perceived self-interest to the point that it annoyed their industrial-focused neighbours through such mechanisms as the Fugitive Slave Act requiring those neighbours to actively assist in maintaining the slave system, at the point when industry became a more important factor to war-winning than simple manpower. Certain aspects of primate hierarchy impulses led to urges which, also later in the form of the Jim Crow laws-"
Jerome coughed. "... I was looking for more of a one-word answer."
"Ah. Then you were also probably looking for the word 'slavery'."
"Okay, let's try more of an essay question. Say that you had a brilliant new idea you wanted to bring to market. What would you do?"
"I'd avoid assuming that I was somehow the first person to assemble the pre-existing ideas, given that there's been plenty of incentive while I was dead for anyone else wanting to make a buck to look for better ways to put together any business plans based on the limited information I have access to. That said, if I could figure out some way to perform basic online searches without everyone and their cousin reading what I'm looking up, I just might try to double-check what sorts of business /had/ arisen from that idea, to try to calibrate how much I should trust myself when I come up with what seems like a brilliant new idea worth bringing to market. And given your previous question, you're probably looking for something a bit more direct, like 'file a business plan to prepare to apply for a loan'."
"Something, yes. Okay - here's a nice, easy, simple one. What's the proper way to greet a visiting Priapic Columnist?"
"Assuming that's some sort of person: Nod my head, say something along the lines of, 'It's a pleasure to meet you. Is there anything I can help you with?', and respond to whatever overtures are made appropriately."
"What?"
"Are you saying that, if I behaved that way, I would insult the person or suffer significant negative consequences?"
"Well - no, I guess not. It's just that the first answer in the FAQ is something else entirely - why would you /pick/ that answer?"
"A rule of thumb called 'pie with a fork', which derives in part from an idea similar to the Unix philosophy of being conservative in what you emit and being liberal in what you accept, in parallel with idea that there are certain baseline forms of politeness that have become widely accepted, and those forms can be estimated based on the idea that new ideas about purity have been becoming increasingly informed by our knowledge of how disease transmission can be limited by proper hygiene."
"... What's the square root of two hundred?"
"Fourteen point, mm, one and change - what's the number to be used for, how many decimal places do you need?"
"You're not even /trying/ to look any of this up, are you?"
"I left my phone inside Lexx. Want me to go get it?"
"Other than what's actually here, what's your overlay showing you right now?"
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"You... how... hrm. Okay. Have you plugged yourself in at least once to recharge, or have you been, I don't know, conserving your battery power like crazy?"
"I've recharged, yes. More than once."
"Hrm. Then I'm confused."
"So am I, I'll admit. This body only stores eighteen kilojoules - I've been thinking of essentially bolting on some armored plates around the ribcage, and stuffing ten or more times that much inside the empty space in there. And who builds a robot so that the only recharging socket also transmits data? There's no way to maintain a proper air-gap without going to all sorts of complicated trouble. The first time I charged, I literally had to nibble the cable and bite the data-lines in half, leaving just the power-carrying lines, before I built myself a decent adaptor-"
"Wait," Jerome lifted a hand. "You're saying that, when you've recharged, you haven't gotten any menu options at all. And all you see is what's in front of you. And nobody's bothered to ask you about your overlays, since you're obviously a robot already."
"To the extent I understand that, yes."
"Right. /I/ understand, now. Hm, gimme a sec, I'm going to take your practice tests, and put together a new scoring algorithm, based on the premise that you took them at iron-man difficulty... whew."
"What?"
"Well, let's just say that you're not going to have to worry about failing to achieve whatever educational certification you seek. But for now, let me check your manuals about how to activate your built-in augmented-reality overlays, which, yes, you can use to a certain degree without hurting your so-called 'air gap', and then we should probably talk a bit about how necessary that particular sort of defensive measure really is in your case..."
Shopping in Weirdtopia
General | Posted 9 years agoWhile waiting for some bureaucratic processes to process, I decide to increase my knowledge of what I can spend my apparently minuscule stipend on by leaving my one-bedroom apartment (that's all it is, one bedroom - it's not like I need a bathroom or kitchen) and using public transport to visit a local indoor flea market. I have a few things I definitely want to buy for myself, even used, if I can find them: spare parts for my rat-bot chassis, electronic hardware pieces that I can use to try to build an adaptor to let me use the micro-USB port on the bottom of my skull for more than just recharging without risking malware infections, maybe some scraps of cloth to try to sew into doll-sized-but-rat-shaped outfits. (Sure, nudity is perfectly legal, and it's not like I have any anatomy I care about hiding, but there are several useful psychological tricks I can use based around whether I'm wearing a sharply-tailored suit versus a more casual outfit.)
After running a few numbers, using the cellphone my caseworker, Jerome, arranged for me as a calculator, I also want to see how hard it would be for me to build myself a parachute without any of the nigh-omnipresent flying cameras gathering the data required to figure out that I'm building any such thing for myself. Sure, my chassis may be built of a wunder-material that's less likely to break than anything from my pre-death time - but I'm tiny and easy to be swept or blown off a high balcony, and 'less likely to break' doesn't mean my CPU would survive a multi-story fall. And if I can make myself a parachute... then given the wunder-batteries and wunder-motors used by all those flying cameras, and since I'm so small and lightweight, I just might be able to build myself a powered paraglider to join them in the air. Of course, that depends on whether the parts for any such thing are within my price range.
Nobody seems to be batting their eyes at the old maid-bot being piloted by a rat-bot looking out through her eyes. That's probably because, at least by the standards I'm used to, I'm one of the /less/ interesting beings walking around BosWash. (Speaking of which, I should look into whether any loopholes exist in the conversion between the governments that were around when I was a Canadian citizen and the system in place now. Having been dead at the time, it's possible that I could argue in a court that I wasn't covered by some piece of legislation, thus making me 'the last Canadian', thus giving me an extra card in my hand to negotiate a better deal for myself with.)
I've already picked up a few bits and bobs and stuffed them in the RV-bot's workshop/cargo area, behind where most humanoids have a belly, when I come to the bookseller's stall, and hit the brakes.
The stall is big enough to have a couple of aisles, with shelves reach up higher than the RV-bot's arms can stretch, and if my face was built to be capable of performing a fond smile, I would. (I make a note to see about updating the RV-bot's face and controls, so I could, say, push some emoticon buttons from the head-cockpit and have the appropriate emotional signals shown to whoever's looking.) I carefully pilot my way into the libro-canyons, practicing the controls that let me look higher and lower at the various themes that are on offer, some familiar - including some specific editions I've seen before, apparently Xanth never went out of style - some less so. The guy running the stall is seated behind a glass case, containing racks of what, for him, are probably antique e-book readers of various levels of complexity and of various degrees of being merged into super-duper-genius smart-phones.
He asks if there's anything in particular I'm looking for, I mention my lack of space to store books that are bigger than I am and my wish that I hadn't lost my digital library while I was dead. He seems curious about certain of the details of my status. "So, let me get this straight. You had the legal right to format-shift any books you owned into digital form, you could even burn the physical copies and keep the digital ones, and there was no way for anyone else to keep track of which ones you owned?"
"Yep. I tried to make arrangements for my stuff to be preserved when I died, but that seems to have fallen through at some point while I was dead. I'd be happy to rebuild my old library - except, well, I'm still looking for a few basics, like useful employment to get enough cash for more than the essentials."
"A job, hm? Hm... tell you what, how about I hire you to run this place while I get some lunch? I think I can get you something worth your time on my way back."
I would have been happy enough to do it for free - people-watching (for a very generous definition of 'people') was as much a part of why I was out and about as getting anything done - so after a quick back-and-forth about responsibilities and how hard to haggle and similar stuff (most of which was advising any customers the owner would be back shortly), I took over the stall for half an hour. During which I practice using the controls for the RV-bot's arms to flip pages on some mid-20th-century scifi magazines that had fallen prey to heavy zeerust. And a moderate bit of foxing.
( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Zeerust , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxing )
The bookseller returns, we swap places again, and he slides across the glass case what I can recognize as The Future's version of a micro-SD card, along with one of the almost-a-genius-phone e-readers. "Here you go - when you read it in private, I'm sure you'll think this is fair return, and come by if you have any questions."
After some further pleasantries, I resume my driving through the market, picking up a few other things with a high-interest/low-cost ratio, and head back to my apartment to start fiddling with my new possessions.
