anvandare

I think we are well past the point where belief in a rules-based world order turns from optimism to delusion. Entrench yourself behind entire libraries of law books if you wish, it only makes for spectacular kindling.

To paraphrase Thucydides: the nuclear capable countries do what they want, and the non-nuclear countries suffer what they must.

All you have to do is train an LLM on the collected works and letters of John Searle; you could then pass your arguments along to the machine and out would come John Searle's thoughtful response...

The shrine is not the shrine.

The shrine is the previous generation teaching the next to build the shrine.

So if the shrine were to fall, then the shrine would eventually fall.

That is why the shrine must keep falling, so that it can keep being rebuilt, and so the shrine keeps standing.

Forest fires would definitely get a lot more exciting.

A cancerous cell does not care that it is (indirectly) killing the lifeform that it is a part of. It just does what it does without a thought.

And if it could think, it would probably be very proud of the quarter (hour) figures that it could present. The Number has gone up, time for a reward.

I don't know. Let's start by cutting up any "social"* company/platform with more than 10 million users and work our way down from there.

Who knows, it might even have the side-effect of forcing them to use open protocols so that people can connect to people who are on other platforms. Maybe they'll even have to make money by delivering service to their users instead of users to their advertisers.

* antisocial, they are antisocial.

The gender of a noun is just a noun class. But because Germanic languages lie more toward the analytic end of the morphological typology continuum (whereas Romance languages lie more toward the synthetical end) the information is latent - or rather, the task of conveying that information is left to other words (the articles).

Just imagine if someone studied Portuguese but learned vocabulary like this, never bothering with the ending vowel:

  'gat-'

  'cas-'

  'bolach-'

Similarly, 'die' should be considered an inherent part of 'Frau'. So don't learn just 'Frau', learn 'die Frau'. The article 'Die' is just as "random" as '-o' or '-a' is in Portuguese. (I'll skip the part where you can have a form of the word in both classes: gata/gato.) People like to try and find "rules" they can remember instead, but it's a pointless endeavor. Language is a Calvinball game.

To make a weird tech analogy: Romance nouns are like laptops, with a touchpad built in. Germanic nouns are like desktops, you have to remember to carry a mouse* along.

* Die Maus

Pregnancy is, it seems, just another (evolutionary) war.

https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-bet...

Red in tooth and claw at every layer, from the smallest cell to the entire biosphere.

"The limits of my keyboard mean the limits of my programming language."

If only they had had ⊥ and ⊤ somewhere on their keys to work with Booleans directly while designing the languages. In another branch of history, perchance.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)#/me...

I take it this means it has moved to the obituaries?

Well, if she weighs the same as a duck...

It seems to be a variation of §1 - because witchcraft is a serious crime and the god of rivers (Idlurugu) would obviously drown anyone who was a witch.[1]

§1: accuse someone of murder -> (can't prove your case) -> your own life is forfeit

§2: accuse someone of witchcraft -> (can't prove your case) AND (they prove they are not punished/drowned by the river god) -> your own life is forfeit

Trial by ordeal was an ancient thing, even back then.[2] It is the sort of thing you see where there was no real distinction between legal and theological, between law and rite. Indeed, Töyräänvuori concludes:

>Arbitration via suprarational trial seems to be required in cases where it is the word of one person against another, and no forensic evidence can settle the manner. Anthropologically, the ordeal is supposed to reveal whether the witness or accused is lying through the threat of supernatural punishment, functioning as a primitive lie-detector test. Its use in European witch trials likely also follows from this function, as accusations of witchcraft were often spread through social contagion. An important facet of the trials is that they seem to have been meant to acquit the accused innocent of the crime in most of the cases it was used.[2]

It's interesting that unproven (false) accusations and perjury are at the very top of the legal code, with severe punishments attached. Which are exactly the sort of abuses you'd see pop up when a legal code is in place.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idlurugu#Idlurugu_as_a_legal_p...

[2] http://saa.uaic.ro/wp-content/uploads/6.-Joanna-T%C3%96YR%C3...

