oqmemphis

[oqmemphis]

Oh he's also pretty deep into AI hype (and attempted to explain it to me despite the fact that one of us is doing a compsci degree and it's not him); I know this because I was in the room while he was watching an interview with Masayoshi Son (a VC guy who's currently funding this stuff), in which he claimed that we would have an AI superintelligence by 2030.

"No, we won't."

"You don't think so?"

"If engineers do develop a superintelligence, it's not going to come from the AIs we have right now. Those have reached the limit of what they can do, and there's not even that much market for any of it."

"Really?"

"Do you know how much money OpenAI made last year?"

"How much?"

"Negative five billion dollars."

"What makes you think that?"

"I mean, that's what their financials say. You can look it up. They're spending money they don't have. They're being propped up by SoftBank [Masayoshi Son's company], which is also spending money it doesn't have. They lose money every single time you make a ChatGPT query. Where's the future in this?"

"Sure, but Facebook and Amazon took years to make a profit as well. It's a long-term investment."

"In what? What does this product do? It summarises emails, what else?"

"I use it. It can learn from what you tell it. It gives me relationship advice."

[pause while i try to think of a response other than "and i've never once seen you bring a girl home"]

"...do you have ChatGPT on your phone?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you ask it: please list all the US states that have a letter R in them?"

"...okay?"

[he shows me his phone and i go over to take a look] "Illinois doesn't have an R in it."

"Uh."

"Kentucky doesn't have an R in it. Massachusetts doesn't have an R in it."

"Wait, why does it do that?"

"Because it doesn't know what it's talking about!"

"Fucking Kentucky?"

[i rapidly leave the room before i get to see to what extent i've evaporated his belief in this machine]

I currently have a housemate who seems to have fallen some way down the right-wing conspiracy rabbit hole (although not so much that he's completely intolerable to be around), which is largely depressing but occasionally it means I get to have fun conversations like this:

"Do you know who George Soros is?"

[me internally: oh god what is this about to be] "Investment guy, isn't he?"

"Yeah. You know a lot of people are saying he's evil?"

"I mean, no worse than anyone else who works in finance."

"You think so?"

"I don't know, what's he done?" [i know exactly what he's done, which is "become the subject of every antisemitic conspiracy theory in the last fifty years"]

"He's funding all kinds of things all over the place."

"Like what?"

"Well, he's funding homosexuality."

[i still have to finish washing these dishes so i may as well keep the Socratic dialogue going] "W-- what? What does that mean?"

"Homosexuality? Well, you know when--"

"No, I know what homosexuality is. I have first-hand experience with it, and I haven't had a cheque through the mail. Is that a thing? Can I get funding from George Soros?"

"Well, no..."

"What exactly is it he's funding, then?"

"He's trying to lobby a lot of governments for new laws, that give more acceptance of homosexuality." [he actually said this in about five times as many words but i don't remember them all]

"And you think that's a bad thing?"

"In schools in America [neither he nor I is American] they're pushing it on children, they're saying you can change your gender..."

This is the point where a more sane version of me probably should have politely excused themself, rather than spending another five minutes attempting to explain how transitioning works while he tried to tell me that there is a licensed doctor somewhere in the United States who performed GCS on a minor, but I guess the past is the past.

[oqmemphis]

I currently have a housemate who seems to have fallen some way down the right-wing conspiracy rabbit hole (although not so much that he's completely intolerable to be around), which is largely depressing but occasionally it means I get to have fun conversations like this:

"Do you know who George Soros is?"

[me internally: oh god what is this about to be] "Investment guy, isn't he?"

"Yeah. You know a lot of people are saying he's evil?"

"I mean, no worse than anyone else who works in finance."

"You think so?"

"I don't know, what's he done?" [i know exactly what he's done, which is "become the subject of every antisemitic conspiracy theory in the last fifty years"]

"He's funding all kinds of things all over the place."

"Like what?"

"Well, he's funding homosexuality."

[i still have to finish washing these dishes so i may as well keep the Socratic dialogue going] "W-- what? What does that mean?"

"Homosexuality? Well, you know when--"

"No, I know what homosexuality is. I have first-hand experience with it, and I haven't had a cheque through the mail. Is that a thing? Can I get funding from George Soros?"

"Well, no..."

"What exactly is it he's funding, then?"

"He's trying to lobby a lot of governments for new laws, that give more acceptance of homosexuality." [he actually said this in about five times as many words but i don't remember them all]

"And you think that's a bad thing?"

"In schools in America [neither he nor I is American] they're pushing it on children, they're saying you can change your gender..."

This is the point where a more sane version of me probably should have politely excused themself, rather than spending another five minutes attempting to explain how transitioning works while he tried to tell me that there is a licensed doctor somewhere in the United States who performed GCS on a minor, but I guess the past is the past.

[oqmemphis]

Letter Tournament: BILABIAL PERCUSSIVE vs P WITH SQUIRREL TAIL

ʬ (Bilabial Percussive)

SEED: 15

CODEPOINT: U+02AC LATIN LETTER BILABIAL PERCUSSIVE

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Lezh

BIO: people see the word "labial" and freak out for no reason.

