From the linked Andrew Molitor item:
Why Extropic insists on talking about thermodynamics at all is a mystery, especially since “thermodynamic computing” is an established term that means something quite different from what Extropic is trying to do. This is one of several red flags.
I have a feeling this is related to wanking about physics in the e/acc holy gospels. They invoke thermodynamics the way that people trying to sell you healing crystals for your chakras invoke quantum mechanics.
"I was somewhere in the middle of your mother last night, Trebek!"
Pretty good sneer there:
BREAKING: Tim Pool announces he will be stepping back from full time content production to look after his family. He states he's tired of being made fun of for not having a wife and kids so he will also be using the extra time to pursue acquiring that family
From an article about a boutique brand that sells books to rich people:
Assouline has made its name publishing tomes that sell for $1,000 or more.
Oh, so they publish textbooks.
"They represent stealth wealth, intended to tell you what your hosts are about and to provide visual evidence: that the owners are people of wealth, education and taste."
🎶 Please allow me to introduce myself 🎶
Fetish content for the world's most divorced man.
Huh. OK, so I boiled away more of my precious time on this plane of reality chasing links and reading old Wikipedia arguments instead of doing something healthy, like discovering a new genre of porn. Anyway, one of TW's complaints is that "outlets like PinkNews [...] are treated as reliable despite long histories of misconduct". He points to a discussion thread where PinkNews was supposedly deemed to be terrible, horrible, no good and very bad despite David Gerard saying it was basically fine. But the analysis proving that PinkNews is terrible, horrible, etc., is itself weirdly bad. I mean, take a look at this:
Another example of a dodgy source is at is [11]. where the claim "Queer-coding has affected many fictional villains. These evil characters are generally either shown as flamboyant and overly dramatic, like Disney characters Scar and Hades, or written as having a deep fixation on the main character, like Jafar, Kim Possible villain Shego and Catra from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. In the past few decades, Disney fans have seen Governor Ratcliffe and Professor Ratigan—as well as Scar, Jafar and Hades—being portrayed as queer characters." The source for this claim? A Twitter tweet by "Jay, a self-described 'transmasc enby' who uses they/he pronouns".
But the story doesn't actually use that "Twitter tweet" as the source. It just springboards from a viral tweet to talking about the larger picture. The tweet didn't say any of the specifics that PinkNews supposedly sourced to it. And the claim that Disney villains have been queer-coded is ... not exactly shocking. I mean, just look up any of the authors that James Somerton plagiarized.
Or consider this article,[12] with the breathless headline "Star Trek: Picard season finale sees iconic character finally come out as queer, inspiring a million new fan fictions. The Star Trek: Picard season finale has confirmed a same-sex romance for iconic character Seven of Nine, and fans are thrilled." The evidence? Two characters holding hands. In a series that already had more than one openly gay couple and thus no real reason to be ambiguous.
Well, actually, Star Trek: Picard did not "already" have "more than one openly gay couple". Star Trek: Discovery had one, and the Kelvin timeline movies had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it implication of one. The PinkNews article didn't just go aflutter over two characters holding hands, but also pointed to an interview with showrunner Michael Chabon:
There are hints that both Seven and Raffi are bisexual.
Oh yes. [...] With a character like Raffi, to the extend we imagined her history in a fair amount of detail, her history included all kinds of sexual partners. There’s a father of her child, but that was far from her only sexual or life partner. She’s had relationships with all kind of people. If it was ever to come up, it was always going to be organic. [...] Same thing with Seven of Nine, having to catch up after such along absence from the human race. If you think about that, it almost seems unnatural that she wouldn’t’ have had partners of other genders. It seems clear she would have. So even if we didn’t see that on Voyager, years have passed. In that time, she’s continued to explore the spectrum of human relationships in a broader way. So in our show, there are echos and implications of that.
And it's not like the article was actually wrong, was it? Jeri Ryan said that Seven is "canonically bi", and the Seven/Raffi romance went on to become a whole thing.
I won't go to bat for PinkNews being good, but this investigation of what's wrong with it is itself irritatingly flawed and superficial. As, apparently, somebody at Wikipedia has already pointed out.
Moreover, when TW makes the flat statement, "Wikipedia currently treats PinkNews as a Reliable Source", he conveniently elides the caveats that naturally come when people who LARP at building an encyclopedia try to summarize the results of their own arguments:
There is rough consensus that PinkNews is *generally( reliable for factual reporting, but additional considerations may apply and caution should be used. Most of those who commented on PinkNews' reliability for statements about a person's sexuality said that such claims had to be based on direct quotes from the subject.
So, yeah, just because the table puts it in green doesn't mean that editors will use it uncritically.
Oh, and look, a lie by omission!
Between 2019 and 2020, Gerard repeatedly fought to make the “Known for” box on Eich’s page mention opposition to same-sex marriage and avoid any mention of Eich’s projects beyond JavaScript.14 After all, Gerard pointed out as he added a PinkNews reference to the claim—it was in a Reliable Source.
He cited Reuters too.
Why did 3.6 million people watch this hour long video dunking on flat earthers? Because the topic of people believing crazy things is fun and interesting.
Dan Olson's In Search of a Flat Earth is most definitely not just an hour of dunking on flat-Earthers.
It pivots to discussing QAnon at 37:30.
From the comments:
This just went from 0 to 100 real quick.
Lord, the cry of pure anguish I gave out in response to that line...
Props to the Qanon guy's kid for standing up to him and saying "nobody's gonna help you" when he kidnapped them, that must have been terrifying
Occasionally rewatch this while dealing with the loss of my own parents to conspiracy lunacy. Even tried using this video to pull them back from the edge. Ended up precipitating cutting contact with them, something that has done wonders for my mental health. I have since realised they were deeper in than I thought, and were never going to listen to their child, and unlikely to listen to people they actually might have respected the opinions of.
The person I used to consider my father now believes that viruses aren't real and is getting deep into transphobia and Putin worship. He is likely to already be a holocaust denier. There is no bottom to the conspiracy theory abyss and few ever seem to find their way back from the depths.
Thank you for crushing that last bit of remaining hope I didn't even know I had.
It's honestly kind of chilling to see him effectively spending half an hour predicting the Jan 6th riot.
"Fun and interesting"?
Reject modernity (wrong number of fingers), embrace tradition (SPIRAL EYE-HOLES ARE WATCHING YOU)
So, if anyone is keeping score, the promise of Artificial Intelligence has descended from "the computers on Star Trek" to "spicy ticket-booking".
As a physicist with a background in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics before moving to quantum information theory, let me reassure you that I speak from training and decades of experience when I say, "No, you dork ass loser."
In 2002, psychologist Richard Lynn and political scientist Tatu Vanhanen published their seminal book
Ah, "seminal" in the sense of "cum-bucket"
If someone asked me to write a metafictional short story, I would simply not.
I consider this a valuable lesson from my college education.