Nate Cull @natecull@mastodon.social

Novas: The Whole Ridiculous Thing

http://natecull.org/wordpress/2019/09/09/playlist-notes-novas-chronology/

Six episodes in and Legend of the Condor Heroes 2017 continues to impress me as the best TV version yet of probably *the* most famous Chinese martial arts epic ever.

If you like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, etc, then this is a great time to get on board the Jin Yong train.

Genghis Khan! The Jin-Song wars! Kung fu princesses! (multiple of) Kung fu witches! The forbidden NINE YIN BONE CLAW skill! A martial arts tournament! (of course) Romance! (multiple of) A big war!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4crHldKx6c&index=1&list=PLJIYzNjvxw8v2TkPFnjYx-xD2IqOKjbYk

That's it everyone, my timeline is now tuned (chef kiss) perfectly

@Gargron @enkiv2 @kitkat @eq

A maybe slightly more approachable article about the questions Ihave in my head about how Prolog handles questions.

http://natecull.org/wordpress/2021/08/03/dataspace-14-what-question/

I suppose the upside, if one can call it that, is that eventually actual life-and-death poverty might come back on the radar of progressive political issues.

The downside is that it might come back the same way it did last time, via actual Bolshevism.

I don't think Bolshevism was a particularly great thing last time and I am not looking forward to it reappearing as a force on the world stage.

New Zealand right now has Jacinda Adern, world's darling, heading a nominally Labour government. And I like Jacinda. I voted for her. I like her she handles crises.

But.

Even under her watch, the NZ housing market has spiralled from merely $unaffordable into $insanely_unaffordable .

I don't get how this has been allowed to happen. I guess maybe it can't not happen, any more than we can stop the tide from rising (now), but what's happening to wealth disparity is terrifying.

I feel like the world's governments learned an exceptionally poor lesson from the global financial crisis of 2008:

"We must ensure that the cost of housing always rises faster than wages, or there will be global economic ruin"

I don't think they've thought ahead to what lies at the end of the road that they think is avoiding ruin.

I Never Thought I'd Live To See A Million (Dollars Being The Value Of A 1950s Three-Bedroom House)

Does Nate Silver run MySQL Wonkbench

Also Economists:

But all of this completely falls over if any human anywhere ever pays a cent in tax, of course.

Economists:

The world is obviously exactly as good as it ever could be because if it wasn't, someone would have improved it by now. This is because humans always make the most rational decision possible at every moment, because it is literally impossible for any human to ever act irrationally, let alone an entire society full of them.

Pretty 2021 lyrics for 1983, in my opinion.

But the early 80s were way ahead of their time.

🎵Empty embraces
Where love can never show
And hearts are made of chrome🎵

🎵 There's no reaction
It's not the place to be
If you are humanware🎵

Someone removed The Visible Targets "Life In The Twilight Zone" from Youtube.

There are vandals and wreckers everywhere.

http://jivetimerecords.com/northwest/visible-tagets/

I mean the Internet just can't be bad because it's market based. If anyone were unhappy with any part of the current situation, why, they'd just vote with their sovereign dollars and walk away! That's why markets always produce the most efficient outcomes for everyone.

Anyway, everything is fine even if the tech industry is gaining vast fine-grained control over everyone's lives, because Joe Biden will certainly remain US President forever, there will never again be a Republican in that seat, Trump was certainly the last bad US President, and no other bad people will ever take control of all this huge Western machine of surveillance and control.

I mean sure, that last one sounds pretty ridiculous, like surely obviously nobody would go along with *that*.

And yet.

Things I once thought were ridiculous and over the top in terms of data privacy are happening daily now, so I just don't know anything anymore.

There may come a time too when USB drives themselves are just banned also. You have to transfer data by cloud storage and storing locally is considered weird and dangerous.

Wouldn't even take too much in the way of USB firmware malware to make that a thing.

If you compile your own software, or host your own website, and you don't get a formal publishing certificate for your code or your website from a recognised corporate or governmental entity, you are a bad person and your code should not run and your website should not be accessed. It's as simple as that.

This is the thinking and it is coming to your own desktop very soon.

But what's the harm of forcing everyone in the world to register every piece of software they create in some kind of online registry, and request formal permission for it to be run, eh?

I'm sure absolutely nothing bad could ever come of that.

I mean you're not a *bad* person, are you? If you're not a bad person you have nothing to fear.

Imagine thinking, ten years ago, that the day would come when you're simply not allowed to compile and run your own software from a removable drive without asking permission from a governing body.

This was what we all expected from a Microsoft-run world in 2001, but in 2011? Some of us thought things had changed. Others of us looked over Apple and the iPhone and resumed worrying.

Now the zeitgeist is closing in fast because of ransomware.

Users With Compilers Considered Harmful.

The corporate war on unsigned EXEs is sure having some collateral damage.

I don't think 90% of the open source software community has quite processed that this war exists and what it means for the future of open software.

I think it is a near certainty that this war will spread to home machines under the guise of "best practices", and if so, then it will be forced with the same kind of zeal we see in the public health field right now, and the same kind of lack of interest in counter-narratives