tingilinde

on american myths

The third review I've come across on Richard Slotkin's new book.

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My dictionary defines ‘myth’ as both a popular tradition that embodies core social values and an ‘unfounded or false’ idea. The word hints at intentional distortion of the truth. But truth is more or less beside the point in Slotkin’s discussion of myths. He is neither asking Americans to embrace demonstrable falsehoods as a way of restoring a lost sense of national unity nor demanding that unifying narratives embody only verifiable facts about the country’s past. ‘As I use the term,’ he writes, ‘myths are the stories – true, untrue, half-true – that ... provide an otherwise loosely affiliated people with models of patriotic action.’ Such common beliefs are more important in the US than elsewhere, since compared with other nations the country lacks traditional underpinnings of patriotic nationalism such as a shared ethnocultural identity, a long-established history and a powerful and threatening neighbour. In a more unified nation, people of different political persuasions would seize on myths as ready-made paradigms which help make sense of events. In A Great Disorder, Slotkin explores the emergence and evolution of the ‘foundational’ myths that have helped define American culture

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artificial voices and stereotypes

Techbros?  stereotypes?

 

A report with samples

 

dealing with unruly children

Parent-approved kidnapping is a thing in some states (Utah, with extremely lax laws, is ground zero) where kids are given tough love and worse. Unsurprisingly religion is often involved.  Sometimes it's called the troubled teen industry and sometimes children die from abuse or by their own hands as a reaction to the abuse.   Paris Hilton went through it.

a tip of the hat to Sukie

Here's a recent short video on one of these programs

 

cat-human bonds

Apparently sometimes

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Cats have to experience socialization with humans within a key time period of their lives in order for healthy social behavior toward people to develop. So if you have a cat that has never encountered a person before, especially early on as a kitten, they’re going to grow up fearing humans, because they never learned that humans were something that could be a source of good things.

When given the right experiences, we do see that companion cats can definitely form bonds with their owners, these bonds can be strong, and they can be stable over time.

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woman preparing dinner in the woods

 

                    wrong, dangerous advice and sexist  stochastic parrotism

 

a very early love letter generator

That Turing used to get around legislated morality of the day.

It's very simple, but so is ChatGPT conceptually and they're both equally intelligent (eg  zero)

 

 

your vote

From Richard who was trying to convince a friend it's silly not to vote for Biden because you don't like a few of his policies. 

 

A vote is not a valentine, you aren't confessing your love for the candidate.

It's a chess move for the world you want to live in.

 

exterior kansas

Another map projection from xkcd

 

Steve points out the Google-defined centrality of Kansas - in particular, Chanute, KS

 

another really bad idea

Drones as first responders

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In practice, law enforcement's desire to get “a view of the scene” becomes a justification for over-surveilling neighborhoods that produce more 911 calls and for collecting information on anyone who happens to be in the drone’s path. For example, a drone responding to a vandalism case may capture video footage of everyone it passes along the way. Also, drones are subject to the same mission-creep issues that already plague other police tools designed to record the public; what is pitched as a solution to violent crime can quickly become a tool for policing homelessness or low-level infractions that otherwise wouldn't merit police resources.

With their birds-eye view, drones can observe individuals in previously private and constitutionally protected spaces, like their backyards, roofs, and even through home windows. And they can capture crowds of people, like protestors and other peaceful gatherers exercising their First Amendment rights. Drones can be equipped with cameras, thermal imaging, microphones, license plate readers, face recognition, mapping technology, cell-site simulators, weapons, and other payloads. Proliferation of these devices enables state surveillance even for routine operations and in response to innocuous calls —situations unrelated to the original concerns of terrorism or violent crime originally used to justify their adoption.

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on pet cloning

I can see it when dealing with endangered species, but why not get a rescue animal? A report on how it's done and some of the issues.

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Like Dolly and Snuppy, all clones are conceived through somatic-cell nuclear transfer: the nucleus of a skin cell from one animal is extracted and implanted into an egg whose nucleus has been removed. The transplanted nucleus contains all the instructions needed to make the new organism. At ViaGen’s genetic-preservation site, the building near Austin that Mendola had stood expectantly outside, I met with the company’s cell-culture manager, Sanaz Arenivas, who told me that she recommends that people send a sample of skin cells around the size of half a pencil eraser, but sometimes people just send in a whole ear from their dead dog. “Time is of the essence in a post-mortem situation,” ViaGen’s Web site warns grieving (or pre-grieving) owners.

Often, the samples arrive at ViaGen accompanied by photographs and stories about the dogs from whom they came. Arenivas showed me the lab where she isolates the cells from the samples, after which she puts the cells in a petri dish with a growth medium until there are about a million of them. With a cryopreservant added, each of these cell lines is then kept chilled, by liquid nitrogen, at minus a hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit, in large silver tanks. Arenivas put on insulated gloves and safety glasses and opened the top of one of the tanks for me. Clouds of vapor escaped as she reached in and pulled out a rack of vials, like a core sample from a sulfurous spring. The tanks house up to fifty thousand vials of cells. Each sample has a unique identifying number—“like V100-Buddy,” she told me. “We have a lot of Buddys.”

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