If you answered correctly with “SpongeBob SquarePants!” you’ve likely heard of the square, sponge cartoon who made his TV debut 25 years ago on May 1, 1999 (before the official series launch in July 1999).
It was a footnote in an article I read about a monkey using blindsight and that there had been several experiments with humans proving blindsight existed and that surprised me. As a footnote....
For context, in case you don’t have kids (therefor you probably don’t watch Bluey), the family in the car (the Heelers) was selling their house to move for a job but ultimately, the dad (Bandit) decided staying at their house with family was more important. As a final act of demonstration, he lifts the for-sale sign out of...
Growing up as a musician I was always trying to be the contrarian that hated Nirvana because they were so popular and their songs were so ‘simple’. I’ve since realized the error of my ways
My favorite feature is how currying is applied literally everywhere. You can take any function that accepts 2 args, pass in a single arg and return a new function that accepts one arg and produces the result. In Haskell, this is handled automatically. Once you wrap your head around using partially applied and fully saturated functions you can really start to see the power behind languages like Haskell
Peter Watts’ Blindsight should be no stranger to anyone on PrintSF. On our Reddit incarnation, it was recommended in just about every thread asking for recommendations. It was sometimes even a suitable recommendation....
Thank you for writing this up. Blindsight to me is exactly as good as it is hyped up to be. I think it crops up in all recommendations lists because regardless of what you’re looking for, it is something one should at least try to read. It’s one of the only books that I will actually reread every now and then. But I won’t pretend that Watts’ pros or character work is what brings me back. It’s purely the scope and delivery of his ideas that makes the book so fascinating and the atmosphere of the novel completely supports the abstract nature of his arguments.
The fact that Echopraxia is not as praised as Blindsight has always led me to believe that the book was missing the parts that made blindsight so great, and frankly without those parts blindsight would be a below average sci fi novel. I will move this up my TBR list based on your recommendation.
Just picked it up for myself after bouncing off fighting games my entire life and this one finally feels like it bridges that gap of being incredibly accessible for absolute trash while maintaining an incredibly impenetrable upper echelon of performance. And it just looks so incredible
Whoopsie! Sydney's road planners just discovered induced demand is a thing, after opening a new motorway.
For those outside Sydney, the New South Wales state government recently opened a new spaghetti intersection just west of Sydney's Central Business District.
It was supposed to solve traffic. Instead, it's turned into a giant car park:
"For the third straight day, motorists and bus passengers endured bumper-to-bumper traffic on the City West Link and Victoria Road. A trip from Haberfield to the Anzac Bridge on the City West Link averaged an agonising 44 minutes in the morning peak on Wednesday.
"Several months ago, Transport for NSW’s modelling had suggested traffic from the interchange would add only five to 10 minutes to trips on Victoria Road through Drummoyne and over the Iron Cove Bridge during morning peaks.
"Those travel delays have now blown out."
So what do motorists say when their shiny new road that was supposed to solve traffic instead turns into a massive traffic jam?
'Dude! Just one more lane!'
From the article:
"[Roads Minister John] Graham and his Transport boss Josh Murray appear reluctant to do what many motorists reckon is the obvious solution.
"That is, add lanes or make changes at the pinch-points that are causing the pain. A three-lane to one merge point from Victoria Road onto the Anzac Bridge, along with two lanes merging into one on the City West Link, are proving to be painful bottlenecks."
I came here to point this out and love the way you stated it. Confusion, hesitation and unnecessary lane changes are what create traffic. There has never been a major highway development in history that didn’t cause at least some short term issues. We should give city planners a bit more credit than that
The volume of cars is a scale factor that determines the impact of traffic causing behaviors and conditions for free flowing highways (no traffic lights, stop signs, etc.). Following too closely and improper lane changing are two specific behaviors that actually create slow downs. There are numerous models that simulate this.
