a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
empty's comments
activity:
empty  ·  3147 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why is Modern Art so Bad?

Hoo boy. Prager "University". This stuff is just right-wing neocon brainwashing, folks.

Sorry, this comment is private.
empty  ·  3153 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Some people worth following

I love you.

empty  ·  3153 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Affinity, anonymity and parameter mismatch: a Hubski hypothesis

is good post

Sorry, this comment is private.
empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Everything is Broken - computers are terrible and everything is hackable

I don't take it personally, unless it's actually personal (i.e, directed at me). But still, I'm going to call it out when it makes sense to do so, especially on social media forums like this, where I don't have to suffer the extra emotional impact of having this sort of conversation face to face. My voice, and the voice of millions others, won't be heard otherwise.

I have a disability that is the subject of mockery in mainstream society. Can you imagine if it were the same for cancer or AIDS? It USED to be the same as AIDS, but we fucking stopped, didn't we? One out of five people with my disability, which is hereditary, die because of it. It killed fucking Robin Williams. People like me are highly functional, higher than average, sometimes, and you use the same words to describe my disability as you do to call into question the judgement of your rivals.

Do you not see how this makes life far more difficult for me?

Sorry, this comment is private.
Sorry, this comment is private.
empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Everything is Broken - computers are terrible and everything is hackable

Thanks for the edit. I really do appreciate it. I saw your message without the edit in my inbox and I kind of went, "Fuck, another asshole I have to unfollow now."

I really couldn't have said just yes, though. Then people who have been poisoned by toxic opinions will look at it and go, "Yep, she's one of those batty social justice warriors, just like /r/TumblrInAction told me.".

But that's just crazy obvious filterbubble brainwashing. They only are exposed to these criticisms of themselves through the filter bubble that shows them how the critics are obviously crazy. See how deep it goes? How many meta-levels there are to how the mentally ill are stigmatized and politicized even in everyday personal politics?

So if I just said "yes", I'd only be hurting people like you, who are trapped in this crazy internet hivemind of mind-control through filter bubbling. WAKE UP, PLEASE, I'M BEGGING YOU.

I can't think of a day that's gone by where I haven't heard someone say something about the mentally ill in a way that wasn't either 1. saying the mentally ill are CURAAAZZZY and unpredictable and violent, when pretty much the opposite is true (I'm very set in my habits and I've been a victim of violence throughout my life, even into now, because of my mental illness and NOT because of my actions), or 2. saying that someone they disagreed with was "crazy", effectively labeling then with my disability because they disagreed with or didn't communicate well with some person.

empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Jon Stewart, Patron Saint of Liberal Smugness

Wait, we should just talk to them. We know who they are.

empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Everything is Broken - computers are terrible and everything is hackable

The word "nutty" wouldn't have the connotation of "bad idea" if we didn't stigmatize mental illness, and we stigmatize mental illness because we use words like "crazy" and "nutty" to describe bad ideas. See how it's a self-perpetuating cycle?

Whenever people phrase things like that, what they really mean is "I don't understand why you want to do X." But instead of phrasing the dialogue in a way that asks why they want to do X, instead the mentally ill are scapegoated. This is literally the definition of scapegoating. You don't want to actually talk about why you think the idea is bad, or just tell someone that their judgement is bad... instead you choose a group of people with a biological illness with negative connotations to associate with the behavior that you don't understand the motivations for, because OF COURSE no one would want to be associated with that group of people.

People with mental illnesses are not stupid. They are not irrational. I am stable the majority of the time. But because of language like the example you gave, and because of the way the mentally ill are portrayed in fiction, I have to keep my disability a secret at work because otherwise people will question every single thing I do and use my disability to discredit me when I disagree with them. That is the life I have to live because people use the same words to refer to my disability as they do to refer to unpredictable, dangerous behavior, even though there is no correlation.

Am I calling for the banishment of that usage of the word "nuts" or "nutty"? Not really, but in my ideal world? Yeah. Like, is it really so hard to phrase it in a way that doesn't promote the stigma? Instead of saying "You'd have to suffer from a disability that will likely lead to your death to try to code that up in Javascript!", why not just say, "I don't understand why you'd want to code that up in Javascript!" or "Why the hell do you want to code that up in Javascript?"

It hurts me a lot more than the benefit you gain from being able to use that word. By using that sort of language, you are directly contributing to the complex of memes which hurts me directly on a daily basis. And when I say it hurts me, I don't mean "oh you made me feel bad by saying that". I mean you contribute to a culture where people mistreat me and get away with it in the workplace, in my own family, in school, etc.

empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Everything is Broken - computers are terrible and everything is hackable

yep, pretty much.

the only thing the security industry can do at this point is to make hacking more and more difficult and to put more and more restrictions on what the user can install on their devices. eventually we get to the point where you need a fancy education to understand software exploitation, and at that point the Powers That Be have control over everything because they're the only ones with easy access to higher education.

and then the revolution comes and we smash up all the machines.

empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Everything is Broken - computers are terrible and everything is hackable

Do you know what an innuendo is? :V

empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Everything is Broken - computers are terrible and everything is hackable

The phrase only has meaning because it's an innuendo. I think you know more than one meaning for the word "nut". When you use that phrase, the implication is "The problem was caused by human error, and the human in question is mentally ill (a nut).". And maybe you don't think that, but you don't think there's plenty of people who DO make that inference?

