Microblog

It's ironic, but telling, that many people feel threatened by pacifists.

Maybe the reason certain people are so sure that machine superintelligence is right around the corner is that they're not very bright, so ChatGPT feels like superintelligence by comparison. At any rate, seeing as artificial general intelligence has ostensibly been five years away every year since 1960, I'm not holding my breath.

Things that you really don't have to say in scientific papers:

• "implications are discussed" — Unlike all those other papers that just drop the mike after the results section? C'mon. At least give some hint of the content of the discussion section, instead of just saying that the discussion section exists.
  
• "emerging evidence" — Maybe wait till it emerges before you count it, Nostradamus. Reviewing the existing evidence is fine; making assertions about the results of research that hasn't been conducted yet seems a tad irresponsible.
  
• "section 9 concludes" — If this is the last sentence of a paragraph that says what's in each section, then the reader can probably figure out that section 9 is the last section. The question is what you've concluded, not whether your paper concludes. Trust me: if you submit an infinite paper to a journal, they won't publish it unabridged.
  
• "available from the authors upon request" — Fine words, but those who've made requests can attest that they're no guarantee of anything. Besides, you're writing for the ages: what use is this promise once you're dead? The best way to show your willingness to provide something is to publish it with the paper.
  
• "participants were thanked" — It's nice that you were polite to subjects, but it's not of any scientific relevance, particularly if you did it after you collected all the data.
  
• "this study has several limitations" — No one study can be all things to all people, much as reviewers may struggle to remember this.
  
• "future research is warranted" — This goes without saying. In the rare case that you really feel like your paper has closed the book on its central question, you'll no doubt make that clear.

Support for the idea of there being more than two genders might be on the rise, but it remains the case that according to a lot of social statistics, there are two ethnicities: Hispanic and not Hispanic. Which I guess explains why supermarkets put all the Hispanic foods in the "ethnic" aisle.

Wookiepedia, the Star Wars fan wiki, is both very comprehensive and insistent on the use of the past tense, which leads to amusing phrasing such as "The color of an object was its property of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way it reflected light." Remember when color existed? Those were the days.

Conspiracy (2001) sounds like an interesting movie, but quite heavy in its subject matter. I'm not sure if I Wannsee that conference.

The humble sponge is the Jesus of kitchen utensils. It becomes the filthiest thing in the house, getting all kinds of weird bacteria into its pores, by taking on the filth of everything else.

If you think Descartes is overrated, consider: he's the only philosopher who's been definitively proven to exist.

"In Yerusalom everything has a price—not even the air you breathe is free. Though at least it is unmetered: since it would not have been cost-effective to implant oxygen-usage monitors in every citizen, a flat breathing-tax is incorporated into the baseline living fee. Panting and gasping come at no extra charge."

—Yves Meynard ("In Yerusalom", 2015)

An excerpt from my 2070 book The 2020 US Presidential Election: A Poorly Recalled Retrospective:

"During negotiations for the following debate, President Turnip demanded that Mr. Bidet (then better known by his first name, 'Brandon') have sex with his eighth wife, Melancholy. Sounds silly, I know, but cuckoldry was a really big thing at the time. Brandon refused, saying the Turnips both stank of beer, specifically Corona. The press was harshly critical of Brandon's rudeness, contributing to the tension that finally erupted in the January 6th attack on capital letters, which in turn caused a nationwide shortage of Shift keys. To this day, we use the word 'shiftless' as an insult."

John: "And I'm not going to live forever, you know, even though I'm going to die trying."

Michael: "Do you want to?"

John: "Why not? Even when sad. What else is there?"

Michael: "When are you sad?"

John: "When I remember I'm not going to live forever."

—Joseph Heller (Closing Time, 1995)

The guys in the EU who came up with the "protected designation of origin" regulations must've been scandalized when they learned that McDonald's french fries aren't actually from France.

"Nevada was discovered many years ago by the Mormons, and was called Carson county. It only became Nevada in 1861, by act of Congress. There is a popular tradition that God Almighty created it; but when you come to see it, William, you will think differently. Do not let that discourage you, though. The country looks something like a singed cat, owing to the scarcity of shrubbery, and also resembles that animal in the respect that it has more merits than its personal appearance would seem to indicate." —Mark Twain (1864)

Kids these days call themselves hemophiliacs, but they can't even name three types of blood cells. Posers.

The God of the Old Testament: "Lads, I spent six entire days making this universe from scratch, so if y'all can't behave in it, I'll murder you in spectacular fashion. Simple as."

The modern God: "Guys, please, stop doing all that stuff I told you not to do! Please! You're ruining it! C'mon, guys, seriously, stop! If you don't stop I'm totally gonna punish you so bad, any day now!"

I know that Bill Gates didn't put microchips in the COVID-19 vaccine because there's no way Microsoft would put their hardware in your blood without a EULA giving them the right to harvest your kidneys.

Say what you want about spherical geometry, you've gotta admit: it's unparalleled.

One underappreciated piece of medical equipment is the humble stick, often a simple tree branch. Medical professionals use this tool as part of end-of-life care to determine whether the patient has ceased all vital activity. Proper technique involves poking the patient with the stick from as far a distance as possible while either holding one's nose or saying aloud "Is it dead?". If complete deanimation is confirmed, best practice is to then shout "Gross!"

I'm a pretty big deal, you know. So big that I have more GitHub followers than Facebook friends.

"I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department." —Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963, "Letter from Birmingham Jail"), demonstrating the use of understatement

Today I saw somebody with a cat on the roof a building across from me. I've seen people walk their dogs on rooves, but this, I have no explanation for this. The cat was on the tubby side, as cats go, so perhaps the owner felt confident she could grab it if it got rambunctious before it jumped off the roof.

Why is agricultural labor so widely demonized? The Devil is depicted with a pitchfork, the Grim Reaper uses a scythe, and anybody who consorts with hoes is considered morally suspect.

When somebody first described to me the plot of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, I thought they were probably making the whole thing up and no such sequel existed.

Pathfinder 2e mentions that "velociraptors and deinonychuses, like their bird cousins, enjoy keeping sparkling baubles in their nests", which suggests the delightful mental image of a (realistically turkey-sized) velociraptor approaching an adventuring party only to grab the wizard's crystal ball in its teeth and dash away.

Silly combinations of adverb and adjective that I've seen:

• highly nontrivial
  
• grotesquely non-canonical
  
• incredibly mediocre

People these days use the word "dopamine" as if it was something they snort lines of: "I got a hit of dopamine when…". Yes, I know you think this makes you sound educated, but actually you're revealing that you barely know what dopamine is or does. Heightened dopaminergic activity is neither necessary nor sufficient for pleasure; ask all the Parkinson's patients on L-DOPA if you don't believe me. It would be more honest to say that you got a hit of one of the four humors, because then the casual listener would more easily apprehend that you're talking out of your tuchus.

While you're at it, stop using the word "DNA" to mean "character". You're not misinforming people about physiology with that one, but it's a no less buffoonish abuse of a scientific term.

I was deep in the archives of an obscure mailing list the other day and I saw an argument in which one guy said "First, to be clear, I do not support" a proposal, without elaborating, so the other guy said "It's hard to respond to an objection without a rationale." That's a mood.

I think it's a tad hypocritical when people who are urinating in public get mad at you for looking.

No man is an island. In fact, in today's highly interconnected world culture, no country is an island, either. Even the island countries aren't islands. Especially the island countries.

"You know, that might be the answer—to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail." —Colonel Korn (Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, 1961)