Algorithms do not have agency. People write algorithms. Do not blame the algorithms. Do not blame the drones. The drones are not…

“Algorithms do not have agency. People write algorithms. Do not blame the algorithms. Do not blame the drones. The drones are not important. The human operators are important. The human operators of algorithms are not lion tamers. Do not blame the drones for making you depressed. Do not blame the algorithms for blowing up towns. Oceania has not always been at war with Eastasia.”

–Warren Ellis, http://orbitaloperations.com/ (viajuhavantzelfde)

Wealthy individuals in the middle ages owned portable images of Christ that could travel with them or be worn as jewellery, so…

“Wealthy individuals in the middle ages owned portable images of Christ that could travel with them or be worn as jewellery, so that they could be constantly looked at and touched, much as we carry around our iPhones and laptops. What medieval subjects experienced when they joined themselves to Christ was directly analogous to our sensation of oneness in being closely joined to our technology – and to our sense of being bereft when that technology goes missing or breaks down because it has, profoundly but almost imperceptibly, become a part of ourselves.”

–Surviving in an Alien Environment: Human + Christ as Medieval Natural-Born Cyborg
(Ruth Evans @ Quiet Babylon)  (viabravenewwhatever)

“SwiftKey analyzed more than one billion pieces of emoji data across a wide range of categories to learn how speakers of 16…

emoji, chart, unicode, analysis, data, swiftkey, language

“SwiftKey analyzed more than one billion pieces of emoji data across a wide range of categories to learn how speakers of 16 different languages and regions use emoji. The findings in this report came from an analysis of aggregate SwiftKey Cloud data over a four month period between October 2014 and January 2015, and includes both Android and iOS devices”

http://www.scribd.com/doc/262594751/SwiftKey-Emoji-Report

“And I promise you,” said the big green bat. “You don’t need to factor the number. You just need to GET OUT OF THE CAR.” “I…

maths, DMT, conversation, cars, reality, cactus

“

“And I promise you,” said the big green bat. “You don’t need to factor the number. You just need to GET OUT OF THE CAR.”

“I can’t get out of the car until you factor the number.”

“I won’t factor the number until you get out of the car.”

“Please, I’m begging you, factor the number!”

“Yes, well, I’m begging you, please get out of the car!”

“FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST FACTOR THE FUCKING NUMBER!”

“FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST GET OUT OF THE FUCKING CAR!”

“FACTOR THE FUCKING NUMBER!”

“GET OUT OF THE FUCKING CAR!”

“Universal love,” said the cactus person.

”

–SCOTT ALEXANDER in http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/

a paper by Marko Rodriguez called A Methodology For Studying Various Interpretations of the N,N-dimethyltryptamine-Induced…

DMT, state specific science, mathematics, love, joy, reality, hallucination, experiment, mathematical assumptions, factorisation, math, maths, study, science

“

a paper by Marko Rodriguez called A Methodology For Studying Various Interpretations of the N,N-dimethyltryptamine-Induced Alternate Reality, [suggesting] among other things that you could prove DMT entities were real by taking the drug and then asking the entities you meet to factor large numbers which you were sure you couldn’t factor yourself. So to that end, could you do me a big favor and tell me the factors of 1,522,605,027, 922,533,360, 535,618,378, 132,637,429, 718,068,114, 961,380,688, 657,908,494, 580,122,963, 258,952,897, 654,000,350, 692,006,139?

“Universal love,” said the cactus person.

“Transcendent joy,” said the big green bat.

The sea turned hot and geysers shot up from the floor below. First one of wine, then one of brine, then one more yet of turpentine, and we three stared at the show.

”

–SCOTT ALEXANDER in http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/

In the television series Fringe, the Statue of Liberty serves as the literal junction point between two worlds, the site of…

“In the television series Fringe, the Statue of Liberty serves as the literal junction point between two worlds, the site of dimensional gateway technology. In between scene cuts, images of the monument, either in true-to-life oxidized green, or its original copper hues, serve as a symbol to demarcate the different worlds to the audience. The unbuilt Hotel Attraction also appears in the alternate-dimension New York City, as an homage to architectural paths untraveled. The World Trade Center towers, still standing in the alternate-dimension, also serve as a similar marker to the Statue of Liberty—much as the towers mark almost all realistic films set in New York City shot prior to 2001. These markers show that the basis for our contextualization of alternate futures always begins in our knowledge of the present, and our real history.”

–Adam Rothstein, ‘The cities science fiction built’ (2015)

The two doors swing open. The world clicks into something else when Isidore walks through. The constant tinkering with reality…

“The two doors swing open. The world clicks into something else when Isidore walks through. The constant tinkering with reality is something that he really hates about the Dust District. The zokus do not have the decency to hide their secrets under the surface of the mundane, but plaster them all over your visual cortex, in layers and layers of spimes and augmented reality, making it impossible to see what truly lies beneath. And the sudden feeling of openness, no boundaries of gevulot, makes him feel something akin to vertigo.”

–Hannu Rajaniemi in The Quantum Thief

…It’s a Watch. A device that stores Time as quantum cash – unforgeable, uncopyable quantum states that have finite lifetimes,…

“…It’s a Watch. A device that stores Time as quantum cash – unforgeable, uncopyable quantum states that have finite lifetimes, counterfeit-proof, measures the time an Oubliette citizen is allowed in a baseline human body. Also responsible for their encrypted channel to the exomemory. A very personal device.”

–Hannu Rajaniemi in The Quantum Thief

What are the rights of the original photographers, the “nonartists” whose works have been so unceremoniously reconfigured? And…

“What are the rights of the original photographers, the “nonartists” whose works have been so unceremoniously reconfigured? And how can what is found be ordered, or put into a new disorder, and presented again to give it new resonance? And how long will that resonance itself last? The real trouble is rarely about whether something counts as art — if the question comes up, the answer is almost always yes — but whether the art in question is startling, moving or productively discomfiting.”

–A Visual Remix - NYTimes.com (viaphotographsonthebrain)

Our technology revolves around several layers of Halachic uncertainty, randomness, and delays, such that Halachically, a user’s…

“Our technology revolves around several layers of Halachic uncertainty, randomness, and delays, such that Halachically, a user’s action is not considered to have caused a given reaction. Within the KosherSwitch®, algorithms operating on the internal micro-controller create all of the patented innovation. Once installed, a KosherSwitch®-based device is constantly and autonomously functioning through the cycles detailed below.”

–How Does It Work? « KosherSwitch -Control Electricity on Shabbat! (viaiamdanw)

Cow Milk Without the Cow

wired, diybio, food hacking, vegan cheese, monkey butter, narwhal cheese, sythetic biology

Consider one group of bio-hackers who meet in the lab each Monday night to work on a project that sounds like a contradiction in terms: They’re trying to make cow’s milk cheese without the cow. Using mail-order DNA, they’re tricking yeast cells into producing a substance that’s molecularly identical to milk. And if successful, they’ll turn this milk into cheese. Real cheese. But vegan cheese. Real vegan cheese. […] They also hope to engineer cheese based on the milk of the narwhal, the most outlandish mammal they could imagine. They hear the milk has the consistency of toothpaste.

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/diy-biotech-vegan-cheese/