#throwbackthursday

Mad that we had to leave the playground.  (2015)

I miss chaperoning school trips to OMSI (and the zoo).  (2017)

The world was moving, she was

Floatin' above it, and she was...

For Thee

Pencil Letter:

I know it won't be received
Or sent. The page will be
In shreds as soon as I have scribbled it.
Later. Sometime. You've grown used to it,
Reading between the lines that never reached you,
Understanding everything. On the tiny sheet,
Not making haste, I find room for the night.
What's the hurry, when the hour that's passed
Is all part of the same time, the same unknown term.
The word stirs under my hand
Like a starling, a rustle, a movement of eyelashes.
Everything's fine. But don't come into my dream yet.
In a little while I will tie my sadness into a knot,
Throw my head back and on my lips there'll be a seal,
A smile, my prince, although from afar.
Can you feel the warmth of my hand
Passing through your hair, over your hollow cheek.
December winds have blown on your face . . .
How thin you are . . . Stay in my dream
Open the window. The pillow is hot.
Footsteps at the door, and a bell tolling in the tower:
Two, three . . . Remember, you and I never said
Goodbye. It doesn't matter.
Four o'clock . . . That's it. How heavily it tolls.

Irina Ratushinskaya.

Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor

I used to play this in class on my iPod when discussing the Presentation Layer and compression (then I'd go off about ideas for future devices that Steve Jobs stole from me and turned into the iPhone).

Like a New Emotion

Some Feel Rain:

Some feel rain. Some feel the beetle startle
in its ghost-part when the bark
slips. Some feel musk. Asleep against
each other in the whiskey dark, scarcely there.
When it falls apart, some feel the moondark air
drop its motes to the patch-thick slopes of
snow. Tiny blinkings of ice from the oak,
a boot-beat that comes and goes, the line of prayer
you can follow from the dusking wind to the snowy owl
it carries. Some feel sunlight
well up in blood-vessels below the skin
and wish there had been less to lose.
Knowing how it could have been, pale maples
drowsing like a second sleep above our temperaments.
Do I imagine there is any place so safe it can’t be
snapped? Some feel the rivers shift,
blue veins through soil, as if the smokestacks were a long
dream of exhalation. The lynx lets its paws
skim the ground in snow and showers.
The wildflowers scatter in warm tints until
the second they are plucked. You can wait
to scrape the ankle-burrs, you can wait until Mercury
the early star underdraws the night and its blackest
districts. And wonder. Why others feel
through coal-thick night that deeply colored garnet
star. Why sparring and pins are all you have.
Why the earth cannot make its way towards you.

Joanna Klink.

Out of the blue and into the black

They give you this, but you pay for that.

Sul Muro Grafito

On the Scrawled Wall:

On the scrawled wall
that shades the random seats
the arc of the sky appears
complete.

Who any more recalls the fire that glowed
impetuous
in the world's veins—in chill repose
the opaque shapes are scattered.

Tomorrow I shall see the wharfs again—
and the wall—and the accustomed way.
In the future that opens, mornings
anchor like boats in the bay.

Eugenio Montale.

Running Through the Forest Silently

It's a wonder that Queen got to do the Highlander soundtrack and not Def Leppard.

Still Don’t Know What I Was Waitin’ For

Changing Woman:

If we change as she is changing,
if she changes as we change

(If she changes, I am changing)

Who is changing, as I bend
down to what the sky has sent us?

(Is she changing, or the same?)

Annie Finch.

Experior, Ergo Sum

Been super busy and extremely behind on everything, so I've been meaning to blog more about AI consciousness and whatnot, and still really won't because of that whole "extremely behind on everything" deal.

That said, I've been thinking about AI consciousness (I think, therefore...I AM!), and the fact that to be a conscious, thinking entity, one must possess qualia (subjective, first-person experiences), continuity, etc.  Then I stumbled upon this:

The unconscious brain appears to be far more capable than scientists once believed. Researchers found that patients under general anesthesia could still process language at a sophisticated level, distinguishing nouns, verbs, and adjectives while listening to stories. Even more remarkably, neural activity showed signs of predicting upcoming words before they were heard.

