#letter science

[akidwithball00ns]

Painted Orko the other day

[philosophybits]

Philosophy cannot be regarded as a mere equation where nature is the unknown quantity! Remark that the poet, in the moment of inspiration, comprehends God, and consequently does the philosopher's work. Consequently poetic inspiration is nothing less than philosophical inspiration. Consequently philosophy is nothing but poetry, a higher degree of poetry!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, "Letter to M. M. Dostoyevsky (31 October 1838)"

[bigbigtruck]

Hey, so today KING IN LIMBO volume 1 came out, and I HIGHLY recommend it. Full disclosure: I’m the letterer on this manga. Kodansha paid me for that, but not to plug this book, or to gush about it with the editor. This is probably my favorite title I’ve ever worked on. The SF premise is very cool and the sense of place is spot on, but what makes KING IN LIMBO stand out is the multifaceted, layered main character. If you’re into grounded, character-heavy SF and want more comics for mature readers please check it out.

I just got the script and assets for the third and final volume and am so excited to see how it wraps up.

[z0mbielovrr]

skating rink<33

(i spent 4 hours on this and ik i was too lazy to color the bg but it better get notes..))

tumblr fucked w/ the quality..

[chubbychiquita]

bitter that life is not a wg fic and i have to participate in society and fulfill obligations

[yeoldenews]

A mother's word for word transcription of the imaginary phone call her four-year-old made to Santa Claus in 1911.

(source: The Harbor Beach Times, December 22, 1911.)

Through some outrageous case of serendipity I found a recording of another phone call this same child made 60 years later. Though I have to say his choice of conversational partner is a definite downgrade from the first call.

[kafkasapartment]

…..What great births you have witnessed! The steam press, the steamship, the steel ship, the railroad, the perfected cotton-gin, the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the photograph, photo-gravure, the electrotype, the gaslight, the electric light, the sewing machine, & the amazing, infinitely varied & innumerable products of coal tar, those latest & strangest marvels of a marvelous age. And you have seen even greater births than these; for you have seen the application of anæsthesia to surgery-practice, whereby the ancient dominion of pain, which began with the first created life, came to an end in this earth forever; you have seen the slave set free, you have seen monarchy banished from France, & reduced in England to a machine which makes an imposing show of diligence & attention to business, but isn't connected with the works. Yes, you have indeed seen much—but tarry yet a while, for the greatest is yet to come.

Letter from Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) to Walt Whitman, 24 May 1889 on the occasion of Whitman’s birthday. (The entire letter is 8 pages).

[technician-the]

Astounding Scifi was a leading scifi magazine of the pulp era, and ran until 1960, when it was rebranded as Analog, which is still running today (I think). The title had previously changed several times in the early years of the magazine but always kept the Astounding form and logo design.

I find this series of titles/logos interesting, you can really see the gradual evolution of the design, and a slow shift in general tastes. The first image shows the main versions. Ive also added a gif version, I spent some time lining up the covers, but the big jumps are the title moving around the page, (I left them it because it shows how in some eras the title was always in one place, and in others it was placed based on the drawing. )

Also, Ive isolated some of the story titles, I think the main/logo fonts/styles show up in the story titles before they start using them in the logo, but also there's some really cool design there. the most interesting ones (love that lettering on Lovecraft ^^) come from the 1930s, when I suspect the cover text (except possibly for the main logo) was drawn by hand. In that period the typographic designs are very diverse, but over time this diversity waned, until In 1950's they switched to using a single (dull T_T) font for all the text on the cover.

[accio-victuuri]

are you really a cpf if you aren’t even the least bit nervous that all these interpretations we’re doing with xzs vlogs might make more sense when ybo releases the bday materials. hahahahahaha. i’m scared.

[thefisherqueen]

I sprang from my chair and limped impatiently about the room with considerable bitterness in my heart. “This is unworthy of you, Holmes,” I said. “I could not have believed that you would have descended to this. You have made inquires into the history of my unhappy brother, and you now pretend to deduce this knowledge in some fanciful way. You cannot expect me to believe that you have read all this from his old watch! It is unkind, and, to speak plainly, has a touch of charlatanism in it.” “My dear doctor,” said he, kindly, “pray accept my apologies. Viewing the matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal and painful a thing it might be to you. I assure you, however, that I never even knew that you had a brother until you handed me the watch.”

This is such a touching passage. It shows us a piece of Watson's personal history, and his continued pain about it, and shows us as well that while it is true that Sherlock Holmes can get carried away in his work occasionally and then forget to consider other's feelings, he also is able to recognise them very well and apologise for his insensitivity. This has to be a significant point in Watson's and Holmes' relationship

[dylanlila]

Jo! Jo! I have to tell you! I was listening to the radio, and there was a story about a climate scientist who partnered with the music department of a university, for the students to turn her numerical data on coastal algae blooms into music! I wanted to share this with you IMMEDIATELY.

*with tears in my eyes* art=science

[akidwithball00ns]

Deluxe Igor

[browsethestacks]

Original Art - Silver Surfer: Parable Lettering Overlay (1988) by Moebius

Moebius Silver Surfer: Parable hand lettering overlay. Note: The image on the right is a stat of the original art.

