Like Romans Applauding Lions

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Sat, 25 May 2013 18:05:06 -0400

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Sat, 25 May 2013 18:03:43 -0400

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Sat, 25 May 2013 18:01:31 -0400

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Sat, 25 May 2013 17:56:01 -0400

The Shape of the Internet is Changing

Sat, 25 May 2013 17:55:12 -0400

The Shape of the Internet is Changing:

Carlos Bueno:

Packet-switching is one of the most important ideas in modern history. Packets did for information what the standard shipping container did for cargo. A shipping container abstracts away everything about what’s inside except its weight. The same cranes, ships, trucks and rules can be used on a million different cargoes without a second thought. The packet abstracts away everything about information except its length.

Having a standard box to put things into and rules about how those boxes move simplifies global exchange, no matter whether it’s bits or atoms. Simplified exchange means you can do more of it, cheaper, faster, and more reliably. And so we have: you can use your old phone to track the progress of your new phone as it travels from a factory in Asia to your doorstep. In less than thirty years nearly all human telecommunications was converted to packetized routing. It happened so smoothly that hardly anyone noticed.

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Sat, 25 May 2013 17:53:23 -0400

The Best Sitcom of the Past 30 Years, Round One: Seinfeld vs. Louie

Sat, 25 May 2013 17:51:28 -0400

The Best Sitcom of the Past 30 Years, Round One: Seinfeld vs. Louie:

Carina-Chocano:

Seinfeld was famously described as a show about nothing, but it’s probably more accurate to say that it was a show about nothingness, about the utter insignificance, triviality, pointlessness, and emptiness of life. It was the most nihilist show ever to appear on television until then, and probably since. I’m not just talking about the oft-cited “no hugging and no learning” part, a jab at the schmaltzier sitcom conventions of the day. I mean that it was dedicated to negating pretty much everything people associate with meaning and happiness. What made Seinfeld so transgressive was that, when confronted with the impossibility of human connection, it shrugged its shoulders and poured itself a bowl of cereal. It’s not just that there is no sentimentality on Seinfeld: There is no love. Jerry and his trio of friends — Elaine, George, and Kramer — break up with people like it’s nothing, like time won’t pass. The lightness, the zingers, the catchphrases, and the laugh track diverted our attention from the radical bleakness of this. That the show pulled it off (for nine seasons, most of them as one of Nielsen’s top two network shows)? It’s really nothing short of amazing.

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Sat, 25 May 2013 17:48:41 -0400

My father, the smoker

Sat, 25 May 2013 17:46:51 -0400

My father, the smoker:

John Jeremiah Sullivan:

We pleaded with him, of course, to treat himself better – though always with trepidation, since the subject annoyed him and, if pressed, could send him into a rage. Most of the time we did not even get to the subject, he was so adept at heading it off with a joke: when a man who is quite visibly at risk of heart attack, stroke and cancer crushes out what is left of a six-inch mentholated cigarette before getting to work on a lethal fried meal (“a hearty repast” as he would have called it), clinks his knife and fork together, winks at you, and says, with a brogue, “Heart smart!” you are disarmed.

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Sat, 25 May 2013 17:44:46 -0400

Dispatches From The Front Line Of Florida's Wild Python Hunt

Sat, 25 May 2013 17:44:15 -0400

Dispatches From The Front Line Of Florida's Wild Python Hunt:

Amanda Petrusich:

Rightly or not, the rest of America regards Florida, its oddballs and citrus groves and theme parks and golf courses and noted deviants, with a mix of awe and terror.

But there is a purity to Florida’s misfit repute, and there was a purity to the Python Challenge, as a kind of hands-on, under-thought, base reaction to invasion. It was so simple: There are too many snakes; let’s kill some of the snakes. It’s easy to feel helpless or neutered in the face of impending environmental meltdowns, to be cowed by the enormity and complexity of the mess, and easier still to feel detached and uninspired, marooned in a city in the dark heart of winter. But Florida does not abide poltroonery or moot intellectualizing. Florida suggests you shut up, get into the swamp, get on your knees, pull out a snake, and murder it. Because there are too many snakes.

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Sat, 25 May 2013 17:42:17 -0400

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Sat, 25 May 2013 17:41:59 -0400

Omens

Sat, 25 May 2013 17:41:02 -0400

Omens:

Ross Andersen:

‘The problem is you are building a very powerful, very intelligent system that is your enemy, and you are putting it in a cage,’ Dewey told me.

Even if we were to reset it every time, we would need to give it information about the world so that it can answer our questions. Some of that information might give it clues about its own forgotten past. Remember, we are talking about a machine that is very good at forming explanatory models of the world. It might notice that humans are suddenly using technologies that they could not have built on their own, based on its deep understanding of human capabilities. It might notice that humans have had the ability to build it for years, and wonder why it is just now being booted up for the first time.

‘Maybe the AI guesses that it was reset a bunch of times, and maybe it starts coordinating with its future selves, by leaving messages for itself in the world, or by surreptitiously building an external memory.’ Dewey said, ‘If you want to conceal what the world is really like from a superintelligence, you need a really good plan, and you need a concrete technical understanding as to why it won’t see through your deception. And remember, the most complex schemes you can conceive of are at the lower bounds of what a superintelligence might dream up.’

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Sat, 25 May 2013 17:33:38 -0400

Machine Cities and Ghost Cities

Sat, 25 May 2013 17:32:22 -0400

Machine Cities and Ghost Cities:

Drew Austin:

Many of New York City’s bridges and tunnels, including the Bayonne Bridge, are products of this imperative to move huge volumes of commuters between increasingly separate homes and workplaces in the modernist city. Robert Moses, who built much of that infrastructure in New York, helped to fulfill Le Corbusier’s prophetic vision, and Moses waged war on the premodern city in doing so (even trying unsuccessfully to ram crosstown highways through Midtown and Lower Manhattan). The close-knit, vibrant districts that thankfully still flourish throughout New York, in the eyes of Moses and anyone obsessed with efficient, machine-like urbanism, were simply in the way. In a sense, the city itself—the traditional, un-optimized, and human-scaled city—was in the way.

Now, the Bayonne Bridge is in something else’s way.

John: There's a lot of reason to invade Turkey. Then you would gain control of the Dardanelles, and access to the Black Sea!

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:26:03 -0400

John: There's a lot of reason to invade Turkey. Then you would gain control of the Dardanelles, and access to the Black Sea!
Merlin: And that's the guy from the Mountain Goats, right?

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Fri, 03 May 2013 09:22:28 -0400

hounddogsrunning: baitsim: this is everything YOU’RE DAMNED...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:52:48 -0400

hounddogsrunning:

baitsim:

this is everything

YOU’RE DAMNED RIGHT IT IS.

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Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:23:41 -0400