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Sunday, January 01, 2023

Links - 1st January 2023 (1)

An AI-Generated Artwork Won First Place at a State Fair Fine Arts Competition, and Artists Are Pissed - "A man came in first at the Colorado State Fair’s fine art competition using an AI generated artwork on Monday. “I won first place,” a user going by Sincarnate said in a Discord post above photos of the AI-generated canvases hanging at the fair. Sincarnate’s name is Jason Allen, who is president of Colorado-based tabletop gaming company Incarnate Games. According to the state fair’s website, he won in the digital art category with a work called “Théâtre D'opéra Spatial.”... Allen did not paint “Théâtre D'opéra Spatial,” AI software called Midjourney did. It used his prompts, but Allen did not wield a digital brush. This distinction has caused controversy on Twitter where working artists and enthusiasts accused Allen of hastening the death of creative jobs."

Lightning Strikes at Exact Moment Girlfriend Accepts Marriage Proposal - "Wedding photographer Danika Camba captured a once-in-a-lifetime photo when lightning struck at the exact moment a woman said “yes” to her boyfriend’s marriage proposal."

Actually, The Bug That Made Gandhi Drop Nukes In Civilization Is Just A Myth - "According to Meier's autobiography, a forum user named Tunafish claimed that Gandhi's affinity for nukes came from an overflow error. Every leader in Civ is assigned an aggression rating between 1 and 12. Gandhi's was 1, but get this: whenever a country adopted democracy, its leader's aggression rating automatically went down by two points. Because there was no way of reading a value for -1, Gandhi ended up going to zero, and then to the opposite end of the spectrum, boasting an aggression rating of 255. But again, this never happened. This purported "overflow error" was fabricated by an internet troll who was annoyed that Gandhi nuked them...   Despite the fact it was all made up, none of this new information makes it any less funny — and Meier himself is the first person to acknowledge that.  "Gandhi firing nukes is, and always has been, inherently funny, no matter how rarely it occurs""

UK tourist complains after holiday to Spain ruined by '˜too many Spaniards' - "Freda Jackson, 81, said she cried at the end of her two-week trip to the popular holiday destination through travel operator Thomas Cook"

Scott Stinson: In defence of the sports press conference - "tennis star Naomi Osaka announced on social media that she would not submit to the post-match question-and-answer sessions while at the French Open... tournament officials in Paris, joined by representatives from the other tennis Grand Slams, responded to Osaka’s first missed press session with a wildly over-the-top statement that threatened not just escalating fines, but possible disqualification and — the real kick in the pants — suspension from future events if she kept up the poor form... it has been weird to see so many, and in particular so many journalists, take this incident as proof that press conferences themselves are dumb and pointless, full stop... despite their flaws, press conferences are still the only efficient way to allow large numbers of media to interact with athletes and coaches. Beyond that, the answers that come from the podium fuel all kinds of coverage of the event and the sport. Those clips and comments go into print coverage, highlight shows, radio and Internet programming. They are also pushed out on social media, including sometimes by the social-media teams of the athletes themselves. It may be true that athletes are not paid directly for the time they spend speaking to the media, but the money that they do make is tied to media coverage of their sport. Broadcast fees, which have risen sharply in recent decades, have boosted salaries and prize money, and it’s those same broadcasters who naturally want press coverage to boost ratings, and interview clips that can be used on their programming... I’ve seen players and coaches use them to provide valuable insight about tactical adjustments. I’ve seen athletes explain the key moments in a match or tournament. I’ve seen coaches who are clearly annoyed with their players and players who are just as mad at their coaches and, sometimes, teammates. The media helps bring that stuff out. I haven’t seen too many players explain those things on Instagram. (Though they have been known to use a devastating googly-eyes emoji to get such a message across.)"
So much for do your job or get fired. It is more important to be brave and stunning

Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann confesses in newly unearthed tapes - "newly unearthed audio recordings of Adolf Eichmann reveal how the architect of the Holocaust described his role in organizing the “Final Solution.” For the first time, the Nazi war criminal, who maintained at his trial that he was nothing more than a “little cog” in the machine, can be heard, in his own words, defending the Holocaust that resulted in the death of six million Jews. “If we had killed 10.3 million Jews, I would say with satisfaction, ‘Good, we destroyed an enemy,'” Eichmann says in one of the recordings, referring to the total population of Jews in Europe at the time of the Second World War. “Then we would have fulfilled our mission.”  The recordings are contained in a 180-minute Israeli documentary series, The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes... In 1957, years after fleeing to Argentina after the Second World War, Eichmann recorded 70 hours of interviews in Buenos Aires. The interviews were conducted by a Dutch journalist and Nazi-sympathizer, Willem Sassen."
Clearly he was just a Jewish agent and this is misinformation to perpetuate the myth of the Holocaust

