loving that low-key ominous flavor <3 [x]
cf. “inventor of Many-Worlds-interpretation quits academia to do classified research for the DoD” :)

• Back In High School, ep. 3271: German class with Ms W
  
• Some of my classmates are psyched about free-form essay writing, but I just feel inept at everything. Task: A few paragraphs each about several environmental problems that are getting worse exponentially.  I’m unable to organize my thoughts on algae bloom. I try to write down notes on a folded-up paper tissue, get angry at me for writing across the folds, and finally give up after noticing that I already had written the exact same words into my notebook.
  
• Watching a documentary about censorship in the PRC.  The presenter inquires about the works of a German author. This cumulates in an argument concerning 1 of his poems about a heart beating so hard it bursts through the chest, with the librarian calling it “vulgar” and “mechanistic”, and the presenter being escorted out by security for trying to defend it.  My unintentionally loud comment (re: similarities to a Vice DPRK documentary) is interrupted by a classmate shushing me, while sympathetically petting my hair.
  
• We have to cast rectangles out of a Gallium-like metal into rectangles, using some industrial apparatus in the middle of the school basement hallway.  I’m disgusted by the smelly, milky-green lubricant, but I opine that seeing the molten metal solidify makes it all worth it.
• A muscular thug is threatening a friend and me with a sledge hammer in a parking lot.  Just as I am about to lug my trumpet case at him out of desperation, he notes he is The Last Of The Hammer Throwers and throws the hammer way into the distance. Then he gets into his Jeep next to his similarly muscular buddy to open a car-based “The most dangerous game”-style hunt on us.
  I get surrounded after climbing a tree, but the crowd of now 2 dozen hunters get into a heated quarrel about whether it’s against the rules to order explosives from some kind of criminal express delivery service, so they can blow up the tree.  I use the distraction to drop down and sprint through some trees, and down a meadow until I get to some buildings.
  Next to a closed supermarket, I enter an abandoned electronics store to hide in.  Beyond the dilapidated entrance, trusses with flickering stage lights have crashed down on the floor, but otherwise the black carpet is clean & the power is on.  I’m relieved to find a computer, so I try to remember my cloud storage passphrase so I can call for help or at least publish these events. I am startled into hiding by a confused voice with a ~South Asian accent, asking for customer service.
  

*yawn* getting late, probably should stop watching vids about upsetting sociopolitical issues on which i am already reasonably well-informed compared to how easily i can do sth about th…

natALIE NO

$ text2wave --help

  WARNING
  No default voice found in ("/usr/share/festival/voices/")
  either no voices unpacked or voice-path is wrong
  Scheme interpreter will work, but there is no voice to speak with.
  WARNING

i have no v o i c e l i b r a r y and i must scream

me, an intellectual:

The 5th iteration of the Joscha Bach Explains The Universe To Computer Nerds I Guess C3 talks is a fun 40min whirlwind tour of a nice (and my intuitively favored) perspective on cognitive science & AI.

Rich in context & analogies/metaphors; few concrete references, no critical discussion or alternatives.  So yeah, especially if you lean towards ~functionalism & computationalism already (probably the most prevalent among transhumanists / LW rats), be aware that this is popsci, not rigorous scientific analysis — a few levels above “opinionated cogsci undergrad hits bong & starts philosophizing”.  Joscha and his intuitions & failure modes seem entirely rationalist-typical.
(I guess I should skim his cognitive architecture PhD thesis some time.)

The huge Chaos Communication Congress hacker con has started this morning. I can’t attend this year (😿), but I’ll be watching some of the live streams (click on video > formats > webm SD video).
Talk schedule (also by topics - the politics/society/culture/general—to—technical/CS/infosec ratio is higher than e.g. at DEF CON). Recordings are usually online a few weeks hours later.
If you (=anyone who can read this) want to hang out in cyberspace, hmu! :3