kontextmaschine

nostalgebraist:

This has occurred to me independently several times, so I figure I might as well write it down.

Anytime there is a social rule, some people will try to find ways to exploit it – to do bad things in ways that are technically rule-compliant, or to wield the rules against the innocent by taking advantage of subtle flaws in the rule’s formulation.

The solution to this is not to make even better rules.  Yes, certain rules are especially bad and ought to be replaced by less exploitable ones.  But any rule you bind yourself to will be exploited.

What you always need, in addition to good rules, is a fail-safe button.  You need to give yourself the right to say “hey, this looks like manipulative bullshit” or “that person sure is an asshole” – specifically, the right to do this “extra-legally,” without caring about the rules.  You need a “no, that’s just wrong, even though some similar things are right” option.

Of course, this option can itself be abused, particularly if it is used freely and unthinkingly.  If the rules hold only until the moment you don’t like their consequences, then the rules don’t really hold at all.

But if someone does that, you can take the same option yourself: “yeah, I said you should have this option, but using it like that is wrong.”  Because the option does not have specific rules (by construction), no one can use rules lawyering to take it away from you.  If someone uses “calling bullshit” for bad ends, you can just call bullshit on them.

This is not without downsides.  It means nothing is certain.  If you declare your right to press the failsafe button, no one can simply rely on you to follow the rules; they have to judge your character to know whether to trust you in any given case.  But there isn’t any real alternative to this.  Rules don’t save you from having to assess other people’s character; even if you know they will follow the letter of the law, you have to decide whether they will follow the spirit of it.

If everyone grokked everyone else perfectly, rules would not be necessary.  Rules help you coexist with strangers, with people you don’t know will grok you.  But don’t be afraid to insist that coexisting with you is more than just a matter of following the rules; that the latter are just a means for furthering the former.  Don’t be afraid to remind people that they are interacting with you, not with the rules, and that your judgments are ultimately your own, for them to take or leave.

This is why democracies make allowance for periodic purges

Is this a Gadsden Flag joke?

Was just behind a car with big white letters “EPILEPTIC DOG ON BOARD” in the rear window, and I believe it, but what am I supposed to do about it?

yesandmeow:

lewisandquark:

So there’s a neural network framework called pix2pix that can be trained to learn how to transform one type of image into another. It’s been used for example to convert satellite images into line drawings and vice versa (think Google maps satellite view vs the one that show boxes where all the buildings are). There’s also trained version of pix2pix that converts a block drawing to a building facade (although it tends to make the building facades into creepy post-apocalyptic burnt-out shells).

Less useful but arguably even more creepy is the version by Christopher Hesse that turns line drawings into cats.

He trained it on about 2000 stock photos of cats that he ran through an edge-detection filter - he used the edge-detected (line drawing) versions as the starting image, and the original image as the ending image. The neural network then learned to convert from the line drawings into the original cat photographs.

The result? A neural network that tries to make ANY line drawing into a photo of a cat. And, gloriously, you can play with it in your browser here. Here are some results I’ve produced.

Here, it was able to turn my primitive trackpad-drawn scribble into a furry cat, complete with fluffy underbelly. Not bad, neural network.

But, if required, the neural network can make do with less. The results get increasingly creepy, though.

The neural network has not been trained on roosters. The network has only been trained on cats. 12/10 Excellent bright-eyed cat. Would stroke its strange furry head-crest.

This is a strange grabby cat, but at least the neural network has identified the eyes.

Ears? Check. Eyes? Check. Fluffy underbelly? Check. Next!

One track robot-mind: cats

onlinepunk:

This is honest to God the funniest shit I have ever seen

partybarackisinthehousetonight:

i romantically stand outside your window and hold up my iPhone to blast our song. a 30 second ad plays first

Texas Senate - Wikipedia

There are no term limits, and each term is four years long. Elections are held in even numbered years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. In elections ending in years ending in 2, all seats are up for election. Half of the senators will serve a two-year term, based on a drawing; the other half will fill regular four-year terms. As such, in other elections, about half of the Texas Senate is on the ballot.

wut

gerardway420:

yo why is there a painting of eva 1 and beetlegeuse on the wall of this hair salon

argumate:

fried-ferret:

now don’t get me wrong Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is a VERY good man, but he’s not a good actor really

I understand he’s charismatic and such but why does Hollywood insist on adding him in almost every single thing they flush out??? He’s in like, everything that has a buff male protagonist lead

argumate:

fried-ferret:

now don’t get me wrong Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is a VERY good man, but he’s not a good actor really

I understand he’s charismatic and such but why does Hollywood insist on adding him in almost every single thing they flush out??? He’s in like, everything that has a buff male protagonist lead

For serious though probably one thing coming out of his live performance background in wrestling is reliably doing his “universally serviceable tough guy with a jocular side” character competently on the first take, on big-budget productions that’s a huge plus

afloweroutofstone:

Also homeownership is wildly overhyped as an idea in America. It constitutes massive amounts of land and resource waste, and mortgages are just a way to get people who are financially secure enough to avoid paying rent to do so anyways. Yet the government still spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year subsidizing it through the tax code because of pressure from the construction, real estate, and finance lobbies and voter support derived from the nostalgic normative ideal of “the American Dream”

Yo setting aside the rest of this, the 20/30-year amortized, fixed-rate, federally insured “rent by another name” mortgage supporting a stable homebuilding industry REALLY DID enable equity-building among non-farm workers who couldn’t swing the previous system (5-year lump sum loans usually paid off in part and rolled over at least once, usu. for owner-developed plots, where credit shocks at turnover time could force liquidation on a depressed and non-fluid market with private magnates as market-clearers) and would otherwise have just been paying rent as rent

sapphirefiber:

tygermama:

morivan:

You know that type of laughter that starts off as a small chuckle but kinda builds up inside your throat, eventually mounting into a full blown, bent over yourself, holding your stomach as you guffaw uproariously?

Yeeeep.

this should be a sculpture about the human condition entitled ‘Unbridled Optimism Meets An Uncaring Universe’

There are photos that tell a story, then there are photos that tell a story.

The trails behind the bike indicate someone drove it into wet semi-set concrete, the footprints ahead of it indicate they had to abandon it to escape, the bike itself remains entombed as monument to man’s hubris

Stopped by my bank to hit the ATM and one was plastic bagged and taped over with a sign saying to use the other one

The other one was dusted all over with what looked like red chalk dust, like it just got back from Holi, it took my card but I couldn’t get the touchscreen to register anything

Obnoxious but novel & effective

nonbinarybuckys:

trekcore:

Look Closely: Torso panels of the new Discovery uniforms are tiny, metallic Starfleet deltas.

Costume designers: you know what’ll REALLY piss off the cosplayers?

why does a culture that manufactures by replicators still have clothing design premised on seams tho

[I hear this is pre-replicator, that’s a good answer]

like, you laugh but like I encountered in LA this is a serious issue, though interbreeding with other canids or possibly some kind of disseminated culture, coyotes are moving into American cities and filling the urban feral canid role we cleared out with those old cartoon dogcatchers, and a big innovation in play is “jumping backyard fences and skeletonizing housepets”