It's the same thing as the ID-10-T error. It wouldn't have the sense of "human error due to mental illness" it didn't have a double-meaning, just like ID-10-T has the double meaning of "idiot". This is a pretty basic facet of natural language that middle school children understand.

I've been at jobs where people have used the exact phrase that you used so that they could insult me to my face about my mental health. When I call them out on it, they hide behind the same sort of explanation you're giving now.

Of course, I am not accusing you of doing that, because you weren't. But what you are doing is making the phrase socially acceptable, and thus giving assholes a cover to use those phrases with plausible deniability. It's kind of the same thing (although not as severe) as the people who think it's a good idea to still have Confederate flags flying around.

I don't expect to change your mind on this issue in this conversation, but I hope you'll at least try to understand my point of view.

empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Everything is Broken - computers are terrible and everything is hackable

    an aphorism of purely mechanical origin

This is false.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_error

The phrase you're using is and always has been derogatory. There's no ambiguity as to what's being referred to as there is with "call a spade a spade".

empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Everything is Broken - computers are terrible and everything is hackable

Please don't use phrases like "loose nut behind the wheel". In all these situations you've described, the "loose nut" is just some person. Often an intelligent, mentally healthy person who did something any person might do. By using ableist language like "loose nut", all you're doing is scapegoating the mentally ill and contributing to the stigma of mental illness.

Please stop doing that. You are actively making my life more difficult, as well as the lives of countless others.

empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Composing music with Neural Networks

(3) is what figures out (2), so there's no need to have (2) independent of (3). (1) is the open-source code.

By design, this model is trained on MIDIs and generates MIDIs. The README explains how to use the code, but it's designed to run on linux (specifically, the sort of GPU AWS instance the author mentions in the article.). However, once you've trained a model, you can just use it over and over again to generate midis, without needing a fancy GPU.

What I'm getting at is: If you can feed MIDI files into your thing, you're good to go.

empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Jon Stewart, Patron Saint of Liberal Smugness

Yup. I keep running around having to tell people to not follow Grendel. I have a mitigation for this problem that I'm developing, but it won't be able to be released until there's an official hubski API.

empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Jon Stewart, Patron Saint of Liberal Smugness

Yes, and I blocked him for similar reasons. But like... why provoke him right before blocking him?

Sorry, this comment is private.
empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Composing music with Neural Networks

What would you need for Reaktor to make use of it?

empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Composing music with Neural Networks

We're still a long way away. While these new results are impressive, it's still basically a very complex markov chain. It doesn't understand anything about the emotional impact of the music it writes, nor how to tailor a piece to evoke a certain emotion in the listener. It's not an AI that we can ask to make a certain type of composition; there's no "Computer, write me a waltz! Write me a melody for this love song I wrote! Write me some spooky music!". It can only create based on what it's been trained on.

And I suppose it's arguable that "creating based on what you've been trained on" is what humans do, too. But there's a lot more to creativity than that. The RNN that made this music is groundbreaking in its ability to discover and reproduce the structure of human music, but it isn't intelligent, and it's nowhere near AGI.

empty  ·  3154 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dear hubski, when do you feel the most powerful?

I think being well-dressed has a lot to do with it. I feel powerful when I feel safe, and I feel safe when I'm dressed well.

I used to feel powerful by tricking creeps on 4chan into downloading a trojan by telling them it was a webcam viewer for some girl. They'd run it and I'd spy on them, then after a few days, take over their keyboard and mouse and start messing with them. Talk to them through input boxes on websites they were visiting.

It was a stupid teenager thing to do, but it did make me feel powerful.

empty  ·  3155 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Some people worth following

Also, you're Great!

Sorry, this comment is private.
empty  ·  3156 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Jon Stewart, Patron Saint of Liberal Smugness

I don't think it's necessary to tell people when you've blocked them. All it does is get one little jab in, and it's to tell them you're not going to listen to their response. This normalizes the "shots fired" that signal beginning of flame wars, and it's a slippery slope from that to the degeneration of thoughtful discourse site-wide.

But for the record, I already had him filtered, too. :P

empty  ·  3156 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Some people worth following

Being on this list of Great People makes me feel Great. %)

empty  ·  3156 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Some people worth following

I like that you like me.

This thread is going to turn into a networking party.

I do not.

empty  ·  3157 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The modern internet sucks: Bring back Geocities

FWIW, tumblr DOES allow users to write their own HTML, and even javascript!