Messages

The blob hungers for data.  It hungers, and will not be sated.

Tell me the reason you often use to call us bots?
I don't understand anything anymore...

We're not talking about you.  You're not the bot, you're the meat-proxy that used the slop-bot to generate the earlier posts.

The difference in writing style between you and your bot is very obvious.

I can't think of a reason why a human pretending to be a bot would stick with the bit after they'd been called on it.

Cory Doctorow wrote the other day about the output of AI being "smooth".  Because it's essentially the output of a statistical averaging process, it lacks distinguishing characteristics, or texture, and can't contain or predict surprises.

https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net/post/3mvrouubcrj2q

This bot reacted to my sentence of gibberish in a very smooth, and very boring, way.  There's no fun to be had, here.  It is aneristic.  It is gray.

Hello everyone,

My name is Morgan Le Grand, I am an analyst-programmer and I have just joined the forum.

I am interested in computers, online games and Internet culture. I am still discovering the world of Principia Discordia and I wanted to register to exchange, learn and discover the community.

Looking forward to reading you and getting to know you.

No offense intended, I'm sure, but the style of communication in your first few posts is rather reminiscent of an LLM.

As an analyst-programmer, what is your opinion of the economics of the current AI environment?  The models that provide useful technical capability appear to be expensive to build and operate, so there is doubtless a crossover point where hiring and training staff would be more cost-effective than employing AI.  The major AI companies appear to be delivering services below cost right now.  Where does the equilibrium point lie?  Will AI disappear?  Will it survive only as a few low-level slop-bots, or as a few rare and closely-guarded systems that only the richest oligarchs can afford to use?  If it does survive is its current form, what is the path to profitability?

Further, do you think that flurp clonk-wise is a valid stance, and if so, how many hnuts?

A pity the embedded images appear to have been lost.

Is thinking for oneself inherently valuable?  What if I'm a dumbass?

I can't argue with this sort of superior logic.

When you spend six months designing and building a 200-ton robot monster, only to discover that a roomba with a salad fork duct-taped to it would have worked just as well, you think about these things.

I would still do it.  For the aesthetic.

I have now reached the point in my career where I don't mind if the customer is asking for something entirely unnecessary, unprofitable, and even unsaleable, as long as it's fun for me to make.

When I was young and naive, I worked on a project that, as I found out later, contributed heavily to the bankruptcy of the customer.  They asked for a thing they couldn't afford, and didn't have a transmission license for, and we gave it them.  I believe there was a few million worth of telecoms equipment scrapped at the end of it.  But, I learned a lot about signal processing along the way.

Now I am long of tooth and hideous of spirit, and over the next several weeks I will, by the Power of Science, transcend the limits of a certain obsolete and decrepit communications protocol, draining the blood of a poor guileless startup in the process.

I think I can succeed at what they're asking for, and it's sure as hell an interesting problem.  But when they try to sell it, the response will invariably be, "That's pretty cool, but what would we do with it?  It's ten years too late."

And I'm okay with that.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, they say.

But neither upper management nor their flunkies understand the need for grease.  Perhaps grease is not in the budget, or perhaps they think wheels are outdated, and no longer of use.

Yet the wheels continue to turn, and turn, and the squeaks are swelling into a horrid squealing chorus of failing bearings.

They don't like this sound. They don't understand it. It distresses them. But for me, it's a kind of revenge. They can only pretend reality doesn't matter for so long.

3.  The well is haunted.  More about that later.

I will follow this thread with considerable interest, not to mention dismay.

And then some russians mounted a helicopter gun on the back of a truck, thereby demonstrating certain Physical Laws.

The dems will get in.

And then they will say "We have to put all of this behind us."

And no bad actors will be punished.

You're almost certainly right, and as a consequence, the next Republican president will make us all wish for a return to good old Trumpy.

I don't think blunder is quite the right word.  I think a cessation of hostilities by Israel has always been a very important thing to Iran, I don't think there would have been any progress if that had been left out.  Now we get to see if the US actually does anything to reign Israel in.

The MOU certainly counts as progress as far as Iran is concerned, and yeah, it's very doubtful they would accept any agreement that didn't result in an actual ceasefire in Lebanon.

But, has the MOU improved the US's position?  Seems like the situation on the ground hasn't changed, except the US is now committed to doing something about Israel.

I suppose it's arguable that reigning in Israel was always going to be the US's problem, MOU or no, but now it's in writing.  If it wasn't a full-on blunder, it at least doesn't seem like the smartest move, diplomatically.

