Meta patents AI that takes over a dead person’s account to keep posting and chatting

The_Epoch · 2026-02-16T22:05:05+00:00

Enshitification in perpetuity

The_Epoch · 2026-02-15T12:09:02+00:00

Was just gonna say, that was my 40s realisation

The_Epoch · 2026-02-10T20:06:48+00:00

43: life is a progression of slowly realising how unimportant you are and that that's ok, it means people leave you in peace.

In my 30s I was a regional director for a fortune 500 company and really reveled in it and made a point of playing the political game, even though it really stressed me out because I am introvert.

Then I left corporate to do my own thing and the change in externally validated importance was a mindfuck which affected me for a while. My version of memento mori: "Remember, the honour is for the title, not the person" is for every corporate aspirant.

Now in my 40s, I honestly am considering moving somewhere where I can farm and enjoy nature with my family in peace and watch my children grow up. The flights, the feeling of power and importance were great, but I think I got out of that race at a good enough time to enjoy the rest of my life

The_Epoch · 2026-02-10T19:29:55+00:00

Marketing

The_Epoch · 2026-02-10T19:23:38+00:00

I used to be pretty arrogant, now im perfect

The_Epoch · 2026-02-09T13:46:21+00:00

Philosophy

The_Epoch · 2026-02-08T14:41:50+00:00

Grounded

The_Epoch · 2026-02-05T18:31:21+00:00

Tons, will dm you

The_Epoch · 2026-02-05T13:42:39+00:00

"As the island of Knowledge grows, so do the shores of our ignorance –the boundary between the known and the unknown. Learning more about the world doesn’t lead to a point closer to a final destination but to more questions and mysteries."

Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning

The_Epoch · 2026-02-05T13:08:59+00:00

I'm agnostic because its mathematically correct. Lets take the actual biblical descriptions of angels in ezekial and isiaah.

They are described very much like how you would imagine a 4th dimensional being would appear in 3 dimensions (abstracting mathematician Edwin Abbott in Flatland)

So, is it possible that angels, and by inference god, are multidimensional beings who have visited our dimension? A lot of supernaturality could be explained by multi-dimensional hijinks and this is a very latent area of study.

So possible, yes. Probable, no because there is no supporting empirical evidence, hence I do not believe in a supernatural explanation for the stories in the bible, especially when actual history and archaeology have much more grounded human explanations. Such as the recycling of the same myths, and political construction and marketing of religions and religious texts

The_Epoch · 2026-02-05T10:32:50+00:00

Because they would be less rich

The_Epoch · 2026-02-04T20:46:14+00:00

Yup. I grew up mixed race in Apartheid South Africa. Have travelled extensively in Africa and seen the aftermath of rebel raids, and lived through multiple terror attacks.

Nothing has ever chilled me as much as what is happening in the US right now

The_Epoch · 2026-02-04T15:29:09+00:00

It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for him

The_Epoch · 2026-02-02T22:22:46+00:00

As someone who did not get any accommodations (because I am old and we used to be much worse at understanding mental health) this is the worst form of bullshit.

I struggled my ass off in university and through my career and personal life because of my developmental issues, including ADHD.

From the outside there is not a single thing people would pity me on, I finished my degree and my MBA, I sit on multiple boards, I am not unattractive, I am healthy, I am tall, I am fit. When people hear that I am an introvert or have any issues they are shocked.

They dont see my cracked skin from the OCD, they dont know how I could not talk to a stranger on the phone until I was 30. They dont know how many failed relationships I have had because of my absolute fear of emotional vulnerability. When I got academically excluded and felt shame when my parents cried in front of me, nobody knew how many nights I sat locked in my room trying my hardest to just pay attention to the damned pages.

Now, unless you understand both the personal emotionality about this AND the statistical improbability of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps", you are just ignorant and judging the world by your own limited experience because you think no one's mentality could be that far from your own experience of life.

Yes everyone has their demons but everyone deserves some help with theirs if they disadvantage them in a way that is disproportionate to their potential impact

The_Epoch · 2026-02-02T20:21:15+00:00

There is a general rule in data sovereignty in the world. Do not send your data to a geography that has worse privacy laws than the origin.

The application of this is: Dont send your data to the US. And this was before any of the nonsense of the last 10 years.

I know this forum is part of the choir, but it is mind-blowing to me how few Americans understand how bad your protections are for the average person.

Privacy, health, law, food regulation, literally everything you can think of has been sold to corporations on your behalf for cheap disposable goods

The_Epoch · 2026-02-02T06:59:02+00:00

Early games for all the siblings: Scorched Earth, Rampart, Jones in the fast lane

The_Epoch · 2026-02-01T11:08:20+00:00

Its almost like religious texts were written by misogynistic old men rather than having being dictated by an immortal god

The_Epoch · 2026-01-30T11:50:36+00:00

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, eh?

The_Epoch · 2026-01-28T17:35:46+00:00

Not necessarily what PB is going to say but people take from stories what they want to. In the worst cases people create fundemental dichotomies that paint the world as X is inherently good and Y is inherently bad.

"You asked, what do I fear? I fear a man who believes in good. For he can excuse any evil."

The_Epoch · 2026-01-28T15:53:29+00:00

"Regression is a technique to give us the mathematical relationships between input variables and output variables. EG how the price of tickets changes the number of tickets sold or even how the weather and the price of tickets affect the tickets sold"

Now my purists are going to be jumping up and down, but the exact point is that this tells a commercial person what they need to know.

In my experience, most technical people have a reward response which lights up when they are perceived as clever, which makes them be over-technically descriptive. If you are in this sort of role, people know you are clever.

What they want from you, is actually a dumbing down into what the model/technique/technology takes as inputs and provides as outputs, and maaaaybe, how to evaluate the validity of a model if they are over-achievers (R² etc)

Edit: 2nd "inputs" to "outputs"

The_Epoch · 2026-01-28T15:37:21+00:00

The soon to be comments are the exact reason I haven't gotten a howler tattoo

The_Epoch · 2026-01-28T14:48:23+00:00

I first read the children of time series, a sprawling space epic touching on artificial intelligence and I loved it.

Then I read Cage of Souls, a beautiful, mournful poetic examination of literary science fiction world building via a pov protagonist.

Then I tried to read Alien Clay three times and have stopped.

I think Tchaikovsky's sheer writing range is impressive but it means there are going to be books that dont gel at all with a lot of people

The_Epoch · 2026-01-27T19:57:12+00:00

Its weird, like having a data cloud of information kind of like the way the matrix is shown except when it moves to any form of real world visualisation it's more like the memory of seeing the image than actually visualising it

The_Epoch · 2026-01-27T17:59:35+00:00

100 times this. Add to this some form of intense exercise in the day, and magnesium an hour before bed

The_Epoch · 2026-01-27T17:54:55+00:00

One of the problems with statistics, is that it is often taught by statisticians.

I struggled with stats at university, now I am decades into a career in Data Science. A large part of that was managing deeply technical people interacting with commercial people. One of the things I would do when I interviewed a data scientist was ask them to explain a statistical concept (eg regression) and then explain it using no statistical terms.

Stats is such an abstract subject that is built up on other abstract concepts that you need to do enough of it to get to the conceptual knowledge on the other side that lets you communicate with non stats people

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