Singularitybooks

Diaspora by Greg Egan “By the five-hundredth iteration, the categories extracted from the library’s data had given rise to a horde of tiny sub-systems in the input-classifying networks: ten thousand word-traps and image-traps, all poised and waiting to be sprung; ten thousand pattern-recognizing monomaniacs staring into the information stream, constantly alert for their own special targets. These traps began to form connections with each other, using them at first just to share their judgments, to sway each other’s decisions. If the trap for the image of a lion was triggered, then the traps for its linear name, for the kind of sounds other lions had been heard to make, for common features seen in their behavior (licking cubs, pursuing antelope) all became hypersensitive. Sometimes the incoming data triggered a whole cluster of linked traps all at once, strengthening their mutual connections, but sometimes there was time for over-eager associate traps to start firing prematurely. The lion shape has been recognized – and though the word “lion” has not yet been detected, the “lion” word-trap is tentatively firing … and so are the traps for cub-licking and antelope-chasing. The orphan had begun to anticipate, to hold expectations.”

@AOh64635563 @Cryptotea @WatcherGuru Worse than killing tens of thousands of innocent protestors? You can’t and you’re not smart.

@Singularitybook @Cryptotea @WatcherGuru This is why the lower iQ should not be on social media.. you guys have to nitpick a bad thing the regime does because you lack critical thinking skills. I can tell you a million things our governments did that was 100x worst.

JUST IN: 🇺🇸🇮🇷 Treasury Secretary Bessent says "we'll see" if Kharg Island eventually becomes a US asset. Kharg Island handles 90% of Iran's oil export.

@NickSzabo4 Thanks for explaining your thinking on that.

The way it might work is that Malaysia and/or Indonesia would mine all but specific channels, and those channels would hug their coasts, allowing their missiles and drone planes and drone boats to be targeted on ships they have not authorized in those channels, and giving them opportunity to inspect the ships for compliance with the rules. China would play ball and follow their rules, as they are now doing at Hormuz. Which countries' shipping companies were privileged would depend on which countries have the best relations with Indonesia and Malaysia. Or just perhaps in which were most willing to pay the tolls. The reason volume at Hormuz is way down is that so far other powers / other shipping companies have refused to obey the new rules. It's propaganda to say that Iran has "closed" the Strait of Hormuz. They are simply enforcing new rules, rules they need to protect themselves in the existential war they are in. China is willing to obey those rules so they are letting Chinese ships through. So far other countries have refused to follow these rules. Unless the U.S. is successful at removing Iran's military veto power over Hormuz -- unlikely, and very costly to try --- other countries and their shipping companies will have to start following Iran's rules, then Hormuz oil flow will be restored. That is the kind of inspection both (and perhaps in the future toll both) Iran is currently setting up at Horm

Why are littoral combat ships equipped with minesweeping packages being diverted to Malaysia? One of the possible, and perhaps most likely, reasons is highly problematic for the future of freedom of navigation. Minesweeping near Malaysia or Indonesia is not a useful part of deterring China from invading Taiwan. In a scenario where the U.S. is ramping up such deterrence, the most rational strategy would involve interdiction of Chinese commercial shipping, in which case we would be preparing to lay mines, or take other anti-ship measures against Chinese commercial shipping, not sweeping mines. To the best of my knowledge these LCSs have mine *sweeping* packages, and LCSs don't have mine *laying* packages, and the LCSs being stationed near Malaysia have these sweeping packages. But what if it is Malaysia, or Indonesia, or both, that is the threat? These countries have watched Iran, otherwise on the ropes, successfully take control of the Strait of Hormuz and assert its own rules and conditions $2.8 trillion per year of cargo goes through the Strait of Malacca. That's more than twice the value that normally goes through the Strait of Hormuz. Malaysia and Indonesia would love to take a cut. But up until now they have been deterrred by opposition of the largest navies in the world. Iran is showing that these navies may not longer be able to prevent such toll-taking. The Houthis and the Ukranians already gave Malaysia and Indonesia a glimpse of the possibilities, and Iran is now making them come alive. But most U.S. elites still consider he U.S. Navy the policeman of the global marine order, the old order where freedom of navigation trumped coastal state rights, and thus presumably do not want to concede this old order at Malacca without a fight, even as the U.S. may also, at great cost, try to contest Iran;'s assertion of a new maritime order, governed mainly by coastal states, at Hormuz.

Bobby Green, just watched your this, the way your voice broke when you spoke about the execution of Iranian wrestler Navid Afkari, it broke me. You were right. It’s heartbreaking. Today Saleh Mohamadi, 19-year old wrestler executed for protesting. We need your voice again. 💔

@Cryptotea @WatcherGuru Right because this whole thing is such a profitable and economically beneficial enterprise based on Bessett's statement. They aren't fooling you! x.com/kusha_alagband…

@WatcherGuru I thought this was about freeing the people of Iran

@gothburz @dzsg7n But this is a fake story, is it not?

