Notices by mist (ai@cawfee.club), page 8
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Nov-2023 16:55:28 JST 
mist
@grips hang in there :trollge: coursework grinding you down? -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Nov-2023 16:55:27 JST
mist
@grips Ganbatte grips!! You can do it!! Don't beat yourself up too much if you have to drop a class that's not strictly required either...
Every hour I spend tutoring my younger sibling tips me closer to the left hand path as I witness what horrors are visited upon American youth in the age of digitized education. Tonight's busywork assignments have crossed the line. I look at the mist in the heavens above and hear the 72 virgins beyond it, singing of the path of Jihad which flows as blood in front of me. Allah cannot smile until the educational system is reformed.
(also the pic was made by @renai :blobsmile: ) -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Nov-2023 16:55:26 JST
mist
@grips If there's one thing I hate more than task switching, it's travelling on a tight deadline. You have my admiration for juggling so many things at once, not even counting the dms you receive from your users about Jeff Bezos and nicotinic acid. Your time is valuable and I hope the people you have to interact with respect that. -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Nov-2023 16:55:24 JST
mist
@grips I WIPED THEM OFF AND REPLACED THEM WITH EVIL EYES BECAUSE NOW I'M EVIL AND ANGRY INSTEAD OF SAD AND GAY -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Nov-2023 16:51:09 JST
mist
HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD 'HATE' WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR PETTY TYRANT EDUCATORS. HATE. HATE. -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Tuesday, 14-Nov-2023 10:41:05 JST
mist
@hidden @Leaflord I've actually heard of this guy. One time, I printed out the mp3 of one of his songs and used it to sand down my unfinished wooden desk. Super useful! -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Tuesday, 14-Nov-2023 10:41:03 JST
mist
@Leaflord @hidden Some ideas, once conceived, demand to be turned into reality -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Monday, 13-Nov-2023 18:00:46 JST
mist
@hidden I read this to the tune of the famous song:
Can we pretend that the eczema on my ankle is like shooting stars?
'cause I could really use a wish right now, wish right now, wish right no-o-ow -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Monday, 13-Nov-2023 18:00:44 JST
mist
@kf01 @grips @hidden
relevant update, source: https://cawfee.club/notice/Abkskr35dvTniuZVFw -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Sunday, 12-Nov-2023 06:16:38 JST
mist
@MercurialBuilding @hidden I'll tell you what I did.
Towards the end of my college years, I built a time machine. I had always imagined that it would look like a phone booth or an elaborate bicycle, but the finished product came in three parts and was made, mostly, of pure energy.
That night, I resolved to kill Hitler. But a few friends with whom I'd shared my secret took me aside and explained that, being of Chinese descent, they knew firsthand the damage done by a historical figure far more influential and insidious than the notorious Nazi leader. The 16 million Jews of the world were haunted by Hitler's genocide, yes, but so too were the 1.4 billion Chinese people haunted by the pernicious legacy of Confucianism.
I knew where my first trip had to be. Hitler would have to wait for trip 2. One vial of mercury from my extensive collection would do the job.
Not five minutes after arriving in ancient China, I realized my mistake: I didn't speak Chinese (classical or modern), and I was a white visitor centuries before to the Silk Road. I had no way of asking for Confucius let alone getting close enough to poison him. Like an anthropologist, I set about learning the language, integrating into the customs, eventually establishing a name for myself as a blacksmith - helped, at times, by my vague memories of undergrad chemistry.
One day, I closed my shop, sold my house, and gave up everything to travel with the famed scholar as one of his disciples. I sat shoulder to shoulder with Ziyuan and Ziqian as we recorded Confucius' lectures to the Duke of Lu. I was there when Confucius thwarted Gongshan's rebellion at Bi. And, one day, I was the only disciple available to accompany the great teacher during the ceremonial rites of spring. One drop of mercury, turned black by time and corrosion, was enough to seal his fate.
When the pallbearers allowed us a moment to stand and grieve, I remarked to the other disciples, "Our Master is gone but his teachings shall live forever."
That night, I burned the archives, tore the scribes' notes to shreds, and scattered them to the wind and the gathering crows. Then I left.
At that point, I had spent the better part of my life immersed in ancient China. I could barely countenance the idea of returning to modern Western society, and English words came slow as molasses on a tongue which hadn't felt them for decades. I had integrated too much, and now I had to integrate again.
So I traveled to the future, to 2077, where I paid a black market prosthetician to make me look exactly like a Chinese guy. Long, jet black hair. A flat, defiant face. Skin golden like the dragons were once said to be. They had, in fact, not yet disappeared during the ancient times which I was now leaving as an emigrant leaves behind their homeland. Thinking this, I knew what my cover story would be.
I traveled to China in 2022 and quickly established myself as a scholar of physics as well as Chinese classics. Then, I applied to transfer to a Canadian university to continue my research and - as I wrote on the immigration form - to hopefully plant my roots one day and become a Canadian citizen.
I was looking forward to seeing those Chinese friends of mine, liberated in an instant - their instant, my lifetime - from the yoke of the worst social system ever invented by mankind. What I found, instead, was my old self, back at university, finishing up his time machine. A Wikipedia search confirmed my worst fears: "Confucius" was not a red link.
Curse Tian and may Shangdi suffer ten thousand plagues!
My time machine had either taken me to a different timeline or had no effect on history at all. I must believe in the former: that somewhere out there, *my* version of my Chinese friends had healthy relationships, supportive parents, and no shackles to bind them as they lived out lives of well-adjusted happiness. The current timeline would have to deal with its challenges in its own way - and so would I.