Nat on Twitter - "20-something: My rent is incr-
Some guy™: Why do you live somewhere so expensive? Have you considered moving to a dilapidated shack in a swamp? You think there aren’t jobs? ?? My buddy got a job kidnapping children for bog witches. It’s not glamorous but it pays well. This gen-
All jokes aside, people should not have to move away from their families, friends, and communities just to be able to afford to live. It’s not entitlement to want to stay where you’ve put down roots, or in many cases, where you’ve lived your entire life."
Of course, the irony is that these are the people who oppose densification and development

Meme - "Watch me make a grown adult their 6am milkshake *Starbucks*"

I didn't poop for a month — but it got me 244,000 followers - "A woman has kept hundreds of thousands of viewers captivated with her battle to be able to poop again after more than a month of pain and unsuccessful attempts.  Cherine Docherty, 39, began documenting her constipation consternation after mysteriously developing bowel problems in February 2022 and is now living with a colostomy bag following months of treatments for an unknown ailment"

Meme - "Have over 400 gallons regular gasoline willing to trade only (Austin)
I am blessed to have over 400 gallons of gasoline. I dont want money am only looking to exchange up to 15 gallons for anal sex. Me giving it to you. Both men and women are welcome but the men need to be very attractive as that is not my prefered sex, will wear a condom and use organic lubricant, there will be no filming or photos, I dont want anyone else to know either, so lets agree to keep it hush. If you are interested send pics so know if it is worth it."

This is a 3200-year old attendance sheet found in Deir el-Medina, Egypt. Reasons for worker absence include "embalming brother", "brewing beer" and "bitten by scorpion" : interestingasfuck

Meme - "Muhammad (53): 'I love you so much'
Aisha (9): 'Like a daughter right?'
'like a daughter right?'"

Is it time to increase maximum speed limits? - The Globe and Mail - "If you were to design the perfect speed trap, it would look a lot like Ontario. Its highway speed limits are among the lowest in the developed world. It's illegal to use a radar detector, and there's a law that allows roadside car seizures and fines of up to $10,000 for drivers caught exceeding the limit by 50 km/h.  Speeding tickets are an Ontario growth industry... "They set the limit low, so everyone speeds," says Chris Klimek, founder of Stop100.ca, an advocacy group. "The whole thing is a cash grab."... I started thinking about the logic of speed enforcement. Cruising on Hwy 401, I realized that the vast majority of traffic was travelling well above the 100 km/h limit; the median speed appeared to be in the 120 km/h range.  As a test, I set my cruise control for 100 and travelled from Toronto to Windsor, a distance of just under 400 km. In my four-hour trip, I was passed by hundreds of cars, including several OPP cruisers – almost no one obeyed the posted limit, including the police. "There is a natural speed all over the planet," says Klimek. "And it's not 100. It's 130. That's the speed we gravitate to. We don't want to be criminalized for driving at a safe and responsible speed." For politicians, selling a speed limit is not unlike selling a war – to get a buy-in, the public must believe that your cause is right. With a war, you sell freedom and justice. And when it comes to speed limits, you sell safety. For decades, police have pushed the idea that speed kills, and that the only way to make highways safe is by enforcing strict speed limits.  But does speed really kill?... highway safety involves more than theoretical calculation. According to the World Health Organization, for example, it's safer to drive in Germany, home of the fastest highways in the world, than it is in Canada: WHO data shows that Germany's death rate is 6.9 per 100,000 cars. Canada's rate is 13.  In countless studies on the relationship between speed and risk, although there is general agreement that lower speeds are theoretically safer, researchers have learned that real-world safety can involve a mind-boggling set of variables. Setting an artificially low limit, for example, can actually make a road more dangerous by creating a greater speed differential between the slowest and fastest drivers. One of the most interesting studies on speed was published in 1964 by researcher David Solomon, who developed a graph that became known as "the Solomon Curve." After plotting data gathered from over 10,000 highway crashes, Solomon showed that the likelihood of being in a crash follows a U-shaped curve, and that the drivers travelling at the traffic's median speed (such as the drivers doing 120 km/h on Hwy 401) were least likely to be involved in an accident. So is speed enforcement designed to make the roads safer, or is it a form of taxation? According to autoinsurance.org, speeding tickets generate more than $5-billion in revenue for North American municipalities each year. They also generate $10.2-billion in extra revenue for insurance companies, who add an average of $300 in surcharges for each ticket. The site also found an inverse relationship between municipal growth and speed enforcement – on average, a 10 per cent decline in a city's economic growth resulted in a 6.4 per cent increase in tickets issued. For a failing municipality, speeding tickets can serve as a "sin tax" (a category that also includes casinos and lotteries)... speed limits can also be set for political reasons – such as when the U.S. lowered the national limit to 55 mph during the 1970's oil crisis. Politics also played a role in Ontario.  Back in the 1960s and early '70s, the limit on Ontario highways was 113 km/h. Under pressure from the U.S., the province lowered the limit to 100 km/h in 1976.  And that's where it remains today, even though most other jurisdictions have since raised theirs. Most U.S. states have a 70 mph (113 km/h) limit. The highest speed limit in North America is 85 mph (140 km/h) on Texas's State Highway 130. Ontario's low limit is often defended on the basis of speed elasticity – the assumption that drivers will automatically exceed the posted limit by a certain margin. By this reasoning, increasing the limit could lead to speeds that are beyond the highway's safe design limits.  Or maybe it wouldn't. On Highway 130 in Texas (where the limit is 140 km/h) traffic studies have shown that more than 86 per cent of drivers operate at or below the limit... "If limits are set artificially low, drivers will break them consistently. Compliance is partly due to perceived reasonableness.""

