levy

this is a film by a director who, in dunkirk, heroized the british army that had actually been humiliated during the evacuation; who, in tenet, told a story of the world being saved once again thanks to the intelligence agencies of western countries (the usa, of course) and villainized the russians; who, in a film he directed with a totally empathy-void mindset like oppenheimer, glorified that murderous monster called oppenheimer and ignored the japanese civilians; who, even in a film set in a fake universe like the dark knight rises, glorified the institutions that maintain order, meaning the usa, and made fools of batman fans even there with cheap, shallow political subtext; and who, in a sci-fi film like interstellar, pioneered the heroizing of the classic american rural male figure through the cliche cooper character playing baseball and sipping beer on his farm, and once again the "americans save the world" cliche.

let's put this on the record so people know just what kind of person is directing the film. how he'll do it this time is anyone's guess, but nolan is a man who, in this historical film too, will find some way to once again show he's a hollywood puppet. slaves to popular culture and nolan's diehard followers will of course ignore this and keep on defending him. for the sake of inception, memento, and the prestige, i don't want to trash his directing, but this is the reality. even though this guy is british, he's more american than an american. essentially he's become a hollywood puppet. that's exactly the situation. not even spielberg went this glaringly heavy-handed in his career...

that's me. if i'm available i reply instantly. to me this is a matter of respect.

2014, 2015, 2016. one world cup, two copa americas, losing in a total of 3 finals, then quitting the national team. the comeback, getting eliminated again in 2018, and just when the english commentator was saying he'll be 35 at the next tournament, this was maybe his last one, at 35 he steps up in every critical moment, scores in every match after the group stage, and of course wins the world cup as the best player of the tournament. squeezing in 2 more copa americas along the way.

he left europe and went to the mls, which is about the level of a pickup rec league, and just when you're thinking that in practice he was still playing but in theory he'd retired, at 39 he comes back to the world cup again and scores in every match he plays, becoming the tournament's all-time top scorer. in the round of 16 against egypt, in the match where he missed a penalty, down 2-0 heading into the 80th minute, just as you're thinking these are probably his final moments at a world cup, he turns the match around with a goal and an assist.

his career plays out like a movie. an unbelievable footballer. the greatest of all time.

in my opinion the best definition of love ever made belongs to flaubert: "curiosity. you suddenly begin to feel curious about someone, a terrible curiosity. you want to know them, to be born with them, to come into the world all over again with them. that's why the sentence furthest from love isn't i hate you, but i no longer want to know."

being a cape verdean in these times, now that'd be something. what a great source of pride it is for their country. they're pulling off historic things.

when we see a broken cup, the same thought crosses most of our minds: it won't be the same as before anymore. more often than not, we even toss it in the trash and replace it with a new one. yet in japanese culture there's an art called kintsugi, one that's lived on for centuries, that gives breaking an entirely different meaning. in this traditional repair technique, which emerged about six hundred years ago, the pieces of broken ceramic are joined back together with a natural resin called urushi, and the cracks are made prominent with gold, silver, or platinum dust. kintsugi, which means "to join with gold," isn't just a method of repair but also a deep life philosophy that changes the way a person looks at life.

the most striking thing about kintsugi is that it doesn't try to hide the breaks. on the contrary, it makes them visible. because those cracks are an inseparable part of the journey the object has been through and the experiences it has lived. the broken ceramic isn't what it was before; but for that very reason it's more special. each line of gold lives on as a quiet reminder of a life lived.

this understanding is quite different from the perspective of the modern world, which is used to exalting perfection. these days, while most people try to hide their flaws, cover up their mistakes, and make their broken parts invisible, kintsugi says the exact opposite: what makes you valuable isn't that you've never broken; it's that you can get back on your feet after breaking.

this idea doesn't apply only to ceramics. a person, too, breaks many times over the course of their life. a breakup, a loss, an illness, disappointments, failures, or moments when trust is shaken leave invisible cracks in our souls. most of the time we try to hide these marks. we think that looking strong means not showing the pain. yet a person's character is shaped not by how skillfully they hide their wounds, but by how they learn to live with them. the marks life leaves behind are one of the most important parts of who we are.

psychology, too, speaks of important concepts that support this idea. one of them is called "post-traumatic growth." research shows that difficult life events don't affect everyone the same way. some people, after living through great pain, begin to look at life with different eyes, to build their relationships more consciously, and to feel the value of life more deeply. of course, the pain itself isn't valuable. but the relationship a person builds with that pain can transform them into an entirely different person. just like a broken piece of ceramic coming back to life with gold, a person, too, sometimes goes through their greatest transformation after their hardest periods.