As it turns out, what the bookseller gave me on that memory chip was, well, everything from before I died. Every book and magazine published. Every TV show and movie broadcast. Every radio program. Heck, every painting and wax cylinder and patent and a few stranger things. Plus Future-level software to sort and skim through the whole thing.
What was also on the memory stick was a short text file, asking that I demonstrate my competence at privacy and plausible deniability by keeping the source of where I got this data to myself, and preferably to not even let anyone know I had said data at all, unless I trusted them enough for them to keep a similar level of discretion. And promising that should I demonstrate a proper combination of responsibility and thoughtfulness, then soon enough I'd be able to leave probationary status and gain access to a better selection of material.
Phrased another way, I'd just been invited to join The Future's version of a 1337 warez group.
After running a few numbers, using the cellphone my caseworker, Jerome, arranged for me as a calculator, I also want to see how hard it would be for me to build myself a parachute without any of the nigh-omnipresent flying cameras gathering the data required to figure out that I'm building any such thing for myself. Sure, my chassis may be built of a wunder-material that's less likely to break than anything from my pre-death time - but I'm tiny and easy to be swept or blown off a high balcony, and 'less likely to break' doesn't mean my CPU would survive a multi-story fall. And if I can make myself a parachute... then given the wunder-batteries and wunder-motors used by all those flying cameras, and since I'm so small and lightweight, I just might be able to build myself a powered paraglider to join them in the air. Of course, that depends on whether the parts for any such thing are within my price range.
Nobody seems to be batting their eyes at the old maid-bot being piloted by a rat-bot looking out through her eyes. That's probably because, at least by the standards I'm used to, I'm one of the /less/ interesting beings walking around BosWash. (Speaking of which, I should look into whether any loopholes exist in the conversion between the governments that were around when I was a Canadian citizen and the system in place now. Having been dead at the time, it's possible that I could argue in a court that I wasn't covered by some piece of legislation, thus making me 'the last Canadian', thus giving me an extra card in my hand to negotiate a better deal for myself with.)
I've already picked up a few bits and bobs and stuffed them in the RV-bot's workshop/cargo area, behind where most humanoids have a belly, when I come to the bookseller's stall, and hit the brakes.
The stall is big enough to have a couple of aisles, with shelves reach up higher than the RV-bot's arms can stretch, and if my face was built to be capable of performing a fond smile, I would. (I make a note to see about updating the RV-bot's face and controls, so I could, say, push some emoticon buttons from the head-cockpit and have the appropriate emotional signals shown to whoever's looking.) I carefully pilot my way into the libro-canyons, practicing the controls that let me look higher and lower at the various themes that are on offer, some familiar - including some specific editions I've seen before, apparently Xanth never went out of style - some less so. The guy running the stall is seated behind a glass case, containing racks of what, for him, are probably antique e-book readers of various levels of complexity and of various degrees of being merged into super-duper-genius smart-phones.
He asks if there's anything in particular I'm looking for, I mention my lack of space to store books that are bigger than I am and my wish that I hadn't lost my digital library while I was dead. He seems curious about certain of the details of my status. "So, let me get this straight. You had the legal right to format-shift any books you owned into digital form, you could even burn the physical copies and keep the digital ones, and there was no way for anyone else to keep track of which ones you owned?"
"Yep. I tried to make arrangements for my stuff to be preserved when I died, but that seems to have fallen through at some point while I was dead. I'd be happy to rebuild my old library - except, well, I'm still looking for a few basics, like useful employment to get enough cash for more than the essentials."
"A job, hm? Hm... tell you what, how about I hire you to run this place while I get some lunch? I think I can get you something worth your time on my way back."
I would have been happy enough to do it for free - people-watching (for a very generous definition of 'people') was as much a part of why I was out and about as getting anything done - so after a quick back-and-forth about responsibilities and how hard to haggle and similar stuff (most of which was advising any customers the owner would be back shortly), I took over the stall for half an hour. During which I practice using the controls for the RV-bot's arms to flip pages on some mid-20th-century scifi magazines that had fallen prey to heavy zeerust. And a moderate bit of foxing.
( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Zeerust , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxing )
The bookseller returns, we swap places again, and he slides across the glass case what I can recognize as The Future's version of a micro-SD card, along with one of the almost-a-genius-phone e-readers. "Here you go - when you read it in private, I'm sure you'll think this is fair return, and come by if you have any questions."
After some further pleasantries, I resume my driving through the market, picking up a few other things with a high-interest/low-cost ratio, and head back to my apartment to start fiddling with my new possessions.
As it turns out, what the bookseller gave me on that memory chip was, well, everything from before I died. Every book and magazine published. Every TV show and movie broadcast. Every radio program. Heck, every painting and wax cylinder and patent and a few stranger things. Plus Future-level software to sort and skim through the whole thing.
What was also on the memory stick was a short text file, asking that I demonstrate my competence at privacy and plausible deniability by keeping the source of where I got this data to myself, and preferably to not even let anyone know I had said data at all, unless I trusted them enough for them to keep a similar level of discretion. And promising that should I demonstrate a proper combination of responsibility and thoughtfulness, then soon enough I'd be able to leave probationary status and gain access to a better selection of material.
Phrased another way, I'd just been invited to join The Future's version of a 1337 warez group.
Waking in Weirdtopia
General | Posted 9 years ago(Based on the ideas seen in https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7492009/ , https://www.furaffinity.net/view/19715652/ , and https://www.furaffinity.net/view/19775309/ .)
"Hello? You're awake? Good. The bad news: Yes, you're in a hospital bed. Yes, you died. The good news: Yes, you were cryonically preserved, according to your wishes, and yes, you've been basically brought back from the dead. I'm afraid that further explanations are going to be a tad complicated."
The individual doing the speaking appears to be a rat's skeleton made out of blue metal, seated on its hind legs on a table to your left.
"Probably most important to you," it continues, "your mind and identity. And I've got some more bad news. Digital uploading. Nobody's bothered figuring out how to bring people preserved the way we were back to life, so it was either destructively scan your brain, or because of various external factors I'll get to in a bit, allow you to die permanently. The organization with responsibility for you at the time went for scanning. ... Oh, yes, I'm a revival, myself. ... I'll get to my body in a minute, when I talk about yours.
"Where was I... right. Well, more bad news is that your perfusion didn't go so well, and there was ischemic damage leading to a certain amount of unrecoverable loss of data. With the best algorithms, about six percent of your neurons had to be basically constructed from scratch. Some people think that's enough to make you a different person, and so not worth 'reviving'," it makes little air-quotes with its skeletal paws, "but I'm, um, call it the equivalent of being on the board of directors of the current successor organization, and I made the choice to bring you back anyway. If you feel I erred, you do have the option of suiciding, but I'd /really/ recommend waiting at least until I finish this spiel, and even better after you start learning about The Future. Okay, I'll admit that I don't want you to die at all, but I also don't want you to feel like you're trapped in some sort of dystopia. Anyway - six percent. You're the worst-off person we've revived yet, and we're hoping to pick up a few more details from you to help us with the next one. I can get you a booklet with all the details, but all you have to worry about is having lost some memories and skills - the algorithms are good enough at rebuilding minds that you don't have to worry about any sort of craziness you didn't start with.
"As for your body... well. The economics of The Future are as crazy as some of their other notions, but in twentieth-century terms, we're just about bankrupt. I was revived not too long ago, because the data indicated I had a more flexible body-image and could more easily adapt to this silly rat-skeleton-thing, which costs a lot less than your humanoid body. Now, people of this era have some oddball notions about bodily integrity and identity - they have to fill out forms just to get a piercing - but we manage to fall through some medical loopholes, having been dead at the time certain legislation was passed. So you're still legally you. If you want to buy yourself a new chassis, you'll have the option, either by saving up yourself or convincing sponsors to pay for you, but you'd legally become a new person, with a host of new issues to deal with, from having to wait another eighteen years before you can vote, to mandated educational minimums, to, and I can't believe this myself, sumptuary laws requiring you to wear diapers the first few years to indicate your status. That's all why I've been sticking with this cheap body I was stuck in. On the plus side, for the part of the economy that deals in dollars, there's something like a Basic Guaranteed Income, so you aren't going to have to worry about how to pay for the necessities.