Armando on Twitter - "how do people who "hate small talk" plan on being in sustained meaningful relationships what are you gonna do "hi honey i'm home do you think freewill truly exists?""

Florida man breaks into woman's home to pet family cat - "A Florida woman said she was startled when she woke up last month to find her neighbor petting her cat... Cline said the man got away, but he returned Wednesday morning. This time, Cline was ready for him, as were police.  "I can't believe he came back," Cline said.  Jasper Fiorenza, 24, was arrested on charges of burglary and resisting an officer without violence."

mack on Twitter - "a condom?? babe think of the turtles"

Meme - "I did IQ research as a grad student, and it involved a lot of this stuff. Did you know that most people (95%+) with less than 90 IQ can't understand conditional hypotheticals?
For example:
>How would you have felt yesterday evening if you hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch?
>What do you mean? I did eat breakfast and lunch.
>Yes, but if you had not, how would you have felt?
>Why are you saying that I didn't eat breakfast? I just told you that I did.
>Imagine that you hadn't eaten it, though. How would you have felt?
>I don't understand the question.
It's really fascinating. We did research on convicts in San Quentin. They're absolute fucking retards, at least 50% illiterate.
Other interesting phenomenon around IQ involves recursion. For example:
>Write a story with two named characters, each of whom have at least one line of dialogue.
Most literate people can manage this, specially once you give them an example.
>Write a story with two named characters, each of whom have at least one line of dialogue. In this story, one of the characters must be describing a story with at least two named characters, each of whom have at least one line of dialogue.
If you have less than 90 IQ, this second exercise is basically completely impossible. Add a third level ('frame') to the story, and even IQ 100's start to get mixed up with the names and who's talking. Turns out Scheherazade was an IQ test!
Time is practically impossible to understand for sub 80's. They exist only in the present, can barely reflect on the past and can't plan for the future at all. Sub 90's struggle with anachronism too. For example, I remember the 80-85's stumbling on logic problems that involved common sense anachronism stuff. For instance:
>Why do you think that military strategists in WWII didn't use laptop computers to help develop their strategies?
>I guess they didn't want to get hacked by nazis?
Admittedly you could argue that this is a history knowledge question, not quite a logic sequencing question, but you get the idea.
Sequencing is super hard for them to track, but most 100+ have no problem with it, although I imagine that a movie like Memento strains them a little.
Recursion was definitely the killer, though. Recursive thinking and recursive knowledge seems genuinely hard for people of even average intelligence (although at San Quentin there weren't too many of those!)
It's the main reason why so many people with sub-90 IQ are sociopathic or psychopathic. They don't have the mental computing power to model other people's thoughts and feelings. I've seen it millions of times with convicts.
>How do you think that man felt when you beat him?
>Dunno.
>How do you think that boy's mother felt when she heard that her son was dead?
>Dunno.
It comes across as psychopathic, but these people literally don't have the brainpower to build even a crude model of someone else's mind, let alone populate it with events that are in the past.
I forgot to mention another important part of abstract reasoning, which is 'mapping'. Basically, expressing one thing in terms of another.
For example:
>Imagine a picture of an arrow, colored in a gradient from yellow to green, following the direction of the arrow.
>Imagine a one-way residential street, with ascending house numbers, with the lowest number being at the entrance of the street and the highest number being at the exit.
>If you mapped the arrow onto the street, what color would house number 1 be?
This question really isn't tricky for most 100+s. It has some minor ambiguities, but anyone of normal intelligence can do the 'mapping': that is, the expression of one thing in terms of another.
However, for sub-90's, this stuff is REALLY difficult. They struggle terribly with it. Sub 80's just can't do it at all. Anything under 90 will routinely make errors with even commonplace mapping (like subway maps, time schedules, etc.) Sub 85s start to get into the territory where they can't learn to read, as symbolic mapping of phonemes (or even morphemes) even with constant drilling, is just too tricky.
Maths is another area I could get into, but the long and the short of it is that it's heavily decided by IQ. That's a bit tautological, since it's a principal IQ measurement, but you know what I mean.
As for the criminial narcissists etc: I honestly don't know. However, sufficiently high IQ autists can emulate theory of mind, and do. If you're smart enough, you can build a little simulator in your brain. You also need to be smart enough to appreciate the utility of it. I suspect that any autist or narcissist over 120 can do this stuff regularly without getting tired, but it's like playing a strenuous game of chess for them. They really don't have the 'hardware' for empathy."

