Alistair Young @cerebrate@schelling.pt

Whyever did we call it "self-destruct" when we could have called it "autoclast"?

(This is a post about AI development. And climate change. And basically everything else.)

As a general note, I have seen lots of people today criticizing those who spend time thinking about future and potential problems rather than the present problems right in front of them.

Gentles all, I trust you will enjoy your trip on Eastern Air Lines Flight 401.

Now consider how likely the likelihood of finding a US.gov iron-spined enough to condemn a million/hundred-thousand/ten-thousand/etc. Lunarians or Martians in the former US colony to slow death for, basically, transmitting an updated copy of their own Declaration of Independence - and doing so in the face of the entire non-Internet-tough-guy population being all "um, I didn't sign up for deliberate mass-murder, kthx".

This is why I do not buy it.

Thinking of that meme that space colonies will remain bound to their earthly masters (because it's the law, don'ch'know) enforced by the Earthers' merciless grip on their supply chain?

Consider, on the one hand, the sheer outrage generated in the public discourse by Israel's refusal to continue to supply electricity and water to the Gaza Strip, a polity whose government, Hamas, lists the brutal murder of every Israeli as its official state policy.

Concept: The COBOL Cabana, a beach bar for recovering business logic programmers.

Let me give you the one-sentence libertarian case for funding the war in Ukraine:

There are literally no circumstances in which spending tax money to shoot authoritarian shitheads isn't a better deal than spending tax money to empower authoritarian shitheads.

The follow-up to our Fed experience gets quite surreal:

https://open.substack.com/pub/noiseinmysignal/p/my-life-is-not-getting-any-less-surreal?r=8byfa&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

New!Battlestar Galactica/The Prisoner crossover.

“I am not a number, I am a free Cylon!”

- 6

Alistair's First Law of Hyperbolic Limitation:

Before anything can qualify as genocide it must first qualify as decimation.

Alternate best way to close trouble tickets:

I AM ALTERING THE SPECIFICATION.

PRAY I DO NOT ALTER IT ANY FURTHER.

Best ways to close trouble tickets:

1. ASDESIGNED

2. WONTFIX

3. THEN THE WINGED HUSSARS ARRIVED

So, if you make a mistake while weatherproofing penetrations in the outside wall of your home… is that a caulk-up?

Is there actually a smallmouth bass? I've always wondered.

...wait for it...

As a eugenicist, I believe that authoritarians should not be allowed to reproduce.

Stupid phrase of the day: "kamikaze drone".

What's wrong with "missile"? (Or, for seaborne drones, "torpedo".)

Alas, this is the post in which I must admit that I screwed up and got those numbers the wrong way around, a pulse being ~ 0.75 s.

By way of apology, another trivia item:

The gift shop at the Golden Tower (i.e., Gilea and Company’s headquarters, in Mer Covales, Seranth - right outside the museum of finance on the mezzanine level) sells both gold foil-wrapped chocolates and chocolate-covered gold bars.

_The former are more expensive._

#eldraeverse