I think you're thinking of the Lightspeed Leapfrog trope[1].

(In a more general sense, it's the inverse of the first-mover advantage: the law of the handicap of a head start[32])

Or: the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LightspeedLeapfr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_handicap_of_a_head_...

As the laws of physics do not seem to stop at the borders of a skull, there is no sovereignty of the Self. But no one minds a thought thinking itself its own thinker, as there is no one at all. Just a thought.

I agree. Evolutionary speaking, animals that develop different behaviors based on 'clean' versus 'unclean' would have a leg-up against the competition. Ants, to give a quick example, throw their dead out with the rest of the garbage.[1] (Which can lead to a funny experiment to have them carry out living members as well - "I'm not dead yet!"[2])

You don't have to understand why you are doing something - or even that you are doing it at all - as long as it works and gives you a benefit, however small. Without proper understanding you will also have false positives, but it's better to be assume there is danger than to assume there isn't any. False positives outweigh false negatives. (To a certain level, of course, too much of it and paranoia becomes harmful again.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrophoresis

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2009/04/01/102601823/h...

"Accepting the limitations of birthform betrays a lack of imagination."

- Civilization: Beyond Earth

The summer solstice ("the longest day of the year") is always the same date regardless of your latitude: June 20th/21st (in the northern hemisphere).

And assuming Syene is on the same longitude as Alexandria[0], Syene's noon is Alexandria's noon.

  Alexandria:       31°11′51″N    29°53′33″E
  Syene:            24°05′20″N    32°53′59″E
  Tropic of Cancer: 23°26′10.4″ N

[0] It isn't, which contributed to the measurement error, but close enough is good enough.

Earth is a spaceship, unfortunately somehow a bunch of monkeys went rampant and now they're busy tearing up the life support system.

If we can satisfy their (limitless and still growing) hunger for energy and resources by exploiting the rest of the solar system, the monkeys can be kept pacified. That could buy us time to figure out a more permanent, and balanced, solution.

The great thing about the Moon/Mars/asteroid belt is that we can strip mine it. Can't ruin the ecosystem if there isn't one.

For reference: this book is obviously a (praiseworthy) ambition to have a Greek counterpart to the Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata[1] by Hans Ørberg.

Ørberg's way of teaching Latin is, in my view, excellent because it is based on a natural view of learning a language: show something, say what its name is, use its name in simple sentences, work up from there. Each time introducing new words surrounded by already-known ones and letting the pupil figure it out. All in the target language itself, exactly how we acquired our mother tongues. Vocabulary is acquired through repetition, grammar is acquired through "getting a feel for what sounds right". Using the brain's own mechanisms for deducing meaning and deriving rules.

The book is definitely going to need illustrations, just like in LLPSI[2]. Hard to understand what 'πόλις' means per se, but not if I take you up a mountain and point at [3] while saying "πόλις".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg

[2] https://blog.nina.coffee/img/lingua-latina.png

[3] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f5/c3/10/f5c31074eeb418bc51e7...

Once dates get too complex it is easier to just have an external script figure out whether today is the day and have it run every day:

  0 9 * * * anvandare is-today-the-day.py && celebrate.sh

With is-today-the-day.py being:

  #!/usr/bin/env python3
  import sys
  from dateutil.easter import easter
  from datetime import datetime as dt
  today = dt.today().date()
  (easter(2023) - today).days == 0 and sys.exit(0) or sys.exit(1)

Or, if we didn't have the easter function already (just adding this because it was fun to work it out):

  #!/usr/bin/env python3
  import sys, ephem as e, datetime as dt
  setup = '2022/09/25'
  date = (e.next_full_moon(e.next_equinox(setup))).datetime()
  easter2023 = (date + dt.timedelta(7 - date.isoweekday())).date()
  today = dt.datetime.today().date()
  (easter2023 - today).days == 0 and sys.exit(0) or sys.exit(1)

>SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars)

I like silly backronyms like that[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculoos

Mankind is to Nature as a cancer cell is to the rest of the organism. Very much part of it, also very much going to kill it because it can't stop growing and consuming resources. But there is no intent, it's just buggy code.

