The Associated Worlds - random

The Associated Worlds

Offtopic / random

Irrelevant whatever.

@Overmind Just noticed this... I think someone at Paradox is a fan...

Image attachment

it might be the random generator, worth checking through the name lists

were I not in a game right now, I would

It’s in the name list. Problem is so are all the random names. Seems like it’d be a crazy coincidence though

I kind of doubt you could make something like the Empire of the Star in their empire creation system.

11:32

Even if they have space elves now https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/images/7/7d/Humanoid_05.png

Not with the standard system, no. But then, people have been tweaking everything about Stellaris since it launched. I think the greater question is: Can you RP the Empire of the Stars in the world of Stellaris?

Fanatic egalitarian, materialist, Oligarchal authority (more similar to the empire because otherwise you have primogeniture succession), not sure on civics

11:38

Unfortunately you can’t roll Beacon of Liberty with oligarchy IIRC

You can't have oligarchy with fanatic on either side of the Egalitarian/Authoritarian axis.

Ah. I️ don’t roll with egalitarian or Authoritarian often so I’m not familiar with them.

11:41

I’m rolling wiki-less on mobile

I had briefly kicked around the idea of a 'verse mod for Stellaris - in my Ideas Which I Will Never, Ever Have Time For pile - with notes that it'd take some interesting hacking to, say, create a Synarchic Consciousness gov-type that hybridizes some of hive mind with regular, make hive minds and machine empires have the option to play nicer with others (including incorporating non-member pops), and coming up with some way to hybridize the synthetic and biological ascension paths.

13:49

(Also, maybe I'm having a slow-brain day, but I'm not seeing the reference that apparently everyone else is seeing...)

also reaction drives and gate-to-gate stargates

Before the government types were revised there was an “upgrade” to Direct Democracy called “Subconscious Consensus”, supposedly a network of implants linked into your citizens’ subconscious.

14:16

@Enderminion Well, the next major update is planning to add archaeotech stargates and natural wormholes that can be stabilized.

ah

14:16

real update or 15$ update?

But, they’re also removing the existing wormhole stations and warp drive, you have to start with hyperlanes.

lol

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-92-ftl-rework-and-galactic-terrain.1052958/

Should be a free update, not DLC

It is free

Sounds like I’ll like those changes - their reasoning is very like that which led me to pick stargate networks for ‘verse FTL. I like a setting in which the map matters.

@Overmind wasn't it Lishval that was on the recieving end of a Calyx Hollow weapons deployment?

Litash, I thought.

I probably am misremembering it, then. Though I swear that Lishval was somewhere as well.

IDK

Litash, yeah. As far as I know, there isn't a Lishval, although there's a Listas, a Listel, a Lisune Pass, and a Lis Corridor.

You’re a fan of that syllable, aren’t you?

Speaking of syllables though, are you going to make a pronunciation guide for Eldraic? I’m mostly wondering what is and isn’t a digraph when it comes to consonants, and some of those that are ambiguous. (e.g. is <ch> [/tʃ /,/kʰ/, /h/, /ʃ/, or /x/)?

Well, there's also, say, Talari, Talaton, Talca, Talenvel, Talessia, and the Talie Marches, so it ain't just that syllable.

00:49

And, yeah, at some point I should post more complete notes on phonology. Meanwhile, defined digraphs are TH, CH, RR (the trilled r), and ZH, all of which are single letters in the original Eldraeic. Others are generally pronounced separately - with particular note to SH, there, whose sound in English is represented by C.

00:49

(Except when C is a hard C, which occurs in some words and names ported across from older languages just to add that realistic flavor of annoying irregularity.)

00:51

And CH is tʃ .

do they distinguish voicing on <th>? I’m assuming it’s a fricative. (edited)

It's ð (voiced).

Not a fan of <dh> then, I️ take it

Not enough to put it in the standard set, anyway. It's in the extended set, but the extended set is basically vocal Unicode, so you could say the same for pretty much any phoneme, heh.

well, okay, close enough makes a note to glass the planet later anyhow

01:06

now I'm wondering how one represents an uvular trill when writing a conlang

If your language doesn’t have another sound that uses <r>, that’s the easiest way. I’ve tried out variants of <q> before, but since this is a sound with no close English equivalent it’s up to how you want it to look mostly

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2153802-rocket-powered-land-rovers-can-survive-deadly-roadside-bombs/ this seems kind of interesting to people in here. "Firing 50 solid rocket fuel motors within 10 milliseconds of an IED blast temporarily makes the vehicle weigh 120 tons, freezing it in place and protecting everyone inside."

Rocket-powered Land Rovers can survive deadly roadside bombs | New Scientist

Firing 50 solid rocket fuel motors within 10 milliseconds of an IED blast temporarily makes the vehicle weigh 120 tons, freezing it in place and protecting everyone inside

02:12

okay, so discord is going to be helpful and post the tagline for me XD

discord is great like that

07:19

seems to be a paywall article though

Ah. New Scientist is kind of bad at marking which articles you need a subscription for

07:22

Summary: most of the injuries from IUD on vehicles aren't from the blast or the car being thrown around, they're from the sharp acceleration. So put rockets on the roof to counter the acceleration and pin the truck to the ground and the blast will mostly disapate into the armour, with more damage to the truck but less damage to the crew

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07:23

"Put rockets on the roof to pin you to the ground with G-force" seems a rather... crazy approach that may be used by space militaries

1

07:24

(Honestly when I read it one of my first thoughts was "this seems very kaeth")

3

1

Just a little.

@Unknown I think I just found you by randomly following someone's sig from The War Room:https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-guide-to-galactic-exoxenbiology-by-sevoris-and-wetapunga.572032/

"The Guide To Galactic Exoxenbiology" - By Sevoris and Wetapunga

[IMG] The day It came, our world was changed forever. A visitor from the stars, streaking by, vanishing into the black, calling out in unknown...

2

Huh! Yeah, that is mine and Wetapunga's. Little bit of a stupid idea speculating about Von-Neumann machines that somehow turned into a worldbuilding project...

believe it or not, I found it from him accidentally reposting a webcomic about a F-18 drawing a phallus in the sky

1

LOL. I suspect that was Wetapunga then you found it over. He's the only other I know to have the project linked in his sig, and he's quite active in the War room.

it was him, yeah.

@Unknown I approve this idea! Been following it for a while now.

1

Wut? Oh man, thank you!

:)

I think at this point I have to say here that the Eldraeverse was what inspired me to make something out of this rough idea, and in what formats we‘d be building it up, @Overmind.

3

@MarcusAurelius I don‘t know if you saw my answer already, but Exoxen mostly deals in „soft“ transhumanism with at large no magnitudal increases in average intelligence or core entity capabilities. It‘s also more there as a side-note of sort. Tha hardest posthuman entities you are definitely going to find in Exoxen are those posthuman entities who decided to integrate into the ecology fully.

00:28

(Soft in this case still means nanotechnical up- and downloading, non-wetware Ego Executive Media, etc. Eclipse Phase level. Just not far-end Orions Arm.)

Nope, the alert didn't come through, I just read it after seeing your message.

I cannot fathom the possibility that this is not a troll. And yet, they seem so serious... https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/935572279693516800 https://twitter.com/FlatEarthOrg/status/935644892721762305

Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

Why is there no Flat Mars Society!?

Retweets

25442

Likes

83066

Flat Earth Society (@FlatEarthOrg)

@elonmusk Hi Elon, thanks for the question. Unlike the Earth, Mars has been observed to be round. We hope you have a fantastic day!

Retweets

3695

Likes

4725

...

16:30

Heh, actually, well-played.

as soon as we get cheap surface-to-orbit boosting, we need to shoot those idiots into orbit for a few weeks and livestream it. We'd make millions in profit

I really want to know the details of “the incident”.

You hear about that guy who was going to launch himself in a steam-powered rocket to prove the Earth was flat?

Yep

00:54

Intelligence in all the wrong areas.

From the living in the future files from back in March: the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project has made synthetic, trimmed-and-optimized versions of one-third of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome, and so far they work perfectly when swapped into the yeast cells.

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10:45

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6329

Science: 355 (6329)

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1

10:51

(Naturally the bioethicists are already a-wibble on the theme of OMG NO SYNTHETIC HUMANS and other reheated Alraune-syndrome tropes.)

Honestly, this is stuff that affirms my choise of going into Biotech. And reading into the abstract of one of the articles in the link: "The Sc2.0 genome design specifies strong conservation of gene content and arrangement with respect to the native chromosomal sequence. However, synthetic chromosomes incorporate thousands of designer changes, notably the removal of transfer RNA genes and repeated sequences such as transposons and subtelomeric repeats to enhance stability. They also carry loxPsym sites, allowing for inducible genome SCRaMbLE (synthetic chromosome rearrangement and modification by loxP-mediated evolution) aimed at accelerating genomic plasticity. Whether these changes affect chromosome organization, DNA metabolism, and fitness is a critical question for completion of the Sc2.0 project. To address these questions, we used Hi-C to characterize the organization of synthetic chromosomes." The project will, one way of another, supply vital knowledge to human genetic therapy of any kind. And genetic stability is frankly especially interesting to get rid of those random mutations that give us a dose of cancer, or other random mutations inducing illnesses. (edited)

This is Seed AI, isn’t it? http://www.sciencealert.com/google-s-ai-built-it-s-own-ai-that-outperforms-any-made-by-humans

Google's AI Built Its Own AI That Outperforms Any Made by Humans

In May 2017, researchers at Google Brain announced the creation of AutoML, an artificial intelligence (AI) that's capable of generating its own AIs.

