Notices by Mallory's Musings & Mischief (malcircuit@thingy.social)

@dalias Yeah, the "question" of free will only remains a question if you are a dualist or whatever. For a materialist like myself, who believes that the mind is what the brain does and is fundamentally just a physical system like any other, quantum mechanics is pretty clear about how there is always at least a small degree of uncertainty involved. And even if you ignore quantum effects, a perfectly deterministic chaotic system (eg, the weather) is fundamentally unpredictable too.

"Is free will real?"

Wrong question. A better question is whether it is possible for someone to predict your choices with high precision. Or worse, whether it is possible for someone to direct your choices with or without your awareness or consent. In practice, those are the only factors that matter.

I don't care whether or not I technically have "free will". How much agency I have in a situation seems to matter a lot more.

So called "soft" skills like creativity, curiosity, and cultivating social relationships are actually fundamental to more areas of society than most people believe, and our failure to prioritize them is a major factor in why our society is failing.

As someone who is exploring and learning about Buddhism, I understand why it's important to look at people like Elon Musk and see them as victims of their own fears, anxieties, and wrong views. The Buddha would offer compassion and love to these people and try to help them to transcend their own mental shackles to be truly free.

I am not the Buddha.

At the beginning of the universe, there was just a bunch of particles flying around in a hot soup. One part of the universe was barely distinguishable from any other.

For 14.8 billion years that soup of particles has been doing an elaborate dance — jumping around, constantly reconfiguring themselves, getting locked into clumps of matter that are changed and mixed by the laws of physics.

This dance could have led to countless different configurations, but they arrived here, to you reading this.

@muon Yeah, as long as ChatGPT is still operating, there's not much point expending any effort to reduce my personal energy consumption. The energy use from people running their AC is a small fraction compared to all the other stupid shit we're wasting power on.

Borders are fucking stupid

Is your country suffering from a lack of technical talent? Do you want to be a buzzing hub of creativity and innovation?

Here's one simple trick: provide asylum for US citizens that are LGBT+, or have Autism or ADHD. Or, fuck it, just accept any US citizen from any targeted group.

All of the smartest and most talented people I can think of are currently freaking the fuck out and would seriously consider moving to your country if you did that. Just saying.

My political party is humanity

I spend a lot of time doing nothing, and that's okay

Turns out doing nothing is a valid activity. I mean, it's as valid as anything is. I can think of a lot of worse things to be doing than nothing.

HEADLINE: POTUS signs executive order making bad weather illegal. Musk vows DOGE will track down government weather control machine and modernize with AI.

HEADLINE: 22 year old DOGE intern killed after showing up unannounced at the gate to Area 51 demanding statistics for expenses related to extraterrestrials

Seriously considering just fucking leaving the country (again). This DOGE clown show seems to have finally pushed past my internal threshold of stupid bullshit I'm willing to tolerate. I'm so done with this shit.

I'm less angry and more just exhausted and exasperated

A real country would have put Musk's head on a fucking spike by now, but nah let's just let him brazenly usurp governmental authority with impunity because we're all apparently just a bunch of sheep being led to the slaughter

Fuck everything

Trying to live a "normal" life right now feels like wasted effort

Here's the shot of the Rosette Nebula (Caldwell 49) I got last night. Red Cat 51 and ASI2600MC using Askar Colormagic C1+C2 filters.

Pulled out H, OIII, and SII channels out of the two image stacks and mapped them to the HOS palette, which I thought looked stunning. This is one of my favorite nebulae 😍

These filters are cool AF. Even straight out of the camera the images looked really pretty. I'm very happy with them.

#astronomy #astrophotography

Here's a cropped version because Mastodon decided to pixelate the crap out of full res one.

The Rosette Nebula (Caldwell 49) in HOS narrowband palette.

#astronomy #astrophotography