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JimD
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Greybeard Geek.
Answer Guy 2 years ago
These are worth pondering: 1. One mark of a smart person is the ability to learn from people they don’t like. 2. The most powerful productivity tool ever invented is simply the word "no." 3. Rich people have money. Wealthy people have time. 4. Writing is often the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about. 5. 90 percent of success is not getting distracted. 6. Short-term results come from intensity. Long-term results come from consistency. 7. Clear writing gives poor thinking nowhere to hide. 8. The quicker you want something, the easier you are to manipulate. 9. If you want new ideas, read old books. 10. First-principles thinking is a competitive advantage because almost no one does it. 11. Talent and potential mean nothing if you can't consistently do the boring things when you don't feel like doing them. 12. The greatest trap is telling yourself that you’ll do something important tomorrow. Procrastination creates negative momentum. 13. Make your next project something people will ask you about for the rest of your life. Those are from: I'll add: * To be successful, learn how to respond to failure.
Answer Guy 2 years ago
Story idea: Ægobots Have you ever wanted a personal robot or servant? What if you could actually sort of be your own robot? What if there was some sort of implant or even just a discipline or technique by which you could turn the part of you that you consider to be YOU, your ego, inward to sleep, play games, watch movies, chat, do your doom scrolling, engage in virtual sex with other ægobots, whatever … all while a sort of AI or "mini me" was blissfully directing your body and other parts of your brain, alter egos, doing various boring, mind numbing or mindless tasks for you. In other words, what if you could direct your body to essentially be your own personal servant? Now the story plot: what if that device, implant, mechanism … what if that were compromised, backdoored, and after untold millions of folks had adopted this for their benefit, they could be subverted, co-opted into being a meatspace army while the owners of all those bodies were off in a dream space, unaware that any of this was going on … a sort of Inception/Matrix zombie horde? What if?
Answer Guy 2 years ago
⚠️ WARNING: A fraudulent Electrum app is being distributed on the Apple @AppStore. ⚠️
Answer Guy 2 years ago
Someone asked #NOSTR should be funded. I responded in thread, but want to also post this on its own: How is the Internet funded? NOSTR should not be a project, nor a product, nor a service. It should be a suite of protocols (implemented over the Internet's TCP/IP protocol suite) which establishes interoperability among clients, servers, and peers — between clads of users and sources of content or providers of services. In other words, it should be like the web, but using public/private keyed identities over an explicitly censorship resistant and privacy preserving event/relay model.
Answer Guy 2 years ago
Every successful narrative must incorporate improbable elements. It's due to a Darwinian dynamic.
Answer Guy 2 years ago
TIL: polysemy: characteristic referring to lexicographically equivalent terms with multiple (poly-) semantic interpretations (-semy). image
Answer Guy 2 years ago
Precursors to Isekai 異世界 ☞ Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain, 1889 ☞ The Magician's Nephew, C. S. Lewis, 1955 ☞ Three Hearts and Three Lions, Poul Anderson, 1961 ☞ The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling, 1959 ☞ Glory Road, Robert A. Heinlein, 1963 ☞ Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, H. Beam Piper, 1965 ☞ Chronicles of Amber, Roger Zelazny, 1970 ☞ Spellsinger, Alan Dean Foster, 1983 I'm sure I'm missing some seminal works which could qualify. Also The Twilight Zone only deserves honorable mention as many of its episodes wouldn't qualify as isekai. However, enough of its stories are so influential, and develop themes which could implicitly be isekai (in the sense that the protagonists have slipped into these "other worlds" without any exposition on how it occurred) that I felt compelled to include it. But we might make similar arguments for The Outer Limits, or even Night Gallery. Where do we draw the line?
Answer Guy 2 years ago
Took the train from Berlin to Amsterdam. Utterly failed to arrange hotel accommodations between getting here. Decided to wing it. Picked a nice sounding pub to park Heather and the luggage at and just struck up a conversation with some pensioners who were drinking and smoking outside. Asked if they had advice for a dumb, impetuous American. So my new buddy Dietrich called over to the hotel that was listed as “full” nearby and arranged for them to hold a room for me at a lower rate than web was showing for anything else in the area. Bought the lads a round. Left Heather here playing D&D over her phone and the interwebs, and watching the luggage while I ambled a quarter kilometer across Haarlemmer to pay for the room and pick up our keys. Now I back sipping on Glenmorangie and getting ready to roll our luggage over these streets. RIP my wheels. Finnegans Rainbow: image
Answer Guy 2 years ago
After #btcplusplus Heather and I extended our hotel stay by two days. Slept in and acted like cave bears all day Sunday. Today we walked over to the Ostbahnhof train station (a whole block away), had breakfast at one of several bakeries inside, did a little souvenir shopping, and wandered over at a nearby park and Berlin Wall memorial. Here are some photos: image
Answer Guy 2 years ago
Breakfast at the train station, Ostbahnhof, Berlin: image