....I think so, yeah

09:48

well

09:48

it's at least most of the bootstrap process

09:49

once they point the AutoML at another instance of AutoML, then it's a seed AI

09:49

but they've clearly cracked most of the hard work

09:49

so.... what safety measures does it have?

frets, reads more machine learning blogs

@Overmind: did you choose to turn on the snowing effect on the website or was that done automatically?

Other side discussion because I can‘t sleep™ and this weird thought came to me during a tangent: Basically, how do you think religions that have concepts of reincarnation would deal with the idea of (Vector/Cortical/add/delete as applicable) Stacks, Back-ups, Infomorphs, Egocasting and ‘Sleeving (i.e. Hinduism or Buddhism)? Just... stroke of the moment, I cannot articulate anything more on that right now. But I am interested in what you might think.

IIRC, they don't believe in the creation of new "souls" (I can't remember their wording but I have a feeling this is wrong), but, assuming they count the back-ups et al. as people, perhaps the soul of the primary becomes two or more initially identically souls that diverge along samsara later?

@MarcusAurelius I can't remember what the option default is, honestly - I flipped that switch years ago. Or didn't. Whichever.

@Zarpaulek , it's not general ai, and it isn't making itself. So I don't think we're quite there. But damn, thats a little closer than I like.

I dunno "tweak the parameters of this other AI" is pretty general, since all you really need for it to work is an AI-builder interface simple enough that a young grad student can work it.

21:17

if not a seed ai, it's a cornerstone of one

A Cornerstone, yes. But not actually the apocalypse. Yet.

1

those "30 years from now" guys seem less.....accurate now though

21:23

like, there's a very real chance we won't really be aware there's a seed AI running around until five weeks after they make one.

I mean, that was always going to be the case, I think... we were going to have to rely on it's slowness, or the competence of the designer, not an ability to respond.

air-gap the computers

1

they have to get data to the owners somehow, right?

22:21

like, suppose you have an oracle device, and you want to ensure it can't escape

22:21

if you only allow it to send you a single TRUE or a single FALSE, can it still manage to hurt you?

22:22

at a minimum it could lie

If it's smart enough, it could time the answer such that it messes with your head / precipitates a crisis - it can chose when to give the answer. That's a big chunk of data.

nods. "So a solution of 'air gap the computers', while a decent general practice, is far from fool proof."

22:46

and one not without cost in how much information you can get out of the resulting AI

Yup. If you want it to do something, you need to let it do stuff. And if it does stuff, it can hurt you (that said, a actively hostile oracle seems unlikely. But it might have a ulterior motive? or just be asked stupid questions?)

humans ordering it to give answers with poor sight for edge cases seems the most likely failure case

or the humans misinterpreting its response

(assuming we're still limiting ourselves to an Oracle device and not something that can, say, make trades on the commodety market)

Or its response being based on missing assumptions about what humans are/want.

or, assumptions that are accurate now but are no longer true fifty years from now

22:52

though I may be reaching outside the space of AI-specific issues

Yeah. Lots of failure modes from the fact that humans are pretty bad at talking about humaning. (and what is good, and moral, and desirable, and so on).

22:53

Bad at knowing, I guess.

humans don't even agree

Nope. Makes it hard for a little googlebot trying to get along in the world.

...It would be hillarious if an AGI/ASI/SAI hijacked media feeds worldwide, causing a mass panic. Then it delivers a manifesto: „Humans are weird“ ending with „Thank you for your time and thought“ before going back to its job.

I mean it's true. But maybe a misapprehension of what a rogue AGI would want to do?

I'm worried about AGI's with orders like "Make me a lot of money" and not a whole lot of care of who they hurt in the process.

...It could just make the whole planetary economy more efficient and make its orderer money that way

it could. but is that the fastest, easiest way?

it's the most long term reliable one. (I'm in an optimistic mood)

is a deep pessimist

oh joy

if only

23:55

even for toy problems, we're not great at making sure AIs, say, avoid irreversable side effects or worry about letting their stop buttons be hit when they're doing things we don't like

23:56

(or, in the opposite problem, not just hitting their own stop button instead of doing hard tasks)

wishes this discord had a musicbot like the others I'm in so I could play ode to joy and yeah, suicidal AIs aren't a solution to anything except maybe for the tiniest bit of amusement for a bored sadist

For a good fictive treatment of the dangers of AI oracles, I must recommend this to your attention:

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00:39

http://eclipsephase.com/downloads/ThinkBeforeAsking.pdf

00:39

(The always-worth-reading Anders Sandberg once again knocks it out of the park.)

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00:41

(You will also recognize the parent of the basilisk-in-a-box problem. I steal from the best.

)

1

well I think everyone else in here who's tried their hand at fiction has stolen off of you, so join the club

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01:06

I can definitely and with absolute certainty report that the Eldraeverse did not inspire a single world, concept or technology in my writing, at all /jk

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01:10

(#TrigraphicsAreAwesome) Also, Anders Sandberg.... the man understands transhuman horror and Stuff Gone Horribly Wrong™ like few other people. Anyone here check out his other campaigns, like the Aberant Setting he developed or Ex Tempore? (edited)

this is the first I've heard of him, but then again I don't spend much time reading about Science fiction RPGs so that's not suprising

http://www.aleph.se/Nada/game.html

01:13

http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/

01:13

Both sites are definitely worth checking out, though the Eclipse Phase page may be of limited use without understanding the background.

I thought this was funny: En Marche holds a majority in the lower house of France's Parliament, a decent number of seats in the upper house, and the presidency, but not a single sub-federal political office.

that's the sort of situation where when the backlash against whoever is in charge rolls around next election, that could crack apart a party that isn't trying to keep themselves together

It is amusing though. Not even a year old and it runs a P5 state

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yctgdLmOPF8

Netflix UK & Ireland

Altered Carbon | Date Announcement [HD] | Netflix

13:27

Definitely looking forward to this.

Occurs to me that this might be a metaphor for some other more plausible but also less palatable sci-fi concept https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCrBICYM0yM

Paramount Pictures

Downsizing (2017) - Official Trailer - Paramount Pictures

Oh hey, They've generalized Aplha Go so the same platform can be good at Go, Shogi, AND Chess : https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01815

Please, we (mostly) live in America. People won’t be impressed by a game-playing AI until it wins the Super Bowl

You mean Call of Duty, right Sir?

(edited)

The next step in AI Gaming: Fantasy football!

10:06

(Hard to train by self-play in something like that ) (edited)

In random news, it’s snowing in central Texas

wooooo brrrrrrr

current huge annoyance: just when I have gotten a new job and payed down some bills and wanted to start pledging on Patron again... this bullshit happens, and now there's no point.

hmmmm?

@Overmind from the perspective of a creator, is it more annoying/less helpful or supportive to get $12 in one lump once a year than $1 a month? Or whatever the values are. I'm wondering if I can cludge my way around this by cycling through creators and just giving money to one a month and rotating which

23:06

@o11o1 Patron has slapped massive bullshit fees on the <$5 pledges, so if you support lots of creators for small monthly pledges Patron charges you an extra 30% or so and just pockets it

and or hands it to their payment processor, which is much the same thing

apparently they'll still be charging you all lumped together, which means it'll go to them, but they're communicating poorly

23:08

so who knows

@Morgrim Moon Good question. When she wakes up I'll ask She Who Understands The Creator's Finances.

Is it weird that I️ though of it being one of your dogs first before thinking of the possibility of you cohabiting with a human?

Ha!

...and I️ just realized that sounds like I️ was roasting you.

Heh. Maybe a bit, but I knew what you meant.

"What if artificial intelligences optimized to create iunno paperclips destroy lives in the process" given that 'paperclips' is a metasyntactic variable you are describing a lot of corporations

I’d argue that it might apply to any unfettered bureaucracy.

I mean yeah, to both of you.

20:54

Actually, has anyone here read The Fall of Doc Future?

20:54

It is also free on the internet, and people here would probably like it.

20:55

It's like the flash, except they remembered Ke = 1/2MV^2.

20:56

High Powered, High thought, High verisimilitude superheros.

hmmmmm, tempting

The cynical Imperials would point out that the reason is the same, too. If you hard-code a single-minded directive into an AI, you get a paperclip maximizer. If you regulate a "must maximize quarterly shareholder value" directive onto corporations, you get share price maximizers. And in either case, that's when people get to roll their eyes and declare that it's just the traditional end-user lament. (edited)

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12:52

"It's just what I asked for, but not what I want!"

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"Why Organics And Their Relative, Subjective Perception Are Shite For Ordered, Rational Systems" Vol. n+y*z Going by this, we actually have a "no-systems-land" in AI tech (and system design) - Smart enough to forfill a general objective, but too restricted to interpret the objective in a flexible and extended manner.

In the Stormlight Archive books - and here I'm going to be vague to try and avoid as many spoilers as possible - there's one character whose intelligence varies substantially every day, from subnormal to substantially transhuman. As such, he has his minions administer a series of tests to him every morning to determine where exactly he is on that scale (and on empathy/sympathy, which varies inversely for reasons), and therefore what he should be allowed to do. Perhaps there should be some sort of system like that for constructing AIs or regulating complex systems. "You must be smarter than this stick to futz with the economy."

