I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has to shit in the woods some time: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/610432/how-to-shit-in-the-woods-4th-edition-by-kathleen-meyer/9781984857132

I was working in sanitation and told my co-worker about my upcoming back country trip. He recommended this book. I put it on my e-reader and read it during the course of my adventure. I changed how I approach such things afterwards.

That too! Why not also make money from it?

Moving to a rural area and realizing how fucking hard it is.

The hill I will die on: rugged individualism as strength in a post-disaster world is a lie that is sold to appeal to ego in an individualistic society, and also to prevent the formation of community.

That doesn’t apply to many existing rural communities, who of course know better.

It’s easy to forget the mass panic around hackers in the 80s and 90s! It wasn’t a letter from your ISP telling you to cut that shit out (pirating).

Kevin Mitnick got sentenced to a year in jail accessing an internal network of a company, and transferring the source code of their software. As far as I understand he didn’t extort the company, threaten them, or release the files. The hack was in 1979 and he was charged in 1988.

The Free Kevin movement in the late 90s (for his later arrest) really created this environment where people pushing back on how blown out of proportion the criminal charges were helped popularize the idea of white hat hacking. If I recall correctly it started as individuals advertising their services for pen testing, etc, and approaching companies with their discoveries hoping for a pay out. I’m sure the big bounty system was just a more efficient way for companies to get this same service without having to hire someone do the testing. They only pay for results. The benefit to the hacker is there is much less risk of being accused of blackmail or hit with charges for admitting to the hack if they cold-approach a company.

Good question, but I wouldn’t be addressing this if it wasn’t being implemented at scale in a desperate manner.

I guess my point is that capitalism is the driver for the implementation at scale in a desperate manner.

Is there any way to operate AI with significantly lower resource demand to the point that is a non-factor?

I can’t back this up with facts and figures, but my I understanding is yes, based on these reasons:

• at least some portion of the built out is speculative. I’m not sure how the popularly reported resource consumption data is generated, but I imagine it includes planned and or approved data centres that may or may not ever get turned on, or even built. Maybe the dotcom bubble is a good analogy here, people wee just buying up all sorts of domains and putting together basically slop websites with the hope they could cash in. It doesn’t mean all those websites materialized.

• if the computing infrastructure is planned and incorporates good practices, there is no reason renewables can’t be used for the energy (including cooling energy). I think this addresses the electricity and cooling resources.

• As for the hardware and mineral resources needed for those, we know a lot of that is speculative production. I hope models will become more efficient, but efficient models don’t sell ram 😉

And we still haven’t addressed the social consequences of it.

I tried to touch on that with the infrastructure but I did skip the less tangible aspects. Again, I think the rush to be the first and create a demand for AI has been the cause of many of the social harms. It’s just thrust upon us as this great thing…without any real instructions or notes about limitations. If it was developed to solve specific problems and not just bump up usage numbers for quarterly reports, perhaps a lot of that could have been avoided.

I have found it useful for some things, but I’m also old. I think that (for better or worse) this lets me see this as a new thing I can use, instead of “the way the world is” as someone who uses it in school might see it. Without remembering how we used to do things, and what the pros and cons of using AI for these tasks are, I think we are in for a heap of trouble.

Eta: I believe the vast majority of data centres approved in Ontario use air cooling, so yes there are places where water cooling isn’t depended on.

I’ve had a hard time separating this song from the idea of manifest destiny ever since Jack Layton famously performed it on the campaign trail and faced that criticism. I realise that I’m probably missing the point, and so were the people who “translated” it to ‘canadian’.

15 years later I now hear it as the realization that the american dream is a lie. North America was colonized and the colonizers were promised all of its riches and freedom from serfdom. But there are still no trespassing signs, and people are still dependent on religious and state aid, despite the vast abundance.

I think the song ends with him being like “well fuck you I’m going after that freedom anyways” which doesn’t quite match my interpretation of the lyrics before that part, but we see the world differently in the current era and I’m not sure how much Guthrie might have known about colonialism.

I don’t have too much to add about china specifically but it might be useful to explore if the “social and environmental costs” would be so high if it wasn’t developing in a capitalist framework?