"Now. There's a sort of secondary economy, based on reputation, computer algorithms, and ways to demonstrate trustworthiness. The rather small organization that's inherited the people cryopreserved in primitive ways has been relying on that secondary economy to cover its lack of cash inflow. And the numbers have been steadily declining. For... complicated math reasons, which I'll admit even I haven't gotten a good hold of, we have exactly enough resources to revive every mind we're entrusted with, but we can't really wait for better reconstruction algorithms or databases to be developed. But there's 'revived', and then there's 'revived' - giving everyone a chassis that can pass for human, like yours, is more expensive than we have the resources for. Some of us revivees are working our tails off, trying to put together enough cash to pay for upgraded chassises for everyone left, so they don't have to put up with doorknobs being a few body-lengths above their heads or other problems like that. And we're going to come across some further problems, as we bring back people whose brains were in worse conditions. You're a free person - you can walk out that door and never look back - but a good part of this secondary economy involves various kinds of mutual-assistance groups, and you could do worse than bootstrap your reputation numbers by helping us help the others. And, of course, we're willing to help you in other ways, too. And we've got a better idea than most about what sorts of things you need help adjusting to, like that most everyone seems to have given up almost every notion of what we consider 'privacy', and those of us who spend second-economy resources to get a few moments of it are considered a bit odd. Which reminds me, there'll be some flying reporter-robots waiting for you when you leave - you'll want some clothes before then, right?"
"Hello? You're awake? Good. The bad news: Yes, you're in a hospital bed. Yes, you died. The good news: Yes, you were cryonically preserved, according to your wishes, and yes, you've been basically brought back from the dead. I'm afraid that further explanations are going to be a tad complicated."
The individual doing the speaking appears to be a rat's skeleton made out of blue metal, seated on its hind legs on a table to your left.
"Probably most important to you," it continues, "your mind and identity. And I've got some more bad news. Digital uploading. Nobody's bothered figuring out how to bring people preserved the way we were back to life, so it was either destructively scan your brain, or because of various external factors I'll get to in a bit, allow you to die permanently. The organization with responsibility for you at the time went for scanning. ... Oh, yes, I'm a revival, myself. ... I'll get to my body in a minute, when I talk about yours.
"Where was I... right. Well, more bad news is that your perfusion didn't go so well, and there was ischemic damage leading to a certain amount of unrecoverable loss of data. With the best algorithms, about six percent of your neurons had to be basically constructed from scratch. Some people think that's enough to make you a different person, and so not worth 'reviving'," it makes little air-quotes with its skeletal paws, "but I'm, um, call it the equivalent of being on the board of directors of the current successor organization, and I made the choice to bring you back anyway. If you feel I erred, you do have the option of suiciding, but I'd /really/ recommend waiting at least until I finish this spiel, and even better after you start learning about The Future. Okay, I'll admit that I don't want you to die at all, but I also don't want you to feel like you're trapped in some sort of dystopia. Anyway - six percent. You're the worst-off person we've revived yet, and we're hoping to pick up a few more details from you to help us with the next one. I can get you a booklet with all the details, but all you have to worry about is having lost some memories and skills - the algorithms are good enough at rebuilding minds that you don't have to worry about any sort of craziness you didn't start with.
"As for your body... well. The economics of The Future are as crazy as some of their other notions, but in twentieth-century terms, we're just about bankrupt. I was revived not too long ago, because the data indicated I had a more flexible body-image and could more easily adapt to this silly rat-skeleton-thing, which costs a lot less than your humanoid body. Now, people of this era have some oddball notions about bodily integrity and identity - they have to fill out forms just to get a piercing - but we manage to fall through some medical loopholes, having been dead at the time certain legislation was passed. So you're still legally you. If you want to buy yourself a new chassis, you'll have the option, either by saving up yourself or convincing sponsors to pay for you, but you'd legally become a new person, with a host of new issues to deal with, from having to wait another eighteen years before you can vote, to mandated educational minimums, to, and I can't believe this myself, sumptuary laws requiring you to wear diapers the first few years to indicate your status. That's all why I've been sticking with this cheap body I was stuck in. On the plus side, for the part of the economy that deals in dollars, there's something like a Basic Guaranteed Income, so you aren't going to have to worry about how to pay for the necessities.
"Now. There's a sort of secondary economy, based on reputation, computer algorithms, and ways to demonstrate trustworthiness. The rather small organization that's inherited the people cryopreserved in primitive ways has been relying on that secondary economy to cover its lack of cash inflow. And the numbers have been steadily declining. For... complicated math reasons, which I'll admit even I haven't gotten a good hold of, we have exactly enough resources to revive every mind we're entrusted with, but we can't really wait for better reconstruction algorithms or databases to be developed. But there's 'revived', and then there's 'revived' - giving everyone a chassis that can pass for human, like yours, is more expensive than we have the resources for. Some of us revivees are working our tails off, trying to put together enough cash to pay for upgraded chassises for everyone left, so they don't have to put up with doorknobs being a few body-lengths above their heads or other problems like that. And we're going to come across some further problems, as we bring back people whose brains were in worse conditions. You're a free person - you can walk out that door and never look back - but a good part of this secondary economy involves various kinds of mutual-assistance groups, and you could do worse than bootstrap your reputation numbers by helping us help the others. And, of course, we're willing to help you in other ways, too. And we've got a better idea than most about what sorts of things you need help adjusting to, like that most everyone seems to have given up almost every notion of what we consider 'privacy', and those of us who spend second-economy resources to get a few moments of it are considered a bit odd. Which reminds me, there'll be some flying reporter-robots waiting for you when you leave - you'll want some clothes before then, right?"
A dream of a story
General | Posted 9 years agoI definitely spent too much time thinking about skele-rat-bots yesterday. Had a dream. Jotted down as much as I can remember, cleaning it up just a tad to fit into reasonably narrative form.
I woke up - not in a hospital bed with no memory of how I got there... but in what looked like a courtroom. With no memory of how I got there. After a quick appraisal of certain immediate matters, I asked the people around me the most pertinent question that came to mind: "Why am I waking up as a tiny skeleton made of blue metal with a long tail?"
The human sitting at the table I was sitting on, wearing a plaid button-up shirt, said, "For the skeletal rat part, between what I had handy, and what I could afford, it was the best I could get in the time I had, with full senses and a decent mind-motor interface. For the you part, my computer said you'd be able to adapt fastest. For the waking part, well, you died, got vitrified, and I'm in some ratings trouble because of some differences between the obligations I've got to revive people frozen the way you were, and certain other debts I owe. I had to do a fast dice-and-read of all your brains before the storage facility got repossessed, and we're here to deal with some issues based around you, well, existing."
"I suppose," I said, spending only a half-second trying to figure out how I was speaking without a tongue before rolling with it and concentrating on more significant matters, "there are worse ways to wake up. What are the stakes here?"
"You want to prove you're a person, first, that you've got rights. Then-"
"All rise," interrupted a Bull Shannon bald-a-like. "BosWash Metro Court is now in session, the Honorable Judge Fatima Ma presiding." As I figured out how to balance my oddly-weighted quadrupedal body on my hind-limbs, a very dark-skinned woman, wearing a black t-shirt and jean-shorts, sat at the judge's bench. "Be seated."
"You," she pointed at the guy I'd been talking to. "You the cryo-nut?"
"Yes, ma'am." He seemed to be taking the informality in stride.
"You," she pointed at me. "You the formerly dead cryo-nut?"
"So I'm told, ma'am," I said, trying to be as accurate as I could and following along with whatever social conventions were in play.
"I like the bony look. Very memento mori."
"Thank you, I think; I wish I'd had a choice in it, though. Ma'am."
"Waitwaitwait." The guy near me facepalmed for some reason as the judge continued. "You didn't /want/ to be a robo-rat?"
"It... wouldn't have been my first choice, ma'am."
She glared at the guy, who withered under her gaze. "Explain," she demanded.
"Well, ma'am, a better body was /supposed/ to have been delivered here, before you got here, but I needed at least one of them awake before you started, so..."
"So you took one of your dead guys and - wait," she turned back to me. "How long've you been awake?"
"About two minutes, ma'am, not counting the years I was a regular human."