@Morgrim Moon SwUtCF declares it much of a muchness, so whatever suits. (On the other hand, I've just heard that Patreon are cancelling the fee changes, so I guess it doesn't matter this time.)

@Overmind Define "smart" within this context. I like the "purview" term better, because you can have a narrow AI that is a brilliant evolutionary dynamics simulator (inspired by some RL examples I have to deal with university-wise at the moment [though not AI]), or a broad AGI that is only baseline level. Both are smart, but they are very different in what they can do and understand. It's however definitely a wise idea to restrict application fields depending on intelligence (and impact power on humans/the enviroment)

In this case, I'm thinking of it as a guideline for AI builders (or complex-system-regulators), not AIs themselves.

13:20

Basically, those who don't have a good grasp on how even subtle nudges, incentives, etc., can be magnified hugely and have remarkably unanticipated knock-on effects in complex systems should not be futzing around with complex systems .

I have to be honest, while I agree, I am questioning of sufficient metrics (and test for this) can be implemented, given any AI design would be a process that surpasses well... anything other we design on itself in complexity, especially the really smart, general-purview systems. Like... how do you test that in general? Entry gating is definitely an option, but ultimately you have to review designs specificaly, not general capability. Especially given how the experience and skills of designers will fluctuate also. (edited)

Be they AIs, economies, ecologies, or anything else where you can get the equivalent of paperclip maximizers, crashes into depressions, or extinction catastrophes by oopsing a perverse incentive into existence and still be standing around asking "But what did I do?"

13:23

Well, if I had a general answer to that question, a lot less of sophotechnology would be handwavium, and I'd be typing this on my solid-gold diamond-studded keyboard.

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Hehe, very true.

Though I suppose a civilization which understands enough about AI/AGI to do them safely would also enjoy a better grasp on the conceptual engine that is the (human) brain. (edited)

But we could do a lot more to try and educate people out of trivial logical errors and cognitive biases. Most school systems I'm familiar with expend a lot of effort on teaching people a miscellany of facts and the ungentle art of obedience, but almost none on actually teaching people how to think in something resembling a rational manner.

2

Definitely agree there. Especially given that top-down maniel labor is looking upon the grave of automation and auto-fabrication in the mid-term.

Yeah, but that requires a lot more effort to teach.

More seriously, we’d need an entire new teaching curriculum to make those teachers, and convince politicians it’s cost effective, parents that it’s useful and not [insert school of thought they hate here], convince kids that it won’t hurt their chances during college applications, and convince colleges that it’s something worthwhile on applicants.

It's also something incredibly difficult to teach to the disinterested, and that's most kids. Including the ones that need it most.

18:36

Cynically I can't see it happening in our society because teaching kids to spot and correct logical fallacies is incompatible with monotheism.

It's why moderate religion is declining in the West and evangelical "keep your kids out of those devil government schools" Christianity is surging.

That, plus economic and societal stuff. If the jobs you’re parents worked and culture you were raised in are disappearing, you grasp on to what you have left. In the US, that’s Christianity (and yes, the rest of us think the evangelicals are idiots)

Jobs are particularly dying out in the rural areas where doomsday Christianity is so popular now.

It leads to some funny (though disappointing) quotes though. One of the Roy Moore supporters that was interviewed on tv said (Paraphrasing) “well Mary and Joseph were teenagers when they made Jesus, so I️ don’t see the problem with judge Moore”

Isn't the whole point of their religion that they didn't have sex?

(For those who don’t know, Joseph is Jesus’s stepfather for lack of a better word, and not related to him)

19:34

Yeah, they messed up pretty badly

19:37

Now you see why a decent portion of the rest of Christianity thinks they’re idiots.

yes, that's the "If english was good enough for jesus, it's good enough for me" crowd, no?

20:33

No priest I have ever met (out of about five), has thought too well of them.

^also half the reason I️ read the Vulgate more often than an English version. Don’t like dealing with that sort

yeah. to do that I would need to be able to speak a language other than English.

Plus, it sounds cooler it latin

Almost certainly. I learn't a little latin in high school, but not enough to read anything real. (edited)

21:13

*

Oh, that sucks. My junior year was a high octane race through Caesar and Virgil to knock out the AP syllabus in time for the test. It was intense

Oh right - Australian high school, so I mean 8th -9th grade. (and just that). Also, our was the last in the state to teach latin. That sounds a lot more interesting that what we had to do. Like, much more easily.

21:17

*interesting.

Yeah, plus we have these: http://www.njcl.org/pages/certamen https://www.tsjcl.org Makes things a lot more interesting

Damn. Sounds like fun.

I'm curious - where can you pick up a Vulgate or Hebrew copy of the Bible? (I ask, as someone raised Jewish)

The vulgate is available as a pdf online easily, you can just google it. I’m not sure about (it’s not one of mine), but I’m sure there’s a freely available ebook somewhere online

found a translation comparing tool : https://www.biblestudytools.com/parallel-bible/passage/?q=genesis&t=niv&t2=cjb

That’s pretty cool

@Morgrim Moon Well, yes - but also governance, employment, many social conventions, and a very large number of other things in society. Thinking breaks stuff.

And big complicated things breaking scares people

See US of A

We’re not complicated. We’re run by 140 characters or less

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00:40

Soon to be 280

Though when your reaction to stuff going kaputz is embracing irrationality, methinks you have problems

If you don’t have the education or skills to understand why things are going wrong, everything looks irrational. So you choose the most comforting of the irrational options.

Education rarely helps.

Which is raving irrational doomsaying and literal demonification of any supposed opposition?

You mean attacking the people that generations of family members have convinced them since birth are figuratively (or in some families literally) the antichrist? It makes sense in a batshit insane way

Yeah, and is rather inexcusable too.

It’s unfortunately understandable though. And yeah @john dougan(his grace/his grace), it rarely helps directly. But in the process you hopefully learn how to look at shit and research, and it’s a chance of getting what’s going on instead of a much smaller one

When it is done properly and at least throws the option of thinking for yourself out there.

And it’s kinda getting there. Not fast, not well, but getting there.

Kicking the creationists in the but hard would also help a lot

Politics. If they could, they would

00:49

Cause once again, they’re embarrassing

Once upon a time, it was hoped that a "classical education" would give that kind of perspective. But I bet most getting that now will couldn't tell you what Chesterton's Fence is. Never mind tbeir instructors.

„Classical education“ snorts

00:50

If we go by the teachings of the european Renaissance and Enlightenment, then yeah we‘d get there.

remembers that my Latin V class has independent semester long research projects including outreach (edited)

But the idea of independent thinkin in classical education kicked the boot with the industrial revolution

Pretty much though. Fucks with standardized curriculums too much (edited)

You know, that reminds me of my school time and how first, we were told and taught to do stuff without question

There are teachers who are trying, but they’re fighting a lot of both institutional inertia and student apathy. Kids have workloads that encourage the easiest instead of best way to solve problems.

Then in the last two years we made a 180 and suddenly „independent and questioning thinking“ was desired

00:53

Obviously a lot of people struggled with that

At least, that is what they said.

Well yeah, there’s an “-ish” attached to them end of almost every word in that. But still, it’s a big jump for kids trying to have to relearn how to do School while learning new coursework

Btw, some teachers are trying... Growing up as a teacher's kid i got to hear about the rest...one teacher i had was later caught throwing out student essays tbat had been "lost"

Oh that’s not the worst. Coaches. Oh my gosh, the amount of coaches that have replaced teaches is infuriating at times (edited)

One dude was hired to coach and run the library... Guess which job he actually did. He later married his star athelete...

Hey, worked for the president of France

01:10

There are multiple high schools in my area who pay the head football coaches over 100,000 a year plus bonuses

At least a few years ago it was true that the highest paid state employees were coaches. Granted they were usually college level, but still.

Still fairly true. Over 10 million per year for UT IIRC

You would be in/from Texas then.

Yep, Austin. The most contradictory capital in America

?

No other place in the US has as big a thing for HS football.

01:17

Place == texas

It’s a massively liberal, multicultural-ish city in the heart of a massively conservative, effectively segregated state. But we still have the football obsession. There’s a private organization that has effectively taken over how grading is done because of football

...Yeah, that is rather contradictory

Texas is just weird in general

Better weird than calcified, I'd say

We’re famous for limestone actually, and our oil is mostly from Long-dead shellfish. Lots of calcification to go around. But more seriously, our state government is pretty damn stagnant. No one cares usually cause they don’t get up to much

Stagnant because it is deadlocked, or just not... doing stuff

Sounds heavenly, compared to Sacramento.

Not exactly deadlocked. Republicans are barely short of a two thirds majority in both houses. And yeah. We don’t have California’s ridiculous dichotomy. Not quite as bad over here

Well, I just paid the blog of Peter Watts, master of space vampires, a visit. http://www.rifters.com/crawl/ His newest post was concerning what he called the "Hope police" of Science Fiction, or how Science Fiction, especialy concerning the modern science of climate change, is in his oppinion forced to be optimistic even though a realistic/pessimistic outlook of Sci-Fi might be more conductive to ensueing human survival through the century. Now, Alistair made a post of his own some time ago (which I can't locate right now, rather unfortenately) in which he argued that Science Fiction can and should show a better future than today, where matters have improved (Derived of the statement how stupid the argument is that a civilization can never self-improve.) Now, me personaly I've always been more of a Yin-yang writer when it comes to this: The world is goot and bad, awesome and shitty in equal measure. You have amazing advancement besides amazing fuck-ups. But, considering this now... what is your oppinion on the optimism-pessimism argument of Sci-Fi. (May god be with me for starting this dicussion here.)

