“By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient.”
— Quicksilver (Neal Stephenson)
Category Archives: Quotable & Notes
Quotable
“A chap like me could make himself pretty useful in a labour-camp.”
— 1984 by George Orwell
“Why are most people who are against abortion people you wouldn’t want to fuck in the first place?”
— George Carlin
“Chatbots have personalities”
“It’s artificial, but these chatbots have personalities. I think people will become more attached, not necessarily to their physical devices, but to the behaviors that these devices have” — Gizmodo
The more I use the voice prompt feature of ChatGPT, the stronger the illusion I’m conversing with a…person. Sky (the ‘voice’ I chose) already seems more interesting than half of my contacts in meat space (remember that term?)
Hey, Siri. Sound…anxious
The following excerpt is from William Gibson’s Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988). More than 20 years before Apple came up with Siri.
“Angela,” the house said, its voice quiet but compelling, “I have a call from Hilton Swift…
“Executive override?” She was eating baked beans and toast at the kitchen counter.
“No,” it said, confidingly.
“Change your tone,” she said, around a mouthful of
beans. “Something with an edge of anxiety.”
“Mr. Swift is waiting,” the house said nervously.
“Better,” she said, carrying bowl and plate to the washer, “but I want something closer to genuine hysteria…”
“Will you take the call?” The voice was choked with tension.
“No,” she said, “but keep your voice that way, I like it.”
I’m not a big fan of “voice assistants,” but I might be if they ever work like Gibson’s.
“Change your tone, something like the priest in the marriage scene in Princess Bride.”
Sigma Male
I had never heard to term “sigma male” before coming across it in a review of David Fincher’s new movie “The Killer” by Max Read. According to Mr. Read, “sigma philosophies include social asceticism, dorm-room Nietzscheanism, weird resentment, boorish self-justification.”
Or, more simply, “If you don’t have any friends, and people don’t really want to talk to you? You might just be a Sigma Male.”
Wikipedia gives the term a more positive spin:
Sigma male is an internet slang term to describe masculine men. The term gained prominence within Internet culture during the late 2010s and early 2020s, and has inspired numerous memes, graffitis and videos. It is used to denote a male who is equally dominant to an alpha male, but exists outside the alpha-beta male hierarchy as a “lone wolf”. In the manosphere, it is regarded as the “rarest” kind of male.
Fincher is best known for the movies Se7en, Gone Girl, Zodiac, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, and The Social Network. All pretty dark. The Killer is available on Netflix.
Jobs
“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest…. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist.”
–Buckminster Fuller, 1970
More on Jobs here…
Somehow it all went wrong
“But somehow it all went wrong instead. The onward march of progress has wandered off down a dark alley and been mugged. The Berlin Wall and Vietnam; the Rwandan Genocide, the Twin Towers, Camp Delta; suicide bombings and global warming. […]There was no progress. No stability. There was just the question of whether things happened far enough away.”
— Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
Appearing to be religious
“There is nothing more important than appearing to be religious.” — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1532)
Stay Put
“The key to living during this environmental crisis is to STAY PUT. Focus on living and existing in your corner of the Earth, protect it. Travel and moving around all the time is so overrated. A lot of it is a waste of time. Create your own bliss where you are right now. Stop searching the world for it!”
STALINGRAD The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943
I’ve only read a handful of history books (crime fiction is my passion) but they’ve all be great reads. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century; Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civ89l War Era; Nothing Like It In the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869; and Wires West: The Story of the Talking Wires. I’m currently reading STALINGRAD The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor.
(Wikipedia) “Stalingrad is a narrative history written by Antony Beevor of the battle fought in and around the city of Stalingrad during World War II, as well as the events leading up to it. The book starts with Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the subsequent drive into the Soviet Union. Its main focus is the Battle of Stalingrad, in particular the period from the initial German attack to Operation Uranus and the Soviet victory.” Continue reading