"Well, fuck," said Judge Ma, shaking her head. "You," she pointed at the guy. "Jail. Thirty days, for the obvious. You've got that long to work up a better defense for the real trial. You," she pointed at me. "Halfway house. Get an immigration caseworker and get yourself sorted. Welcome to the future, blah blah blah, good luck, you'll need it."
As she started to stand, apparantly finishing off whatever had just been going on, I decided it probably wouldn't hurt to ask, "Um, ma'am - one quick question. How soon do you think I can get a proper body?"
She leaned against the side of the judicial bench. "Got some bad news for you. And some non-binding legal commentary. While you were pushing daisy icicles, the rest of us had all sorts of problems, and had to work out some compromises to keep living. You get yourself a different body, or even change what you've got too much, and you're a different person. You wouldn't believe the forms I had to fill out just to get my piercings. My advice? Stick with what you've got - you've got a loophole, having been dead during the paper-wars, which you'll be able to squeeze for a lot. You go for anything else, and among other troubles, law says you'll have to wear diapers the first few years, whether you need 'em or not, so folk know you're re-born."
"Seriously? Embarrassing sumptuary laws are worse than being... /this/?"
"Go ahead, ignore the woman who's spent decades learning the ins and outs of these things giving you a hint about what's in your best interests. Anyway, these laws are fucking stupid and it sucks getting caught in them, but at this point, changing it would mean changing the constitution, and opening /that/ can of worms risks a whole lot of other barely-functioning things stopping functioning altogether, and there's damned few willing to risk that for the sake of a couple of old dead dudes. Now go on, I've gotta do my entrance schtick for the next case. Or stay and watch, as long as you clear the table for the next defendant."
"Er, go on where? I can't even see any doors from here."
"Bailiff, man needs some help finding a door. Be a dear?"
I tried not to flinch as his hand, which was larger than all of me save my tail, picked me up, carried me between some half-filled pews, out the courtroom's back door, and carefully set me on the floor.
Whereupon a fairly literal cloud of journalists - or at least flying cameras - descended upon me.
Ah, civilization.
My apparent thought processes:
Something something "Weirdtopia" ( http://lesswrong.com/lw/xm/building_weirdtopia/ ), or at least "Transmetropolitan taken one or two steps closer to the Twilight Zone"; immigrating from a first-world country to a zeroth-world or so one ( eg, in https://forums.spacebattles.com/thr.....8#post-8064081 , going from around G to F, maybe to low E); deliberately inverting the usual assumption of morphological freedom; clothes have made at least one more step of informal outfits being used more formally... probably a few other things.
Trying to do some world building based on a few minutes of dreaming... I'd guess after a few more Panama Papers style scandals, most social liberal democracies really tightened the extent to which rich individuals could profit at the expense of the public as a whole; and when ems came along, a lot of the shenanigans they'd otherwise have gotten up to were similarly constrained. Aka, Elua fighting back against Moloch ( http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/3.....ons-on-moloch/ ), supported by non-first-past-the-post voting systems reducing present-day American style polarization. Imagine if 90% of our current economic system turned out to be for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the 99%... And the 99% got enough proof of that to start voting based on it. Anything resembling a loophole would likely get "fixed", even at the expense of the few non-rich such loopholes were supposedly for.
Remember, if a weirdtopia isn't deeply disturbing, it's not weird enough. :) "Good news: religious based laws against nudity and sex have been thrown out. Bad news: there's no quality control on the aesthetic level of the people having sex in public."
I woke up - not in a hospital bed with no memory of how I got there... but in what looked like a courtroom. With no memory of how I got there. After a quick appraisal of certain immediate matters, I asked the people around me the most pertinent question that came to mind: "Why am I waking up as a tiny skeleton made of blue metal with a long tail?"
The human sitting at the table I was sitting on, wearing a plaid button-up shirt, said, "For the skeletal rat part, between what I had handy, and what I could afford, it was the best I could get in the time I had, with full senses and a decent mind-motor interface. For the you part, my computer said you'd be able to adapt fastest. For the waking part, well, you died, got vitrified, and I'm in some ratings trouble because of some differences between the obligations I've got to revive people frozen the way you were, and certain other debts I owe. I had to do a fast dice-and-read of all your brains before the storage facility got repossessed, and we're here to deal with some issues based around you, well, existing."
"I suppose," I said, spending only a half-second trying to figure out how I was speaking without a tongue before rolling with it and concentrating on more significant matters, "there are worse ways to wake up. What are the stakes here?"
"You want to prove you're a person, first, that you've got rights. Then-"
"All rise," interrupted a Bull Shannon bald-a-like. "BosWash Metro Court is now in session, the Honorable Judge Fatima Ma presiding." As I figured out how to balance my oddly-weighted quadrupedal body on my hind-limbs, a very dark-skinned woman, wearing a black t-shirt and jean-shorts, sat at the judge's bench. "Be seated."
"You," she pointed at the guy I'd been talking to. "You the cryo-nut?"
"Yes, ma'am." He seemed to be taking the informality in stride.
"You," she pointed at me. "You the formerly dead cryo-nut?"
"So I'm told, ma'am," I said, trying to be as accurate as I could and following along with whatever social conventions were in play.
"I like the bony look. Very memento mori."
"Thank you, I think; I wish I'd had a choice in it, though. Ma'am."
"Waitwaitwait." The guy near me facepalmed for some reason as the judge continued. "You didn't /want/ to be a robo-rat?"
"It... wouldn't have been my first choice, ma'am."
She glared at the guy, who withered under her gaze. "Explain," she demanded.
"Well, ma'am, a better body was /supposed/ to have been delivered here, before you got here, but I needed at least one of them awake before you started, so..."
"So you took one of your dead guys and - wait," she turned back to me. "How long've you been awake?"
"About two minutes, ma'am, not counting the years I was a regular human."
"Well, fuck," said Judge Ma, shaking her head. "You," she pointed at the guy. "Jail. Thirty days, for the obvious. You've got that long to work up a better defense for the real trial. You," she pointed at me. "Halfway house. Get an immigration caseworker and get yourself sorted. Welcome to the future, blah blah blah, good luck, you'll need it."
As she started to stand, apparantly finishing off whatever had just been going on, I decided it probably wouldn't hurt to ask, "Um, ma'am - one quick question. How soon do you think I can get a proper body?"
She leaned against the side of the judicial bench. "Got some bad news for you. And some non-binding legal commentary. While you were pushing daisy icicles, the rest of us had all sorts of problems, and had to work out some compromises to keep living. You get yourself a different body, or even change what you've got too much, and you're a different person. You wouldn't believe the forms I had to fill out just to get my piercings. My advice? Stick with what you've got - you've got a loophole, having been dead during the paper-wars, which you'll be able to squeeze for a lot. You go for anything else, and among other troubles, law says you'll have to wear diapers the first few years, whether you need 'em or not, so folk know you're re-born."
"Seriously? Embarrassing sumptuary laws are worse than being... /this/?"
"Go ahead, ignore the woman who's spent decades learning the ins and outs of these things giving you a hint about what's in your best interests. Anyway, these laws are fucking stupid and it sucks getting caught in them, but at this point, changing it would mean changing the constitution, and opening /that/ can of worms risks a whole lot of other barely-functioning things stopping functioning altogether, and there's damned few willing to risk that for the sake of a couple of old dead dudes. Now go on, I've gotta do my entrance schtick for the next case. Or stay and watch, as long as you clear the table for the next defendant."
"Er, go on where? I can't even see any doors from here."
"Bailiff, man needs some help finding a door. Be a dear?"
I tried not to flinch as his hand, which was larger than all of me save my tail, picked me up, carried me between some half-filled pews, out the courtroom's back door, and carefully set me on the floor.
Whereupon a fairly literal cloud of journalists - or at least flying cameras - descended upon me.
Ah, civilization.
My apparent thought processes:
Something something "Weirdtopia" ( http://lesswrong.com/lw/xm/building_weirdtopia/ ), or at least "Transmetropolitan taken one or two steps closer to the Twilight Zone"; immigrating from a first-world country to a zeroth-world or so one ( eg, in https://forums.spacebattles.com/thr.....8#post-8064081 , going from around G to F, maybe to low E); deliberately inverting the usual assumption of morphological freedom; clothes have made at least one more step of informal outfits being used more formally... probably a few other things.
