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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.workstoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlIs "female" offensive?
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    8 months ago

    This is what I said to someone who asked a very similar question about the same thing a while back:

    ‘Females’ is, effectively, a ‘technical term’ you might say, that isn’t used in normal conversation. It’s used specifically in situations where distance from the subject being discussed is intentional. It is the sort of language used in police reports, medical reports and the like…when it’s even being applied to humans at all. Its use is perhaps more common referring to animals; it’s the sort of terminology you’d expect to hear in a nature documentary.

    The people trying to push its use are intending to make the subjects - women - sound ‘other’ and separate and alien by referring to them as ‘females’. Not everyone who is picking up this terminology intends it that way, but the connotations are unavoidable because of how language works in common use, and therefore if you don’t intend it that way, you badly need to be made aware of it so you can stop.







  • Get every flagship CPU and GPU from 2000 to today that I can get my hands on. Also as much open source code as I can get hold of. And especially AI stuff - there’s several fully open source models, so bring those, and as much technical writings on them as possible.

    Speaking of which, download every science paper published since 2000 that I can get hold of, in every possible field.

    Get as much info on the 2000 election as possible, to hand to Al Gore, see if he can win that election with a solid unassailable margin.

    Research stocks, lottery, and everything else I can to get fast money within the shortest possible period of time after I get there, so I can get super rich before the butterfly effect makes predictions impossible, I need billions in seed money and I need it fast.

    Then use that money to start a private research group, and hand them all the scientific papers I brought. Get those experts to work studying all this knowledge and figure out what can be turned into practical technology. Turn some of this into profit-making devices to fund continued development, but release as much as possible for free.

    Essentially, deluge the world in as much new technology as possible, mostly free and open source, holding back only as much as necessary in order to fund continued research.

    And oh jeez the pharmaceutical industry. Release for free every drug made since 2000, so the pharmaceutical industry can’t get their patents in them.

    Big list of stuff there, but if I pulled off even half of it, the world would probably be a much better place in 25 years than in my original timeline.


  • Some of these actually do have an effect, but it’s difficult to impossible for a person to know whether this particular one is a placebo button or not.

    This is especially the case with elevator close door buttons. Those buttons are always hooked up, because they are needed during emergency operation with the fireman’s key. They are sometimes programmed to cycle the doors marginally faster under normal circumstances, but more often aren’t.

    Also, some of the traffic crossing buttons don’t make the walk cycle come sooner, but they occasionally are needed to insert a walk cycle at all, because some intersections don’t trigger a walk cycle unless the button has been pressed.




  • People whose jobs can be taken by AI means every human. ALL OF US. It’s just a question of how soon. Some jobs will still need humans for several decades, others will not.

    What we all collectively need to do is acknowledge that we are winning. This is the endgame of civilization, and our victory condition is 100% unemployment, because no one should be required to work.

    But we need to acknowledge that tying a person’s means of living to a ‘productive job’ is no longer viable, and people need to live even without doing something ‘productive’.