Meme - "Someone should make a haunted house where it's not that scary and the props look poorly made, but the Exit is fake and the real haunted house begins when you think you've left it."

Meme - "Old Left vs. the Modern Left."
Old left 1971: Resist Authority
*NO* CIA
Screw the establishment
Free Speech Free Love
Modern left 2021: OBEY THE ESTABLISHMENT
*NO* Free Speech
<3 CDC
Mask up!
Do what you're told"

Facebook - "Most British citizens will not immediately spot anything significant or out of the ordinary with these photos. For Malaysians who were days away from Bersih 3.0 in 2012, Najib arranged for yellow T-shirts and other items related to Bersih to be banned. Then on the eve of the protest itself, Najib fled the country on one of his many overseas 'working trips'. An official visit to London was part of the overall trip itinerary, calling in on her majesty as well. Of all the colours Her Majesty and team of advisers could have chosen for the Queen's dress that day...... Yellow was chosen. Kudos your Majesty!"
From 2015

Feedy TV - Posts | Facebook - "Crispy skin fried pork castle"

Facebook - "OIympic gold medallist Joseph Schooling is in hot water. He’s admitted trying cannabis, once, while overseas. Did he commit a crime? Short answer: no. For those who want to take a deep dive into the law, here it is. The key legal provision is Section 8A of the Misuse of Drugs Act. It lists cannabis as a controlled drug. It says a Singapore citizen or permanent resident who “is found as a result of urine tests” to have consumed a controlled drug commits an offence. Schooling wasn’t found to have consumed cannabis “as a result of urine tests”. He passed his urine tests (i.e. no drugs were found in his urine samples)... Why was Section 8A written this way? In the 1990s, Singaporean addicts were making trips to and from neighbouring countries to get their fixes. That made a mockery of our anti-drug laws, which at the time didn’t prohibit consumption of drugs outside Singapore... That’s something to bear in mind, when we consider the outcry on social media, and the calls to cancel Schooling. When it was reported that Schooling admitted taking cannabis, but wasn’t being prosecuted, it set off a wave of protests. People complained that, in not charging Schooling, the authorities were guilty of favourtism... Should we hold Schooling to a higher standard because he's a national sportsman? That's not how the law works."
Meanwhile, in countries where marijuana is legal...

