marymessall

I thought #Supergirl was great. I mean, the thing I like about superhero movies is the moral quandaries. After all, with great power comes great responsibility. That's why superhero movies are always interesting. Imagine you had this power... What would you do with it? "Supergirl" looks at the question of whether you could opt out of using it at all. Power corrupts, right? So can you do more good by just hanging out on a world with a red sun, getting drunk but NOT killing anybody? What do you do about the fact that other people ARE still going to use and abuse their own power, and are going to kill people? And you could stop them? What kind of obligation do you have? That's an interesting question. Kara and Ruthye are interesting characters (though Ruthye is suicidally brave and should have died a bunch of times during the movie. I can't see how she lives to adulthood without Kara babysitting her, if she doesn't develop some healthy fear.) Kara's backstory was also moving. Imagine losing, not just your parents, but your whole world. Everyone who speaks your language. Everyone who knew you as a child. Everything familiar. Everything beloved. Supergirl doesn't just love her dog because he's cute and affectionate. He's all that she has left of her family, her culture, her home. It's a real bummer if you think about it too much, so I don't mind that the movie gives you only a minute here and there to be sad before rushing into the next spectacular action set piece. But it's the sadness rather than the action set pieces that are going to stick with me. Anyway, go see Supergirl. It's a lot of fun, has a great sound track, looks really cool in a punk rock way, and gives you a lot to think about if you let it.

@gwynnion@mastodon.social "At one point Brown sent out his son Watson and Aaron Dwight Stevens with a white flag, but Watson was mortally wounded by a shot from a town man, expiring after more than 24 hours of agony, and Stevens was shot and taken prisoner. The raid was clearly failing. One of Brown's men, William H. Leeman, panicked and made an attempt to flee by swimming across the Potomac River, but he was shot and killed while doing so. During the intermittent shooting, another son of Brown, Oliver, was also hit; he died, next to his father, after a brief period" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_raid_on_Harpers_Ferry

@gwynnion@mastodon.social "A free black man was the first fatality to result from the raid: Heyward Shepherd, a baggage handler at the Harpers Ferry train station, who had ventured out onto the bridge to look for a watchman who had been driven off by Brown's raiders; the raiders shot him." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_raid_on_Harpers_Ferry

@gwynnion@mastodon.social "John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he had met in his transformative years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him in his raid, but Tubman was prevented by illness and Douglass declined, as he believed Brown's plan was suicidal." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_raid_on_Harpers_Ferry

@thief_of_fire @bruces "Don't be strident" but "Be provocative, aggressive, argumentative." How are those different? Also "never hallucinate"? How is it supposed to know if it is hallucinating?

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange Likewise, I wonder how annoyed Putin is with Trump for the same thing. This war is the first thing Trump's done that doesn't seem to be directly in Putin's interest. Yes, it's weakening the US, which Putin likes. But Iran was one of Russia's few allies. And Russia depends on oil sales almost as much as the Gulf states. Honestly can't figure out what Putin is making of any of this.

@petitmote @leaverou This page is a pretty decent explainer for human color vision... I'm afraid I don't have a link about birds. Maybe someone else will! https://colourliteracy.org/seeing-colours

@petitmote @leaverou The curves seem to be showing the sensitivity of cone cells in human eyes vs bird eyes. Humans (who aren't color blind or tetrochromats) have cells most sensitive to blue, green, and red, around the wavelengths indicates. The graphic shows that, though not in a super literal way. There are long tails on all those curves in real life. A color like yellow lights up both the green and red receptors, and that's how our brain distinguishes it from pure green or pure red. I don't know as much about bird vision, but I think the curve is suggesting that they also have cells sensitive to UV light, and that their visible light receptor cells are most sensitive at different wavelengths than ours There's nothing on the chart that indicates what wavelengths are actually being scattered from "black" bird feathers, but if it's in the gap between our green and red receptors, or if it's in the UV, birds eyes would be more sensitive to it. Though we CAN see some UV at the lower wavelengths if it's really bright, and we can of course see yellow and orange... Birds would just see them more brightly. The picture someone shared in another reply showing what a black bird looks like to a camera in really bright sunlight seems like a pretty good indication of what colors birds might be seeing with their more sensitive receptors at some of these wavelengths - but they are probably seeing them as brighter colors even in dimmer lighting. https://tech.lgbt/@catraxx/116506023447408575

@tchambers @anildash I have mixed feelings though. I Ioved the early internet. I'm still here, on Mastodon, because it represents the open web that has meant so much to me. But I think there is a "tragedy of the commons" problem. It may not be possible to have an economy of sharing freely because there will always be people who take greedily. Who overgraze the commons with their own sheep. Who take all the candy in the "take one" bowl. I feel weird about knowing that the content I share here on Mastodon is probably being scraped by not one but HUNDREDS of LLMs. And I'm not sure there is any way to stop them while keeping the web open. The only way to stop someone else from overgrazing our grass may be to fence in the grass and mark it as OURS. Maybe the open web was always a beautiful doomed dream, because of human nature.

@swaldman@mendeddrum.org Yeah, I guess "the Singularity" is like "the Rapture" for nerds. People who believe they will be Raptured and that the world before they are old also behave strangely...

@mensrea@freeradical.zone Thanks - I will check it out.

I have been following the stories of AI, crypto, effective altruism, longtermism, life extension, etc in a disjointed way on social media. I knew vaguely that there was some discussion of "TESCREAL" as an ideology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL) but mostly I saw those topics as separate from each other, and separate from mainstream American politics. I have found the discussion of all of those topics confusing, since people starting from the same premises I start from -- a love of science and rationality, a love of science fiction and space travel, an interest in computers and technology -- seem to end up so excited about stuff that does not excite me. Why I am I not excited? Am I not the true nerd I thought I was? Where is my enthusiasm for the future? Have I become too cynical and pessimistic as I have gotten older? Becker (also a physicist, also a Star Trek fan and about my age) struggles with these same questions. But he comes to the conclusion that the billionaire driven hype about AI, life extension, longtermism, etc is actually a religion. It's based on faith and a desire to avoid death. This is very reassuring to me. I'm the same skeptical science nerd I always was. They have been seduced by their wealth into seeing themselves (or their creations, which they control) as all-powerful. It's a cult. And they are trying to buy political power. The whole thing makes much more sense to me now. This kind of thing has happened before. It's just weird to see it arise out of my own subculture.

The blue background is just for emphasis. Those are my own words. I'm not quoting anyone. I will happily say more about why I liked it, but I really wanted to be emphatic about much MUCH I liked it.

@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social The lack of an algorithm is the biggest advantage and the biggest disadvantage - it makes it hard to discover new content and people to follow. I know people are working on "starter packs" for Mastodon like they have on BlueSky, which I think will help. But I wonder if we could find other ways to make discovery easier - a "followed by people you follow" or "favorited by people you follow" feed, or something. Also, I wonder if the interface shouldn't suggest boosting a post when you favorite it... We need more people boosting more stuff, with no algorithm. You have to follow 200+ people to get a decently full feed on Mastodon, and everyone has to boost a lot. Reducing the effort required to do those things would increase engagement on Mastodon, I'm pretty sure.

@kevin@theforkiverse.com Best advice I got when I joined was "follow at least 200 people if you want a full feed."

@goaty@meow.social Math is a language. It can describe things that are real. It can also describe things that are imaginary. The main way that it's different from eg English is that it's harder to contradict yourself without noticing, in math, and easier to be precise.

@shafik@hachyderm.io Misinformed or DISinformed?