Especially when the state gets to define "violence." It is trivially easy to get someone to "resist" arrest: twist their arm hard enough and it takes a *lot* of training to *not* fight back.
Renewable energy. Climate science. Semiconductor manufacturing. Plus various randomness. https://tocarbonzero.tumblr.com/ https://semiengineering.com/author/katherine/ https://beyondwave.tumblr.com
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Especially when the state gets to define "violence." It is trivially easy to get someone to "resist" arrest: twist their arm hard enough and it takes a *lot* of training to *not* fight back.
You need this today. Trust me.
I can't speak for Martha Wells, but almost every actual human I know has skills outside their job description. People have hobbies! Multiple jobs with different requirements! Educations that may or may not be directly related to their current employment! (One-note characters are also boring.)
Armored vests are not actually recommended for multiple impacts either.
Well, that's the name under which they registered, but apparently not the person who showed up.
There's film of Pollock at work. Hundreds of still photos. I agree that if you don't see intention there, there's no point in continuing.
That's also why using digital tools is not the same as prompting an AI. A digital artist is still choosing what brush (or filter) to use to achieve a desired effect.
No, actually they can't. Pollock made a splash, examined the result, and chose what brush and what paint to use for the next splash. Splash B was part of a conversation with Splash A and the negative space of the canvas. Writing a prompt is no at all the same.
That's the Philip Glass argument, essentially, but it's a false analogy. A model that fit your description wouldn't be capable of doing what genAI does. The enormous environment-destroying data centers and the vast corpus of data are not incidental side effects, they're the whole enchilada.
Pollock was extremely intentional in his work. He didn't control exactly where the paint ended up, but he made choices about what paints to use and how to fling them at the canvas. I don't see why incorporating a human observer's reaction wouldn't be art: communal creation is as old as humanity.
Best essay on the subject that I've seen. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
There is no such thing as intentional AI "art." The AI is incapable of forming an intention, and the human prompter does not control the end result.
East to West in Switzerland is about the same distance as east to west across the northern Rockies.
How long does it take to cross Switzerland by train? It’s about the same distance.
Talking to a rubber duck is a well-established problem solving method.
Not from California, but I did live in Massachusetts when Romney was governor. And threw his own biggest success under the bus when he decided to run for President. "Romney of the left" is what I think when I think of Newsom.
I'm pretty sure you're not going to do 400 km/h through the Rockies.
I gave you numbers and you told me they were nonsense. So yes, I apologize for taking a direct insult personally and refusing to do further unpaid research on your behalf. Have a nice day.
I think making sure the GOP lite candidates don't get nominated in the first place is a better choice than yelling at people who literally fear for their lives. Especially since the actual decision is more than three years away.
I think the argument is not about "the Dems," but about some specific, named Democrats embracing GOP frames and talking points.
I also think the 2016 and 2024 elections showed just how important the catastrophically bad economic situation in 2008 was for Obama's win.
If you don't believe me, just ask OpenAI. They aren't spending $40 billion a year on data centers to have them sit idle.
Do NOT give the One Ring to John Wick!
And also this: www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...
And then there's this, from the woke environmentalists at JP Morgan Chase. qz.com/ai-chips-dat...
This come out just recently: www.tomshardware.com/tech-industr...
I sneered at that those tiny kitchen counter racks for years, but it turns out they are useful as a "recently used" or "favorites" rack. Cumin, for instance, gets used several times a week and has earned a promotion out of the main storage area.
Probably Szechuan pepper would also be okay. It's from a variety of Zanthoxylum species.
Bet this'll be super fun for the AI "writers," too.
Think of it as a really good physics model, tweaked with big dataset on actual storms. Physics model creates a prediction with error bars, the real storm data shows where in that distribution storms are likely to end up.
Can confirm. I abandoned the posted excerpt before I encountered evidence of crimeing.
I saw a listing out on the Olympic Peninsula. Beautiful little cabin in the woods. No electricity. No indoor plumbing. I'm not sure there was a road to get there. $100K. And I've been living here too long: I thought, "Eh, sounds reasonable."
Plus lodging and transportation, I’d guess that anyone non-local is paying north of $2k just to be there. Plus the time and raw materials for the merchandise, plus the opportunity cost of whatever isn’t happening while they’re there.
