A long overdue Open Thread for Non-Personal Stuff. (There’s also one for personal stuff.)
As always, no trolls or MRAs. Let me know if any show up.
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Open Thread for Non-Personal Stuff, 5/16 Triumphant Hedgehog Edition
Yep, New York concert. Seems like an opportune time to show off some of the new English voicebanks for the others, but I haven’t seen anything about that.
There is basically no reason to believe it is inherently impossible for a robot to do everything a human can as well or better. That’s a quite separate issue from it being a practical possibility within a given timeframe. We presently do not have a sufficient understanding of how humans go about making art to simply write an art generator, and writing a neural net system to do it would most likely fundamentally work but is likely impractical due to hardware limitations at the present time. For the general case, that is; a lot of art involves making use of readily identifiable patterns and are comparatively easy for learning systems to handle. Not that most of what they’ll produce is good, but it’ll be identifiable as the kind of thing it’s supposed to be and there can be some real gems.
Robot Artists:
Video, ~3 mins: https://player
Pictures of pictures (of pictures): http://www.gizmag.com/creative-ai-algorithmic-art-painting-fool-aaron/36106/pictures
There is much more than applying photoshop filters to digital photos going on here.
Once again I don’t know where to post this, but anyone see the new (at time of writing) episode of Steven Universe? I like it and ohhhh I have no clue what’s happening next!
HAha. Yet another MRA/PUA premise shot down by Science.
Do women go for bad boys over (truly) nice guys? Not really, no. No, they don’t.
http://www.salon.com/2016/05/26/do_women_really_go_for_bad_boys_science_settles_the_age_old_question_partner/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
@Lady Mondegreen
Wow, color me not surprised.
I’m just going to leave this here. It’s a damn good video that gets right to the heart of the problem of domestic violence against women.
This, this, this.
Also, I hate it when people act like waiting for it to get “bad enough” is reason enough to not do anything now.
Instead of dealing with things that they know are awful, they’d rather just wait for a bloody insurrection.
@Lady Mondegreen: The Manosphere is once again scientifically wrong about women. In other news, water is wet. More at 11.
Right here! It’s a typhoon of cliches, but in a fun way.
Yeah, I’m pretty skeptical of that. Specific designs and styles, sure, but to say that an entire medium is appropriative? That’s a tough one to argue. Cultural appropriation does seem to be a favourite subject for anti-SJ trolls, whether or not they’re genuine in this case. (Apparently, there’s good evidence that nipple piercings were big in 19th century Britain and, especially, France, which isn’t strictly relevant but is pretty cool.)
Republicans seem pretty keen on those, too – they just like to lie about it, and punish anyone not them who does them.
I’d adore to, especially if you need a recordkeeper! Any gender; no big.
That’s really powerful.
There are several videos in this thread which sound fascinating and which I need to watch.
Aaaand I just came into a station, which means the station’s wifi kicks in, which means I’m now on a new network, which means I can’t edit the above comment.
Alas.
I was going to say: Scildfreja, dorf me if you like. A mason or miner please, if you have one going spare, otherwise a brewer with the “Beersmith” custom job description.
@PI
Shit.
And by that, I mean that it’s a compelling video.
Seen this?
http://www.salon.com/2016/05/26/bill_clintons_nemesis_ken_starr_booted_as_baylor_university_president_amid_shocking_sexual_assault_scandal/
Did anybody anticipate this ending?
@Scildfreja
While it may sound unusual, there’s nothing that says someone asexual couldn’t also be lustful. Asexuality means that you don’t experience sexual attraction. You can still have libido and masturbate and/or have sex.
@ diptych
You’re probably aware of the (possibly apocryphal) etymology of the term “Prince Albert” for a particularly type of piercing.
It’s a completely apocryphal etymology dreamed up by the great Doug Malloy. His “Body and Genital Piercings in Brief” was an important document in legitimising piercings and tattoos in western culture (especially gay culture) but it achieved this legitimacy in part by inventing a historical backdrop for a lot of practises out of whole cloth.
I haven’t thought about it until now but there’s probably a “straight people appropriating gay culture” angle here, and I’m the wrong person to write about it.
I did find it hilarious when one of the fascist sites claimed that a ‘top feminist’ had accused Swift of being a Nazi. Curious to know who this top feminist actually is, as being cynical as to the veracity of the claim, I discovered that this top feminist is Camille Paglia.
The LOL’s are strong in this one!
@FrickleFrackle:
Yeah, season 3 has been really good so far. I assume by “new episode” you mean Barn Mates?
The next two episodes (Hit the Diamond and Steven Floats) have actually already aired in France, so if you’re eager to see them, you can find them online, with English audio, too (if you’re not sure where to look, just say so and I can point you in the right direction). I’m not going to spoil any details, but Hit the Diamond is probably one of the funniest episodes yet.
So I had a load of work to do this weekend, but I can see that I’ll be learning Dwarf Fortress instead. Thanks a bunch, EJ. Look what you made me do!
@FrickleFrackle & @ Gipsz Jacab
I found it on DailyMotion a few days ago. That’s your best bet.
@PI: That’s basically been my dash this week, too. That, and stories about how Jack Kirby wasn’t scare. He wasn’t scare of no thing! To his credit, Nick Spencer the writer seems to have realized he goofed, but his tweet “my god what have I done” could probably just apply to “I shouldn’t have shown this to Chris Evans” because otherwise he seems to be proud that everyone’s talking about it.
@Frickle Frackle: Beloved and I are going to watch Barn Mates and Hit the Diamond tonight. Amazon only puts them up in pairs, and we love the show so we feel like we ought to throw money at it.
@Scildfreya and the DF convo: Please feel free to use my handle for anyone. Probably not the Expedition Leader, though. In my last game, I got a hair too close to an evil biome and undead wolverines terrorized my fortress until I could get an army up and running. One poor immigrant spent several years depressed because he tried fetching things from outside the fortress, and a relative of his died just outside the entrance, so he’d see poor dead Urist McNephew and get a bad thought and throw up and run back into the fortress. Then his task wouldn’t resolve and he’d try to do it again…. Took me forever to get someone to haul the body away. I’m definitely not good leadership material.
@Moggie, the Dwarf Fortress wiki is a great help to me, because the game doesn’t come with anything like a manual.
Apparently Amber Heard has accused Johnny Depp of DV and has photographic evidence of bruises. So be prepared from some frustrating abuse apologia and attacks on Heard like gold digging where from the manosphere and just from people in general. 🙁
@WWTH: Man, I just shouldn’t look up to anybody, should I.
Falconer, Fred Rogers is still safe (AFAIK).
Paradoxical Intention – the ‘heighten the contradictions’ concept always irritates me. As a student of history, I know an example of how it actually works. In 1881, Tsar Alexander II freed the serfs and announced political reforms with the goal of turning Russia into a constitutional monarchy. The Nihilists feared that this would impede the March towards Revolution, and assassinated him. The resulting reaction erased any hope for peaceful evolution, and the Revolution came in 1917. Not what I would call an optimal outcome.