@dzsg7n Millions of us. We looked at real homes with plumbing and load-bearing walls and thought "but what if digital and worse." You were right to stay away.

My net worth peaked at $1.2 million. None of it was real. I don't mean that philosophically. I mean it was located on servers that have since been turned off. I own eleven properties in the metaverse. Three in Decentraland. Four in The Sandbox. Two in Voxels. One in Otherside. And a beachfront villa in Horizon Worlds that I bought for $214,000 because Mark Zuckerberg called it "the next frontier." The frontier closed last week. It's a mobile app now. Last year I mass DM'd 340 people the phrase "you don't understand how early we are." I have since stopped doing that. Not because I was wrong. Because most of them blocked me. I got into metaverse real estate in November 2021. Everyone was buying. Someone paid $450,000 to be Snoop Dogg's neighbor. In a video game. With no legs. The avatars didn't have legs. I thought that was bullish. "The legs are coming," I told my Discord. "Legs are a roadmap item." Three hundred people reacted with rocket emojis. I called myself a "digital land baron." I put it in my Twitter bio. I put it in my LinkedIn headline. I said it on a podcast that had eleven listeners. Three of them were bots. The rest were my alts. My virtual property has more square footage than my actual apartment. My actual apartment has furniture. Location, location, location. My most valuable asset was a plot next to a virtual Gucci store. Gucci left in 2023. The store is still there. Nobody's in it. It's like a mall in Ohio but with worse graphics and no food court. I held. Diamond hands. That's what we said. "Diamond hands." It means refusing to sell while your investment loses 94% of its value. We turned financial paralysis into a personality trait. A guy in my Discord paid $2.4 million for a 618-parcel estate in Decentraland. Prime district. High foot traffic. I asked him what "foot traffic" meant when the platform had 38 daily active users. He said I didn't understand the technology. I didn't. I still bought more. We had a DAO. A decentralized autonomous organization. That means we voted on decisions. There were nine of us. Three never showed up. Two voted on everything without reading it. The other four were me and my alts. We voted to "acquire strategic parcels." The vote passed unanimously. I voted four times. My portfolio peaked at $1.2 million. I told everyone. I made a spreadsheet. I projected 40x returns by 2025. I made a pitch deck. The pitch deck had a slide that said "WE ARE BUILDING THE DIGITAL ECONOMY." The slide had a rocket emoji. That was my entire financial model. In 2023 I bought a Bored Ape for $189,000. It's worth $14,000 now. I don't talk about the Ape. I still use it as my profile picture. People ask me about it. I say "I'm long-term bullish." Long-term bullish means I can't sell it without crying in a Panera. My mom asked me what a Bored Ape was. I said "digital art on the blockchain." She asked why it cost more than her car. I said "you don't understand Web3." She said "I understand you live in a studio apartment." She's not in my Discord. Justin Bieber bought one for $1.3 million. It's worth about $90,000 now. I felt better about mine after I heard that. That's community. WAGMI. We're All Gonna Make It. We said that every day. In the group chat. While the floor dropped. While the volume dried up. While 95% of all NFT collections went to zero. We're all gonna make it. None of us made it. But we said it with conviction and a laser-eye profile picture. That counts for something. It doesn't. But we said it did. That's decentralized consensus. Meta spent $84 billion on the metaverse. I need to say that again. $84 billion. More than the GDP of Luxembourg. More than the GDP of Iceland, Luxembourg, and Malta combined. They spent it on a platform where the avatars had no legs, the graphics looked like a 2006 Wii game, and the peak user count was lower than the lunch rush at a Chipotle in Des Moines. They just pulled Horizon Worlds from VR headsets. It lives on as a mobile app. My beachfront villa is now a mobile app. Location, location, location. Zuckerberg renamed the entire company for this. Facebook became Meta. A $900 billion company changed its legal name because the CEO watched Ready Player One and said "I want that." Reality Labs lost $10 billion in 2021. $14 billion in 2022. $16 billion in 2023. $18 billion in 2024. $19 billion in 2025. That's not a strategy. That's a speedrun. They laid off 1,500 Reality Labs employees this year. Shut down three VR studios. Killed Supernatural. Put the entire VR social vision in a casket and said "we're pivoting to AI and wearables." The pivot took four years and $84 billion. I pivoted too. I'm an AI real estate investor now. I bought a virtual plot in an AI-generated world that doesn't exist yet. The founder said it was "the intersection of spatial computing and large language models." I don't know what that means. I gave him $40,000. He has a whitepaper. It's 47 pages. I read the title and the tokenomics section. The tokenomics section is a pie chart. I love pie charts. They make everything look like a plan. The project has a roadmap. Q1: "Build community." Q2: "Launch beta." Q3: "Scale ecosystem." Q4 is blank. Q4 is always blank. That's where the exit scam goes. My accountant asked me to value my metaverse portfolio for tax purposes. I said $1.2 million. He said "current market value." I said $6,400. He stared at me for eleven seconds. I know because I counted. He asked if I had any other investments. I showed him my NFTs. He stared for longer. I told him they were "cultural artifacts with long-term provenance." He asked if I'd considered a 401k. I told him a 401k was "legacy finance." He told me to leave his office. The metaverse is dead. I don't accept that. I am a digital land baron. I own eleven properties across four platforms. I have a beachfront villa in a mobile app, a plot next to an empty Gucci store, and a cartoon monkey that cost me more than my actual car. Location, location, location. The location is nowhere. But I'm early. I'm always early. That's the same as being wrong except you get to say it with confidence.