Ꝕ (P with Squirrel Tail)

SEED: 82

CODEPOINTS: U+A754 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P WITH SQUIRREL TAIL, U+A755 LATIN SMALL LETTER P WITH SQUIRREL TAIL

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: X

BIO: it's gotten lucky so far, but how will it do against an opponent this strong?

[link to all polls]

[oqmemphis]

I’m reading that new memoir about working at Facebook,”Careless People,” and it’s just fucking insane.

At one point Facebook wanted to be an international hub for organ donation. The “Lean In” lady asked why she couldn’t go down to Mexico and buy a kidney if her four year old needs one. This is literally on p.57. What the fuck else is going to be in this book if that is on page 57

[oqmemphis]

tournament stats as of the end of round two!

and here's the full bracket by win margin:

every "normal" Latin letter used in ordinary English has now been eliminated, and I think the funniest possible outcome from here is that the final ends up being Glottal Stop vs. Cased Glottal Stop

Letter Tournament: ROUND THREE

[link to all polls]

[oqmemphis]

Letter Tournament: PHI vs LAMBDA

ɸ (Phi)

SEED: 9

CODEPOINT: U+0278 LATIN SMALL LETTER PHI

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Blackletter E

BIO: the IPA symbol for the bilabial fricative (like F but not).

Ꟛ (Lambda)

SEED: 105

CODEPOINTS: U+A7D9 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER LAMBDA, U+A7DA LATIN SMALL LETTER LAMBDA

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Bidental Percussive

BIO: it's really inconvenient to make the slides with this one, because of how it isn't in Noto Serif.

[link to all polls]

[oqmemphis]

Stanley entered the basement and saw the Princess chained to the wall. Knowing that she would destroy the world if left alive, he took his blade and immediately slayed her.

...While talking to her first might seem like a safe choice, Stanley had already been told that the Princess cannot be trusted. Knowing that dropping his weapon would be a terrible mistake, he instead tightened his grip.

*irritated sigh* ...Although the blade had somehow slipped from his grasp, it was still nearby. Correcting his obvious fumble, Stanley reached for the blade and-- oh for God's sake, Stanley...!

[oqmemphis]

when i was like 15 i discovered that my school had been operating a shell company for tax purposes since the 1980s (weirdly they shut it down the year i left). i tried to figure out why, and this got me the exciting distinction of being the only kid ever summoned to the accountant's office.

[oqmemphis]

from the context of the conversation i don't think that's meant as the entire definition, just as one qualifying criterion. he says "if it gives you points..." not "iff it gives you points..." (however i will acknowledge that interpreting it as the latter has much funnier implications)

What's a video game?

Watch the new episode now on Dropout

[oqmemphis]

the distortion of "there is potential profit we did not earn" as "there is money we lost" is fascinating and disgusting to me. "megamediaconglomerate lost $1,000,000,000 to piracy this year" is a flat out lie. it is not true. they did not have a billion dollars, that they now do not have. they felt entitled to one billion dollars, that they did not have, and still do not have. it's an infuriating perversion of the truth

[oqmemphis]

[oqmemphis]

Letter Tournament: X vs P WITH SQUIRREL TAIL

X

SEED: 18

CODEPOINTS: U+0058 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER X, U+0078 LATIN SMALL LETTER X

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Turned Y

BIO: for "xylophone".

Ꝕ (P with Squirrel Tail)

SEED: 82

CODEPOINTS: U+A754 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P WITH SQUIRREL TAIL, U+A755 LATIN SMALL LETTER P WITH SQUIRREL TAIL

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Beta

BIO: a scribal abbreviation of "prae", but the letter itself isn't called "prae" because "P with squirrel tail" is a much better name.

[link to all polls]

[oqmemphis]

well i did this for the number tournament and have apparently learned nothing since then, so here is the state of @janmisali's Latin Letter Tournament after Round 1, with every winner coloured by its vote margin!

extra stats under cut

Only six "conventional" unmodified letters remain: C, E, S, V, W and X. How many will make it through to round three?

[oqmemphis]

god, GOD Freddie Mercury was such a fucking badass

[oqmemphis]

bonus: you have another article written a year prior about a potentially precognitive author who writes a book that appears to mysteriously predict an internationally famous disaster

how much of a high is it to write Queen Elizabeth II as an integral part of your story and then have her die on the Most Important Day of the story which is also when your first book dropped. like bury the survivors LITERALLY predicted her death. it killed her.

[oqmemphis]

the implication here seems to be that a LARP campaign counts as a mathematical paper, which is not technically true but funny enough that i think it should count

@janmisali when you were discussing erdos-bacon-scott numbers earlier, i realized mine is 9!

my erdos number is 3, because in high school i co-wrote a larp with my friend @savrenim , who has an erdos number of 2

my bacon number is 4 from participating in an AP game of wickedness with brennnan lee mulligan

my scott number is 2 from the trans lifeline mega-collab event

[oqmemphis]

the number of spacecraft failures recently has been absolutely insane and it all comes down to tech bros barging into the industry going "it's not that hard wtf is nasa so bad" and then completely skipping out on any testing