As far as I understand, a lot of the environmental/community harms are multiplied in a rush to hoard resources and build up capacity for which there isn’t yet a need.

Because of the rush to bring capacity online (whether or will be used or not) and because infrastructure has been so neglected throughout the western world, the data centres are monopolizing power generation and transmission, leaving others to pick up the cost of expansion and maintenance.

Lack of power in places where land is cheap or where there are significant perks for businesses means on site power generation with things like diesel generators is seen as a valid solution.

The same situation arises for cooling. Water cooling is the cheapest in places where water is cheap and regulations are limited, but this is a detriment to infrastructure and the environment. Air cooling or closed loop liquid cooling has a much lower impact, but is more expensive and limits where you can build.

If there was no incentive to chase higher and higher valuations, would the same decisions be made?

To be clear, I have no idea how china is handling these problems. I would believe there is a sort of AI arms race going on as well, so perhaps removing capitalism wouldn’t mean better, more sustainable choices are made.

I hope this is useful in understanding why I missed the joke: I wanted to match what I thought was a serious tone because I was afraid of causing insult if it seemed I wasn’t treating your comment as earnest.

Maybe part of the joke is referencing that autistic people need to make their own frameworks because (especially as adults) we are left to raw dog an existence not made for us yet we yearn for rules. I’ve seen a few people creating theories like this seriously, although they are often centring the autistic experience instead of dissecting allistic traits. That’s why I was being extra careful when wording my question.

So yeah, maybe a little tone indicator when you make your post would be good, or even explaining that this is an exercise in pathologizing allistic behavior instead of the other way around.

Thank you! I think I understand now.

“Eyes (for reading the economist)” was my favorite part, but I think it is a bit generous lol.

Is this something distinct from cognitive dissonance, or largely a more developed and specific framework?

Your train of thought has a gap. The boss has no monopoly on money. The customer has. He’s the one that buys or pays something. The boss is, more or less, at the mercy of his customers. This is less of a problem if the boss sells something that is crucial to your life, like food, water, housing etc, so things you really need to survive, but a big problem if you sell something that isn’t.

I respectfully disagree.

This analysis ignores bank and finance capital, which are the ones who hold the monopoly on money. So yes, it would be fair to say the boss (individual capitalist) does not hold the monopoly on money, but they have access to very cheap money.

If the individual capitalist didn’t have access to cheap loans, and the supply chain wasn’t propped up by neocolonialism (i.e. wealth extraction from other countries) then I would agree they would be dependent on the consumer. This had not been the case since the early 19th century or earlier.

Hackers like to hack.

Bug bounties can be lucrative, but they are also a way to indulge in the joy of hacking without worrying about legal ramifications.

I love Aunty Donna!

I do not love the idea of walk-in kilns. Mine opens from the top and is much smaller lol.

Something that really annoys me is when people are super rigid with language. I’m not talking about when people are intentionally precise and check in to make sure they are understood (u r angels, honestly 🙏) but when people have no understanding about how culture impacts communication.

The internet is giant. English is spoken in so many different ways all over the world. I wonder if I’m more sympathetic to this because of the autism and knowing how easy it is to be misunderstood, or if it’s living in a place with a lot of immigration so that I can get to know how english is spoken in different english speaking regions as well as how people who learned english later in life communicate.

An IRL example that always comes to mind is when I was a child and visiting family in the southern US. Someone asked me what I thought of something and I said, “It’s nice!” enthusiastically. Well, apparently that’s the wrong thing to say and a great insult because “nice” is a code word for “I don’t like it, I’m not going to pretend I do, but I don’t want to stray too far from social norms and say it clearly”. Where I am from it is a genuine positive assessment (unless it’s said sarcastically, which isn’t what I did). It didn’t matter when I told them I didn’t mean any offense and that the word has different connotations where I’m from. I should have spoken english the right way. Their way.

I am preparing my eye balls 👀

I don’t understand this reply.

Thank you for your kind words.

I’m actually working on an art project that uses a mismatch between production technique and end usage as commentary. If I ever finish it, I will share it in this community because it is an expression of my experiences with autism.

