/reader

(Technically: self-reported ASMR correlates with a shared EEG biomarker, but it doesn’t demonstrate the reverse – i.e. this does not yet show how to build an ASMR detector.)

Hey, Apple has a patent on EEG sensors in AirPods (as previously discussed).

Free product concept:

AirPods that use their sensors to detect the ASMR response, then dial in to relentlessly trigger it 24/7. A new alternative to noise cancelling mode.

Tim Apple you can put the cheque in the post.

SEE ALSO:

The ASMR version of Bee Movie, and other neuro-divergent media (2021).

2.

A paper presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), St. Louis, MO:

The Early History of Artificial Intelligence in China (1950s-1980s).

Always interesting how words and politics amplify/inhibit technologies and ways of thinking.

e.g. in this paper, a quote from the 1970s:

“Can human build intelligence? No. The term ‘artificial intelligence’ is easy for idealists to exploit. If humans can build ‘intelligence,’ then, in the future, something more intelligent than humans will emerge. … Some Soviet revisionist academicians are vigorously propagating AI. This behavior fully exposes their ugly face as traitors.”

HOWEVER,

I am most particularly tickled by this anecdote:

In the early 1980s, the misunderstanding about AI lead many people to an idea that associates AI with the so-called “exceptional human body functions”, which refers to some unscientific, unproven, imaginary, supernatural functions of human body such as extrasensory perception (ESP), telepathy, and moving things with mind. This fervor stemmed from a news report in March 1979 on Sichuan Daily, a local newspaper in Sichuan Province. The report was about a boy named Tang Yu who were claimed to be able to read books using his ears. The news caused a sensation.

Huge if true.

3.

Every so often I remember this story about Jacques Derrida related on X nee Twitter and can’t stop laughing. Copy-and-pasting it here for posterity.

A professor of mine went to go hear Derrida speak once. The entire talk was about cows; everyone was flummoxed but listened carefully, and took notes about…cows. There was a short break, and when Derrida came back, he was like, “I’m told it is pronounced ‘chaos.’“

4.

The argument in From Newspeak to Cyberspeak (Slava Gerovitch, 2004) about why Soviet Cybernetics didn’t invent the personal computer, as previously mentioned:

the political insistence on materialism stripped cybernetics (and therefore computing research) of metaphorical yet inspirational ideas like “memory” and “learning”, constraining the vision of computing to simple calculation.

The human elements were translated away. So the metaphorical leap to “hey maybe computers could be bicycles for the mind” was just too far.

You know memory was controversial in English too, once upon a time? Like, computer memory.

May I suggest that a protest is overdue against the anthropomorphic character of the terminology that is being applied to electronic digital computers? To the layman the use of such a terminology seems to ascribe human or near-human properties to these machines.

That’s a letter to Nature.

I can’t read the full letter right now (please do send me the PDF if you can) but Kapp objected to the terms: memory, instruction, information, machine language and decision.

The argument settled quickly: memory stayed as the adopted term.

And then a backwash effect: people now often imagine human memory as working like computer memory, a box that you put things into and take things out of, which isn’t the case at all. The metaphor became the exemplar.

So I think about that, while we’re talking about “training” and “hallucinating” and “thinking” with our LLMs. It’s not true, anthropomorphising an AI as a lil guy is so misleading: you type something into a window, a rack of GPUs in West Virginia is lit for a nanosecond with the energy density of a small star, a wavefront of computation sweeps across electron surfaces that holographically encode the entire record of human culture at the speed of light, focusing into a single beam that spits a stream of tokens down a fibre onto your screen. And then it does the same for someone else.

Let’s use those human terms anyhow. It’s not like we have anything better. And they might help with with the next metaphorical leap to what these AIs really are.

(And then I wonder what the backwash is, how it will change how we narrativise ourselves.)

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I wrote software for a living for a long time. Speaking for myself, I can confidently say that Claude Code writes code that's so much better than mine that it's embarrassing. I've gotten over it. I'm not a craftsman. I wish I was, but honestly I just want to tell the computer what I need done and have it do it. I suppose that's really all I've ever wanted. Now I can, and it's thrilling.

That Tesla Roadster demo was a pretty cool stunt. Cool, but dumb. And only a stunt.

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Realization: There are two webs, one created by TBL that flourished until about 2006, and the VC-web that appealed to the masses, and grew like a weed -- and they also called it the web. The confusion -- you could read it in a web browser, but that didn't make it of the web. My regret, looking back, is I tried to make software in the VC-web. Never got traction, anywhere. My heart, mind and home was always in the first web. And I think what we're coming to terms with now is that has been languishing for 20+ years, it didn't realize its promise, lots of interesting stuff to read that stimulated more thought and thus writing. We should be way ahead of where we are. Because writing has become something for the elite (Substack) to speak through, and limited to grunts and snorts, "social media," for the rest of us. They basically recreated the publishing environment the web was meant to route around. What a story. Can the web reboot? Same old thing, if you want it badly enough, it might be possible.#

I didn't notice it at the time, but in the all the work we did about blogging, we had open channels of communiation, meant to make everyone feel like they had a stake. Big mistake, because they took this too literally and the way many people communicated was through orders, demands or ultimata. All of it came from the power we gave them by making everyone's voice supposedly equal. Of course they weren't all equal. Power has to be a function of your contribution. And as it says in Rules, power comes from users of your product. If being compatible with you means I have access to more users, then I will listen. I will also listen if you remain respectful -- and don't presume to give me an order. Someone just did that today, and it froze me, then I re-read the message and it was an order, and not nicely phrased, condescending, presumptive, and very wrong. I started writing a reply, even posted one, then realized what was going on, and deleted my reply and blocked the person. #

 

Win of the week: got my flu and COVID shots — went for both in the same arm — very little soreness and no other symptoms 💪 The pharmacist told me about racing his corgi!