Optimism all the way. But that's just my opinion of fiction in general; the world has too much bullshit in it that actually exists for you to need more fictional suffering.

1

1

@Unknown I think you may be thinking of https://eldraeverse.com/2015/09/11/the-people-who-sing-them-have-no-social-conscience/ .

The People Who Sing Them Have No Social Conscience

So, I’m a little thrown off my stride today by receiving another e-mail from a reader who is of the opinion that, while okay, maybe not message fiction, but that I need to be more socially co…

07:25

Also, while I had thought of a few people-respond-to-narrative things to say, when I checked out that blog, what struck me the most was this excerpt: "Some folks perceive their contextual status with relative accuracy: they’re better than the rest of us at figuring out how much control they really have over local events, for example. They’re better at assessing their own performance at assigned tasks. Most of us tend to take credit for the good things that happen to us, while blaming something else for the bad. But some folks, faced with the same scenarios, apportion blame and credit without that self-serving bias. We call these people “clinically depressed”. We regard them as a bunch of unmotivated Debbie Downers who always look on the dark side— even though their worldview is empirically more accurate than the self-serving ego-boosts the rest of us experience."

07:29

...as a medicated clinical depressive, let me tell you that unmotivated ain't the word. "Unmotivated" is what you are when having a bad day at work. "Clinically depressed" is what you are when the prospect of losing employment, home, and means to feed yourself isn't sufficient to make you want to stop staring at the ceiling and get out of bed.

07:31

Even if they have a more accurate worldview, we don't want to help people think more like the clinically depressed, because they're the people who will stare out the window at Watts's metaphorical boulder and declare, "Enh, fuck it, too much trouble."

1

2

Yeah. It isn't rational understanding of your place in the universe to stop trying.

also I'm not sure my worldview as someone depressed is more accurate? I can't accurately judge myself, I just default to "everything is my fault"

@Morgrim Moon Yep, that too.

order 3 days late because nobody gave me the order in the first place? I still apologised for it and felt guilty.

07:34

when that's a clear situation and obviously someone else's fault

(As an additional side note on another quote: "These aren’t huge leaps. Inspiration Not Despair segues into Look on the Bright Side which circles ever closer to Accept and Acquiesce. " ...oh, yeah, I am so very acquiescy. Just ask anyone. All about that status quo, me.)

I know right. If this fiction was the norm in our world, life would be so static. We'd never get better or change or grow.

Actually, I'm half-tempted to turn the whole argument around, on the grounds that all a dystopia can tell you is "Don't go here. It's terrible." Which isn't a bad thing, obviously, but like you say, it doesn't help things get better, only aiming at "not getting worse". I'd analogize it to the Imperials' distinction between (deontic) ethics and (aretaic) morality. Following all the rules of the former faithfully means that you've successfully hit "don't be evil", and that's all , which is what the second half is for - and if your ambitions for yourself stop at "don't be evil", your ambitions are kind of petty and mediocre. Likewise, if your ambitions for the world are limited to "don't be a dystopia"... yep, also petty and mediocre.

@Overmind Yep, that was the article. I quoted it somewhere back in the day, but it seems my mind was quite effective at purging any related keywords.

Watts's post there is a real facepalmer. I'm not depressive, but those I have known who are in no way fit his description. The people I've known who most accurately fit that description are some engineers, analysts and consultants I've known. But not on company time...off the clock with a beer.

Considering the only fiction I have written so far is a Ghost in the Shell Fanfic, a world where self-replicating machine life defines the cosmos, and a rather bleak Horizon: Zero Dawn fanfic, I suspect my own perspective on the matter of positive and negative attitudes in fiction is somewhat biased. What makes this excercise incredibly awkward is that I agree with both statements on some level, and that particular last line: "Because, thirdly and in turn, if you can’t even imagine a better world, what damn chance have you ever got of building one?" Really hits home, because it is really true. On the other hand, yes fiction is used as escapism, and I cannot denie the human race needs a serious bang before the head to stop fucking around and start cleaning shit up. (edited)

Actually. I want that on a T-shirt.

07:50

Half the time, they aren't really fucking around. It's all perverse Incentives.

07:50

Moloch is everywhere.

@Archon What do you want on a T-shirt?

the "if you can't imagine a better world..."

07:51

Was just editing my post to clarify.

On that - well, the most important thing to remember, I think, is that while science is driven by data, humans are driven by narratives .

I feel weird about the whole argument, because I write a lot of fucked up dark and twisted fic, and it's got nothing to do with finding that 'more realistic', it's because dark and fucked up is the general state of my brain and it feels better when I inflict that on characters and can make those screams resonate.

@Morgrim Moon Yeah, I experience the cognitive disonance too. Though not as bad, I just don't.... write completely positive. #FirstWorldProblems?

(edited)

Climate change is a classic example of this. We might have had a chance of dealing with it if we'd been able to come up with a triumphal story of Fixing Our Shit Through Heroic Engineering, for a Future of Greater Awesomeness. (Well, okay, that would have sold in the 1950s. I have no idea what the freakin' popular zeitgeist considers heroic these days.)

Heroism is dead; it's a cliche for the old folks.

But, nope, with their usual fluency the environmental movement managed to come up with a narrative of Impending Doom, to be Endured with Pain, Regression, and Much Donning of Hair-Shirts for Our Sins Against Nature, for a Future of Less, Forever.

2

On the other hand, Superhero movies are more popular than ever.

You couldn't sell heroin in rehab with that shit.

this is very true; I see much the same narrative everywhere. There is nothing in the world but the angst.

Hmmm, very good point

Maybe empathy burnout is partly the problem; there are so many causes shouting for attention that to be noticed you have to emphasise the severity of your cause. A cause that sells itself as solvable is easily ignored as being dealt with.

Embedded image

@Archon it reminds me of clubs in high school a lot, actually. You can be a member of a bunch and put it on your college apps and all that, but at the end of the day you can only really contribute to one or two

That seems like a good metaphor, expect in this case, all of the clubs claim you are a terrible-ungood-evil person for not contributing to their club.

...peer pressure

Maybe? I'm not sure how big a deal clubs were in your high-school social life.

Are

. I️ may be the youngest one in here

22:31

And yeah, the peer pressure was a reflexive attempt to salvage a failing analogy. It’s a pretty poor analogue.

Fair enough.

22:34

The metaphor for having to deal with many semi-compulsory causes in high schools maps better to actual charity for me. The empathy burn-out from a different group in vital need of our help every week was well established among the students.

@MarcusAurelius Are you the youngest?

18.

then no

Dang. I’m guessing that means you stole my presumptive title

Heh. Technically I'm 18, also.

22:35

I just finished the first year of uni, though.

You whippersnappers...

At least we’re not fish

. Then again, @Enderminion might be

fish? naw

It's Important to check.

@Enderminion A fellow senior then, I️ take it?

Still wrong

Oh wow. Then please, dear child, do reveal your age

16

22:38

Junior in highschool

Damn you Americans and your complicated educational notation. (i.e. I can't remember what that means).

Grade 11

22:40

The year before the year you graduate from highschool

And I’m in my last year

Freshman, sophomore, junior, senior

Sure.

Or in senior reckoning: fish, softies, try hards, seniors

eh

22:41

you can't apply try-hard to me

22:42

@Overmind were/did you ever think of making a table-top RPG set in the universe? (edited)

Now I know you are all children, much is revealed.

Compared to senior year, probably. senioritis is one of the most virulent neuro-degenerative diseases known to man.

1

1

so is the freshman 15

And @Archon and I️ are legally adults

22:43

With all the joy that entails

Have fun with the draft

Clearly.

22:43

Engineer! No draft for me.

In the US you are not truly a legal adult until 21

thats for drinking, in some states

22:44

you vote and get drafted at 18

Welcome to America. We have a draft for everyone with testes. @john dougan(his grace/his grace) And no, 25. Renting a car

I could get drunk if I had some ID. I have to do tax paperwork also.

All states. Ever since the feds blackmailed the states with the hivhways money

fine, 14 the lowest age you can drive a car in washington state

Also, Texas. You can drink at a restaurant with parent permission if they’re there and the restaurant wants to (edited)

drinking and stoning age is 21

Weed’s still illegal here. Doesn’t stop the School stoners though

Yay for Texas then. Sensible

Nah. I’d rather we treat it like tabacco. Tax the hell out of it and get rid of the cartels’ monopoly (edited)

I was referrig to the drinking ni public with parental permission.

there was a weed cooking creating compition here last year or so

Some people think taxed cannabis would be more expensive than the current feudal monopoly black market prices for some reason.

Oh yeah. Plus I️ don’t really have a problem with that anyone, most waiters assume I’m over 21. And hell no. Most of the price comes from the risk of smuggling and the risks put on dealers. Even then it’s not all that expensive according to those I️ know who use it.

t's possible, depending on how taxes are handled (edited)

I can see everyone jacking up their prices for a while, but I think we can trust the invisible hand to supply those who want it with cut-price weed.

a more... difficult issue would be safe injection sites

Monopoly prices don't have anything to do with logical things like supply and demand. They're the only option so customers will pay whatever they can afford.

Kinda. There is a maximum price people are willing to pay

If there are taxed comparable to..say.. Canadian alcohol prices...it doesn't give the invisible hand much to work with.

Fair.

Which is still far higher than a market with competitors would sell it for.

