Tootfinder

Our #VFXPipeline, database and renderfarm also supports shot numbers with emojis. Need to find my post about this from a few years ago 😁
Maybe I should test it again to make sure it still works. Back then, all I had to do was disable a regular expression that enforced alphanumeric characters.

#today I have fitted an extra circuit-breaker to an experimental doohickey that I have going, I have checked some documents for friends, and I am about to do some admin including for a meeting next week. All wrapped around a nice warm relaxing bath*.
*Except for some HUGE knots in my hair!

The first record of the parable commonly known as the "Blind Men and the Elephant" showed up around 2500 years ago, in a Buddhist text from India. At this point it's pretty commonly known. I assume that most folks reading this will be familiar with some variation of it.
If not, it's essentially a story about people who have limited information making assertions about something: one man grabs a tail and says, "it's like a rope," another the trunk and says, "it's like a snake," a third the leg saying, "it's like a tree," and so on. Later variations are less kind to the men, having them not simply report their findings, but fight over them. The first English translation draws a parallel to religion.
This comes to mind for me, because social media has a tendency to incentivize us to make those hard assertions, to dig in, to argue our perspective as part of a spectacle. Free and federated social media isn't structurally that different from corporate media, so the incentive models built to maximize engagement by maximizing conflict tend to leak through the similarities in the user experience and the conditioning of other platforms.
I didn't really come here to critique the fediverse, but rather to remind everyone, "no one sees the whole fucking elephant." We are limited and there are necessarily some things so big they will never be individually comprehensible. Any system that relies on us all agreeing cannot possibly respond to those big things.
We can see that concretely if we look at the difference between "democratic unity" and "diversity of tactics." In the first model, everyone either agrees or gets forced to behave as though they agree (at least on some issues). That's how liberal democracy works. Diversity of tactics (which systematically described, for example, in the "St Paul Principles"), on the other hand, let's people align on goals without needing to agree on exactly how to achieve them. The reality being that often there are multiple "correct" paths, and sometimes those paths can only work if multiple paths are taken in unison.
No one sees the whole elephant. We won't even see the elephant later. People will still be arguing about the elephant long after it's gone. But if you want to get rid of the elephant, you're gonna need to accept that you can't comprehend it all and you're gonna have to figure out a way to work together that doesn't require a unified approach.

"This post is about a found mural, a lost artist, and a conference talk. It’s the full story of Wes Cook and The McDonald’s Mural. Grab a beverage, sit back, relax, and thank you for joining me..."
https://cabel.com/wes-cook-and-the-mcdonalds-mural/

Wes Cook and the Incredible McDonald's Mural
A personal story about discovering a mural in a McDonald's, an unknown artist named Wes Cook, trying to save the mural, and a conference talk about it all.

I know next to nothing of substance abt The Amazing Digital Circus. All I know is that every time a trans woman makes a virtual reality story she makes a zillion bucks and her characters get turned into fortnite skins cuz of our innate sauce with the feeling of physical disconnection, and im lowk tempted to try continuing the family nacho recipe even as itd be purely cynical cuz I actually really really only care abt the process of becoming a real physical person im tired of thinking within …

Just finished "Snake-Eater" by T. Kingfisher (@…). I'd read and thoroughly enjoyed her "Digger" webcomic, and found this book to be quite enjoyable too. There's something indelibly heartwarming about an anxious character growing to feel more comfortable and self-assured, especially when escaping and unlearning emotional abuse, and I'm certainly a sucker for heartwarming characters. I like the way that Kingfisher has taken time to talk about and try to avoid cultural appropriation, in a way that I feel is reasonable, although of course I'm not an expert judge of the nuances and I'm biased by having liked the book, so I'm willing to be told things are complicated in that regard it others judge differently. I also really liked the window dressing of a vaguely solarpunk future society, in a book that's not at all about that society. I'd love to see Kingfisher write something focused on how that society could work (or maybe she already has?).
Probably going to look up some of Kingfisher's fantasy books soon.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

Wanna know why #psycholinguistics is so fascinating?
In a 2001 #experiment participants saw sentences like
"While Mary dressed the baby played in the crib."
Then they had to answer the question:
"Did Mary dress the baby?"
Up to 51% of all answers where "Yes!" – and participants were *very* confident about their answers.
🤯
Original paper:
Christianson, Kiel & Hollingworth, Andrew & Halliwell, John F. & Ferreira, Fernanda (2001). Thematic Roles Assigned along the Garden Path Linger. Cognitive Psychology 42(4). 368–407. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1006/cogp.2001.0752
Also a fascinating read:
Ferreira, Fernanda & Bailey, Karl G.D. & Ferraro, Vittoria (2002). Good-Enough Representations in Language Comprehension. Current Directions in Psychological Science 11(1). 11–15. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00158

The thesis I was reading spent the majority of it's time focused on John Boyd's OODA loop as a tool for critical analysis in high pressure or constrained situations. Table top exercises could also benefit from using these steps to slow down the thought process, expose what's actually happening, and sharpen these tools.
So each step could start by observing (which is generally what the GM will tell you, but you may ask additional questions to refine observational thinking). What do you look for in any given situation? How do you gather data? What sources do you use?
Next you would orient. Talk through this out loud. What does that data mean? How this fit what you already know, or does it challenge your assumptions? Are you observing something related to a previous action? What does that tell you about your previous action or actions? How do you turn the data you observed into intelligence you can act on? How do your observations narrow the options for the next possible action?
Then you decide your action. But you're not simply deciding, you're coming up with a hypothesis that your action will test. Anything you do is an opportunity to learn something about the world, about your situation, about the accuracy of the model you're using to make decisions. What belief does your next action imply? How will you know if that action was correct or incorrect? What observations would challenge your hypothesis? What observations would confirm it? Are those mutually exclusive, or are there additional observations or actions you must make to clarify things?
Then act. Finish your turn by choosing your action or actions (individually or collectively). Perhaps take a moment to write down notes, like what your observations, your hypothesis, and if you think your previous hypothesis was confirmed or refuted. You can review these all later to refine your thinking.
By exploring these ideas in a safe environment, you can train your brain to run through the process at high speed when under pressure. This helps you avoid panic. It's a lot like slowly practicing marshal arts moves until they become muscle memory, which then just happen without thought when needed.