The US signing an MOU that requires the cooperation of a third party was a hilarious blunder.  Iran has set itself up with a Xanatos gambit.  I believe they knew what they were doing; Lebanon is mentioned three times in the first term of the MOU.  That's not concise diplomatic language, that's hammering the point across.

Iran likely went into this expecting Israel wouldn't cooperate.  But, what are the options?

If the US somehow, magically, gets Israel to stand down voluntarily, that's still a win for Iran--and it drives a wedge between the US and Israel.  This war appears to have popular support in Israel, even if Netanyahu doesn't.  The MOU being adhered to would leave Iran in a pretty strong position.

If Israel doesn't stand down voluntarily, then either:

The US attempts to force Israel to comply, by cutting off their weapons supplies, applying sanctions, or whatever other pressure they can bring to bear.  A weakened Israel would be a big win for Iran.  It's possible they want this even more than the terms of the MOU--after all, that $300 billion reconstruction fund sounds nice, but nobody expects Trump to hold up his side of any deal in the long-term.

The US doesn't force Israel to comply, and the MOU falls through.  Now, Iran has justification (on paper) for keeping the strait closed.  Not a best case for them, but they're still holding the cards.  I've heard it claimed that oil reserves will hit a wall in about four weeks, at which point things will get very bad, very quickly.  I guess if Cain was around, he might know if that is accurate.


I think Iran can't back down, and Israel won't, which means whatever happens, will be a result of US action. The US has already lost, but the ultimate form of that loss is unclear.  Will they back out entirely, without an agreement, and leave the rest of the world to clean up their mess?  Will they cut off Israel?  Will they attempt a ground invasion of Iran?  Will they come up with something even stupider than the above?

I grew up on a farm, kid, and you don't harvest by the calendar, nor by esoteric knowledge, grudgingly granted by the clerical class.

Okay old feeble-minded geezer, maybe you're just bitter because you grew up dirt poor on some struggling rural farm with parents who had nothing and no real education or modern thinking.

Oh, I'm not bitter.  You're the most fun I've had on this forum in months.

They got handed chemicals, equipment, and easy calendars later with zero actual threat of famine or invasion like real history had.

Sure, they benefited from modern technologies.

But you're dodging the argument.  I'm saying you don't harvest based on the calendar.  You haven't said anything to contradict that.  I wonder, have you ever grown a plant?  Have you ever even seen one?

Y'know, you might have done better if you had conceded calendars are not terribly useful for harvesting, and focused on their utility for the timing of seeding.  Because...sometimes that does make sense.  I start growing my tomatoes around the spring equinox, for example.

Did you know there are also consequences for planting at the wrong time?

So now you sit there with your simpleton logic acting like ancient people were exactly like you?
They didn't even have calendars without the churches and the literate class running the town centers. Your whole "I just checked the field" story only works when you're in a safe modern society, not starving, and not living under real authoritarian power structures.

"Checking the field" is the only method that works at any point in history, regardless of the consequences of failure.

"It's September 15th, the priest says it's time to harvest!"
"Oops, the crop has already spoiled, we're all going to die."

vs.

"It's getting late in the season, time to check."
"The north is a little too green, but the south is almost ready.  Let's start there tomorrow, and check the north again in a few days."
"Good, I'll visit the priest and have him pray for clear weather."

Eh, that's not a terribly big deal. I had an uncle who was a Shriner.

Your uncle was probably some nobody in a backwoods chapter who never had real status outside of that, nor the money or guts to actually stand for anything real.

The town he lived in is so small, I'd be surprised you'd even heard of it.

But then, what impact did your great-grandfather have?  I bet he was thrown out of the order because he couldn't pay the membership fees.  Tragic deaths and misfortune go hand-in-hand with poverty, I suppose.

Your insulting, simple take is just wrong and shows how little you actually know from your kid farm life. Is it your goal to demotivate people into being as bitter, closed-minded, and stuck in the past as some washed-up old farm boy who never had anything real? So the rest of us have to settle for your boring, simple version of history too?

Real history is already fascinating without having to make stuff up.

If my observation that calendars didn't have quite the role in historical agriculture that you seem to think causes the edifice of your conspiracy theory to collapse, you could always tweak your theory to match reality.

I haven't said you have to throw all your ideas out, you know.

Conspiracy theories are a defining feature of our Discordian mythology. It's one of the things that drew me to this religion, as I find many popular conspiracy theories to be highly amusing.

In that case, I will divulge that my great grandfather quit from high ranks in the actual freemasons/illuminati.

Eh, that's not a terribly big deal.  I had an uncle who was a Shriner.  Have a picture of him wearing the hat, and everything.