Media was always already social. If I email my friend a link to a YouTube video, is the Internet a social network? I think what we think of when we think of 'social media' or a 'social network' is an integrated platform that lubricates particular potentials, like being able to create and share content with friends and fans. But there are other ways to realise those potentials, including ones that require the interfacing of different platforms (or media, in the McLuhanian sense), or what might be perceived as different platforms at one scale, and the same platform at another scale, as per my Internet example. And, the multiplicity of platforms, and the interfacing between them, might confer additional advantages and open up yet more potentials.
States are not inherently good, they are just large organisations with a monopoly on certain social functions. All large organisations have the capacity to inflict terrible harm.
Last year I managed to connect with 10 other trans people in my Lancashire home town. This is a place with zero 'alternative' spaces, let alone dedicated queer spaces. I made a poster using the trans pride flag as the background, and wrote a bit of blurb on it and put an email address on. Then I stuck it up on community notice boards in supermarkets and in a pub window. My idea was that if you put these things in high footfall areas, someone is bound to walk past and get in touch. And they did! Plus, more pride flags being visible, especially if they are coming from the grassroots and not a giant company, shows that we are here and not alone, and makes us feel safer. So if you want to connect with people near you, maybe go analog and put up some posters ^__^
This would be too risky IMHO ie in eastern Europe (I don't mean sh*thole of russia where this is even much worse, just eastern EU).
The general attitude is less tolerant. Most people in general population of course have 'live and let live' attitude, but small part of each country does actively attack such people, ie skinheads or other far right groups.
This is exactly why it's important to find each other, so we can keep each other safe. There is strength in numbers. If you put up your posters on community notice board and use a non-personal email (I just made a new Gmail account for it) then nobody can be identified, the worst case is someone pulls the poster down.
I'd like to see this for smaller n, to see if there are motifs or patterns, which can be used to implement memoisation like Hashlife (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife), or to reveal new formulas for exploring Collatz sequences with.
Good idea. Although, from the little exploration I did with examples for small n, given the low stopping times, the behaviour was very boring. Nothing necessarily interesting. But then again, I didn't explore it exhaustively.
> Good idea. Although, from the little exploration I did with examples for small n, given the low stopping times, the behaviour was very boring. Nothing necessarily interesting. But then again, I didn't explore it exhaustively.
Warning: huge amounts of compute time have been spent trying to find a counter example to this conjecture, which almost everyone believes is true. I kept my office warm this way one winter. It has been described as a way to turn pure Platonic mathematics into heat.
Always interesting to try to visualize something though.
Ps -- I implemented hashlife one time. Still amazed someone came up with that algorithm
I don't use Kinopio for everything, but when I need to arrange ideas in a 2D way and think about webs of relationships, it's been an amazing addition to my set of "tools for thought". Thank you for all of your work on it <3
Or we could move away from pricing everything and the neoliberal obsession to turn everything into a market, and restructure our economy to provide everyone with their basic material needs, regardless of how much income they have.
even if we restructure everything to meet human basic needs, pricing will still be part of the equation. finite resources means value has to be attached to materials.
Value and price are not the same thing. Money is a form of access control which limits the availability of scarce resources to those people and organisations which have enough funds. It also collapses the value of all things to a single dimension. There are other ways to decide how much of something is produced and how it is distributed, for example participatory economics.
Money isn't just a form of rationing, it creates the scarcity it claims to solve.
A neoliberal economy wastes talent and skill in much the same way an ICE wastes most of the energy from the gas it burns. Vested interests clog up the engine and keep it from running cleanly and efficiently.
This doesn't just create pollution of all kinds - physical, social, political, and ecological - which makes the environment a very unpleasant space for most humans.
It also puts a hard cap on the maximum speed, which is nowhere close to what's possible.
pricing is the exercise of determining value, even in a non monetary economy (think barter or contribution) you still need to price the value of materials and time. obviously money creates secondary effects which are not related to value due to arbitrages and other effects, but I do not believe you can have finite resources without determining value, which is what I meant by pricing.
We still haven't found a better resource allocation model than pricing.
We have tried central planning, and it resulted in horrendous living standards (as compared to the western world), queues all-night-long that you had to wait in if you wanted to buy bread in the morning, "if you're not stealing from your employer, you're stealing from your family" being adopted as a common proverb, and the whole system basically running (for some definition of running) on bribes, favors and theft. Communism finally fell around '89 in most of Eastern Europe, and we're still recovering.
Perhaps you could solve some of these points with computer-aided optimization and dystopian AI-powered mass surveillance, but is that really what we want?
In my view, the problem isn't capitalism, the problem is the government trying to fix capitalism, but instead making it much harder for small competitors to emerge, effectively causing almost-government-mandated monopolies.
Think about what industries are complained about most in America, and how regulated those industries are. You can't just lay fiber, make medications or help patients without going through a regulatory minefield, mostly for good reasons, but this is why the big providers of these services aren't outcompeted by smaller ones. There's a reason why the mostly-unregulated big tech is considered to be one of the most trustworthy industries among most (non ideologically motivated) consumers, far surpassing any political party.
Capitalism is sometimes bad, central planning is worse, but heavily regulated capitalism is the worst of them all.
A key problem with unfettered capitalism is the tragedy of the commons. If left alone rogue/selfish actors will destroy that which belongs to all of us and is required to live (see nature). How do you propose to solve this without "benign" interference?
If your property generates air pollution, noise pollution, smells, unclean water, radio interference etc, you get taxed and/or have to offset the effects (e.g. by planting trees).
You can do this with very simple, straightforward regulation, in a way that is very easy to understand, doesn't require an army of lawyers to follow and doesn't advantage or disadvantage large companies.
The temptation of exceptions, exceptions to exceptions, and exceptions to exceptions to exceptions might be too much for governments to stomach, though.
The AI explanations for these tracks is quite amusing/disturbing:
> Based on the information provided, it appears that the user is a resident of the United States, likely living in the Onalaska area of Washington state. They are using a Windows 10 computer and the Firefox web browser, which suggests they are comfortable with technology and keep their software up-to-date.
> The user's browsing activity indicates that they have an interest in lightsaber-related content, which could be a hobby or a professional interest. Their use of the Broadstripe internet service provider, a regional provider in the Pacific Northwest, further reinforces the assumption that they are a local resident.
> While the user's specific age or occupation is not known, their choice of browser and operating system implies that they are likely an adult who is familiar with modern computing technology. They may work in a field that requires internet access, or they could simply be an enthusiastic internet user with a diverse range of interests.
> The fact that the user is accessing the internet through a residential broadband connection suggests that they have a stable living situation and the means to afford reliable internet service. This, combined with their apparent technological proficiency, paints a picture of a relatively well-off and engaged individual.
> Overall, the available information suggests that the user is a tech-savvy adult residing in the Onalaska area of Washington state, with a particular interest in lightsaber-related content. While their specific background and occupation remain unknown, they appear to be a relatively well-established and engaged member of their local community.
Does anyone know anything about 'sustainable aviation fuel' (SAF)? The last time I flew, I was given an option to pay for this, but I don't know what it actually is, how it's made, if it's carbon neutral, or if and in what ways it is 'sustainable'.
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