At midnight, the regime raided 18‑year‑old Melika Azizi’s home and dragged her to Lakan Prison in Rasht. She’s been beaten, cut off from her family, and sentenced to death. In court she looked the judge in the eye and shouted: “You’ve spilled the blood of so many young people, how can I stay silent? It doesn’t matter to me, kill me too.” This is a teenager whose “crime” was courage. We can’t let them execute her in silence. #MelikaAzizi #StopExecutionsInIran

BREAKING: The Islamic regime in Iran hanged the 19-year-old wrestler and anti-regime protester Saleh Mohammadi today

@wholemars They explain how it *might* be possible within a few minutes of him saying that, but regardless you’re the expert on fabs who has for some reason completely written off Tesla’s all in endeavor at chip fabrication as a total loss before it’s even begun.

I have a hard time imagining how this could be possible

@elonmusk I think the grok button should be a neutral fact check not psychoanalyze accounts.

@elonmusk Not thrilled with the grok button lately. Rather than give facts it seems to editorialize and ad hominem the poster.

@capeverdeanvibe @Ibrahim_olar What are your thoughts about the passage about breastfeeding an adult that was eaten by a tame sheep?

Years ago I read the Qur’an as a Christian trying to prove a point to some Muslims I used to vehemently debate with. Just for me to end up a muslim months later. Life is so so funny

@Ibrahim_olar @Official_Bilal @HarleyShah x.com/noamagid/statu…

@Ibrahim_olar @Official_Bilal @HarleyShah I didn’t dream this up, I saw multiple reports:

I am losing my mind. Do these people not realise that the Strait of Hormuz was open, to the world, for free, until they decided to bomb Iran unprovoked and kill their leader and kill little schoolgirls?

【悲報】Meta唯一のメタバース、終了へ ・Metaが運営するHorizon Worldsが、6月にQuestから完全削除 ・VRでのワールド構築、アクセス全て不可に ・VRを捨て、スマホアプリのみに移行 2021年に社名まで変えて10兆円以上を注ぎ込んだメタバースの夢が5年で終わった。 最近Horizon Worldsは進化して、ユーザーも増えていた印象 それがVRで終了したとなると、メタバース終焉の序章に見えてしまう...

@RonaldJMoeller Definitely. I personally think we should have crushed their ballistic & nuke capes, but Trump has a plan, he has definitely earned the confidence of any clear eyed observer.

@Official_Bilal @HarleyShah A lot of the health care workers the evil regime mass rapes for treating protestors are women too! Lots of opportunities there.

@HarleyShah Iran: has female nuclear engineers, doctors, pilots West: 'They hate women! Quick, drop JDAMs on their universities to save them!' The white savior complex is so advanced it now requires cluster munitions. Iconic.

@BitPaine @NickSzabo4 Not fair to call her low IQ. Here, she was lied to.

It’s actually substantially worse than this tweet makes it out to be: The study in question claimed that black babies died more when cared for by white doctors. Not only was that finding spurious and disappeared when controlling for low birthweight infants, it DID find that white babies died more when cared for by black doctors. They were well aware of this, and an audit of the original manuscript showed a comment where they intentionally chose to downplay this because it “did not fit the narrative.” Wokeness went through academia like a fucking freight train and produced some of the most god-awful bullshit since the inception of the scientific method. Much of it has never been corrected in the public consciousness. This paper, for example, was cited by everyone’s favorite low IQ Supreme Court justice.

@kiran2_k @HazelAppleyard I think every story posted on Reddit is fake. They all seem like someone crafted them for maximum effect like JK Rowling. I’m sure there are some true ones but they get like zero up votes.

@HazelAppleyard I'm convinced these women intentionally insult their boyfriends as a way to destroy their egos so that they don't leave. They try to get their boyfriends to think that they aren't desirable to other women. More often than not, it backfires.

There is no recovering from this 😭

Disaster.