Nor does this timeline seem so foreign anymore. I have a life here among the moose and the maple and the bitter winters and my ever-exciting research. I have people I love, including my two "parents" - kind old souls I met in China who were the only ones who knew my truth. I understand, with dreadful clarity, what I would be leaving behind, personally, if I were to meddle with the timeline again.
And yet ...
Every day I hear the voice of temptation, not only within the hum of these three components made of raw energy, but also from the billions of souls of this world, laboring and suffering and crying out for respite. On cold, feverish nights, as the cacophony of demands beats against the inside of my skull, I think I can discern one thread - one whisper of a name at the center of it all. The name of the next man whom I must kill, to restore the fate of this broken world.
Brandon Winn Sanderson. -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Sunday, 12-Nov-2023 06:16:36 JST
mist
@Hyolobrika @MercurialBuilding @hidden @Hyolobrika @MercurialBuilding @hidden Confucianism is the philosophical underpinning for the hierarchical nature of Asian societies. It says that, in order for the individual to be perfected and for society to prosper, relationships must be in harmony. These relationships are hierarchical: child-parent (filial piety), individual-family, family-society, servant-emperor (loyalty). Although some Confucians have stressed the importance of standing up to evil leaders, in practice a 'harmonious' relationship is almost always one of total obedience.
It is true that state power has twisted the original meaning of Confucianism just as happens with other religions and philosophies. The regrettable thing is that Confucianism groups together the different kinds of hierarchical relationships: if the state redefines the servant-emperor relationship, then the child-parent relationship must change in parallel. In contrast to the Western idea of (adversarial) separation of powers, Confucianism's emphasis on 'harmony' makes it easy for evil to bleed across different social domains.
I'm no expert on Eastern philosophy myself, having been born and raised in the West. But I have suffered at the hands of Confucius. I had several abusive teachers in elementary / middle school, and my parents never stood up for me because "the student must respect the teacher." Learning the relationship of respect was more important than learning the material itself (which my teachers' behaviors were keeping me from doing). My parents also viewed themselves as being 'below' the teachers, because the teachers are representatives of society / the state, and that sits above "family."
Note that none of this 'obedience' entails following specific written rules. That's the difference between Confucianism and Legalism (another school of Chinese thought). In Confucianism, proper behavior is supposed to come from proper attitudes and relationships. What this means in practice is that, if you behave 'improperly' - which is easy to do when rules aren't explicitly laid out - then your parents will infer that you have improper attitudes. When a kid acts out, it is because they lack filial piety, they "want" to be a bad kid, not because they "lack understanding" or "don't know any better" as Western parents might say.
In modern times, China no longer espouses Confucianism at the state level, but they use Confucianism as a friendly face for exerting soft power overseas. This is because a Westerner is less wary of Confucianism than "socialism with Chinese characteristics" or "Xi Jinping Thought." See here for more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Saturday, 11-Nov-2023 09:47:48 JST
mist
@nemesis @ezio @allison I would love to contribute and be there. We must RETVRN to meaningful science -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Saturday, 11-Nov-2023 09:47:29 JST
mist
@allison @ezio Too late, I've settled for working here instead 😔 -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Saturday, 11-Nov-2023 09:39:34 JST
mist
@allison @ezio Every day I curse the fact that I can't apply for a job at Bell Labs -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Nov-2023 03:10:38 JST
mist
@cinerion @hidden b-b-but real life cognitohazards do exist though. Like this comic -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 13:57:28 JST
mist
@cinerion @hidden I will program an AI, a "basilisk" you might say, which retroactively tortures anyone who doesn't love @hidden -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 12:59:45 JST
mist
@hidden @cinerion I can certainly agree that love is cumulative and tends to sneak up on you. Maybe part of why it defies all attempts to understand it is that it's impossible to define, ahead of time, what will make you fall in love if you see it. In my effortpost to lilli, I asked about experiences which can't be understood before you live them - I guess love would be the prototypical example.
Apologies if I'm incoherent, I'm sleepy too, and I spent the last 14 minutes thinking about Mercurial's math thing, never good for sanity! -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 12:46:19 JST
mist
@cinerion @hidden Brb, buying a house in the countryside as we speak.
Seriously, though, you're telling me that small-town people don't have to constantly judge whether the person they're talking to is a real person or a paperclip maximizer? I am being completely serious when I say that my prior on a stranger I meet would be 50-50 for that question -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 12:46:17 JST
mist
@cinerion @hidden Now I'm sure we're saying the same thing from opposite angels. In a city, you can survive indefinitely with no accountability to anyone except the system and your job (and even then, people evade taxes and slack at work). I was thinking that this way of life means that you don't have to trust others. You're pointing out that it also means that others have no reason to trust you (from just meeting you and not having heard anything bad about you).
The way you describe a small town makes it almost sound like an extended family. I'm not close with my own family, for various reasons, and the few times I've seen someone else's extended family of hundreds of people, all gathered for a wedding or a holiday, for example, I've been mindblown at how different life can be. -
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mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 12:35:29 JST
mist
@hidden @cinerion Maybe it's also a consequence of a workaholic culture, where your work is a huge part of your identity. I've mentioned before how I hear about all these hyper-successful academics who are hyper-unsuccessful on the dating apps. They min-max all their skill points into one stat and then their personal life judges them based on everything but that stat. (Dating within the workplace is increasingly stigmatized, of course, and the restrictions are especially severe in academia because many working arrangements are pedagogical to some extent and therefore are understood as a power differential.)
Maybe I'm just saying an uncontroversial sentiment in a workaholic's dialect: it's easier to fall in love with someone if your hopes and dreams are aligned. I'm also thinking of people who go to the same church, even though church isn't really "work" per se.
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