Posts by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
(DIR) Post #Aln9WdsKka29p1V9OK by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-09-08T11:19:01Z
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@futurebird Where do stories like James Blish's Cities in Flight and Cixin Liu's Death's End that resolve with "let's impact the formation of new universes as we experience the end of ours" come in? Would that be under "universal laws of nature"?
(DIR) Post #AlvNP5wTT4PVAxPfA8 by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-09-12T10:32:12Z
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@futurebird @llewelly @Nonya_Bidniss What happens with breathing?
(DIR) Post #AlyCOkP71uoYM4Jsum by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-09-13T19:13:01Z
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@futurebird @nev We have a 2004 Honda Element. It looks like the mutant offspring of a minivan and a pickup as envisioned by a mad scientist. Even at 22mpg, it is unbelievably functional.It is the transformer of cars. We fit a twin mattress in the back when I couldn't sit long enough to get to the doctor. It's uncarpeted, so evacuating two carsick dogs in a hurricane wasn't a disaster.It maneuvers like a small car. And I don't know how we'll replace it.
(DIR) Post #AmRgTYiqWOHBmWb9qi by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-09-28T00:36:40Z
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@futurebird I once went looking for a picture of a gelatin fruit salad for a talk, and ended up finding a gelatin model of San Francisco and some of the most horrifying recipes I've ever heard of, relying on celery flavored jello or tuna.San Francisco link: https://www.lizhickok.com/san-francisco-in-jell-oRecipe links (I apologize in advance!):https://vintage.recipes/ring-around-the-tuna/https://www.pinterest.com/pin/482025966351394675/
(DIR) Post #AmUkkxB9pOaBqXGp1c by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-09-29T12:08:40Z
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@futurebird Rationally, I'd go to space rather than the deep ocean. They're equally inaccessible and require equally specialized equipment, but the failsafes, seriousness, and funding at places like NASA mean that resources are better matched to the seriousness of the stakes.Personally, the views from space are better, but I suspect the views underwater would be more interesting, because I see fewer pictures and videos.But they're both equally scary to me.
(DIR) Post #Amaz5gL2nAuxjehOoy by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-10-02T12:17:38Z
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@futurebird I can't drink tea in hotel rooms because you have to heat the water with the coffee machine and it makes both the cheapest and the most expensive tea taste like asphalt. You're not being prissy, you're being normal. Tea flavor and residual coffee oils are just incompatible.
(DIR) Post #AmjXDvT9N5vCgYGxoO by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-10-06T15:17:50Z
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@futurebird We know from robotics that many apparently complex behaviors can be replicated without "thought":- "move away from strong stimuli and towards weak stimuli" creates mouse-like exploration behavior- "when object detected, if hands are empty, pick it up; if hands full, drop it; if no object, wander" creates termite-like mounds.I'd suspect the attack behavior is a variant of flocking, and acquiescence to being eaten happens when the self-preservation sensor is bypassed?
(DIR) Post #Amte8PDuKcgSI1NnPM by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-10-11T12:22:24Z
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@futurebird @Uraael I was once invited to attend an event being held because someone had received funding to "support innovation".They could have put 10 experts from 5 domains in a room for a week with no other responsibilities and given them a problem to solve and resources/info on request, and gotten innovation out. Many times.Instead they held a series of mini conferences in the most predictable format imaginable, focused on "encouraging innovation".🤦♀️
(DIR) Post #AmxpONSz0tdGSKlhMu by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-10-13T12:47:21Z
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@futurebird @trezzer Yeah, the NHTSA data isn't great.https://www.craftlawfirm.com/autonomous-vehicle-accidents-2019-2024-crash-data/I know some of these are using a remote overseer system, where the person capable of manual control is remote rather than in the car, but the operator is limited in the actions they are allowed to take and cannot prevent horrific outcomes they see unfolding.Found this, am now even more disturbed: https://phantom.auto
(DIR) Post #AmxqaBEKQwtBw16bpo by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-10-13T12:21:42Z
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@carrideen @futurebird In London, we loved the public transportation - especially how everyone (both residents and people coming in for an event or work) took the tube to get where they needed to be.But that egalitarian usage doesn't happen by accident. It happens because, for residents *and visitors*, cars are slower and less convenient / predictable than buses and subways. In most US cities, a car is more convenient for visitors and locals use public transit.