[wastehound-voof]

Mr. Plinkett's Super Happy Fun Star Trek: The Next Generation Mistakes Video

[aboutiroh]

[goldsasa]

Dear Sirs!

(or have some ladies also signed?)

A few days ago, you, Mr Musk, together with Mr Wozniak, Mr Mostaque and other signatories, published an open letter demanding a compulsory pause of at least six months for the development of the most powerful AI models worldwide.

This is the only way to ensure that the AI models contribute to the welfare of all humanity, you claim. As a small part of the whole of humanity, I would like to thank you very much for wanting to protect me. How kind! 🙏🏻

Allow me to make a few comments and ask a few questions in this context:

My first question that immediately came to mind:

Where was your open letter when research for the purpose of warfare started and weapon systems based on AI were developed, leading to unpredictable and uncontrollable conflicts?

AI-based threats have already been used in wars for some time, e.g. in the Ukraine war and Turkey. Speaking of the US, they are upgrading their MQ-9 combat drones with AI and have already used them to kill in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The victims of these attacks - don't they count as humanity threatened by AI?

I am confused! Please explain to me, when did the (general) welfare of humanity exist, which is now threatened and needs to be protected by you? I mean the good of humanity - outside your "super rich white old nerds Silicon Valley" filter bubble? And I have one more question:

Where was your open letter when Facebook's algorithms led to the spread of hate speech and misinformation about the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar?

Didn't the right to human welfare also apply to this population group? Why do you continue to remain silent on the inaction and non-transparent algorithms of Meta and Mr Zuckerberg? Why do you continue to allow hatred and agitation in the social media, which (at least initially) belonged to you without exception?

My further doubt relates to your person and your biography itself, dear Mr Musk.

You, known as a wealthy man with Asperger's syndrome and a penchant for interplanetary affairs, have commendably repeatedly expressed concern about the potentially destructive effects of AI robots in the past. I thank you for trying to save me from such a future. It really is a horrible idea!

And yet, Mr Musk, you yourself were not considered one of the great AI developers of Silicon Valley for a long time.

Your commitment to the field of artificial intelligence was initially rather poor. Your Tesla Autopilot is a remarkable AI software, but it was developed for a rather niche market.

I assume that you, Mr Musk, wanted to change that when you bought 73.5 million of Twitter's shares for almost $2.9 billion in April?

After all, to be able to play along with the AI development of the giants, you lacked one thing above all: access to a broad-based AI that is not limited to specific applications, as well as a comprehensive data set.

The way to access such a dataset was to own a large social network that collects information about the consumption patterns, leisure activities and communication patterns of its users, including their social interactions and political preferences.

Such collections about the behaviour of the rest of humanity are popular in your circles, aren't they?

By buying Twitter stock, you can give your undoubtedly fine AI professionals access to a valuable treasure trove of data and establish yourself as one of Silicon Valley's leading AI players.

Congratulations on your stock purchase and I hope my data is in good hands with you.

Speaking of your professionals, I'm interested to know why your employees have to work so hard when you are so concerned about the well-being of people?

I'm also surprised that after the pandemic your staff were no longer allowed to work in their home offices. Is working at home also detrimental to the well-being of humanity?

In the meantime, you have taken the Twitter platform off the stock market.

It was never about money for you, right? No, you're not like that. I believe you!

But maybe it was about data? These are often referred to as the "oil of our time". The data of a social network is like the ticket to be one of the most important AI developers in the AI market of the future.

At this point, I would like to thank you for releasing parts of Twitter's code for algorithmic timeline control as open source. Thanks to this transparency, I now also know that the Twitter algorithm has a preference for your Elon Musk posts. What an enrichment of my knowledge horizon!

And now, barely a year later, this is happening: OpenAi, a hitherto comparatively small company in which you have only been active as a donor and advisor since your exit in 2018, not only has enormous sources of money, but also the AI gamechanger par excellence - Chat GPT. And virtually overnight becomes one of the most important players in the race for the digital future. It was rumoured that your exit at the time was with the intention that they would take over the business? Is that true at all?

After all I have said, I am sure you understand why I have these questions for you, don't you?

I would like to know what a successful future looks like in your opinion? I'm afraid I'm not one of those people who can afford a $100,000 ticket to join you in colonising Mars. I will probably stay on Earth.

So far I have heard little, actually nothing, about your investments in climate projects and the preservation of the Earth.

That is why I ask you, as an advocate of all humanity, to work for the preservation of the Earth - with all the means at your disposal, that would certainly help.

If you don't want to do that, I would very much appreciate it if you would simply stop worrying about us, the rest of humanity. Perhaps we can manage to protect the world from marauding robots and a powerful artificial intelligence without you, your ambitions and your friends?

I have always been interested in people. That's why I studied social sciences and why today I ask people what they long for. Maybe I'm naive, but I think it's a good idea to ask the people themselves what they want before advocating for them.

The rest of the world - that is, the 99,9 percent - who are not billionaires like you, also have visions!

With the respect you deserve,

Susanne Gold

(just one of the remaining 99% percent whose welfare you care about).