Skip to content

Ecce Signum

Immanentize the Empathy

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Published Works and Literary Matters
  • Indexes
  • Laboratory

Tag: idiots

Links and Notes for the Week of February 25, 2018

2018-03-04 John Winkelman

* An interesting, fun, and very strange article and comment thread, courtesy of Charles Stross. From the intro: “I am working (for reasons of my own) towards a comprehensive list of plausible techno-thriller plots from 2010 where the MacGuffin is named Satoshi Nakamoto.”

* Homecoming: How Afrofuturism Bridges the Past and the Present is an excellent article.

* Once upon a time I was a fan of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth books. Then he starting carrying water for Ayn Rand, and the decent-but-not-great quality of his interesting-but-not-innovative stories declined sharply. Now he has distinguished himself as a jackass by publicly insulting the cover artist of his latest book. The internet, of course, is having none of this and is doing an excellent job of roasting Mr. Goodkind. It appears his behavior has cost him spots at a couple of conventions, and will likely make future business with the publishing industry more difficult for him. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

* Since students are protesting their presidentially (45) approved murder at the hands of NRA-backed second-amendment fetishists and other terrorists, members of the mainstream conservative fascist and fascist-adjacent community are sending them death threats and accusing them of being crisis actors, etc. This has not stopped the students from protesting, and indeed seems to be reinforcing their will and message. To that point it is important that students (and enforcers of student-affecting rules) know which rights are in play. The ACLU has helpfully published a page which clarifies students’ rights.

* Voyages in Sentence Space is a wonderfully strange tool which “bridges” the space between two arbitrary sentences with additional sentences along a “gradient” of meaning. From the example:

  1. I went looking for adventure.
  2. I went out on a mission.
  3. I shouted awkwardly.
  4. I stared incredulously.
  5. I feel desperate.
  6. I never returned.
  7. I never returned.

Sentences 1 and 7 are user input. Sentences 2 through 6 are generated to “fill the space” between 1 and 7. Here is an example I generated:

  1. His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god.
  2. His features seized his mistressmaker, and then.
  3. True Bailey leaped through little branches at them.
  4. Send Clayton taking off his shot.
  5. No more pictures stood in things.
  6. It has returned close to none.
  7. And none returned alive, save I.

Interesting and fun in an absurdist, surrealist way. The full article details the thought and technology behind the experiment.

* At the time of the publishing of this post, I have 1,091 books cataloged at LibraryThing.

Posted in Links and NotesTagged Afrofuturism, conspiracy theories, idiots, LibraryThing, neural networks, politics comment on Links and Notes for the Week of February 25, 2018

Personal website of
John Winkelman

John Winkelman in a diner in San Francisco

Archives

Categories

Posts By Month

June 2022
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  
« May    

Twitter Feed

Retweet on TwitterJohn Winkelman Retweeted
weirdlilguyscats being weird little guys@weirdlilguys·
27 Jun

Hi everyone - taking some time off to mourn the loss of half the country’s rights and status as free citizens in America.

Please do what you can to support groups helping those that will now need to travel for reproductive care, like the @BrigidAlliance
https://brigidalliance.org/donate/

Reply on Twitter 1541407247175229442Retweet on Twitter 1541407247175229442384Like on Twitter 15414072471752294424410Twitter 1541407247175229442
JohnWinkelmanJohn Winkelman@JohnWinkelman·
26 Jun

4 of 5 stars to The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe https://www.goodreads.com/review/show?id=4790331558

Reply on Twitter 1541143905177067521Retweet on Twitter 1541143905177067521Like on Twitter 1541143905177067521Twitter 1541143905177067521
Retweet on TwitterJohn Winkelman Retweeted
GennHutchisonGennifer Hutchison@GennHutchison·
20 Jun

Talking to someone about an estranged adult child and their parent, and the person could not understand the child cutting the parent off because "if they die, wouldn't you feel terrible you never made peace?" And it's interesting because... (cont'd)

Reply on Twitter 1539034762790113280Retweet on Twitter 15390347627901132801462Like on Twitter 15390347627901132808062Twitter 1539034762790113280
Load More...

Links of Note

Reading, Writing
Tor.com
Locus Online
The Believer
File 770
IWSG

Watching, Listening
WYCE Electric Poetry
Writing Excuses Podcast
Our Opinions Are Correct

News, Politics, Economics
Naked Capitalism
Crooked Timber

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

© 2022 Ecce Signum

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: x-blog by wpthemespace.com