Looking forward to: been researching stuff to do with the fam in SF!

Stuff I did:

• 14 hours book outline — sketched up potential page layout thumbnails; made an excel sheet of spreads and analyzed and refined content / organization
• “carrot cake” oatcakes for Sunday brunch (I subbed 2T melted butter and 1/4c extra milk for the applesauce) — liked with the cream cheese glaze and pecans! (I used only 2oz cream cheese) Definitely heartier than pancakes but much healthier, would eat again
• spent two hours looking up and trying fixes on my freezer drawer, which was still jammed… finally gave up and called a tech — $180 to disassemble the whole freezer and put the roller back onto its track — I was admonished to be gentle with it like ten times 😅
• getting used to sitting on the wedge cushion (I should have gotten the wider version oops)
• also got an oversized wedge pillow to use when I have indigestion, when I need to either sit up or at least not lay all the way down
• been running more of my web searches on Marginalia Search (versus my usual DuckDuckGo) — it’s not suited for everything but it seems to turn up more ten year old blog posts and no SEO / AI slop sites, which is much more what I’m looking for: real people and small businesses, hobbyists and enthusiasts
• one weight workout + 4x PT exercises — now with added foam rolling 😭
• I used to go to exercise classes, and thought maybe it would be “fun” to try again… but got sticker shock 🤑 a day pass at the bouldering gym is $30, the HIIT place sells a $350 ten-class punchcard, kickboxing is $950 for 40 classes, BJJ didn’t even list a price… I was reminded why I decided free weights at home was my best option 🏋️‍♀️

Dinners:

• veggie sausage dogs with cream cheese and mustard + potato chips + orange juice
• smoked mozzarella red pepper ‘paninis’ + potato chips + orange juice
• tried Indian food with double digestive enzyme (you can take two capsules, I typically take one unless it’s something I think will set me off) — gobi manchurian + samosa + garlic naan — alas, my experiment failed, that was an unpleasant evening
• red lentil curry (omitted peanut butter and lemon) + leftover naan + leftover rice
• fake veggie burgers + curly fries + pineapple juice
• smoked mozzarella red pepper ‘paninis’ + (store bought) pumpkin pie and whipped cream
• smoked salmon and leek quiche

Reading:

• Read On Fairy-Stories by J.R.R. Tolkien and The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang 👍
• Finished reading There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm 👍, Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner, and The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh 👍
• Continued reading Starboard Wine by Samuel R. Delany
• DNF’d A Secret in the Garden by Jeneane O’Riley and The Duke of Her Desire by Sophie Barnes
• Wrote catch-up reviews for Daggerbound and The Exquisite Torment of Loving Your Enemy

Haha I have my very elaborate TBR tracking system… and my friend showed me the legal pad where they just write down interesting titles they come across 😆

Words I looked up:

• coeval
• philology
• indissolubly
• calques
• pellucid
• truculent — this is not what I thought it meant at all lol
• fillip
• plethoric — ok this one was obvious
• succoring

Choice phrases:

“…[D]isbelief had not so much to be suspended as hanged, drawn, and quartered.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories

Pretty stuff I saw:

• spectacular fall scenery on this Japanese mountain hike — Emma notes that it’s a tourist trap but for good reason, which is how I feel about Paradise at Mt. Rainier / Tahoma / Tacoma

Nature notes:

• figs are starting to ripen! time to get the infrared camera going again 🍿 someone (squirrel?) ate half a fig already and left it on the fencepost
• speaking of, saw the squirrel taking a nice long drink from the bird bath one sunny afternoon
• leaves have fallen off the top half of the dove tree — it does not have a graceful fall transition and every year we think it’s dying 🍂 a lot of fruit on it still
• big white berries on the snowberries
• saw the towhee for the first time in a while, also the hummingbird did a fly-by of the kitchen window
• I really like it when the sky behind is dark gray with rainclouds, but the sun sets the trees in front aglow with warm light — saw a faint rainbow through a gap in the trees 🌈

Word.

I did some reading about why so many of us feel the need to switch things up, and why some people aren’t this way and can be happy with “just good enough” year after year.

In theory, neither type of person is better. Those of us who endlessly experiment and optimize risk wasting time on side quests. The just-good-enough folks risk missing out on the fruits of progress.

Balance in all things, I suppose. How’s that for a safe take?

Anyway, digging Iosevka this time.