a scientist who, with every one of his studies, is bound to inspire both admiration and astonishment, in my opinion. i wanted to share one of his studies that surprised me the most. he was the first person to put forth the concept of "the wisdom of the crowd."

in 1906, galton came across an interesting kind of contest at a livestock fair. in this contest, whoever correctly guessed an ox's weight won the prize. about 800 people gave their guesses, and galton noted them all down. but the thing is, not one of them actually came close to the right answer. among these 800 people there were folks like butchers and farmers who could easily estimate an ox's weight, but right alongside them were people who had no clue about the subject.

the ox turned out to weigh about 543 kilograms. the person who made the closest guess took the prize. then galton decided to take the average of all the guesses and compare the result. the average came out to around 542 kilograms. the diverse crowd was smarter than even the best expert's guess.

galton published his findings in a paper, and as a result, the wisdom of crowds was born. these observations helped develop the concepts of the mean and variation, and they led him to formulate the fundamental statistical concept of standard deviation.

known by those who don't know mythology as the father of hercules...

brazil only has the name. with 35-year-old danilo and 33-year-old santos at fullback, a casemiro who's turned to mush in midfield, and a mediocre paqueta, this is about as far as it goes. even if they get through the round, it's impossible for them to advance.

some people don't want to lose you, but at the same time they don't want to choose you either. and this stems not from their being confused but from the fact that choosing you brings effort, consistency, and responsibility. they don't want to give those. they don't want you to go on your own way, and they don't take a step themselves either. they don't want to see you with someone else, but they don't offer you clarity either. they want closeness without commitment. they want the comfort of knowing you're there, but they don't want the responsibility of you actually being present. and the truth is, they don't want to look like the bad guy. they find excuses that will ease their own conscience, and they want to preserve this clean, clear-conscience image. but at some point you mustn't confuse attention with intention.

you can't jump from "it can imitate consciousness" to "therefore it can't actually be conscious."

ai takes in data from its environment, processes it, and changes its output accordingly. it has the capacity to learn.

more importantly, the fact that biological and electronic processes run differently is not an argument on its own. planes don't flap their wings like birds, but they still fly. different mechanisms can produce the same function.

the point that really gets overlooked is this: right now we don't have even one accepted mechanism for consciousness. does it arise only from certain types of neurons? from a certain complexity of information processing? from the capacity to interpret? or does it rest on some completely different principle we haven't discovered yet? we don't know.

so saying "current ai is not conscious" is one thing, and saying "an electronic system can never become conscious" is a completely different claim. we have no basis, experimental or theoretical, to back up the second one.

what's ironic is that the human brain itself, at some point in evolution, went from unconscious neural networks to what it is today. if the thing we call consciousness is an emergent property, we have no grounds at all to say it could never emerge in a system that isn't biological, given enough complexity and the right architecture.

in short, it might become conscious or it might not. but don't speak with total certainty, in a way that talks down to people, about the limits of a mechanism you don't even understand. because sooner or later someone asks, "can you show me the agreed model that explains how human consciousness forms?" and that whole condescending post of yours just disappears.

let me take it one step further. as far as we know, there is no living creature that has the capacity to think and learn (and no, i don't mean adapting genetically) without also having consciousness. by the logic above, that's an even stronger argument.

the only thing we can do is admit what we don't know and discuss the possible theories. for now, it's neither an inevitable outcome nor an evolution that will never happen.

teams like norway are teams created to reach the quarterfinals and get knocked out. it wouldn't be haaland, even if it were odin, loki, and thor, this situation wouldn't change.

a modern medical-shamanism variant in which the dark-age urban human, in order to save the digestive system they've devastated with industrial foods, has begun worshipping acidic bacteria grown in jars. when we examined the kitchen remains from that era in our laboratory, we determined that the members of the tribe felt like molecular biology experts while consuming vinegar-smelling primitive liquids called probiotics, ferments, or kombucha tea. that these creatures, who cared about the comfort of the bacteria in their own intestines more than the peace of their close friends within the tribe, fed themselves according to bacterial data logs is one of the funniest biological paranoias in the history of anthropology.

if you want to figure out where you went wrong on something, pay attention to the parts you skip over when you are explaining it to someone else.

this show is by far my favorite show. i don't know how many times i'm watching it now. on this watch i noticed that this show doesn't have a single dead scene or a single toxic character. in most shows there are scenes that add nothing to the overall story that i always want to fast-forward (and even skip outright if i'm watching alone), like unnecessary family or romance scenes thrown in to fill out the runtime (i watched the daredevil born again episodes 15 minutes at a time), or there's a toxic character whose every scene i skip (e.g. the flash -> iris). while watching person of interest it never even crosses my mind to skip a single scene, and there isn't even one main character who makes you hate them (the only one that bugged me was van gogh in the final season, but that one was pretty much a side character).