Tootfinder

A friend of mine rooted my #Roborock S7 robot vacuum and installed custom software called #Valetudo. Now it runs completely without needing to connect to the manufacturer's servers in China, which gives me more peace of mind. I was surprised that almost all the original fun…

"We're just going to run a physical simulation of a human brain to achieve AGI"
"Won't the brain die instantly if it's without a body and oxygen supply etc?"
"Well, we'll just also simulate a body."
"Won't the body die instantly if it's in a vacuum?
"Fine, we'll just simulate an atmosphere too."
"Won't the body die if it's without food and light and gravity and stimulation?"
"Fine, we'll just simulate all the physical processes on the Earth."
"Won't the Earth just freeze instantly without the Sun being there?"
"Fine, we'll just simulate the sun, too."
"Will the solar system work properly if there's only the sun? What about gravitational influences of other mass in the galaxy, what about cosmic rays?"
"Fine, we'll just simulate the whole universe, too."

Three Vegan Lunar New Year Dishes You’ll Want On Your Table #plantbased

Three Vegan Lunar New Year Dishes You’ll Want On Your Table
From Buddha’s Delight to chili oil dumplings and chow fun–style noodles, these vegan Lunar New Year dishes are festive and stress-free.

Hello migraine with aura my old friend… 😘
Could be fun to try to visualize that. The patterns are different every time and a mix of blank spots, blurry areas, and rainbow stars or rather twinkling chrystal patterns slowly growing and wandering around my field of vision. ✨

Yesterday Cory Doctorow argued that refusal to use LLMs was mere "neoliberal purity culture". I think his argument is a strawman, doesn't align with his own actions and delegitimizes important political actions we need to make in order to build a better cyberphysical world.
EDIT: Diskussions under this are fine, but I do not want this to turn into an ad hominem attack to Cory. Be fucking respectful

Acting ethically in an imperfect world
Life is complicated. Regardless of what your beliefs or politics or ethics are, the way that we set up our society and economy will often force you to act against them: You might not want to fly somewhere but your employer will not accept another mode of transportation, you want to eat vegan but are […]

Scottish engineer and inventor,
James Watt
was born on this day
19 January 1736
"I had gone to take a walk on a fine Sabbath afternoon. I had entered the Green by the gate at the foot of Charlotte Street – had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking about the engine at the time and had gone as far as the Herd’s house when the idea came into my mind, that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication was made between the cyl…

Thony Christie (@rmathematicus.bsky.social)
The 18th-century, Scottish, engineer and inventor, James Watt was born 19 January 1736 #histsci #histtech https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/a-twelve-year-flash-of-genius/

Isn't it funny how weather can affect our emotions, even when it makes no logical sense?
Fog is rare in my desert home, but it is my favorite weather condition. No, I don't like smog. Fog.
I was contemplating why I was suddenly so joyful this morning and realized it was that I was driving through real, vision-obscuring fog. As a child, I loved to play pretend in the fog, imagining myself in the sky among the clouds. There are so many mythical and fantastical reasons one …

On a more positive note, my home now features a #vacuum robot running the open source #Valetudo cloud replacement. The guide on how to do that was surprisingly easy to follow. Some light soldering, a bit of flashing that's pretty similar to rooting an Android device, and it's done.
And becau…

The Fusiform Imagery Node: where vision meets concepts in the left temporal lobe https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393226000448
• FIN in left fusiform is a key hub for voluntary visual mental imagery.
• Lesions or disconnection of FIN r…

