TechTakes

not only are the DCs burning water and harming ears, we’re on to the stage of taiwan not farming rice in service of making more chips

She shows us one of her rice paddies. It used to hold enough water to raise ducks. Now it's nothing but cracked earth and a few crispy flowers.

I’m neither a climate nor agriculture scientist so I can’t guess the longer term impact of this; I immediately wonder whether the soil could get harmed by disuse over years, along with other warming-related problems

I’m too angry to even sneer properly at this. it’s so fucking obviously nuts, but perverse incentives roll right ahead unchecked.

I think some people are from hell

Here is the worst thing I didn't have to read today from a transhumanist:

Yes but laws are often outpaced, presumably having your dog walk in and say he liked it is a pretty good reason to have your bestiality charge thrown out and perhaps move on to the discrimination countersuit.

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Also this may have historic reasons, as the first futa was drawn centuries ago, long before the technology that enabled transgenderism, with breasts being the key difference.

Bonus round:

Catching up on SMBC and finding a quality sneer I'm a little bit surprised I didn't find here sooner.

Can I get an abot?

https://bsky.app/profile/jonpennington.bsky.social/post/3kxqkmezcwe2o

I went to college with him. Yarvin is curdled nerd rage personified. He also lies about his age. He's older than me & claims a birth date that would make him younger than me.

I was on a Quiz Bowl team with him & whenever he would buzz in for an answer, he would jerk his body spasmodically, which the other people on the team called "Yarvinating."

He's the kind of player that other Quiz Bowl players hate, known in the subculture as a "pickoff lord." That is to say, he's the kind of guy who would pad his stats by diving in to buzz on easy questions, make wild guesses on intros so he could get more points than teammates, etc.

Hand to God. If anybody disputes me, I've got at least one other person who would remember the "Yarvinating" anecdote. I've got legit Quiz Bowl cred. I used to play against Ken Jennings before he was even a Jeopardy! contestant, let alone host.

I connected on Facebook with a former classmate, somebody else from that team who once appeared in a College Jeopardy! tournament. We're both kind of just gobsmacked that we were there for somebody else's Lex Luthor origin story.

Another bit of tea... He lies about his age. He was an upperclassman at Brown when I was a freshman & he claims to be younger than me.

see also https://www.qbwiki.com/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

Yarvin played on the College Bowl-only team for Brown from 1989 to 1992. In 2021 he published a poem[2] stating that "No one can fucking touch me / In College Bowl." Brown failed to advance out of the Region 1 tournament for all four years of Yarvin's participation, making his lifetime record at intercollegiate tournaments 0-4 and demonstrating that, at a minimum, the Brandeis, MIT, and Williams teams were capable of "touching" his performance.

so what rhymes with Proton getting into AI grifting? you fucking guessed it

the wife sent this one to me

Study shock! AI hinders productivity and makes working worse [Thomas Claburn, The Register]

Personal opinion: c'mon bubble

the lesswrong to MAGA pipeline

(from twitter)

Japan supermarket chain uses AI to gauge staff smiles, speech tones in quality service push (South China Morning Post).

Called “Mr Smile”, it was developed by the Japanese technology company InstaVR and is said to be able to accurately rate a shop assistant’s service attitude.

It has also been designed with “game” elements that invite staff to improve their attitude by challenging their scores.

The company said its goal was to “standardise staff members’ smiles and satisfy customers to the maximum”.

Thanks I hate it

Press release here: https://www.aeonretail.jp/pdf/240701R_1.pdf or here: https://www.instavr.co.jp/news/aeon-retail-smile-2024-07-01/ (Lots of big words so I didn't try to read it)

InstaVR's English website here: https://www.instavr.co/

more on the nsfw side but this is a kinda interesting finding/use of existing tech

Crowdstrike offers 10 USD gift cards as apology.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/crowdstrike-offers-a-10-apology-gift-card-to-say-sorry-for-outage/

Those that try to use them find out that Crowdstrike can't even buy gift cards at scale.

No idea how true it is but apparently crowdstrike fired some of their QA and replaced it with AI, anybody heard about this? (source bsky) (Also 'AI' is doing a lot of work here, that could be anything)

https://xcancel.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1816925777377788295#m

Yud requires calories for his massive brain.

Whatever shambling corpse of Toys "R" Us still exists has released "the first OpenAI SORA generated brand commercial."

It looks absolutely dire, particularly in motion, but posters are still falling over themselves to call it "cool" and "exciting" or claim that people "might not notice" that it's complete and utter arse.

Have not read it yet, but seems relevant to our collective interests. NSFW due to NASB. Accelerationism, amphetamine philosophy, and the Death Trip. (A long post about Nick Land).

Trump selecting JD Vance has his running mate has led to stuff I know from this venue bleeding into stuff I follow (shamefully) for US politics. Case in point, behold Mencius Moldbug between Richard Hanania and some racist dweeb from Cambridge:

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/07/meet-you-at-the-bottom-if-there-really-is-one

Not everyone wants ai for their search tools

https://xcancel.com/jrawson/status/1814232925967089808

The fuck.

Reposting this from the last Stubsack here by request.

NASBLOL (I'm not sure this abbreviation will work out): "Investors in anti-Biden cryptocurrencies are getting absolutely destroyed." (Source)