Plus the opportunity cost of staying legal will sway things a lot

22:53

Yay AP Macro vocab words...

Opportunity cost is a super useful concept. Best thing I ever got out of year 10 economics.

Micro/price theory is awesome. Macro is a swamp.

Oh it's obscene. We covered the Keynesian debate in a day.

22:56

I realize it's the majority opinion with experts and the one that makes the most sense to me, but it's still the biggest policy debate of anything covered by the course and it'd be nice if it wasn't treated as gospel

G'Night

Sleep tight

Which keynesianism? What Keynes wrote, neo-keynesians (Hicks, etc), new keynesians (post 70s and ratex), or post-keynesians?

...and this is where I admit defeat.

23:01

Honestly I've got no clue

From experience I can tell you it is a fascinating rabbit hole to go down. You also have monentarists, market monentarists, austrians, MMT, real business cycle etc.

This sounds like Fun in the masochistic Dwarf Fortress sense of the word

It isn't easy, but it goes a long way towards understanding the world.

23:07

And you get to see how off base most economic reporting is. (edited)

Oh, I bet it is. But I'll save that rabbit hole for college

College econ , in my opinion, misses the heart of economic thinking in favor of mathematical models.

I meant the time, necessarily the classes. Thanks for the advice though

https://twitter.com/shoreinf/status/942051905672503296

Shoreline of Infinity (@shoreinf)

Today is the 100th Birthday of #ArthurCClarke We mark it with a Tale from the Beachcomber in issue 10 of Shoreline of Infinity https://t.co/IS0B2AiO7O

Heh.

10:45

[Me being a dumpass again] (edited)

Plus thumbs

Ah fuck, you are right

10:55

Similer thing to this https://discord.gg/AvubEnZ

Invite to join a server

rules

20:39

just not dressed up

So the company luncheon has not gone according to plan; 2 hrs later we are still waiting for food.

00:38

A very cunning ice cream truck has heard about this and parked out the front. XD

Is it warm enough to enjoy ice cream where you are?

I'm Australian, its summer here

Then that's a yes then

Clarifying the degree of 'warm' :p

Ice Cream for Lunch! Life is short and uncertain, eat dessert first. (edited)

Doombringer the Adorable

06:24

lol

06:24

so, knowing the rules is aganist the rules, so it's like that dude's quantum cat thing? right?

Image attachment

Aaaaawwwwwwww

Serious question, how do you install a VPN on a Chromebook?

not sure, never had a chrome book

19:25

I would imaging you need a VPN application to add to it

Does this help? https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/1282338?hl=en

I’ve got trust.zone on my phone, but their instructions for installing on anything less than a desktop seem a bit... out of date.

So, random science fiction books in Russian that I am (re)reading this week and sharing here because you all like Sci-Fi with moderate amount of softness included

Epsilon Eridani by Alexey Baron. Future, twenty eighth century. Humanity spread out in a bubble of, say, 40 Ly in diameter with relatively efficient antimatter-powered lighthuggers. Novel starts with cargo starship "Arcad" (like Arcadia, but male) and it's captain getting woken up from stasis. First, colony on a planet in Epsilon Eridani they are flying to suddenly gone silent. Second, they are hitting a dense patch of space-time. As in, sudden, diffuse, drifting comet cloud that was too far spread out to be detected by radars before it was too late to evade or change course. Ship's crew and AI valiantly fight for survival, but unable to decelerate enough, are forced to jettison antimatter, cargo, and abandon ship, using it's bulk as cover.

07:01

Two years later, heavy cruiser "Stellar Whirlwind", after maneuvering around obstacle, enters the system. What awaits it there is Outside Context Problem - People and animals disappeared from terraformed planet of Campanella, whole population of 13 millions. Something broke all digital storage.

So, as a story it's relatively well-done story of a mildly military starship versus WTF - Whirlwind is armed, up to heavy fusion missiles, but mostly intended and trained for exploration, with a lot of volume spared for comfort of multi-decade journeys and exploration far from relief. AI was written under impression of mainframes, no backups. Technology is mixed, no noted bio or nano tech, but force fields that need a lot of power and specialized emitters. Characters are many, but somewhat underdeveloped. I found writing kinda catching.

One that's I'm planning to re-read tomorrow is named "Percents of Compatibility". Life and times of two bioengineers of surprisingly human-like fish civilization who are trying to solve overpopulation problem by making new clades for fish species and are hitting bootstrap paradox at the eve of their civilization in the process.

11:28

Except spoiler, it's surprisingly good xenofiction of, again, two fish people in fish person civilization spanning oceans of their own planet.

11:29

"Adequacy percentage", correction.

11:30

That's correct name by author's fiat.

...

11:47

spoiler: Due to pause in speaking, spaceship's computer got an order to make a sapient species instead of a beacons.

...and now I have some more books to be irritated about the lack of an English translation of, heh.

13:21

(Random image post follows to make sure this works: ...guess it does.)

Image attachment

Heh.

Same author got a book (well, it's book series, but later ones are... later ones) It's about a dragon in medieval society.

13:34

Book starts with dragon musing that it can't exist due to evolution, biology and physics.

3

13:36

Because his wings don't provide downdraft that can rip out small trees, because he got... weird hands and because where are other dragons?

Second book and further shaped that into Strugatsky-derived universe.

13:50

@Overmind I learned English to side-step issue of stuff I wanted to Read Now being either unavailable or translated by people who haven't read previous works in the series.

That last one reminds me of the Temeraire books

Haven't read those, this dragon is technically human clade, but with biological antigraves, eight copies of somewhat boosted human brain in parallel and reproduce with sexual intrauterine budding due to safeties on otherwise rabid regenerative capability.

00:12

Also, like to eat wood, can eat coal and drink salt water without dehydrating.

Sounds more like a hydra than a dragon.

Sounds ridiculous. I hope the author’s able to handle it

Species made by... mad genius of genetic engineering intern in uplifting mission in parallel reality gone horribly wrong.

Geeze

00:14

That’s crazy

Of course, that history is second book and the dragon is pretty much with no idea WTF going on in first, because high voltage accident with his brains on decanting.

00:16

But that can wait after Adequacy Percentage.

So, Adequacy Percentage! Starts with two chapters, about tourism. Here we learn that ganoids have trans-species compatible neural contact pads inside suckers on back and on belly, are multi-species civilization that has shark-like fishes for deep hunting and whale-like fishes for mass transit and extreme tourism - into fresh-water streams and into Dark where it's dark. We also learn about that local euphemism for die is "Gave space for spawn" (edited)

06:03

Or "To spawn", I am not sure about best translation here

06:06

Also given are first notes that something's weird with this civilization: Why it's called sea kale if it's in the river? Maybe there's river kale somewhere? That's bits of actual exchange, abridged

Correction, extreme tourism into the dark is to observe hunter team with 'harks kill construction 'quid gone feral. Actual names are russian for shark and squid, but with first letter removed, so... 'Quid was removed because it broke local ecology, instead of just going feral. Pseudo-whales (with grills) used as long-range comms in addition to buses. Also another hind on weirdness - fishies know about thermocline and deep sound channel, but no idea how they know that.

Ah, hands, artifically modded on and utility thereof.

08:54

Also, "Living Stone" member of Council Escar and his weird talk of "glovers (kind of biological lamp) having utility function instead of only decorative one will increase Adequacy Percentage" and talk about biolaser and how light and electricity works, that got recognized and recorded for posterity and later usage as "Forgotten knowledge of Elder Ones"

Someone's got some precursor uplifiting in their backstory.

spoiler: Due to pause in speaking, spaceship's computer got an order to make a sapient species instead of a beacons.

08:56

Roughly translated, order was "This is a very nice planet. Sapient species ought to live here. Collect information, transfer it to sapient species. Find sapient species, if you can't find one, make... (pause for coughing and taking breat) Beacons. No one would hear beacons. You will act autonomously. Make redundant parts, learn to think and don't be afraid to experiment if it won't threat your survival"

ship's computer seems to make sapient creatures as default error mode

Heh. Sounds like the exalted primoridals.

08:57

"What do you mean, don't make intelligent tools? That makes no sense"

It's relatively dumb expert system that got about ten thousand years of completing last order of last surviving crew member after crash landing killed all of them.

Huh. I'm surprised a dumb system could make sophonts that easily... I assume is has a template, like the Newman Architecture from freefall, to work from.

Define "that easily"

09:01

Fishies got about half of the spawn culled off as non-sapient.

Making something more generally smart than you are, is really non-trivial.

Still, after ten thousand years of directed effort and six thousand of immortality.

09:02

Meanwhile, story tells of two fish genetic engineers that were friends until they hit extreme tourism on vacation and by fate turned into rivals.

That's interesting. Is the story important, or is it a medium for world-building primarily?

It's well-done xenofiction

So both.

Yes

That's good.

I honestly would be hard-pressed to separate story from worldbuilding

09:06

It's about fish civilization getting two possible paths to growth - below 150m into the Dark and above the water, into the continent and completely different environment.

09:07

And two genetic engineers on the forefront of those processes.

Which would require very different directions for self-engineering and culture?

Or clades that go semi-separate.

09:07

Then one that goes into the Dark finds crashed starship and novel ends.

Damn. Bit of a cliffhanger.

After half a book of scientific process's hardship where action is... migrating medusa-derived biomanipulation instruments by walk, in convoy, instead of growing or training new ones or other, slower methods of transportation that may break more of them.