This next part isn’t a direct reply to you, but I’d like to use your comment as a jumping off point for a massive infodump lol:

It’s not possible to achieve perfection with the methods I use in pottery. That is not the point. If I wanted a perfectly formed object, I’d be doing slip casting (molds) and not hand building. I’m not knocking slip casting as either skill or art form, nor am I saying this object shows any level of skill at hand building. It doesn’t have to be quite this janky 😅

Its okay of people think this is a poorly made piece. It kind of is. My unreasonable wish is that folks would be able to tell what parts are poor execution (either by choice or lack of skill) vs limitations of the method.

Clay has a memory. Depending on how an object is formed, if you don’t align all the little clay bits in the right direction they will spring back into a different shape during drying or its two trips through the kiln. You can’t tell by looking at an object if it will happen.

Hand building presents the biggest challenge in preventing this. Both throwing and casting involve working with a wetter clay so you are more likely to get the alignment correct even deep within an object. Apart from being way faster and having less material loss, this is why plates are most often cast in production settings.

This object involved connecting 7 slabs of clay (bottom, wall, 5 partitions). They are attached by scoring and slipping, and then adding additional clay at the joints and smoothing it to reinforce the seam. That’s where the bulges come from in the curved part of each section. The wall is pushed into the partition, leaving the curved part to flex because it has not been compressed in the same direction as the joint. I could have spent more time compressing the outer wall in different directions to redirect that ‘spring’ but didn’t 🤷‍♀️ However, even if I did one would still expect some deflection.

In contrast, here are some throw plates. They are my first ones that I decided to fire so they are also janky but you can see how the technique used influences what flaws are present.

These are formed by pressing the clay down while it’s spinning, which directs the particles to spread along the base. I kept the throw marks (concentric circles within the centre part) visible and picked a glaze that accentuated them, but the glaring flaw here is how droopy the green plate’s rim is. The clay is too thick and heavy there for the type of foot it has, so it drooped a bit in the kiln. There are ways to prevent this, but because I have never fired this shape before (with this clay or otherwise), I didn’t know how it would behave. I’m honestly super proud the damn thing didn’t form a giant crack in the centre, which is a common failure with thrown plates.

There is no part of the OC that suggests a positive or negative moral or ethical assessment of the behaviors they described.

I strongly disagree. Here are some examples of what I read as setting up what the capitalist was saying as positive:

“That seems like it was a risk.”

“That seems like a lot of work.”

“Nobody paid me, I hoped to get paid once I could start selling products.”

“So, really, it’s oversimplifying to say that you do nothing, and the worker does everything.”

“Yeah, he makes what I tell him to make, but I figure out how much to charge, where to sell it, where to buy the raw materials, basically everything about the business other than operating the machine.”

That is an easier argument to attack than what was actually described (a series of cause and effect), projected onto the scenario provided in the OC.

I didn’t attack it. I said I didn’t know if it was positive or negative, because it presents the capitalist as reasonable while he says vile things about the workers.

Acknowledging the motivations and logic of others, even those you disagree with, is not an endorsement of them. It is a fact that what OC described is how the history of capitalism played out in practice (with a large spoonful of corrupt lobbying to drive those wages down and profits for capital holders up).

I honestly don’t know if we are talking about the same OC. Do you mean the top comment on the chain or the image in the post?

I hope that clears things up. You weren’t “just asking a question”.

I certainly didn’t frame it as “just asking questions.” I was genuinely confused when I was asked:

where do you see such statement in the comment i reacted to? some red circles would help.

When the comment the reacted to (replied to) was mine.

I finally figured it out that they meant “where in my reply did I say that”.

You were presuming a specific answer and asking them to verify your presumption.

As I have explained already, I was stating how I read it and asking if this is what they were referring to as true.

If you were genuinely asking a question about how it was read, you could have easily said "I read the OC to imply that workers should be exploited. Is that the fact you’re referring to? I ask because that seems too callous to be true.

I think it’s absurd to tell people how they should communicate online. I’m sure that wording would have been clearer to you, but it’s not the intuitive wording to me. Not everyone speaks english the same way. That’s why it’s better to assume good intent and ask questions.

What argument? They said the text was the truth and I asked if they understood it to mean the same thing I did.