[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

The plodding pace she was forced to set—for the road was too narrow and winding to pass safely—allowed time for meditation.

Elizabeth Peters, Naked Once More

Outside the window the cry of gulls could faintly be distinguished as they swirled about aimlessly in the gloom.

Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

The device had been constructed by a master craftsman, and the riddle was this—that though he'd been told the box contained wonders, there simply seemed to be no way into it, no clue on any of its six black lacquered faces as to the whereabouts of the pressure points that would disengage one piece of this three-dimensional jigsaw from another.

Clive Barker, Hellbound Heart (second sentence of first paragraph)

Skimmed by the savage Seneca from the waters of Pennsylvania's great Oil Creek, mister.

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine

Only those with unshakable psych profiles were assigned to the outlying agronomy posts; the screening was almost as rigid as that for deep space.

Margaret Wander Bonanno, Strangers from the Sky

One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came from from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (opening line)

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

The crowd would have engulfed the platform and the open space as well if it had not been held back by the triple row of Sebastian soldiers on Pilate's left and the soldiers of the Ituraean auxiliary cohort on his right.

Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor)

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Only a few of them had been wounded; here and there you saw one stepping gingerly, leaning on a crutch or two canes, but so far on toward recovery that his face had color.

Dorothy Parker, "Soldiers Of The Republic"

Suppose they never get counted—what's the worst that can happen? If the number of imaginary sheep in this world remains a matter of guesswork, who is richer or poorer for it?

"The Little Hours"

In her twenties, after the deferred death of a hazy widowed mother, she had been employed as a model in a wholesale dress establishment—it was still the day of the big woman, and she was then prettily colored and high-breasted.

"Big Blonde"

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Come to the sneer side. We have brownies.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago

Removed for being either chatbot slop or a pointless imitation of same.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago

However speaking as someone with success on informatics olympiads

The rare nerd who can shove themselves into a locker in O(log n) time

[-] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago

I once saw the stage adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, and the scientist who conditioned Alexander against sex and violence said almost the same thing when they discovered that he'd also conditioned him against music.

[-] [email protected] 58 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The New York Times treats him as an expert: "Eliezer Yudkowsky, a decision theorist and an author of a forthcoming book". He's an Internet rando who has yammered about decision theory, not an actual theorist! He wrote fanfic that claimed to teach rational thinking while getting high-school biology wrong. His attempt to propose a new decision theory was, last I checked, never published in a peer-reviewed journal, and in trying to check again I discovered that it's so obscure it was deleted from Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Functional_Decision_Theory

To recapitulate my sneer from an earlier thread, the New York Times respects actual decision theorists so little, it's like the whole academic discipline is trans people or something.

[-] [email protected] 46 points 6 months ago

Wojciakowski took the critiques on board. “Wow, tough crowd … I’ve learned today that you are sensitive to ensuring human readability.”

Christ, what an asshole.

[-] [email protected] 44 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Those are the actors who played Duncan Idaho in the David Lynch adaptation and in the two Syfy miniseries. So, yeah, it's not wrong, just incomplete — though I have no idea why it only serves up those three. There's certainly no limitation to three images, as can be verified by searching for "Sherlock Holmes actor" or the like.

[-] [email protected] 78 points 8 months ago

"When I have a disagreement with a girl, I hit my balls with a hammer. There is absolutely nothing she can do; it's a brutal mog."

[-] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago

To date, the largest working nuclear reactor constructed entirely of cheese is the 160 MWe Unit 1 reactor of the French nuclear plant École nationale de technologie supérieure (ENTS).

"That's it! Gromit, we'll make the reactor out of cheese!"

55
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Tesla's troubled Cybertruck appears to have hit yet another speed bump. Over the weekend, dozens of waiting customers reported that their impending deliveries had been canceled due to "an unexpected delay regarding the preparation of your vehicle."

Tesla has not announced an official stop sale or recall, and as of now, the reason for the suspended deliveries is unknown. But it's possible the electric pickup truck has a problem with its accelerator. [...] Yesterday, a Cybertruck owner on TikTok posted a video showing how the metal cover of his accelerator pedal allegedly worked itself partially loose and became jammed underneath part of the dash. The driver was able to stop the car with the brakes and put it in park. At the beginning of the month, another Cybertruck owner claimed to have crashed into a light pole due to an unintended acceleration problem.

Meanwhile, layoffs!

43
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Google Books is indexing low quality, AI-generated books that will turn up in search results, and could possibly impact Google Ngram viewer, an important tool used by researchers to track language use throughout history.

260
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

[Eupalinos of Megara appears out of a time portal from ancient Ionia] Wow, you guys must be really good at digging tunnels by now, right?