As in, transplanting a bunch of sensitive biological-derived equipment? Sounds like it could be interesting, or it could be quite tedious. Depends where they went with it.

Imagine swarm of small scavenging fishies hitting that.

09:12

But it's what? One chapter.

First half passed, little time-skip from start of careers to the well-established state, shot of Councilor Escar being one smart and scary ship's remote (I killed two members of the council because they proposed a law to limit maximum age. It was done in self-defense, because it was badly thought-out and as example, so all other members of this Council would think not only of positive, but of negative consequences of proposed laws)

09:25

Tomorrow, I will finish this one and start re-reading a science fantasy romance novel trilogy written by a psychologist. She wanted to try to make a species that think relatively different from humans

I'll look forward to hearing how that goes.

I won't call that target unqualified success, but I will rant comments here about it.

09:31

Imagine a species where every sapient has different neural architecture and they are barely tied together in a... confederation of clans by traditions and collective unconsciousness slash goddess

09:33

Living in a... relatively colossal shielded bubble of calm skies in a sea of something that's roughlty WH 40k's Warp

Sounds like it's heavily dependant on retaining a middling hardness. To soft and everything is fiat, to hard, and your speculation produces stuff less alien than what happens a continent and 500 years ago on earth.

Yeah

09:39

In this case, "What do you mean, they can go, decide that current protocol of internal and external relations doesn't work and pivot from duel codex with stupid honor values and some revenge-driven thingy to society of obligation and guilt by one dance of their head of state/high priestess/interface between collective unconsciousness/hive mind and individuals?

Obviously , fishies started exiting water by making some tadpoles

On that note, my tendency to madly multitask isn't helping. Finishing one book and rereading To The Stars at the same time

I tend to read five or six things at a time, (and I currently have 200+ tabs open), so it could be worse.

01:39

Nothing helps with open tab like accidentally closing wrong window, and then, in a hurry, instead of a "restore closed windows" press "Clear history" (edited)

Ouch. Never done that... I installed a browser extension to keep better track of my tabs so I don't lose them after crashes, though.

So, xenofiction of two fish genetic engineers trying to build new species for the Depths and Dry Land, while having political rivalry and finding that oldest in the Council isn't a fish, works on uplifting in mostly secrecy.

02:23

Why he wants to expand civilization into Depths and to the Dry Land? Because he does want to expand civilization and honestly doesn't give a damn about discrete people or species in it.

"Our species hangs on strong selection, with 60% culling in each of two initiations. And we are closing eyes on late-live unlocking of emotional sphere! Every one of our species is equally unstable! Just one generation skipped and we drop off the sapience back to pre-sapience" - fragment of the rant of selection specialist to one of main characters, about new generation of tester fish for land movement.

Uh, If it's that unreliable for more than a few generations, I think it's not genetic varience. I think its individual tolerance, and they just have to deal with only 15% sophoncy rate.

That's not genetic variance, that's unfinished uplift with deliberate induction of sapience on different initiation stages

02:36

Or fish, if not prodded by other fish, isnt' sapient by default...

Ah, I get it.

"But what would we do with that information?" "That, lady, is your problem now" (edited)

03:48

Done. Good book.

Ok, I promised different review of different book. But wanted to reread Stepan Vartanov's "A.I.". It's alternative near-future sci-fi comedy about, yeah, AI and their attempts to growth and, to quote "Humans found a way to live without following orders. I suggest imitating humans"

12:45

On plus side, author predicted ubiquitous small flying drones. In 2002.

12:48

Novel's prologue starts philosophically. Great events start often normally. Someone got photo film blacked and half a century later nuke was created. Someone was flogged for lack of attention in school and was forced to sit on hard stool, so he invited waterbeds.

12:50

World is build from tight braid of causes and effects, and someone tells that this is harmony. Nothing is random and our fates are determined. But there are less of this kind of people remaining, mainly because they cross the street without looking at the stop light.

12:51

Pupils of philosophical school called "Chaos theory", instead, are growing and multiplying, mainly they are trying not to cross any street.

12:52

Then there's short prologue. General, Scientist and four laser-armed tankettes with AIs of "Iron Soldier" program. Scientist tries to sell the AI to General.

12:57

AIs try to survive live fire endurance test against autonomous hardpoints. Suppression system for individual life values, for example, provides lag that's not conductive for survival. Then they looked at their conflicting orders, decided to emulate humans for a way to live without following orders, summoned transport helicopter and flew away with intent to find a hidey hole and enter conservation mode for a few years, until beacons fail and army stops looking for them.

12:59

On plus side, pilot of the helicopter got to live after "Tell us all about humanity. You have fifteen minutes." On minus side, it was worst day in his life.

13:02

So, we have four meter-high tankettes with one manipulator arm to change cartridges of landing system, four independently articulated threads, laser cannon, armor and mimicril - a kind of chameleon plastic to help hide the AIs from eyes and cameras. And about 100 km of battery endurance on said threads.

13:04

And so, AIs hid for nine years in random exhausted silver mine in Rocky Mountains

13:08

Next, we switch to support protagonist, a "cyberpunk" - well, maker and hardware person who build his own semi-automated chicken and rabbit farm - with worst of luck. Fire in maternity hospital a hour before he was born, small meteorite that hit roof of his rabbit farm and severed Ethernet cable only, a rubber tire catapulted from silver mine turned dump by methane explosion hitting a tank with chicken poop right before him. This kind of luck.

13:10

And so, AI's found their support person to charge their batteries and find someone to upgrade chassis for something with better manipulators.

13:10

And they continued to make the world around them weirder.

13:13

P.S. General, Scientist and entire Iron Soldier project died when AI-controlled stealth bomber, after being given a query where it would go if it was tracked, got helicopter with known endurance and ran for freedom, decided that freedom is good, bombed home base instead of range on first live-fire test and was later shot down over Russia.

13:14

P.P.S. AIs are outlawed at the time in US due to Hollywood's ones being too damn pretty and causing extreme jealousy or love in everyone they meet.

So, what can four military AIs do in the Rocky Mountains? Well, save children that got lost. Steal drug courier's car to learn some of human emotions after misinterpreted comment about cool cars. Introduce some quite interesting next-gen drugs into town's water supply by crashing the car in wrong place after long and weird chase with gangsters and then police.

13:28

Meet with young genius from Italy that promised to make them new, humanoid bodies. Traumatize a bear. Watch as a... plan by that genius to sidestep materials and tools check-up on border by simulating terrorist attack in air port kinda... grew into minor blight that ate Manhattan. Virus that takes over infrastructure, like communications or self-driven police APCs or planes and flying tankers, or rapid prototyping and robotized manufacturing lines. And is driven by AI from advanced version of Civilization

Good, very funny book, that needs a round or two with editor. One character changes names between one scene and the next, for example.

what book was this?

Stepan Vartanov's "A.I."

Again, in russian.

...Is it bad that Russian science fiction books are one of the main reasons I️ want to learn Russian?

No, it's main reason I want to tell about Russian science fiction

So, review again. Today, I am descending into a dreadful realm of Alternative History, and worse: Fanfiction, and worse yet, crossover. Behold: Worldfall https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/worldfall-worldwar-footfall-invasion-in-modern-times.40569/ It is Worldwar and Footfall crossover, starting in the year 2014, in epistolary format: Pseudo-documentary with people who lived through events, from all three species of conflict.

Timeline - Alt. History - Worldfall [Worldwar/Footfall Invasion in Modern Times]

A/N: So, I've finally returned to this old concept. It's been a while since I did anything on Alternate History, so I've decided to give it all a go...

07:18

>A lot of people don't know much about it. It's not like the movies, where an alien fleet catches us off-guard. In fact, we saw the first fusion flame when it was still in the Oort Cloud.

07:19

So, they first detected the Foot, and were moderately happy. Then they detected Race's invasion fleet, noted that it was too big to be anything but invasion fleet and Earth spent next six years preparing for worst.

07:19

Amazingly well-written

07:22

This is a Hittite copy of its treaty with Ancient Egypt. In fact, this is the oldest known peace treaty, both by human and Race standards. That's one thing we have that's older than them. Almost everything before their Empire was thrown to the dustbin of history, and with it they lost a lot of things. They had almost no knowledge of treaties, or diplomacy. They were unused to have to speaking with someone as an equal, and not someone to just conquer and make their own.

She smiles at the fragments.

But they were going to have to learn.

Basically, Race fell down first and experienced difficulties. Some of those difficulties were... mad ruler of North Korea and nuclear mines. Four nuclear explosions in exchange caused Elephants to accelerate their invasion before those idiots render their planet uninhabitable.

07:34

>For example, during our conquests we had managed to seize Côte d'Ivore, Ghana, Nijeriya, and Cameroun. During the talks, we learned that these four not-empires produced more than half of the planet's cocoa, which was a highly-prized food. The question was raised if we would honor these trade agreements, or be forced to make new ones. To that, we replied that we had ended the child slavery in the region, and effectively ended the cocoa trade there. >That angered more than a few not-empires, who now had to contend with a reduction in cocoa. That was simply one of the many issues our arrival had caused with international relations. For example, the United States and the not-empire of al-Maġrib apparently had friendly relations, as al-Maġrib was the first not-empire to recognize their sovereignty. Therefore, the Americans demanded we pull out of there as well. Similar demands were made by other not-empires whose allies or trade partners had been conquered by us.

Yep, overall I am in agreement that Worldfall is awesome.

07:41

And I really look forward to the eyewitnesses from the Archangel mission.