Isn't solidarity and doesn't work. People who are going to vote their hatreds will not be satisfied with just a little hate when the alternative is a seething cauldron.
My take is that burning a Confederate flag will make all the same people just as mad, but deprives them of the "patriotism" argument.
There are also ethical differences between a company making decisions for all drivers of their vehicles vs individuals making decisions for themselves.
Maybe, if you take the home office deduction (painful), and strictly segregate Work Tea from Home Tea. But keeping track of all that might drive you to drink something stronger than tea. Re: complications, your mind's got nothing on the tax code.
If consumed on an otherwise deductible business trip, or supplied as an office amenity, yes. If made in your own kitchen, no. (US only, not an accountant, YMMV)
Maybe if it's Atlas Shrugged?
Twyla Tharp said about dance, but it applies to writing as well, that you don't need one IDEA. You need many small ideas. A musical phrase. A series of steps. A talisman that the protagonist stumbles over... And then you ask yourself "where did this come from?" or "what happens next?" Repeatedly.
I don't read romance, but I do read mysteries. Same idea. The promise of the genre is that the crime will be solved in the end, but a whole lot can happen along the way.
All those mid-century novels talking about British tourists clutching their Baedekers suddenly make sense.
Who are you willing to take in exchange?
Those on the bowl might be Nordic fish, but PNW Native-carved fish are different.
From SAE 2 to full autonomy is a very big jump.
Pretty much all the luxury brands have some form of advanced driver assist, they're just much more conservative about what they claim to be able to do. Waymo has deployed driverless taxis in a number of cities as well.
There are old mushroom hunters, and there are bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.
Yes, indeed. There's certainly a gap between what a well-designed autonomous vehicle theoretically *could* do, and what the real world examples we see *actually* do. (The current real world examples mostly do not claim to be fully autonomous, but the human/car handoff is a whole other issue.)
The real world is not a trolley problem, but it is messy and unpredictable in a way software doesn't necessarily handle well. 2/2
Sure. But these are questions that need to be asked before autonomous vehicles are deployed at scale, and saying "there is no trolley problem (for autonomous vehicles)" is an attempt to handwave the questions away. 1/2
To the extent that they correctly evaluate those conditions.
How fast is it going? What's the stopping distance? What collision risk does it create by stopping? While autonomous vehicles theoretically have faster reactions than humans, it's still easy to create a scenario -- icy pavement, blind curves, falling debris -- where it can't react fast enough.
Well, not exactly. In a fully autonomous vehicle, the answer to the problem is defined by its software, and both the passengers and the public at large are tied to the tracks. The only way to break the premise is to decide that autonomous vehicles shouldn't exist. This is the critics' point.
It's impossible to know *why* early humans decorated objects in their environment, but they unquestionably did. Art may not *only* be about self-expression, but it's definitely a primal human need. AI won't change that, no matter what it does to business models for artist support.
So you're saying (1) it's fluffy and warm from the dryer, and (2) it urgently needs cat fur replenishment? Fiasco to the rescue!
And also like it's the solemn duty of everyone on the internet to try to persuade everyone they encounter. Whether those people are amenable to persuasion or not. The internet has many uses other than yelling at strangers! Try it sometime!
Libraries are usually free. Museums usually aren't, but I'm increasingly convinced that a museum membership is one of the best cultural investments you can make. They're usually pretty inexpensive, and being able to go whenever. you. want. changes how you see and think about art. Recommended.
The world does not need more freshman level problem sets, in any discipline. It *does* need more humans capable of solving them.
Not if it's written by Chuck Schumer you don't!
Either there were no professionals on the committee, they were ignored, or they refused to participate after being ignored in the past.
I'm pretty sure Charlie's wife didn't want him back.
I've found Sharpies useful for this purpose.
Therapy is emphatically *not* about constant validation. It's about helping you figure out which responses to situations are not helpful, and how you might change them.
I don't have too many eggs, but I do sometimes have too much lavender (it likes it here). It's a good choice for "mild fruity/floral" infusions.
I read a lot of technical papers. Which feature two(!) very helpful summaries (the abstract and conclusions) written by the author of the paper! And even with that help, AI still does a terrible job.
Also, worldbuilding for a novel or short story is different from worldbuilding for a TTRPG. Even if characters wander "off the map" or ask questions that you don't know the answer to, you don't need to solve it in real time. If you don't know where the silver mines are, that's probably okay.