Trying to do some world building based on a few minutes of dreaming... I'd guess after a few more Panama Papers style scandals, most social liberal democracies really tightened the extent to which rich individuals could profit at the expense of the public as a whole; and when ems came along, a lot of the shenanigans they'd otherwise have gotten up to were similarly constrained. Aka, Elua fighting back against Moloch ( http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/3.....ons-on-moloch/ ), supported by non-first-past-the-post voting systems reducing present-day American style polarization. Imagine if 90% of our current economic system turned out to be for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the 99%... And the 99% got enough proof of that to start voting based on it. Anything resembling a loophole would likely get "fixed", even at the expense of the few non-rich such loopholes were supposedly for.
Remember, if a weirdtopia isn't deeply disturbing, it's not weird enough. :) "Good news: religious based laws against nudity and sex have been thrown out. Bad news: there's no quality control on the aesthetic level of the people having sex in public."
I'm still writing
General | Posted 10 years agoI'm taking a short break from creating "S.I.", and am trying a somewhat different writing exercise: building up an entire story before I start writing any of it, as opposed to the web-serial model I've been trying with S.I.
I'm going for hard science fiction, based around the idea of brain-uploads, something like a Singularity, thinking hard about how to solve problems, and interplanetary exploration and exploitation. The furry content is mainly incidental, but still present, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
I could use all the constructive criticism, commentary, and advice I can get. The current draft of the story design-document is at https://docs.google.com/document/d/.....o_kMIcmlI/edit , and is already up to 30,000 words without my having written the first line of actual narrative... I rather suspect that short stories are going to be outside the range of my authorial expertise for some time to come.
I'm going for hard science fiction, based around the idea of brain-uploads, something like a Singularity, thinking hard about how to solve problems, and interplanetary exploration and exploitation. The furry content is mainly incidental, but still present, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
I could use all the constructive criticism, commentary, and advice I can get. The current draft of the story design-document is at https://docs.google.com/document/d/.....o_kMIcmlI/edit , and is already up to 30,000 words without my having written the first line of actual narrative... I rather suspect that short stories are going to be outside the range of my authorial expertise for some time to come.
My cat passed away last night
General | Posted 10 years agoPunk Rock Girl, aka Punkers, was at least 16 years old. After many years of being a typical crazy cat - waking up and yelling out meows until someone reassured her she wasn't dreaming, being delighted with the windowbox we set up for her, and so on - the last few days she started being tired.
Yesterday, I took her to the vet, and the bloodwork said her kidneys were at least 75% gone, and I got some medicine. Before it could do her any good, she got worse, and by the evening, she couldn't stand anymore, and was crawling to stretch out in a dark corner. With some help from my relatives, I made the choice, and we drove her to an open vet, and at 7pm, she was gone.
I stayed the night with a relative, and am back home now. I'm nowhere near cheerful, but I'm close enough to functional. I'm blowing off all my chores and such today, and will probably be watching classic Looney Tunes cartoons and pushing other rarely-used cheer-up buttons.
If you've got a pet, give 'em a hug from me today.
Yesterday, I took her to the vet, and the bloodwork said her kidneys were at least 75% gone, and I got some medicine. Before it could do her any good, she got worse, and by the evening, she couldn't stand anymore, and was crawling to stretch out in a dark corner. With some help from my relatives, I made the choice, and we drove her to an open vet, and at 7pm, she was gone.
I stayed the night with a relative, and am back home now. I'm nowhere near cheerful, but I'm close enough to functional. I'm blowing off all my chores and such today, and will probably be watching classic Looney Tunes cartoons and pushing other rarely-used cheer-up buttons.
If you've got a pet, give 'em a hug from me today.
I've been writing.
General | Posted 11 years agoI've been writing.
Last May, I took a piece of advice: "Just start writing".
I'm now over 222,222 words into a novel, and counting. You can see my first chapter in my account here at https://www.furaffinity.net/view/14787286/ , or at the story's eventual permanent future home at http://www.datapacrat.com/SI/ . (Note: The sample chapter there is NSFW due to containing an image of tasteful female nudity.)
"S.I." contains a protagonist who is transformed by Science! into a humanoid rabbit in the first chapter, and I'm told it compares favourably to my previous, now-cancelled attempt at long-form writing; so if you liked "Myou've", you're likely to like "S.I.".
One thing I don't have is an editor. I know I have a number of flaws as a writer that need correcting: for example, when left to my own devices, I tend to go for dialogue instead of description or action, and the story isn't as good as it could be because of that. Does anyone reading this know someone with a good set of editing skills?
Last May, I took a piece of advice: "Just start writing".
I'm now over 222,222 words into a novel, and counting. You can see my first chapter in my account here at https://www.furaffinity.net/view/14787286/ , or at the story's eventual permanent future home at http://www.datapacrat.com/SI/ . (Note: The sample chapter there is NSFW due to containing an image of tasteful female nudity.)
"S.I." contains a protagonist who is transformed by Science! into a humanoid rabbit in the first chapter, and I'm told it compares favourably to my previous, now-cancelled attempt at long-form writing; so if you liked "Myou've", you're likely to like "S.I.".
One thing I don't have is an editor. I know I have a number of flaws as a writer that need correcting: for example, when left to my own devices, I tend to go for dialogue instead of description or action, and the story isn't as good as it could be because of that. Does anyone reading this know someone with a good set of editing skills?
A story worth reading
General | Posted 12 years agoThe Thousand Year Romance Of Clover The Clever, by Benman
Clover the Clever has found a love so pure and true that no pony can stop it. But even the greatest love cannot conquer death itself.
So Clover will keep looking until she finds something that can.
Clover the Clever has found a love so pure and true that no pony can stop it. But even the greatest love cannot conquer death itself.
So Clover will keep looking until she finds something that can.
Political Compass
General | Posted 12 years agohttp://www.politicalcompass.org/charts/crowdgraphpng.php?DataPacRat1=-6.1,-7.6&Dalai_Lama=-5.2,-5.8&Hu_Jintao=8.5,9.0&Dubya=8.5,6.5&NDP=-1.0,-1.5&Green_Party=0.0,0.5&Liberal_Party=3.0,3.0&Conservative_Party=7.0,6.1&Obama=6.0,5.9&Hugo_Chavez=-4.5,6.0&Milton_Friedman=7.0,-2.0&Hitler=1.3,9.3&Mugabe=-3.0,9.0&Stalin=-9.3,8.7&Nelson_Mandela=-6.9,-3.7&Ayn_Rand=10.0,-9.0&Gandhi=-7.5,-3.0&USSR=-10.0,4.5&DataPacRat2=-4.4,-9.6&DataPacRat3=-4.0,-10.0.png
Where do you fall?
--
I've been fiddling around with my new 'about' page ( http://blog.datapacrat.com/about/ ). I've taken three different two-axis political quizzes ( http://www.politicalcompass.org/ , http://uselectionatlas.org/TOOLS/PO.....TX/thetest.php , http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz (though I had to flip the third one's graph to fit the others)) , and they've all put me around the same area - 'left libertarian', extremely left socially, moderate-to-strong left economically.
--
My result from Political Compass:
Economic -6.12, Social -7.64
--
My result from Political Matrix:
<p>Economic score: -4.39<br />
Social score: -9.57</p>
<p>Your score pegs you as economically <b>moderately leftist</b> and socially <b>far-leftist</b>.</p>
<p>Moderate economic leftists generally support regulation of free trade and business to assure that workers are fairly treated and prices remain stable.</p>
<p>Social far-leftists generally believe that the government has no business enforcing morality on most matters, instead favoring a government that intervenes only when absolutely necessary to avoid direct harm. Many social far-leftists also look negatively on the government's past attitudes toward groups they view as persecuted, although some simply oppose government intervention on utilitarianist grounds.</p>
--
My result from World's Smallest Political Quiz:
Your PERSONAL issues Score is 100%
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 30%
Liberals usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy. They generally support a government-funded "safety net" to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations, defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.
Where do you fall?
--
I've been fiddling around with my new 'about' page ( http://blog.datapacrat.com/about/ ). I've taken three different two-axis political quizzes ( http://www.politicalcompass.org/ , http://uselectionatlas.org/TOOLS/PO.....TX/thetest.php , http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz (though I had to flip the third one's graph to fit the others)) , and they've all put me around the same area - 'left libertarian', extremely left socially, moderate-to-strong left economically.