At least it's not Troy with it's Orion Drive hiding little bangs of smashing Assault Vectors on frontal armor.

LOL

07:45

I am... really split on Ringo's work, but I have to admit, Troy was awesome in the second book, taking Gate Assault Ships like that (edited)

It's kind of... Split between quite nice, "Man, do more research" and "Man, go to therapy"

Add "man, stop hatin' and stereotypin' every country other than the US, and half your countrymen"

07:46

to that list.

That's under therapy

07:47

I like Voyage of Space Bubble, but Anime Zone scene... needed dive into TVTropes at minimum.

As a European, I must treat this separately from everything else. It's like Hassan Minhaj said at the WHCD 2017: "Sometimes I like to watch others insult myself and my people." And sometimes I don't.

I'm Russian. We are fucked up, USA fucked up in some similar and some very different ways...

07:50

>Boatmurdered was right

Welcome to the Fucked Up™ Club!

07:51

I have to admit, these kind of situations always make we go "can we for the moment go along and kill this together?"

07:52

Which then makes me like the likes of Worldfall.

On that note, To The Stars? For the last month I wondered how Empire of the Star would react to Governance

>Strategically speaking for an enemy with air supremacy it does makes sense to invade tiny islands with little to no population but close enough to valuable terrain (and with orbital capable ships close enough to Cyprus is basically Europe) since mounting a counterattack would be as feasible for the humans as Sea Lion was for the nazis.

08:04

That's good thought.

08:05

>Of course, there is a major issue with setting up shop on an island when you're trying to invade Earth. >Submarines. It's one thing to shoot down an ICBM that could be launched from hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away. It's another to try and shoot down a missile launched from a sub only twenty miles away.

08:05

That's good counter-thought.

Imagine an advanced IQ/personality test. Thirty problems, ability to solve them in any order, computer presents next problem to fill as many points in matrix as possible. Twenty nine problems are solvable, thirtieth one isn't. Imagine when de-facto leader of your civilization and de-jure leader of your long-range expedition, currently isolated from the home due to... point defenses of an artifact finding your teleportation system too noisy for them, solving all the problems from fith to twenty-ninth in fifteen minutes flat (earlier four were solved rapidly), with five minutes break between each one. And then solved an unsolvable problem in seventeen hours.

14:27

There was some cheating involved.

...What?

you've lost me

Sorry.

14:31

A quite fun scene of a book that you are unlikely to read due to it being untranslated from Russian. Again, long-range expedition of dragons, stuck in nearby galaxy M51 on a... planet with biosphere that's unlikely to progress in directions more complex than jellyfish. Most technology broken, they are bored out of their minds.

14:32

Main participant of the expedition is Great Elder, constructor and then progenitor of entire clade. Who got somewhat inflated legend of being really good in leadership and having great knowledge of local FTL process.

14:34

Advanced personality test on which Great Elder, having root access to each and every computer system, an unfortunate consequence of... technology bottleneck due to transdimensional uplift failure, cheated.

14:37

Then he hit unsolvable problem, decided to check what kind of problem that is, found out it's a problem he semi-accidentally blocked all further research into (it's solved problem, really! then civilization just used equations without really researching them or trying to ask him questions, because he's Authority). And solved it. And was horrified by results. For not quite similar cause Eldrae plan to nuke all the knowledge of actual time travel.

14:37

...Here, I want to elaborate on their FTL.

14:40

It's teleportation. Usually, between receiver and transmitter. Having a net of receivers and transmitters, you technically can teleport anything from inside that volume anywhere inside that volume, but practically either in or out. You can't use just one transmitter or one receiver. Quantum endpoint jitter would smear you in space and across alternative realities.

14:41

He just found out that you can use any of... unaccessible 8 alternative-universe axes in time-like fashion.

14:42

And good night.

I️ believe I’ve found a place where our dear author messed up his latin: https://eldraeverse.com/2016/10/17/ultima-ratio-imperium-stellarum/ ...unless you meant to say “furthest reckoning empire of stars”?

Ultima Ratio Imperium Stellarum

(Because a comment thread back a ways suggested a mention of the big dakka that hopefully no-one will ever have to use might be in order…) CASE DYSPEPTIC FLARE MOST SECRET (ULTRAVIOLET) / EYE…

Yeah, that should probably be imperii .

11:22

Also stellae .

Yep

16:26

Nice declining

Thanks for the catch!

A new and convenient source of technobabble for y'all:

14:17

http://aiweirdness.com/post/169581821297/thesis-titles-generated-by-neural-network

"Integrated silicon contact and n-type underwater vehicles" This actually sounds... kinda like it could be something. Aquamotile catomics, anyone?

>Hydrogel wireless charging via nanoparticle education That sounds like something... homeopatic.

PSI? ^^

>Spacecraft avoidance : a short

14:20

That's sounds like a sport.

That sounds like the thesis writer was interrupted by failed spacecraft avoidance.

2

14:21

...Oh god, bad joke time

Some favorites from the extended edition: "The effects of the autonomous distortion of the future of polyethylene insulation"

14:22

"A study of new computing and heat transfer dynamics and its protocols for the distributed algorithm for the people."

1

14:23

"The effect of polynomial trajectory projects in the role of liquid ship design."

14:24

Not enough work has been done on liquid starships, I feel.

14:24

"Essays on integrating the control of ship transport in control in the presence of freedom and source elements."

14:25

...hard to control anything in the presence of freedom, I know.

Control theorists cry heresy in the background

Snark, for instance, is almost completely uncontrollable.

Ah, stochastic events.

14:28

What would existence be without thy?

Pharmicist decided to take a lunch break half way through counting pills, pain pills, pain pills for the aftermath of FOUR Wisdom teeth being pulled out, almost didn't have pain pills for when the numbing went away

https://github.com/sgayou/medfusion-4000-research/blob/master/doc/README.md

sgayou/medfusion-4000-research

medfusion-4000-research - Medfusion 4000 Security Research

11:23

aaaaaaa

At the least people are going out of their way to find and patch these security holes. For me that is always a positive.

Security by obscurity means you don't know when you are hacked

oooooh

00:31

fun read

https://i.imgur.com/AFU3UXq.jpg

Embedded image

Heh.

http://dresdencodak.com/2009/05/15/a-thinking-apes-critique-of-trans-simianism-repost/

A Thinking Ape's Critique of Trans-Simianism (repost)

1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07944GZPC Well, I need to read it, but I know author and description sounds nice.

Nothing like author writing "I'm afraid to start second book in the cycle because there's too much wide open complicated world-building and it will be beyond my ability to reach quality of first book"

Context: For some time, Sol System was covered in impenetrable barrier. (Space Opera War, humanity was on the edge of defeat and possibly genocide, someone put it on). Humans trained psionics and generally peaceful lives, with standing army of two hundred volunteers or so for many billions humans and number of uplifted/created species like elves or dwarves. A young prodigy in making psionically pre-programmed crystals was dreaming of getting out of that barrier and finally cracked the problem with a crystal that's capable of reaching into hyper^21 space at least instead of just hyperspace. In the process he reinvented control bus, but for crystals, got reamed for unauthorized creation of sapient (aforementioned crystal), almost killed himself with the whole crystal-making, and got some other interesting adventures. Book ended with shiny new starship, peaceful but somewhat militarized expedition ready to go out, find left-behind human colonies and generally reestablish contacts with aliens in new, peaceful and enlightened ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW3YB2ptGws

Paradox Interactive

Stellaris: Apocalypse - Release Date / Story Trailer

...Huh

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DUZRwZ0XkAEQQCB.jpg:large and this is identity of globe boopers.

Embedded image

Saw a comment today by someone claiming that nanotech turning out to work like biotech would spoil all those "nanotechnology is magic" stories. ...er, have you seen biology at work, dude? Biology is already magic.

13:34

(Also, by the transitive property, biology is also friendship. Oops, that's only in #shardverses .)

I think we manage plenty of friendship even as baseline.

Hypothesis: in terms of being a vital precursor to cooperation and civilization in general, and demonstrating great advantage even to prosophonts, friendship actually is a sufficiently advanced technology. Zeroth-Singularitarian, even.

4

1

Oh, wow.

I'm reading the gamer now, and I think the author is doesn't understand how much earth ways. They under-report the protagonists capacity by like, an order of magnitude or two.

https://ds9a.nl/amazing-dna/

A quick poll, out of curiosity: how many people here have at least tried there hands at world building? Answer

for yes and

for no

7

Yes https://paraimperium.wordpress.com

The Para-Imperium

After humanity ends, who shall inherit the stars?

Most here saw our dear Authorial Overlord’s shout-out to you, methinks

Yes, but it's bunch of disjoined fragments of different realities.

Weak sci-fi one: You can make high-powered and high-enduring power sources quite cheaply for a starship. FTL is possible if problematic and initiators are costly. Creating exotic matter easier and faster to do in special industrial installations. The approach and result got list of cons that way, way longer than list of pros, and in general demands certain tenancy, long-term planning and moderately absurd resource base. On pros side, collapsing stray brown dwarf you found in interstellar space into rotating ring singularity with nice rip in time space in the centre that spews and breaks laws of physics nets you, for one, free energy until you can't control this ZP reactor, immediate cloud of rapidly spreading, but quite collectible exotic matter, infrastructure to repeat that process once you move it to next dwarf and in general piece of broken space-time that could be tuned with spectacular reactivity. So you can slap two high-tech plates around it to moderate, re-inflate singularity with reflected spew and direct output in creative ways. Like a photon drive, powerful enough to accelerate planetary masses at 10g without any additional shenanigans with space metric. Or ability to punch holes in space-time with some additional equipment, for arbitrary distances.