125
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

In October, New York City announced a plan to harness the power of artificial intelligence to improve the business of government. The announcement included a surprising centerpiece: an AI-powered chatbot that would provide New Yorkers with information on starting and operating a business in the city.

The problem, however, is that the city’s chatbot is telling businesses to break the law.

19
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

a lesswrong: 47-minute read extolling the ambition and insights of Christopher Langan's "CTMU"

a science blogger back in the day: not so impressed

[I]t’s sort of like saying “I’m going to fix the sink in my bathroom by replacing the leaky washer with the color blue”, or “I’m going to fly to the moon by correctly spelling my left leg.”

Langan, incidentally, is a 9/11 truther, a believer in the "white genocide" conspiracy theory and much more besides.

24
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut'n'paste it into its own post, there’s no quota here and the bar really isn't that high

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

59
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

If you've been around, you may know Elsevier for surveillance publishing. Old hands will recall their running arms fairs. To this storied history we can add "automated bullshit pipeline".

In Surfaces and Interfaces, online 17 February 2024:

Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic:Lithium-metal batteries are promising candidates for high-energy-density rechargeable batteries due to their low electrode potentials and high theoretical capacities [1], [2].

In Radiology Case Reports, online 8 March 2024:

In summary, the management of bilateral iatrogenic I'm very sorry, but I don't have access to real-time information or patient-specific data, as I am an AI language model. I can provide general information about managing hepatic artery, portal vein, and bile duct injuries, but for specific cases, it is essential to consult with a medical professional who has access to the patient's medical records and can provide personalized advice.

Edit to add this erratum:

The authors apologize for including the AI language model statement on page 4 of the above-named article, below Table 3, and for failing to include the Declaration of Generative AI and AI-assisted Technologies in Scientific Writing, as required by the journal’s policies and recommended by reviewers during revision.

Edit again to add this article in Urban Climate:

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines HW as “Sustained periods of uncharacteristically high temperatures that increase morbidity and mortality”. Certainly, here are a few examples of evidence supporting the WHO definition of heatwaves as periods of uncharacteristically high temperatures that increase morbidity and mortality

And this one in Energy:

Certainly, here are some potential areas for future research that could be explored.

Can't forget this one in TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry:

Certainly, here are some key research gaps in the current field of MNPs research

Or this one in Trends in Food Science & Technology:

Certainly, here are some areas for future research regarding eggplant peel anthocyanins,

And we mustn't ignore this item in Waste Management Bulletin:

When all the information is combined, this report will assist us in making more informed decisions for a more sustainable and brighter future. Certainly, here are some matters of potential concern to consider.

The authors of this article in Journal of Energy Storage seems to have used GlurgeBot as a replacement for basic formatting:

Certainly, here's the text without bullet points:

18
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

In which a man disappearing up his own asshole somehow fails to be interesting.

22
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

So, there I was, trying to remember the title of a book I had read bits of, and I thought to check a Wikipedia article that might have referred to it. And there, in "External links", was ... "Wikiversity hosts a discussion with the Bard chatbot on Quantum mechanics".

How much carbon did you have to burn, and how many Kenyan workers did you have to call the N-word, in order to get a garbled and confused "history" of science? (There's a lot wrong and even self-contradictory with what the stochastic parrot says, which isn't worth unweaving in detail; perhaps the worst part is that its statement of the uncertainty principle is a blurry JPEG of the average over all verbal statements of the uncertainty principle, most of which are wrong.) So, a mediocre but mostly unremarkable page gets supplemented with a "resource" that is actively harmful. Hooray.

Meanwhile, over in this discussion thread, we've been taking a look at the Wikipedia article Super-recursive algorithm. It's rambling and unclear, throwing together all sorts of things that somebody somewhere called an exotic kind of computation, while seemingly not grasping the basics of the ordinary theory the new thing is supposedly moving beyond.

So: What's the worst/weirdest Wikipedia article in your field of specialization?

93
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

The day just isn't complete without a tiresome retread of freeze peach rhetorical tropes. Oh, it's "important to engage with and understand" white supremacy. That's why we need to boost the voices of white supremacists! And give them money!

28
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

With the OpenAI clownshow, there's been renewed media attention on the xrisk/"AI safety"/doomer nonsense. Personally, I've had a fresh wave of reporters asking me naive questions (as well as some contacts from old hands who are on top of how to handle ultra-rich man-children with god complexes).

6
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Flashback time:

One of the most important and beneficial trainings I ever underwent as a young writer was trying to script a comic. I had to cut down all of my dialogue to fit into speech bubbles. I was staring closely at each sentence and striking out any word I could.

"But then I paid for Twitter!"

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blakestacey

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