--
My result from Political Compass:
Economic -6.12, Social -7.64
--
My result from Political Matrix:
<p>Economic score: -4.39<br />
Social score: -9.57</p>
<p>Your score pegs you as economically <b>moderately leftist</b> and socially <b>far-leftist</b>.</p>
<p>Moderate economic leftists generally support regulation of free trade and business to assure that workers are fairly treated and prices remain stable.</p>
<p>Social far-leftists generally believe that the government has no business enforcing morality on most matters, instead favoring a government that intervenes only when absolutely necessary to avoid direct harm. Many social far-leftists also look negatively on the government's past attitudes toward groups they view as persecuted, although some simply oppose government intervention on utilitarianist grounds.</p>
--
My result from World's Smallest Political Quiz:
Your PERSONAL issues Score is 100%
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 30%
Liberals usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy. They generally support a government-funded "safety net" to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations, defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.
DPR Is Now A Full-Fledged Cryonicist
General | Posted 13 years agoHow much is your life worth to you?
If you suffered from a disease which might strike you down at any time; and a treatment was available, which cost six thousand dollars per year... would you be willing to scrape together that much cash for it? If the best available treatment only had a fifty percent chance of success... would you be willing to pay three thousand a year it? If the best available treatment only had a five percent chance of success... would you be willing to pay three hundred a year for it?
My own answers to all three questions are 'yes'.
After reading and researching about cryonic preservation, my best estimate of its success - that is, eventual revival - is somewhere in the neighbourhood of five percent. I have also learned that arrangements can be made for one's own cryonic preservation for around three hundred dollars per year. I have filled out the forms, signed the paperwork, sent in my first installment. (If you want to know how to sign up yourself, feel free to ask.) Put simply - I'm putting my money where my mouth is.
Medically, the procedure I have signed up for isn't "freezing", which involves ice; instead, it's "vitrification", which lowers the body's temperature in a way that avoids the creation of tissue-damaging ice crystals.
Legally, according to the "Uniform Anatomical Gift Act" of my cryonic provider's location, and the "Trillium Gift of Life Act" of my home province, what I've actually signed up to do is donate my whole body for scientific research. There's no actual guarantee that, if vitrified, I will ever be revived - though that is the goal being aimed for.
Philosophically, I have not encountered any significant evidence in support of the idea of an immortal soul. The best conclusion I've been able to reach is that minds are processes created by brains, and when the brain is sufficiently damaged, the mind ceases to exist, like a candle blown out. If it's possible to avoid dying, I'd rather avoid it; and for a number of causes of death, like getting hit by a car, there aren't really any ways to avoid them, and only a few possible ways to even potentially survive such lethal levels of damage to the body... but people keep coming up with new tricks all the time, and it's possible that whatever does end up killing me will be curable at some point in the future - and it's also possible that the vitrification process will be reversible at some point in the future. I've already mentioned my estimate of that possibility.
So... if I don't manage to live long enough for a technological Fountain of Youth to be discovered, then, if all goes well (or at least as well as possible, given that I'll be dead), my body will be transformed into a glass statue - and, like Sleeping Beauty, like Rip Van Winkle, like the various Kings Sleeping Under the Mountain... like Han Solo in carbonite, like Dave Lister, like Khan Noonien Sing, like Ellen Ripley, like Philip J. Fry, like Captain America in the iceberg, like Buck Rogers... like Rana sylvatica... I will await the possibility of my eventual awakening.
And if it doesn't work, then, worst-case scenario is that I just stay dead. Which is what would happen if I never signed up for cryo in the first place.
If you suffered from a disease which might strike you down at any time; and a treatment was available, which cost six thousand dollars per year... would you be willing to scrape together that much cash for it? If the best available treatment only had a fifty percent chance of success... would you be willing to pay three thousand a year it? If the best available treatment only had a five percent chance of success... would you be willing to pay three hundred a year for it?
My own answers to all three questions are 'yes'.
After reading and researching about cryonic preservation, my best estimate of its success - that is, eventual revival - is somewhere in the neighbourhood of five percent. I have also learned that arrangements can be made for one's own cryonic preservation for around three hundred dollars per year. I have filled out the forms, signed the paperwork, sent in my first installment. (If you want to know how to sign up yourself, feel free to ask.) Put simply - I'm putting my money where my mouth is.
Medically, the procedure I have signed up for isn't "freezing", which involves ice; instead, it's "vitrification", which lowers the body's temperature in a way that avoids the creation of tissue-damaging ice crystals.
Legally, according to the "Uniform Anatomical Gift Act" of my cryonic provider's location, and the "Trillium Gift of Life Act" of my home province, what I've actually signed up to do is donate my whole body for scientific research. There's no actual guarantee that, if vitrified, I will ever be revived - though that is the goal being aimed for.
Philosophically, I have not encountered any significant evidence in support of the idea of an immortal soul. The best conclusion I've been able to reach is that minds are processes created by brains, and when the brain is sufficiently damaged, the mind ceases to exist, like a candle blown out. If it's possible to avoid dying, I'd rather avoid it; and for a number of causes of death, like getting hit by a car, there aren't really any ways to avoid them, and only a few possible ways to even potentially survive such lethal levels of damage to the body... but people keep coming up with new tricks all the time, and it's possible that whatever does end up killing me will be curable at some point in the future - and it's also possible that the vitrification process will be reversible at some point in the future. I've already mentioned my estimate of that possibility.
So... if I don't manage to live long enough for a technological Fountain of Youth to be discovered, then, if all goes well (or at least as well as possible, given that I'll be dead), my body will be transformed into a glass statue - and, like Sleeping Beauty, like Rip Van Winkle, like the various Kings Sleeping Under the Mountain... like Han Solo in carbonite, like Dave Lister, like Khan Noonien Sing, like Ellen Ripley, like Philip J. Fry, like Captain America in the iceberg, like Buck Rogers... like Rana sylvatica... I will await the possibility of my eventual awakening.
And if it doesn't work, then, worst-case scenario is that I just stay dead. Which is what would happen if I never signed up for cryo in the first place.
Looking for transhumanist art
General | Posted 14 years agoYou may or may not already be aware, but there exists a boardgame, Phil Eklund's "High Frontier", which is a reasonably realistic simulation of using rockets to putter around the solar system and start industrializing it. The BoardGameGeek reviews are at http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/...../high-frontier .
What you may not have heard is that Mr. Eklund is currently designing an expansion to the original game, in which the goal is to launch STL interstellar colonization attempts... and the theme has a distinctly transhumanist flavour, with the current draft of some of the crew-types being "Immortal group mind", "Zero-gee pantropists", "Utility fog robonauts", and a "Rental body guild". Mr. Eklund has asked me to help with the flavourtext for those cards - and, if I can find any, some images for the crew cards that can be gotten with no copyright issues, that are better than the current ones. And since some of the best transhumanist-themed art I've found is here on FA... would any artists here be willing to have their work become part of a published board game?
What you may not have heard is that Mr. Eklund is currently designing an expansion to the original game, in which the goal is to launch STL interstellar colonization attempts... and the theme has a distinctly transhumanist flavour, with the current draft of some of the crew-types being "Immortal group mind", "Zero-gee pantropists", "Utility fog robonauts", and a "Rental body guild". Mr. Eklund has asked me to help with the flavourtext for those cards - and, if I can find any, some images for the crew cards that can be gotten with no copyright issues, that are better than the current ones. And since some of the best transhumanist-themed art I've found is here on FA... would any artists here be willing to have their work become part of a published board game?
New word in the world: bei'e
General | Posted 14 years ago"Do not walk to the truth, but dance. On each and every step of that dance your foot comes down in exactly the right spot. Each piece of evidence shifts your beliefs by exactly the right amount, neither more nor less. What is exactly the right amount? To calculate this you must study probability theory. Even if you cannot do the math, knowing that the math exists tells you that the dance step is precise and has no room in it for your whims." -- from "Twelve Virtues of Rationality", by Eliezer Yudkowsky
One of the more useful mental tools I've found is the language Lojban ( http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Learning ), which makes explicit many of the implicit assumptions in languages. (There's also a sub-language based on Lojban, called Cniglic ( http://www.datapacrat.com/cniglic/ ), which can be added to most existing languages to offer some additional functionality.)