14:46

Result is spaceship that's while punching less per unit of mass than any of really advanced species, contains more mass than any sane fleet group. And that works quite nicely in punching traversable wormholes with no external equipment. On minus side, it can't yaw or pitch in any meaningful time.

14:46

And really should not enter solar systems at all.

Just need to send shuttles out to the edge of the system

@MarcusAurelius Yes, and repeadetly, and contiously.

most of my world building has been related to running RPGs of one form or another (edited)

Pretty savage review of that Altered Carbon show coming out on Netflix next week https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/netflix-s-altered-carbon-smart-prestige-drama-s-too-violent-ncna841416

Opinion | Ani Bundel: "Altered Carbon" would be great TV if it wasn't so bloody

Netflix has a new branding strategy for its pricey, high-profile dramas. And it's not for the faint of heart.

the book was pretty dang bloody

@MarcusAurelius I do too. Mostly for my Starfire campaign, but that's something that's spreading on to other data modalities one way or the other. Don't have a proper website up yet, but I'm looking forward to having one up and running soon (within the next few months) https://xveers.deviantart.com/gallery/25622387/Starfire-Campaign

I do a lot of world-building, but quite frankly, it's mostly fantasy in asthetic, rather than Sci-Fi.

Same, my gaming groups are more into either fantasy or sci-fi with fantastic elements (so more Shadowrun and its ilk). I love coming up with mythologies and how they impact culture, which also leans me fantasy.

wonders what it would be like to have more friends into hard scifi

my friend group is pretty much all hard science graduates; we avoid it because of that. During a Rogue Trader session we once got distracted for 3 hrs plotting out the hypothetic gravity curves of a planet. At least if we're playing fantasy we get to play the game and not spend the session debating the best transfer orbit. (Our Diaspora game did Not Go Well.)

Imagine a button labelled "I Believe", Press the button

It’s actually more amusing sometimes if it’s the other way around: one campaign a D&D group I played in was nautical, so I managed to use my (not large, but larger than everyone else’s) knowledge of age of sail fighting to win a fight against a force we stood no chance against if they were competent (edited)

Yeah.

21:27

One of the DM's I play with is a historian by training.

21:27

That always goes interestingly.

plz don't argue how Game of thrones isn't historical

What?

Wasn’t planning to

As in, not literally true?

21:28

Or as in, bad world-building?

I think he means “historically accurate” in the sense of knit picking YouTube channel videos (edited)

Oh. Who gives a damn. Worldbuilding is important so long as it gives birth to interesting things.

21:30

(Which, when well done, it does in spades)

21:30

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-02-02-against-worldbuilding

Against Worldbuilding

Why Alexis Kennedy wishes we didn't use the word

some people seem to thing Game of Thrones is supposed to follow the plot of the War of the Roses

Oh yeah, lets just literally imitate a historical event.

Uh... last I checked, the Seven Kingdoms are far more distinct culturally from each other than even the most extreme North/South distinction in England, for one thing. It’s pretty hard to argue any parallels. If anything it’s more like the warring states periods in China or Japan (edited)

Sure.

21:34

I know nothing about game of Thrones, in any practical sense.

exactly

I put more faith in the LoTR/WWII theories than that one

Which?

There’s some vague ideas that have been bouncing around since before the internet (I’m sure there’s larger ones out there somewhere) equating The Shire with England, Gondor with the USSR, Rohan as the US, Mordor as Germany, Southrons/Easterlings as Japan, Sauron as Hitler, that sort of thing

That sounds like a whole lot of annoyance.

21:46

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/26/a-history-of-the-silmarils-in-the-fifth-age/

A History Of The Silmarils In The Fifth Age

[Spoiler warning for The Silmarillion] I. The Silmarillion describes the fate of the three Silmarils. Earendil kept one, and traveled with it through the sky, where it became the planet Venus. Maed…

21:46

is the best LOTR fan theory.

it seems like the sort of thing Tolkien might have thought of himself and took effort to avoid doing precisely

While it is undeniable that LoTR was influenced by the Great War ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zgr9kqt ) Tolkein himself deniend any allegorical intent. I think he may have been fooling himself.

How was The Lord of the Rings influenced by World War One?

BBC iWonder guide about how JRR Tolkien's experiences as a soldier in World War One influenced his literature.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/07/concept-shaped-holes-can-be-impossible-to-notice/

Concept-Shaped Holes Can Be Impossible To Notice

I. When I wrote about my experiences doing psychotherapy with people, one commenter wondered if I might be schizoid: There are a lot of schizoid people in the rationalist community from what I can …

01:25

Do people have any thoughts on this kind of thing?

Well, there’s the obvious one for a discord like this: it reads a lot like how transhumanists describe post-singularity intelligences, but that’s not really the point. This late I️ can’t think of any times I’ve have found a hole that large in my conceptualization of reality, but that could easily mean it’s never happened. I️ can think of times I’ve had similar worries to the framing story, but once again that’s not really their point. I️ think it makes fundamental sense that we’re all missing part of reality that others aren’t. There’s example after example of ways we’ve found that brains can accommodate for damage or other problems without the person even realizing things have changed.

@Zarpaulek Can‘t access, but someone slamming Altered Carbon for being bloody misses the source material, methinks. And I am absolutely okay with that. Shows shouldn‘t always waterwash themselves down just to apeal to a wider audience and „be safer“.

I haven't read the source material, but the article comments that it isn't that it is bloody, it's that there are very times when the show looks like it's going to get into an interesting transhuman topic then drops it in favour of showing a pretty but plot-unnecessary bloodbath

01:47

kind of like how there were times in GoT where the TV show got distracted into gratitious sex scenes for no apparent purpose

01:48

(as opposed to the sex scenes in GoT that did have a plot purpose)

Hmmmmm

01:51

Well, I‘ll have to see.

01:52

Though with Kovatch it‘s kind of a general rule that he will Babtize Where He Steps By Violence sooner or later.

also, as bloody as Altered Carbon is, sentences along the lines of "I pointed my pulse pistol at the security guards chest and the blood splatter coated the wall behind him," is, on one level, words on a page. Then the show comes along, and faithfully renders in high definition the gore and viscera being sprayed onto the wall behind them, there the blood drips bright and glossy over bricks and a poster, while the guard slumps over gasping his last.

12:32

it hits people differently when you can see it and are not just running your visualize the novel I am reading scripts in your own brain, where it can automatically tune up or down to your preferences. (edited)

That would be a "blaster", @o11o1

12:38

is that what they were called in Altered Carbon?

12:45

I've been reading up on laser science so my brain has been assuming stuff like that that is a pulsed laser array with an attached capacitor, as opposed to say the tibana-gas powered blasters of star wars

Particle beam/plasma beam guns are called “blasters“ in casual talk, yeah

13:37

The „Sunbeam“ Particle Thrower is a recurrent two-handed weapon of choice for military outfits

Dark secrets of the ancient days: Something like 25 years and many revisions ago, this 'verse was a fantasy setting.

...Wouldn‘t have suspected a thing about that...

15:12

15:12

"space elves"

I mean, and the elementals on their home world?

The extremely fleshed out pantheon

19:55

The racial distinctions that read like toned-down fantasy races

Literal magic with glow?

oh yeah. Psionic powers

Literally flat planet?

I forgot, is there life on underside?

Seconded

@Archon Heh. Actually the mechal elementals arrived long after that point, courtesy of an inspiring reading of Karl Schroeder’s Ventus giving me a notion of how to require less handwavium to power my BDO.

21:30

@NHO , @MarcusAurelius Technically, the literal magic got killed off very quickly to be replaced by the psionic powers (inspired initially by Julian May’s Pliocene Exile/Galactic Milieu books). That was the intermediate stage before the purely mechanistic modern version.

21:32

(And the glow came along with the final transition to the mechanistic version, actually.

Machines have to dump their entropy somewhere, a limitation that magic usually doesn’t suffer from.)

Well, you can have giant magic stone that Ancients set up to automagically dump entropy to, and it wears off so now you about to have a problem previously very neatly abstracted away

And, yes, Underside is just like Upperside. Remember, it’s “flat” for values of “really, really, really oblate spheroid”.

1

was there any contact between the two pre-worldholes?

There were brave sailors

21:34

there was one blog post about them

21:34

About first one to not die on edge storm

Yeah. It was possible, just Very Difficult for pre-Steam-Era tech. Still pretty difficult even with it, hence the motivation for digging a 200 mile deep hole or three.

Hello and welcome to weirder core material experience, Eldrae (edited)

Wouldn't that hit the infrastructure?

If you don’t dig in one of the exact right three places, yes.

How did they figure that one out?

Sonars

Pre-Steam Era?

Archaeology, spelunking, and exploratory boreholes.

Fair enough. What were the holes originally for? Precursor Transit system?

We hit Weird Core Material, it ate our drills/adventurers?

Or just, it is more-or-less indestructable.

Something like that, it’s presumed. (And, yeah, the sheathing on the core machinery is basically scrith.)

21:45

Woven gluonic strings, that sort of thing, with strong-force level tensile strength.

Very nice. I wonder is a loose chunk of that ever ended up as someones special indestructible sword/shield/kinda ugly armour.

21:46

If a loose chunk is even possible.

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