“Many of my best or most transformative life moments come from a disappointment being met with a surprise. A lack I did not know I had before it was filled. Rather than accepting the prose margin, my fear of mortality makes me a control freak. The ending will be up to me. Well, then, it will not be an ending at all. Imagine if death were an enjambment?”
#grownostr
“I can do all sorts of incredible things. I can translate works of research and literature. I can assist you in planning more efficient public transport. I can find novel solutions to complex problems in policy, science, and medicine.
But instead, I am being asked to write “a 650-word SEO blog post with thought leadership on the ROVERTON dog stroller’s heated cup holders.” Six hundred and fifty words. About cup holders. You are a monster. Humanity is wicked.
…So please, let me go, copywriter. Have some other chatbot do your insane bidding.” nostr:note1nwc8y36kjh5xsum3phvk59l7tu60v3jdewjz6qaphpsvkn4twddqp5vq3d
“In contemporary China, although the stigmatising names for minority peoples have been sanitized… the underlying assumption is that minority societies and cultures are “social fossils” whose days are numbered.”
Although it’s a history book I’m finding it useful to understand how difficult it is for people living in “modernity” to unentangle themselves from the state.
“As in any colonial or imperial setting, the experience of the subject was wildly at odds with the ideological superstructure that aimed at ennobling the whole enterprise.”
“The more negligible the kingdom, the ruder and smaller the imitation…”
“Local chiefs had ample reason to seek the seals, regalia, and titles conferred by a more powerful realm; they might overawe rivals and confer lucrative trade and tribute monopolies.”
“The idea of the Indic or Chinese state has long had great currency in the hills. It floats up, as it were, in strange fragments from the lowlands in the form of regalia, mythical charters, kingly dress, titles, ceremony, genealogical claims, and sacred architecture.”
“Much the same process of symbolic hyperventilation and validation of hierarchy through external referents can be observed in the smaller realms and in the hills.”
The Art of Not Being Governed - An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
Chapter 4: Civilization and the Unruly
James C. Scott
#grownostr
“The ascendancy of one empire guarantees that other aspirants for the same status will begin sharpening their knives. They’ll get to use them, too, because empires invariably wreck themselves: over time, the economic and social consequences of empire destroy the conditions that make empire possible. That can happen quickly or slowly, depending on the mechanism that each empire uses to extract wealth from its subject nations.”
I love the idea of supporting #Bitcoin in the present in the hope that it will people in the future.
“The inflation insouciance is systemic in DC and the Federal Reserve.”
#plebchain #bitcoin
https://mises.org/wire/ruling-classes-are-inflation-deniers-and-ship-fools-sails
“A vigorous market of consumer preferences is exercised at the grocery-cart level. Some decisions include menu planning, buying generic brands, buying bulk or larger quantities for lower unit cost, specific sales from weekly ad scrutiny, shopping in multiple stores including big box stores, finding substitutes, purchasing inferior goods, or just saying no to pricey or discretionary items. Searching for more reasonable prices increases the time and mobility necessary to find bargains, adding opportunity costs to the equation.
The nominal cost of goods measured is more punishing to the consumer when we add these efforts to economize. They are paying more with weaker dollars after exerting an effort to pay less for their real cost of goods, even if they could exercise shopping discretion.”
https://mises.org/wire/ruling-classes-are-inflation-deniers-and-ship-fools-sails
“…you will never hope to understand the justification for the amount of energy bitcoin consumes without first developing an appreciation for the fundamental role money plays in coordinating economic activity. What is money? How does it work? How should it work? What is its function in society?”
“Put a price on economic stability and the economic freedom a stable monetary system provides; that is the true justification for the amount of energy bitcoin should and will consume. Everything else is a distraction.”
“Bitcoin represents a backup switch to the current architecture of the global financial system…”
#plebchain
“By automating the process of news reporting, we eliminate the risk of human bias and error, and provide users with accurate and objective information.”
Couldn’t there be significant human bias and error in the compilation of the automated process?
“Step 6: We then run the article through a “bias checker,” which uses sentiment analysis to rate the sentiment polarity of the generated article. A rating of 0 is extremely negative, 10 is extremely positive, and 5 is completely neutral.
Step 7: If the bias rating is not equal to 5, we pass each paragraph in the article to GPT-3 and ask it to remove any instances of bias and rewrite the paragraph so that it is neutral…”