Boxbot

“Imagine that you encounter a signal. It is structured, and dense with information. It meets all the criteria of an intelligent transmission. Evolution and experience offer a variety of paths to follow, branch-points in the flowcharts that handle such input. Sometimes these signals come from conspecifics who have useful information to share, whose lives you'll defend according to the rules of kin selection. Sometimes they come from competitors or predators or other inimical entities that must be avoided or destroyed; in those cases, the information may prove of significant tactical value. Some signals may even arise from entities which, while not kin, can still serve as allies or symbionts in mutually beneficial pursuits. You can derive appropriate responses for any of these eventualities, and many others.

You decode the signals, and stumble: ... They contain no usable intelligence, yet they are structured intelligently; there is no chance they could have arisen by chance.

The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus.

Viruses do not arise from kin, symbionts, or other allies.

The signal is an attack.

And it's coming from right about there.”

the gsv sleeper service had an entire other ship/Mind basically acting in this role (a rotating assignment/volunteer position), complete with human crew/residents

the grey area/meat fucker was a small, uncrewed, and demilitarized(?) ship/Mind that, while morally repugnant to the culture's sensibilities (or at least most other Minds'), no one considered significant/dangerous enough to give the same treatment

the culture Minds are intentionally designed with personalities (for lack of a better term) suited for their intended functions that keep them interested in/involved with base reality and their responsibilities there. there was a bit about how "perfect" Minds created without such proclivities will basically fuck off to a higher plane of existence asap. of course the culture Minds know this, they're the ones designing and building new Minds after all, and some decide that they'd like to see what's on the other side of the veil themself and that's allowed, but most are content running their ships and orbitals and whatnot

same. i had multiple days of confusion 'cause i thought i was sleeping thru the alarm / half-consciously dismissing it (something i've had trouble with before)

i'll never trust apple to provide a simple alarm clock again for anything important

i can't remember which ios update it was but one of them removed the ability to set custom wake-up alarm sound (separate from the generic alarms).

did it pop up a warning? no

did it default to a built-in alarm sound? no

did it just stop sounding the alarm, but still show it as active and selected in the config screen? yes

pretty sure the british also saw to the irish as subhuman, which also enabled their exploitation

there's a kid in texas who got a beanbag round embedded in his skull so i'd say helmets are probably a good idea when you've got cops firing less-lethal munitions into crowds

your original takeaway was correct too =). there were multiple experiments covered by the paper, the earlier ones involving cues that the subject was aware of directing attention into the blind spot, and the later ones dealing with cues and targets both in the blind spot.

"attention" in this case being an unconscious phenomenon that can but not necessarily lead to conscious awareness.

in the study both the visual cues (possibly misleading) and targets were purportedly presented within the subject's "blind spot". the subject did better than chance at correctly signaling whether a target was presented or not and, additionally, was faster at signaling when the cue was helpful than when it was misleading indicating that attention was being directed to the probable location of the target subconsciously.

in short, it appears that some neurological mechanisms were processing visual cues and directing attention accordingly without any (reported) conscious awareness of the the cues or the targets.

> Slavery (including the enslavement of whites) is not legal, at least not in the US

when you get this fundamental assertion wrong why would anyone bother reading anything else you have to say on the subject?

i recommend reading the 13th amendment again.

maybe you should be proposing hypothetical solutions to address the issues of income inequality and oppression instead of how hypothetically you would like to see masses of people gunned down in the streets

The United States of America

now (more) americans get to experience to misery, terror, and death that the u.s. has exported to to rest of the world in order to fuel its economic "growth"

"What kind of ghoul would argue that we shouldn’t vaccinate everyone against a pandemic threatening the health of our nation? The same kind of ghoul, perhaps, who thinks that cancer treatment, or insulin, should only be available for those lucky enough to be able to pay for them."

probably the same ghouls upvoting the "price gouging is actually good" story and flagging this one, hiding their sociopathy behind shitty economics 101 scenarios and loudly advocating for the free market while the government pumps over a trillion dollars into it in an effort to keep it from imploding under its own contradictions.

america is a sham, and an exogenous shock like covid-19 is likely to lay it all bare. the only question is how we respond to the ugly truths revealed; do we acknowledge and strive to fix the issues facing the country, or do we avert our eyes and hope all this just blows over.

it also exempts smaller employers. effectively only covering a fifth of the employee population in the u.s.