(DIR) Post #AmxqaDZJjsrnBgwOpM by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-10-13T12:33:08Z
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@carrideen @futurebird That convenience is the product of many factors:- Are stops no more than a 15-20 minute walk apart?- Will I be able to eat or feed my child a snack on the train?- How safe/clean are the stops and trains?- Are the stops close to where I want to go / have parking where I'm coming from?I work in a city with good public transit, yet people using it to reach my workplace face a 45 minute walk or 1h bus ride *on top of* their in-city commute.
(DIR) Post #An0yPjUC73pc6Ew4hs by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-10-15T01:11:43Z
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@parsingphase @futurebird @btanderson Getting this straight. You take a perfectly good, edible nut. You drill a hole through it(with what? does orientation matter? how big a hole? does string type affect the hole? are there professional conker strings? what about string length? is there a relationship between string length / hand-eye coordination / success?)then smash it until you break someone else's nut.And get ... bragging rights?
(DIR) Post #AnCaiWRcl61Q9RgBEm by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-10-20T15:43:36Z
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@futurebird @Fragglemuppet I think The Dark Crystal is the better movie - more solid storytelling, more depth to the world building, more complexity to the characters, more emotionally engaging and more emotionally satisfying.But maybe because Labyrinth is a simpler story, and has simpler, sillier elements (like the whole "Bog of Eternal Stench" conceit) I enjoy watching it more.I can't choose which one I like best!
(DIR) Post #AnOeq65XwuDtVtCLPk by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-10-26T11:26:19Z
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@futurebird As a teenager, I decided it was easier to be as honest as possible as much of the time as possible. In college, I made a conscious choice to take other people at their word.Communication is about conveying concepts between minds, and we know so little about what's going on in someone else's brain that making it *more* difficult defeats the purpose.I don't have unspoken incoherent reprehensible internal monologues. What does it say about Klein, that he does?
(DIR) Post #AnR0hhcRd1Ruc7uMHQ by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-10-27T14:39:32Z
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@Nonya_Bidniss @futurebird Taking the "you're allowed to manage your own portfolio" out of political positions might change the makeup of people who choose to seek them. That might be nice.
(DIR) Post #AoIc2qey6TSSNoxPDE by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2024-11-22T11:18:52Z
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@futurebird I get fractions now, but I changed schools mid-year that year. The old school hadn't gotten to them yet, the new school had already finished them, and my teacher assigned another student in the class to help me catch up. It went ... poorly. It took years for me to bounce back from that.
(DIR) Post #AqbssxN3eeHwBy4U5I by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2025-01-30T14:11:13Z
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@futurebird Very bad things.We generated a latex template that exactly mirrored the word template for a set of documents so we could properly format the math in them.All the documents needed to go through a review process that involved getting feedback, and some of these documents could only be pdfs, so we figured that generating pdfs from tex and getting feedback on the pdfs would be fine.Wrong. Apparently requesting feedback on pdfs of latex documents was unreasonable.
(DIR) Post #ArmAWUDRZwhBq4AGCe by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2025-03-06T11:08:04Z
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@futurebird Or maybe we're just underestimating bee and butterfly hubris!
(DIR) Post #ArsWTnZQWgq6wAKW5A by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2025-03-09T12:42:22Z
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@futurebird @calendsofapril I've been looking at house plans, and the number with simple rooflines is miniscule. And you can't even search for "basic rectangular footprint house with simple roof" - it's all "inexpensive, ahh, that means you want a *small* version of this ridiculously complex design with lots of gables and random sticking-out-bits".
(DIR) Post #As5DmqdpxYdRtFF3L6 by robotistry@sciencemastodon.com
2025-03-15T15:44:09Z
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@futurebird The TV show Babylon 5. I haven't seen it, but it's the first thing my mind goes to.