As salty as I am about it, there's also another way to think about this. For anyone who still has connections to folks on the right (which is perhaps unlikely for anyone on this server, I digress), the cult that has consumed them thrives on isolation and grievance.
The words "you were right" have the potential to cut through the programming and open up an opportunity for reconnection. The modern conspiratorial cult of the Right has been built partially around people who were told they were wrong or were crazy. In the vast majority of cases, they were wrong and even when they were right they completely misunderstood why, but we'll skip that for now. Liberals making fun of them (even the times when they definitely earned it) has pushed them further and further into their ideological hole.
The thing about those words, "you were right," in this context is that the way they offer reconnection also requires them to take one little step of betraying their ideology to accept them. So they must choose between maintaining allegiance to a pedophile or finally getting to feel superior after years of living in an illusion of persecution.
Under the ideology of the Right, admitting one is wrong is a weakness. It is admitting defeat. They have to "own the libs" by saying things, things that they know aren't true, in order to feel dominant. But these things are often so absurd that they end up being made fun of, feeling even more weak and pathetic, reinforcing their fear and alienation.
Offering what they're looking for can offer a way out, but only if they're willing to start to recognize the thing they've supported for what it is.
And they were right about some things. They were right that Bill Gates was a terrible person. I've had plenty of liberals defend him based on his philanthropy washing, but he's awful and always has been. The Epstein links make that blatant. They intuitively recognized him and didn't trust him, even if they were wildly off base about *how and why* he shouldn't be trusted... Even if their correct mistrust was leveraged into one of the most destructive conspiracy theories ever (vaccine denial and COVID vaccine avoidance).
They were right about Bill Clinton. He was always shady as fuck. Sure, the people who attacked him at the time turned out to be even more shady but that's not the point right now. He was connected to Epstein and that was always creepy as fuck.
And the Epstein thing was an open secret that liberals ignored for a long time. It was seen as some weird thing that right wing nutjobs believed about the Clintons. But it was true. Not all of it, and there has always been an antisemitic element to the right wing interpretation or Epstein stuff, but his whole pedophile conspiracy was always kind of real.
The whole "Illuminati"/deep state thing is a vast oversimplification, an attempt to make comprehensible an incredibly complex set of interlocking and emergent behaviors. But Epstein did very much want to remake the world, to create a new world order, and he absolutely played a part in it.
The Right wing nutjobs talked about global authoritarianism, Blackhawks flying over American cities, masked men with guns disarming and executing legal gun owners in the streets. That's all happening right now.
The "FEMA concentration camps" are not actually that far off. ICE and FEMA are sister agencies, both under DHS. I'd be more than happy to call that one "close enough" in order to hear some MAGA admit that ICE is, in fact, building concentration camps.
There was always a huge millennialist element to these things. They tended to be connected to "the antichrist." It was absurd, especially for me as someone who no longer identifies as a Christian. But I'll even acquiess that to a degree. The "the number of the Beast" is 666. That's just the sum of the Hebrew spelling of "Nero." Revelations focuses a lot on Nero coming back to life after his death. His death that involved a head wound, thus the line from Revelation 13:3:
> And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast.
The parallels between Trump and Nero are easy to draw, and Trump's ear wound feels pretty on-the-nose for this. I don't believe in "prophecy" in this way. I think that there are patterns, and useful patterns can become encoded in beleif systems. But I will, again, happily call this one "close enough" for anyone on that side willing to also acknowledge it. I'm happy to meet on that common ground, because anyone who accepts it must recognize that their duty is to fight against it.
A lot of these correct nuggets are embedded in a framework of religious extremism and antisemitism. The vast majority of the beliefs holding these together are wildly wrong and incredibly toxic. But by giving some room to feel validated, listened to, understood, can give some room to admit things that were wrong.
Cult de-programming starts with an opening. People have to talk through their own thoughts, hear their own inconsistencies. Guiding questions can help them untangle these things for themselves. And it all starts by having enough room to feel safe, to not feel cornered, to not feel stupid. Admitting mistakes means being vulnerable, and the MAGA cult is built on fear. It's built on exploiting vulnerability and locking it away.
De-programming takes a long time. It's not easy. It takes patience. But every person who comes out does so with a powerful perspective, a deep understanding, that can be turned back against it. The best people at getting people out of cults are former members. Some of the most dedicated antifa are former fascists who understood their mistakes and dedicate their lives to fixing them.