Meme - "Didn't pay for his overseas training. Check. Gave him deferment for National Service and made it sound like he owed them the favour. Check. Humiliated him when he didn't win the latest Olympics, even though his dad was sick. Check. Publicly shamed and provoked his sponsors to pull out deals with him through the use of newspaper mouthpieces when he admitted to taking weed overseas. Check. Completely revoke his "privileges" (lmao) to train during NS, effectively ending his swimming career. Check. Double-down on drug policies despite the overwhelming evidence of weed's relative lack of harm as evidenced by multiple independently-led scientific studies and meta-reviews compared to tobacco and alcohol (to the point where the UN/WHO has rescheduled the substance), under the guise of protecting Singaporeans. Check. Place highly condescending articles in Straits Times by impotent editors saying "A Hero Fell Down, Let's Pick Him Up", or some pretentious shit. Check. Hold his prize money for Hanoi SEA games. Check. Classic Singapore. Treating people like used condoms. Perhaps we should start seeing this country as a condom too. Discard after use, tyvm."
Drugs are one of the sacred cows in Singapore after all

Meme - "Player: I'm going to play a entertainer fighter who uses the power of dance
DM: weird, how would that w...oooooh
How it works: *Rasputin fight in the King's Man*"

Asbestos, The Twin Towers and 9/11 - "WHEN THE FIRE ALARM WENT OFF, IT TOOK TWO HOURS TO EVACUATENEW YORK'S WORLD TRADE CENTRE.
The bigger the building, the more important fire-proofing becomes. That’s why today’s buildings have asbestos-cement walls and even floors containing asbestos. Asbestos contains fire, cannot burn and holds up after metal and glass have melted down, giving vital time for people to escape. You’ll also find asbestos sealing plumbing joints, insulating heating pipes, electric motors and emergency generators. Asbestos.  We couldn’t live the way we do without it.
When life depends on it, you use asbestos."

Meme - "Soyman 28 Income: 150k Becky 30 Income: 120k
"we just cant afford kids right now"
"I cant see us being able to afford children until we're at least in our mid- late 30s"
"People aren't having kids because of the economy"
Meanwhile...
Muhammad 25 Income: 0 Abidah 22 Income: 0"

Meme - "Justin Gray
On the first pic is me and the second is how my wife should look like. White (required, i have high standards), blonde, petite (nothing taller than 165cm or 5'5), innocent looking and virgin.
About me i'm the typical alpha male, tall as hell
(196cm or 6'5) so i will protect you from beta short males approaching you. Rich, confident and manly looking as hell.
Open for volunteers"

Meme - "Welcome to Ang Mo Kio
Yip Hon Weng
Welcome to Yio Chu Kang!"

Meme - "HER : I DO NOT GIVE ANY MIXED SIGNALS
ALSO HER:
*Spanish flag*
American
English French toast
 Made in China"

Meme - "Oh you're posting on an alt? Why don't you use your real photo and name so I can call your employer and get you fired for disagreeing with my retarded world views???"

Kathy Griffin slammed for saying Republicans will start a 'Civil War' - "Kathy Griffin is catching heat Wednesday following a political tweet some social media watchdogs are now calling out as “threatening.”  The controversial standup comic threw herself into the fiery pits of Twitter when she suggested that if Americans want to endure a fatal historical throwback — then they should vote for red in the forthcoming election.  “If you don’t want a Civil War, vote for Democrats in November. If you do want Civil War, vote Republican”"

Cynde Moya on Twitter - "Remote login is a lot like astral projection."

Pie Chart of Dark Desert Highway : charts - *Hotel California lyrics*

Meme - "Kaspersky
YOUR CHILD SEARCHED RESTRICTED TOPICS
Strairdrac The Netherwatcher searched for ”Teaching crabs how to read" which is considered forbidden knowledge under your current parental control settings."

Meme - "I've accidentally set up push notifications for the BBC science magazine and it's like being followed about by an inquisitive but annoying child
Why am I seeing stars after bumping my head?
What would happen if there were no Moon?
Where do sound waves end up?
Do plants die of old age?
Why do the British talk about the weather so much?"

Meme - "You know what the Green Heron is basically the best heron because it is like 90% neck so when it is all folded down it looks like a giant head with wings and legs but then suddenly ZOOP" "

Coming back into my son's life PRANK (fuck that lil nigga!) (EMOTIONAL) - YouTube

Meme - "people beating up the blind kid for saying the n-word
"me who told him he's black *popcorn*"

Meme - "Girls with the time machine:
I am your granddaughter
Really?
Boys with the time machine:
Looks at those jewish milkers
Hitler: How wrong i was... "

Meme - "Friendly reminder that anime is a form of insidious propaganda used to distract people from japan's war crimes"

Meme - "Art work that was appreciated before WW2-
Art work that was appreciated after WW2-
They just made sure that everybody can go to art school now"

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