One of the things Lojban (and Cniglic) has are 'evidentials', words which can be used to tag other words and sentences to explain how the speaker knows them: "ja'o", meaning "I conclude", "za'a" meaning "I observe", "pe'i" meaning "It's my opinion", and more. However, there hasn't been any easy and explicit way to use this system to express Bayesian reasoning...
... until today.
Lojban not only allows for, but encourages, "experimental" words of certain sorts; and using that system, I have now created the word "bei'e" (pronounced BAY-heh), which allows a speaker to tag a word or sentence with how confident they are, in the Bayesian sense, of its truth. Taking an idea from the foundational text by E.T. Jaynes, "bei'e" is measured in decibels of logarithmic probability. This sounds complicated, but in many cases, is actually much easier to use than simple odds or probability; adding 10 decibels multiplies the odds by a factor of 10.
The current reftext for "bei'e" is at http://www.lojban.org/tiki/bei%27e , which amounts to adding Lojbannic digits to the front of the word:
ni'uci'ibei'e -oo 0% 1:oo complete disbelief, paradox
ni'upabei'e -1 44.3% 4:5 10 times less likely than sobei'e
ni'ubei'e <0 <50% <1:1 less than even odds, less likely than so
nobei'e 0 50% 1:1 neither belief nor disbelief, agnosticism
ma'ubei'e >0 >50% >1:1 greater than even odds, more likely than not
pabei'e 1 55.7% 5:4 preponderance of the evidence
rebei'e 2 61.3% 3:2
cibei'e 3 66.6% 2:1 clear and convincing evidence
vobei'e 4 71.5% 5:2
mubei'e 5 76.0% 3:1 beyond a reasonable doubt
xabei'e 6 80.0% 4:1
zebei'e 7 83.3% 5:1
bibei'e 8 86.3% 6:1
sobei'e 9 88.8% 8:1
panobei'e 10 90.9% 10:1
pacibei'e 13 95.2% 20:1 10 times as likely as cibei'e
xarebei'e 62 99.99994% 1,500,000:1 5 standard deviations
ci'ibei'e oo 100% oo:1 complete belief, tautology
xobei'e ? ?% ?:? question, asking listener their level of belief
By having this explicit mental tool, even if I don't use it aloud, I'm finding it much easier to remember to gauge how confident I am in any given proposition. If anyone else finds use in this idea, so much the better; and if anyone can come up with an even better mental tool after seeing this one, that would be better still.
.uo .ua .uisai .oinairo'e
One of the more useful mental tools I've found is the language Lojban ( http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Learning ), which makes explicit many of the implicit assumptions in languages. (There's also a sub-language based on Lojban, called Cniglic ( http://www.datapacrat.com/cniglic/ ), which can be added to most existing languages to offer some additional functionality.)
One of the things Lojban (and Cniglic) has are 'evidentials', words which can be used to tag other words and sentences to explain how the speaker knows them: "ja'o", meaning "I conclude", "za'a" meaning "I observe", "pe'i" meaning "It's my opinion", and more. However, there hasn't been any easy and explicit way to use this system to express Bayesian reasoning...
... until today.
Lojban not only allows for, but encourages, "experimental" words of certain sorts; and using that system, I have now created the word "bei'e" (pronounced BAY-heh), which allows a speaker to tag a word or sentence with how confident they are, in the Bayesian sense, of its truth. Taking an idea from the foundational text by E.T. Jaynes, "bei'e" is measured in decibels of logarithmic probability. This sounds complicated, but in many cases, is actually much easier to use than simple odds or probability; adding 10 decibels multiplies the odds by a factor of 10.
The current reftext for "bei'e" is at http://www.lojban.org/tiki/bei%27e , which amounts to adding Lojbannic digits to the front of the word:
ni'uci'ibei'e -oo 0% 1:oo complete disbelief, paradox
ni'upabei'e -1 44.3% 4:5 10 times less likely than sobei'e
ni'ubei'e <0 <50% <1:1 less than even odds, less likely than so
nobei'e 0 50% 1:1 neither belief nor disbelief, agnosticism
ma'ubei'e >0 >50% >1:1 greater than even odds, more likely than not
pabei'e 1 55.7% 5:4 preponderance of the evidence
rebei'e 2 61.3% 3:2
cibei'e 3 66.6% 2:1 clear and convincing evidence
vobei'e 4 71.5% 5:2
mubei'e 5 76.0% 3:1 beyond a reasonable doubt
xabei'e 6 80.0% 4:1
zebei'e 7 83.3% 5:1
bibei'e 8 86.3% 6:1
sobei'e 9 88.8% 8:1
panobei'e 10 90.9% 10:1
pacibei'e 13 95.2% 20:1 10 times as likely as cibei'e
xarebei'e 62 99.99994% 1,500,000:1 5 standard deviations
ci'ibei'e oo 100% oo:1 complete belief, tautology
xobei'e ? ?% ?:? question, asking listener their level of belief
By having this explicit mental tool, even if I don't use it aloud, I'm finding it much easier to remember to gauge how confident I am in any given proposition. If anyone else finds use in this idea, so much the better; and if anyone can come up with an even better mental tool after seeing this one, that would be better still.
.uo .ua .uisai .oinairo'e
I iz a poor ratty
General | Posted 14 years agoMy laptop is now back, with a new hard-drive... that contains nothing but a bare-bones OS. My old HD is currently in an external case, waiting for me to try copying as much data from it as is recoverable.
Total damage: pretty close to USD $200, plus the time spent reinstalling and configuring my software, and generally settling myself back into my machine, etc. (Amusingly, if I wasn't concerned about recovering my data, I could have bought a laptop with the same specs for the same amount.)
My apologies if I don't respond for another day or two while I finish various other tasks.
Total damage: pretty close to USD $200, plus the time spent reinstalling and configuring my software, and generally settling myself back into my machine, etc. (Amusingly, if I wasn't concerned about recovering my data, I could have bought a laptop with the same specs for the same amount.)
My apologies if I don't respond for another day or two while I finish various other tasks.
Laptop is near-dead
General | Posted 14 years agoMy cat likes to pretend she's a seatbelt when I use my laptop computer. Today, when the phone rang and I tried to get up to answer it, some combination of movements ended up with my laptop crashing to the floor... and crashing whenever I try to run any useful software.
I'm current working on trying to copy as much as-yet-un-backed-up data as I can to my external hard-drive (which is a good idea anyway). If I can't figure out what the problem is and fix it... I'm probably going to have to funnel all my discretionary money towards a replacement. My phone just doesn't. It it for any serious computing.
This also means that outside any commitments I've already made, I'm unlikely to do any commissioning for the foreseeable future.
Update: Took it in to the shop. The good news is that it looks like they'll be able to save my data, which as you might guess from my username, makes me a happy data pack-rat. No word yet on the rest of the machine.
I'm current working on trying to copy as much as-yet-un-backed-up data as I can to my external hard-drive (which is a good idea anyway). If I can't figure out what the problem is and fix it... I'm probably going to have to funnel all my discretionary money towards a replacement. My phone just doesn't. It it for any serious computing.
This also means that outside any commitments I've already made, I'm unlikely to do any commissioning for the foreseeable future.
Update: Took it in to the shop. The good news is that it looks like they'll be able to save my data, which as you might guess from my username, makes me a happy data pack-rat. No word yet on the rest of the machine.
From the Newsfeed: A Warning Sign
General | Posted 14 years agohttp://boingboing.net/2011/11/16/do.....arian-pep.html
"Now the FCC are trying to take away the free internet," she says,
referencing SOPA. "I remember Goebbels. I grew up over there."
From BoingBoing's comments:
Anselm Yesterday 10:43 PM
Folks, listen up. When the Patriot Act passed, my grandmother called
my mother and said "Get out! Get out now! I've seen this before- this
is how it starts! Come back to Germany!"
And now Mrs. Rainey is saying the same thing.
For those who don't know- Germans don't invoke names like Goebbels as
a joke. That was a very serious accusation, and not one that should be
met with disbelief or even anger, but with an instant stop and a
moment of self-reflection.
cnawan Today 01:41 AM
F*ck. f*ck. f*ck.
I cannot stop crying.
My mother-in-law married a german whose uncle was in the Waffen SS.
(needless to say his family don't talk to him any more.) Vater-in-law
has been helping intellectually disabled ppl in AU for years.