Mankind is not malicious, just malignant.

"Tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une chambre."

"All the unhappiness of men arises from a single fact, which is from not knowing how to stay at rest in a room."

(Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 139)

It is no coincidence that the word 'idle' means both 'doing nothing' and 'being worthless'. I could write out a longer comment with some more thoughts on the health of a society that is obsessed with productivity and 'staying busy', but I'd rather spend those minutes doing nothing instead.

History is either seen as a circle or as a line.

If as a circle, then history repeats itself endlessly. The world is reborn and dies, over and over. It is seen as the lives of generations.

If as a line, then history has only one beginning and will have one ending. The world is born and will die. It is seen as the life of an individual.

The ones that adhere to the line can in turn be divided along those that see the line going up (toward a sunlit city at the top of a hill) and those that see the line going down (towards a hellish valley at the foot of a hill - Megiddo perhaps). Or rather, it's the same line, and the same hill, but they disagree on the direction they are headed.

Of course, any line is just a circle zoomed-in close enough, and any circle draws a line if it rolls on long enough. History is just another form of story, a way of seeing things. What matters is not the story, but who is telling it and why.

There's no real need for AI. If you combine Atlas with VR controllers you could have the robots be in the danger zone while the human controllers sit in a safe and secure place. I'd say we're about a decade or two away from that, but I can see the potential.

(Additionally add Starship as a delivery mechanism and Starlink as a low-lag communication channel and you've got a "deploy a battalion of killbots at any place on the planet within 1 hour, with 0 risk for the operator-soldiers" pitch for a defence contract)

Alternatively, just create electronic stamps* for email; cheap enough that it doesn't enter the minds of those that send a few emails per day but expensive enough to ruin the profit margins of spammers.

* I'm thinking something similar to SSL: write email, create hash (one hash per recipient), submit signing request for hash, CA signs request and returns stamp (certificate), stamp is transmitted along with email. Additionally, allow people to give each other (or sites/newsletters they would like to receive) 'rubber stamps', allowing them to create (free) stamps for emails addressed to each other... And since no idea of mine is ever original I'm certain several smarter people have already written multiple RFC's on this and the idea never took off because of something I'm overlooking at the moment. Ah well.

For another saga (or perhaps fable is a better term) see the reindeer on Saint Matthew Island:

https://www.geo.arizona.edu/Antevs/nats104/00lect21reindeer....

I usually just answer Socratically: "So how can (some) planes fly upside-down?" whenever I encounter the Bernoulli-adherents.

> The first and most moral responsibility of Freeland will be establishing a decent brewery on the new planet. (Civilization: Beyond Earth - Hutama)

Sure, our ancestors (who could make their way and thrive in the wild) would probably consider me (who gets lost the moment I make a wrong right turn and depends on the local supermarket) a complete idiot, especially since I couldn't recreate any of the technology my daily life so depends on... But I've got central heating and clean tap-water, so I'm happy with the exchange.

The higher we climb the ladder of technological dependency, the more calamitous it becomes should we ever fall off. Best not to look down. (I think I'm supposed to bang rocks together to make fire, right?)

Pretty sure SpaceX's first deliveries to Mars (orbit) will include just that. I think they could probably use Starlink satellites without much modification (most important one I can think of would be more panels to cope with the reduced solar irradiance)?

The GPS constellation has 32 satellites. A GPS satellite weighs ~2000kg. Starship should get 100-150 tons to Mars - the math checks out! (Disclosure: I got all my rocket science from sending Kerbals to their doom.)

So, MPS for Mars, LPS for Luna? Just imagine the amount and quality of rover footage we could get if each of them had (constant!) 1Gbps uplink to Earth...

Things either have a cause, and then they are causal. Or they have no cause, and then they are random.

But in the opinions of some, the laws of physics stop at the neck, beyond which things are neither causal nor non-causal nor random nor non-random but 'free'. Whatever that might mean. (Apparently it's some sort of unmoving mover which moves itself and interacts with the universe without being interacted upon by the universe.)