Lies! There are no peanut butter Oreos! I don’t care what the company says!
You're too kind. Deliberate vandalism. How could clawing back billions of dollars in already appropriated money *not* have bad economic consequences?
Speaking of which, once you're known in the field the press people for conferences will do backflips to try to help you. 3/3
Probably field dependent as well. In fast moving fields, the journals are only for the historical record anyway. Most of the "conversation" around the work happens through conferences and preprints. 2/3
In recent years, I think the universities have concluded that the academic publishers are charging a lot of money for not very much value. They -- including some very prestigious ones -- are starting to be friendlier to open access principles. 1/3
Read something amazing today. Amazing both because of what we're learning about Jupiter and its moons, and because of the human ingenuity deployed to learn it. www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...
Not lying. Helping me build my block list, though.
Yeah. I think Tolkien understood "power corrupts" a lot better than many writers.
And it's currently on sale at Kobo. Winning! www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/...
Probably courtesy of the tariffs imposed by the Toddler in Chief. Is there an ebook?
(Or maybe that's just my raging imposter syndrome, since my WIP is a historical fantasy set in a country I have never visited.)
Maybe the more nuanced answer is "write what excites you, but at least have the humility to know what you don't know?" 2/2
I think there's a more nuanced conversation to be had. Members of marginalized groups are IMO rightly concerned about appropriation of their histories and cultures. A lot of harm has been done by people perpetuating stereotypes or just flat out making stuff up. 1/2
They'd repeal Title IX if they could. It's been a tremendous contributor to women and girls finding "non-traditional" roles.
For people to care *enough to pay for it.* The shift of local advertising to the internet (Craig's list, FB Marketplace, et. al) absolutely decimated local news budgets.
National politicians also have bigger budgets: better production values, better ads, usually more polished candidates. Local candidates are often that nerdy neighbor who's annoyingly obsessed with zoning regulations.
My experience is that "talented" people often hit a ceiling. Once they reach the limit -- whatever it is -- of their natural aptitude, they have to work just as hard as anyone else to get better. Some do, some don't.
Clearly he's living rent free in my head. LOL. Probably the most embarrassing choice of all: I think Conrad is the only 20th century writer listed, and he died in 1924. That's a hundred years in which there were several (!) important literary developments. Poseur.
Not a single woman, only a handful from outside Europe. Shakespeare, but no Chaucer; Homer, but no Plato; Stendhal, but not Balzac or Voltaire. He's not even good at being condescending.
Being a beginner is hard! Especially as an adult who already has some things that they're good at.
This was by no means the first party in Seattle history to run late. I'm sure the venue could have figured something out if someone on the organizing team had thought to ask.
Void kitty is protecting you from evil snek!
I don't write about economics, but I don't have time to scroll through pre-print servers. If I write about a pre-print, either the author(s) emailed me about it or it came up as part of research on a specific topic.
Welp, guess I'm going indie after all. 😬
As of this morning, arXiv has in fact withdrawn the paper. FWIW, the list of firms that even *employ* more than 1,000 materials scientists is extremely short, and I expect that any such firm participating in the (alleged) experiment would have at least one of their own scientists as a co-author.
Could you message me an email address? I don't have an Etsy account. Thanks!
This is what people who talk about "retail politics" have in mind. Joe Biden had it, especially when younger. Kamala Harris is more in the wonky, hyper-competent Obama mold, and like him there's a racism barrier that limits her appeal.
That was Bill Clinton's trick, I think. Among current national figures? Tim Walz.
Me! But I already read it. So I guess I need to stock up on your other books?
Pro tip: Dough Zone is a local chain with comparable quality and lower prices. They also have an outpost near the Convention Center.
This can also be a problem in martial arts. Even with the best intentions, it's very hard for your training partner to protect you from injury if you can't/won't acknowledge that something hurts.
Four hours of exercise 6x a week for a non-professional athlete just *might* be a little excessive. Certainly fatigue would be very normal if you weren't eating and sleeping enough to support that workload.
Good description of the MAGA movement over here, too. Core supporters are petty bourgeoisie, not the working class.
That word you had to look up to make sure it was used/spelled correctly? Probably you should have used a simpler word instead.