Mutter-in-law's parents (badass academics) went on a cycle tour of
Europe in 1935 - they came back to NZ and told Rotary Club
members/whoever that sh!t was going down in Europe.
No-one would believe them.
Make your own judgment.
If I had any family left in the USA, I would tell them to
Get.
The.
F*ck.
Out.
Now.
"Now the FCC are trying to take away the free internet," she says,
referencing SOPA. "I remember Goebbels. I grew up over there."
From BoingBoing's comments:
Anselm Yesterday 10:43 PM
Folks, listen up. When the Patriot Act passed, my grandmother called
my mother and said "Get out! Get out now! I've seen this before- this
is how it starts! Come back to Germany!"
And now Mrs. Rainey is saying the same thing.
For those who don't know- Germans don't invoke names like Goebbels as
a joke. That was a very serious accusation, and not one that should be
met with disbelief or even anger, but with an instant stop and a
moment of self-reflection.
cnawan Today 01:41 AM
F*ck. f*ck. f*ck.
I cannot stop crying.
My mother-in-law married a german whose uncle was in the Waffen SS.
(needless to say his family don't talk to him any more.) Vater-in-law
has been helping intellectually disabled ppl in AU for years.
Mutter-in-law's parents (badass academics) went on a cycle tour of
Europe in 1935 - they came back to NZ and told Rotary Club
members/whoever that sh!t was going down in Europe.
No-one would believe them.
Make your own judgment.
If I had any family left in the USA, I would tell them to
Get.
The.
F*ck.
Out.
Now.
View of Earth
General | Posted 14 years agoWatch it in HD and fullscreen:
http://vimeo.com/32001208
(Via http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/b.....on-time-lapse/ )
http://vimeo.com/32001208
(Via http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/b.....on-time-lapse/ )
Something to watch
General | Posted 14 years agoIf you haven't seen it already: "There she is!!" by SamBakZa, five manwha-style videos about a girl rabbit and boy cat.
Caution: Mood whiplash in episode 4.
Main page: http://www.sambakza.net/works_tsi/tsi_main.html
Ep 1, "There She Is!!": http://www.sambakza.net/works_tsi/t.....tsi_step1.html
Ep 2, "Cake Dance": http://www.sambakza.net/works_tsi/t.....step2_eng.html
Ep 3, "Doki & Nabi": http://www.sambakza.net/works_tsi/t.....tsi_step3.html
Ep 4, "Paradise": http://www.sambakza.net/works_tsi/t.....tsi_step4.html
Ep 5, "Imagine": http://www.sambakza.net/works_tsi/t.....tsi_step5.html
TV Tropes description: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....ain/ThereSheIs (Contains spoilers)
There she is!! is a five episode Web Original Animated Series by Amalloc of the Korean web animation team SamBakZa.
The series is drawn in the Korean Manhwa style, done without dialogue to K-Pop music. It's about a girl rabbit who meets up with a boy cat, and falls in love with him, much to his initial dismay.
...
The sheer emotional impact and cuteness of its art, plot, and message can not be adequately explained with words. Having taken five years to complete, There she is!! is still considered one of the best flash series on the internet and is a must-see.
Caution: Mood whiplash in episode 4.
Main page: http://www.sambakza.net/works_tsi/tsi_main.html
Ep 1, "There She Is!!": http://www.sambakza.net/works_tsi/t.....tsi_step1.html
Ep 2, "Cake Dance": http://www.sambakza.net/works_tsi/t.....step2_eng.html
Ep 3, "Doki & Nabi": http://www.sambakza.net/works_tsi/t.....tsi_step3.html
Ep 4, "Paradise": http://www.sambakza.net/works_tsi/t.....tsi_step4.html
Ep 5, "Imagine": http://www.sambakza.net/works_tsi/t.....tsi_step5.html
TV Tropes description: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....ain/ThereSheIs (Contains spoilers)
There she is!! is a five episode Web Original Animated Series by Amalloc of the Korean web animation team SamBakZa.
The series is drawn in the Korean Manhwa style, done without dialogue to K-Pop music. It's about a girl rabbit who meets up with a boy cat, and falls in love with him, much to his initial dismay.
...
The sheer emotional impact and cuteness of its art, plot, and message can not be adequately explained with words. Having taken five years to complete, There she is!! is still considered one of the best flash series on the internet and is a must-see.
And I'm back
General | Posted 14 years agoSunburned, bug-bit, and sandy (Long Point is pretty much made of sand), but pretty cheerful, and, hopefully, with a few inspirations I wouldn't have come up with otherwise.
Camping
General | Posted 14 years agoTo anyone who wants to get in touch with me this weekend: Sorry, I'll be off doing the thing with the tent and the keeping an eye open for critters stealing my food. Internet access and phone-charging power are going to be intermittent for me, at best - no guarantees I'll see any messages until Tuesdayish.
That said, if anyone knows of anything interesting near Long Point on the north shore of Lake Erie, I'm all ears... :)
That said, if anyone knows of anything interesting near Long Point on the north shore of Lake Erie, I'm all ears... :)
Only listen to this...
General | Posted 14 years ago... once you've grabbed yourself a kleenex, and you're somewhere nobody can see you listening to it it.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na-xvlYMGck
MP3: http://www.tomsmithonline.com/frees.....io/BoyFrog.mp3
A webcomic about it: http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp08032005.shtml
Authour's notes: http://www.tomsmithonline.com/lyrics/boy_frog.htm
... Holy hannah, it's been over 20 years. And this is still one of the most bittersweet things I've ever heard. I just listened to it a bunch of times in a row to pick the best video link - and even though I'd just heard it, each time caught me the same as the first one.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na-xvlYMGck
MP3: http://www.tomsmithonline.com/frees.....io/BoyFrog.mp3
A webcomic about it: http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp08032005.shtml
Authour's notes: http://www.tomsmithonline.com/lyrics/boy_frog.htm
... Holy hannah, it's been over 20 years. And this is still one of the most bittersweet things I've ever heard. I just listened to it a bunch of times in a row to pick the best video link - and even though I'd just heard it, each time caught me the same as the first one.
Rationality Matters
General | Posted 14 years agoI've been trying to take some of the important bits of some of the ideas I've generally come to understand, and to get them expressed in some way that other people would want to view or hear them, and to learn them. "Rationality Matters" is my first serious attempt - it has its good points, and its points that I could have done better, both of which I'm learning from for the future.
Oh, yes, and L. Freakin' Neil Smith, noted libertarian SF authour, plugged it on his newsletter.
Oh, yes, and L. Freakin' Neil Smith, noted libertarian SF authour, plugged it on his newsletter.
21st Century Fox
General | Posted 14 years agoI just dug up a couple of sidestories from the webcomic 21st Century Fox that I've never forgotten - even though I'd forgotten exactly which space-based furry webcomic had run them, or when. Anyone who's actually reading this journal - just read 'em. And if you want to comment here, or tell anyone else to read 'em, go right ahead.
First story setup: http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040719.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040723.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040726.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040728.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040730.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040802.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040804.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040806.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040809.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040811.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040813.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040816.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040818.html
Second story setup: http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070129.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070205.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070212.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070219.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070226.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070305.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070312.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070319.html
First story setup: http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040719.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040723.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040726.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040728.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040730.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040802.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040804.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040806.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040809.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040811.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040813.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040816.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20040818.html
Second story setup: http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070129.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070205.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070212.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070219.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070226.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070305.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070312.html
http://www.hirezfox.com/21cf/d/20070319.html
A quick explanation
General | Posted 14 years agoIn case anyone's wondering - I'm not trying to take away the pageviews of any artist by posting the pics of DataPacRat here. I've simply seen too many pages controlled by other people, such as artists' galleries, taken offline over the years. So if I want to make sure these pictures stay online, the only way I can do that is by maintaining my own online copies. (That's why I run my own website of archived material, too.)
A comic worth reading
General | Posted 15 years ago
FaithryShakin'
General | Posted 15 years agoHad a small earthquake about half an hour ago. Seems there was a 5.5 on the Ontario/Quebec border, felt from Windsor to Boston to Montreal. No major damage here - I didn't recognize /what/ it was at first, "No, it's not someone tromping up the stairs, my air mattress isn't suddenly deflating, it doesn't feel like a truck going by, I don't think I'm having a seizure..."
