Mike Agg @countingquoll@social.cleverlibre.org
I used to be be good at sums.
Feminist, skeptic, hermit.
Joined Nov 2022
Mike Agg
boosted
In 100,000 years an alien ship enters our solar system. The earth has no remarkable intelligent life, but it's a beautiful biodiverse planet recovering from some bad extinctions. The aliens don't notice the traces left by humanity right away, this is just a survey trip and not much monumental remains.
But, they do pick up a signal, coming not from Earth, but from Mars. "How strange?" they think. Mars is obviously the inferior planet for life. Earth is incredible. But they go to investigate. 1/
Ælfgif-who? This podcast about the lives of early mediaeval women just gets better and better.
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mbG9yZW5jZWhycy5zdWJzdGFjay5jb20vZmVlZA?ep=14
Mike Agg
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TikTok: Look! I discovered hot water melts frozen food faster!
Twitter: Look at this TikTok video showing how to defrost your food faster!
Yahoo news: Millions of Twitter users view TikTok video showing new life hack for melting frozen food!
Mastodon: Please read my academic white paper describing the impacts of public school system underfunding
Might be ready for a new .NET role. Green tech would be nice.
Mike Agg
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Well that was a new experience. Crossing the fabulous hurdle bridge at Laforêt. Originally built by tobacco growers for easier access to their crops during the low water months of summer, it is still rebuilt each summer from hornbeam staves.
This is an old Maquis Camp hidden in the woods of the Ardennes, restored to its 1944 condition. The occupying German forces never found this one, despite the Panzergrenadier detachment garrisoned just a kilometre away in the village of Vresse.
The camp had sleeping quarters, a kitchen, mess, chapel, and a telephone line to a house in the village to provide warnings of troop movements.
Mike Agg
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The best [citation needed] ever.
Mike Agg
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Very amusingly, the #NYT have "invented" a new game that happens to be identical in premise to the Connecting Wall from #OnlyConnect which has been on the BBC for 15 years.
Except in execution it's *nothing* like Only Connect's game, because in OG OC you'll get words that fit multiple groups and entire red-herring connections that fit a few words but aren't solutions at all, so even if you know everything going in there's still a little graph-theory problem to do to work out how to get the unique set of four non-overlapping groups of four.
The NYT version doesn't bother with that. In the boards I've seen there's no ambiguity at all — some words can mean multiple things, but each word fits into exactly one group and there are no false connections. They've stolen the mechanics and the layout and the ideas, but they didn't understand the original well enough to get what was good about it, so their version just fundamentally doesn't work.
You might as well watch the Nicholas Cage version of The Wicker Man.
Mike Agg
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Why Rowan Atkinson is wrong about #ElectricVehicles - and The Guardian should have fact checked before publishing https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/08/fact-check-why-rowan-atkinson-is-wrong-about-electric-vehicles
Mike Agg
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"By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying,
Lady, make a note of this —
One of you is lying."
Unfortunate Coincidence, First printed in Life, (April 8, 1926) p. 11
Dorothy Parker died #OTD in 1967.
She was known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. via @wikipedia
Books by Dorothy Parker at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/5625
Mike Agg
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Cigarettes are a lot like squirrels. They’re both perfectly harmless until you put one in your mouth and set it on fire.
Mike Agg
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I'm not surprised.
Horrified, yes. Outraged, yes. Angry, yes.
Surprised ... no.
"UK mental health charities handed sensitive data to Facebook for targeted ads"
Mike Agg
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My husband had to wait for 6 years to capture this view of #TheNeedles.
Taken as the #moon set at 4.30 am last summer. This shot is only possible a couple of times each year. He almost had it in 2016 but it was slightly too breezy and the telephoto lens couldn't keep in focus.
It causes controversy as some think it's fake, I promise you that it is not. It involved much research, persistence and luck with the weather! It's the cover shot on our 2024 calendar #IsleofWight #photography
Mike Agg
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Humans!
Please don't send us any more unsolicited nude pics with instructions on how to get to your house.
It's creepy.
Sincerely,
The Aliens.
Mike Agg
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This scenario is why Daniel Dennett is right https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/problem-counterfeit-people/674075/ to say that the act of counterfeiting people is the great danger and that it should be illegal. Do whatever else you want with your AI; you should not be allowed to create fake humans for purposes of deception. https://infosec.exchange/@jerry/110402514310273332
Mike Agg
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Mars - Frost in Utopia Planitia
Full size image: https://flic.kr/p/2oDimoo
I'm pretty sure this is the only hashtag #frostodon from the surface of another planet (so far) 😂
Mission #NASA #VIKING LANDER 2
Instrument: CAMERA 1
SOL 960 / 1979-05-18 local time 12:50
Raw data processed from: https://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/
#Mars #HopeProbe #Space #Spacetodon #Astrodon #Solarocks #Astronomy
Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/AndreaLuck
Mike Agg
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It’s almost as if these large language models are extremely unsuited to the primary application being imagined for them: knowledge retrieval.
I used to be be good at sums.
Feminist, skeptic, hermit.
Joined Nov 2022
