TheVat

I think it was clear you were replying to Ogon, but it doesn't hurt to clarify. I have a friend in Toronto who is an artist and has quite a bit of her work at DeviantArt, some of it deals with women and how their self-image is influenced by modern culture. I agree Ogon might fit in there nicely. @Genady - is there any of your daughter's art that can be seen online? Forgive this question, if you prefer not. I know many people limit or compartmentalize their web presence. (anyway, that would be another thread, as this one is Ogon's "show")

Moving away from such habits of being judgemental and uncharitable would only serve to lengthen lifespan and improve health, IMO. A lot of negative harsh judgements come from not really understanding someone's whole story, and you can often get to a more positive view by an effort to understand them. There are exceptions of course - people who are so damaged and twisted that it's not possible to really avoid being critical - but in that case you can opt to not dwell on them. We have had public figures here in US who one must, at some point, just stop reading about them or watching them on media. Best not to give them oxygen.

@MasterOgon A couple of the earlier ones you posted in 2021 also had retro touches that made me think of Fritz Lang's Metropolis and other early sci-fi art. Very evocative.

I remember your flying saucer designs at the now defunct sciencechatforum. Glad you made your way over here. I like the surreal aspects, and also how some show influences of old Soviet Era poster art. The eroticism of "Space Values" was intriguing.

Were you helping the Fijians deal with climate change? 😀

I've played it on pf. Worked all day at it, just got deeper in debt. Do you play marimba, xylophone or vibe, also? I can imagine the "hammer" theme of the song would sound cool maybe on marimba, with its lower range and deeper timbre.

Officer-related shootings, and resulting mortality, is tracked by the FBI's National Use-of-Force Data Collection but that is too recently started to be much use. (2015) The Law Enforcement Epidemiology Project has a little over two decades of data. https://policeepi.uic.edu/data-civilian-injuries-law-enforcement/facts-figures-injuries-caused-law-enforcement/ This group, run from the CDC, has been tracking violent deaths for a couple decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Violent_Death_Reporting_System As for finding data on fat cops, good luck! Maybe some industry clearinghouse tracks doughnut consumption in specific areas? 😏

As several have noted, how much inflation depends on what proportion of a business overhead is labor. And how much is inflation from a MW increase offset by increased disposable income of workers. If inflation raises all goods and services ten percent, but average wages increase fifteen percent, then workers gain. It also matters how other pay grades, above minimum, are stepwise affected by the MW increase at a business. And it also matters where the inflation hits hardest. If it's nonessential goods and services (non-rent/food/utilities/transit), then people can scale back to meet their budget. Essentials, OTOH, are harder to scale back - it's hard to negotiate paying 80 percent of your rent and utlities, or skip meals, or walk to a job that's 20 miles away. So maybe MW should be set at state and municipal levels, and calculated to meet the cost of living in that area, with the standard being: can afford essential goods and services. I think most people at the bottom wage level would gladly endure a pricier burrito at Chipotle, if it meant they could pay rent and groceries every month. You can make a burrito at home. You can't chop 200 square feet off your apartment and ask the landlord for a rent discount. Chipotle would not likely have to lay off burrito assemblers for the simple reason that, for every MW worker who skips lunch there due to a rise in prices, another one who got the pay bump (and happens to have a good rent deal, with roommates, or lives with extended family, say) would start eating there more often. Not a practitioner of the Dismal Science, so take all that with a grain of salt.

Too many social science branches rely on faux-scientific analysis that can masssage data into any shape desired. For every paper about white domination of seminars I am sure you can find one about male domination or capitalist domination or dog owner domination or whoever's silhouette is hanging up there in the ideological shooting gallery.

One cause of organisms to change is when there is some selective pressure in those environments - flight developed not because it was inevitable but because some species gained a reproductive advantage in developing the ability to become airborne. For such reasons as escaping predation or better location of food or traversing rough terrain or a combination of factors. So it's a matter of complex pressures in a particular ecosystem. So, as others point out, there is a variety of different wing configurations. A dragonfly and a condor have quite different wings. And (per @Genady pointed question) we have snow high in the mountains and yet no species growing skis or snowboards. (only a snowshoe hare, which is really just having large back feet)

Are we sure this is not a spoof paper? If not, it is profoundly silly. Even the teapots should continue to have calm weather.

Why he paints in the nude, I have no idea. Perhaps it saves on his laundry bills?

Was using experience in an epistemically neutral sense. And was talking about AGI at the level of a machine that can learn, modify its own programming, exhibit functional plasticity, and (why am I needing to repeat this) replicate at least some of the causal powers of a brain. Please stop caricaturing this as spreadsheets or thermostats or whatever. While one may reasonably dismiss simple programmed devices as incapable of subjective states (aka "qualia"), there is as yet no definitive disproof that an advanced AGI could not have them. That's not being mystical, that's just keeping an open mind, since we don't yet know all the causal features of human cognition or if they could be implemented in some other substrate than protein-lipid pudding.

Not really suggesting dryers or fryers are candidates for AGI. Not sure if I've ever expressed an affinity for panpsychism here. This was more along the lines of a hypothetical neural network that can causally replicate neural activity at a learning level more like a person. The suggestion is that placement of such an AGI in an android body with various sensory and motor abilities akin to a human would allow a level of interaction with the world that allowed it to develop concepts of the physical world. Form an internal model of the world that takes it towards greater sentience and understanding of sensory experience. (no reason this could not be done virtually, for that matter, and some AI folk have suggested that, too, as sort of a safer "sandbox") Are you not open to the possibility of AGI research at least looking into the possibility? As @Genady mentioned, having a body to interact with a world is a part of how human and other animal cognitive abilities develop. This was the post I was reacting to....

Why are covens of sixteen witches so dangerous? Because they hex a decimal system.

My experience too. I've renovated six houses, and have found nothing better than a heating coil. Hold it the right distance and the paint softens, moisture in the underlying wood vaporizes and causes rapid bubble formation, then scrape away. By far the best approach when there are 7-8 layers, as the heat penetrates all and bubbles form from the wood layer. You quickly learn a speed that doesn't scorch the wood. The exception might be crown mouldings, like a roman ogee profile, where it's really difficult to bubble and scrape without spending your remaining lifespan on it. That might be easier to take to a pro dipper/stripper, or just find someone who can match the profile and rout you some new stuff. And all of this is child's play compared to black mastic removal from old tile-over-wood floors. Another forum thread someday, perhaps.

This is why some AI theorists say that AGI cannot mature until it is given a mobile physical body to interact with the world. It has to experience that the stovetop is painfully hot, not just interpret words stating so.

Indeed. Especially when they deceive. A common thing in US subdivisions, like in prairie area where name ends with -wood, and there are no woods.

Yes.

I've wondered if architect Robert Venturi was inspired by the line in that song about building a staircase going nowhere "just for show." His famous house (built for his mother) in Philadelphia, had such a staircase. Finishing touches on the house were done in 1964, the same year that Fiddler opened on Broadway.

93, on that list...seemed understandable why it's rare. In the county of Berkshire, in England, there is a place called Soggy Bottom. (it was also a fictitious locale in Louisiana, in the movie O Brother Where Art Thou?) https://mapcarta.com/N1246380035