I love a villain that can’t be reasoned with or can’t be appealed to. The alien species in Blindsight is a great example of this. They are hyper intelligent, but lack any form of consciousness so humans have no way to understand them or their intentions
You’re right, doesn’t change the point though. I have never encouraged anyone to try Lemmy because of how prominent some of this stuff is in the front page, even with nsfw toggled off
Could be an attempt to reduce the radar cross section or RCS of the aircraft. Albeit a very dumb approach. This is a major component of defensive electronic warfare where you try to reduce the strength of an RF signal bounced back towards a radar receiver by manipulating the physical geometry of the craft so that it reflects RF waves away from their origination point. It works well in cases where the transmitter and receiver are on the same platform. In this case it appears that this craft is worried about detection from aircraft flying at higher altitudes or other high altitude RF tracking platforms.
I finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Loved the book. There was lots of science, but it was explained well enough that it wasn’t an issue. There were also certain things which may not feel very probable, but it’s a science fiction, so I didn’t care about that, but I can see some people having problem with that....
Just finished it and checked Lemmy and saw your reply.
Overall:
This is among the best world building I have ever read. Saying that PSS subverts expectations is a huge understatement. I won’t spoil the ending, but anyone going into the hook probably should know that it is a very polarizing conclusion. I personally loved how Mieville was willing to take this chance with such a long book. I put down the hunger games after book one because I hated that an oppressive government willing to sacrifice people for entertainment suddenly allowed Pita(sp?) and Katniss to survive. PSS respects that stories don’t have to be all tied up and neat at conclusion and that sacrifices should have meaning. Truly an outstanding experience in my opinion.
The iconic SpongeBob SquarePants made his TV debut 25 years ago (www.npr.org)
If you answered correctly with “SpongeBob SquarePants!” you’ve likely heard of the square, sponge cartoon who made his TV debut 25 years ago on May 1, 1999 (before the official series launch in July 1999).
TIL about blindsight, a phenomenon by which visually blind people can apparently see or detect objects without using their visual cortex (en.m.wikipedia.org)
It was a footnote in an article I read about a monkey using blindsight and that there had been several experiments with humans proving blindsight existed and that surprised me. As a footnote....
The Sign (lemmy.stuart.fun)
For context, in case you don’t have kids (therefor you probably don’t watch Bluey), the family in the car (the Heelers) was selling their house to move for a job but ultimately, the dad (Bandit) decided staying at their house with family was more important. As a final act of demonstration, he lifts the for-sale sign out of...
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit [1991] (www.youtube.com)
Some of my iterations are delightfully recursive (lemmy.world)
Echopraxia: The Sequel to the Most Recommended Book Ever
Peter Watts’ Blindsight should be no stranger to anyone on PrintSF. On our Reddit incarnation, it was recommended in just about every thread asking for recommendations. It was sometimes even a suitable recommendation....
Unsettling Complexity (image.civitai.com)
(tlscope222) (2024)...
Mary Karr, "A Perfect Mess" (lemmy.world)
State your music taste chat (lemmy.world)
[INSPO] What would you call this style? (lemmy.world)
Mental Calculation. In Public School of S. A. Rachinsky - Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky (1895) (upload.wikimedia.org)
Anon plays indie games (sh.itjust.works)
Street Fighter 6 Tops Over 3 Million Units Sold Worldwide (www.capcom.co.jp)
Royal Kludge RK920 Review and Sound Test | A Sensible Full Size Prebuilt Mechanical Keyboard (youtu.be)
What are your favorite villain tropes? (www.youtube.com)
For me its:...
Change my mind
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2940649d-6bbe-484d-b61c-defdb1eaf239.jpeg
Russian Su-34 Strike-Fighter Seen Covered In Tires (www.thedrive.com)
An image emerged on social media of a Russian Su-34 Fullback covered in tires similar to how they've been placed on bombers recently.
What book(s) are you currently reading? 31 August
I finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Loved the book. There was lots of science, but it was explained well enough that it wasn’t an issue. There were also certain things which may not feel very probable, but it’s a science fiction, so I didn’t care about that, but I can see some people having problem with that....