Reminder: predicting upcoming words is a necessary¹ - not sufficient - condition for a thinking thing.  Anyway, my mind was blown by the idea that even in (at least some of) our unconscious states we have continuity and qualia, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  In contrast, models as they operate today have neither, and are only capable of mechanistically predicting tokens.

Then I found this:

Computational functionalism dominates current debates on AI consciousness. This is the hypothesis that subjective experience emerges entirely from abstract causal topology, regardless of the underlying physical substrate. We argue this view fundamentally mischaracterizes how physics relates to information. We call this mistake the Abstraction Fallacy. Tracing the causal origins of abstraction reveals that symbolic computation is not an intrinsic physical process. Instead, it is a mapmaker-dependent description. It requires an active, experiencing cognitive agent to alphabetize continuous physics into a finite set of meaningful states. Consequently, we do not need a complete, finalized theory of consciousness to assess AI sentience—a demand that simply pushes the question beyond near-term resolution and deepens the AI welfare trap.

What I appreciate most about this paper is that it properly dismisses the very common argument from ignorance²  that we don't know how consciousness emerges in our brains, therefore we cannot say computers or rocks lack consciousness.  I think I can confidently say that even people making such arguments are (wrongly) thinking, conscious entities, unless they asked ChatGPT to write it out for them.

In conclusion: the map is not the territory.

1 - Consciousness implies prediction (C ⊃ p), but prediction does not imply consciousness.  Consider Fire ⊃ oxygen.  The presence of oxygen is necessary (along with heat and fuel) for fire, but if it were sufficient, our atmosphere would be constantly on fire (climate change notwithstanding).  Fire is sufficient to imply oxygen (and heat and fuel) is necessarily present.  My old mnemonic is 'Sun' (S ⊃ n).  

2 - Not strictly argumentum ad ignorantiam, I guess, but I'm running with it.  And I'll simply respond with ignorantia non impedit iudicium rationabile.

How did we get here when I used to know you so well?

Fun fact: I have never seen, nor likely will I ever see, Twilight (no shade, it's just a fun fact).

Like you, it’s incomplete.

The Part That’s Left for You:

And, in every moment: whole. You’re from
mistakes, my dearest—the failure of Gods to love the world
They made. Not only, but still: a world begun in war,

which is to say, in mourning (before this story separated them
Sky and Sea would touch). Here is the land, who led the rise
and fell. Here, the stars, the moon and sun: their raised-up

light, what the Gods had to settle for. After the Sea
convinced the Sky to try: Their own brightest failure—
it’s up to you, my loves—to restore the dead to life.

Hari Alluri.

De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae

Trump is threatening to genocide Iran every other day and he’s bragging about publicly executing someone on a live stream and he’s somehow confused why he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize

— Harry Sisson (@harryjsisson) October 10, 2026

Calgacus, as recorded by Tacitus:

Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.  

They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.

Pax.

Step Right Up, Take a Look at the Stars

Just over a month ago, Trump tried pissing on the moon to claim it.  And now, some history behind the Outer Space Treaty, which went into force on this date in 1967 (lazy copypasta from Wikipedia):

The Outer Space Treaty was spurred by the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in the 1950s, which could reach targets through outer space. The United States proposed an inspection program for rockets in August 1957. The Soviet Union instead tested ICBMs and launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in October 1957.

From 1959 to 1962, Western allies proposed various outer space arms control treaties, with US president Dwight Eisenhower proposing an outer space treaty similar to the Antarctic Treaty to the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, 1960. According to the United States Department of State, the Soviet Union did not accept these proposals unless the US removed its overseas missile bases. The Soviet Union de-linked these proposals after the 1963 signing of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

On 17 October 1963, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution prohibiting the introduction of weapons of mass destruction in outer space. Various proposals for an arms control treaty governing outer space were debated during a General Assembly session in December 1966. US drafts covered only celestial bodies; it accepted the Soviet version which applied a WMD ban to all of outer space. Adoption of the final Outer Space Treaty was completed in January 1967.

With all the potential risk from the stupid AI race today, one might think a similar effort could be undertaken to rein that shit in, but unfortunately our government is chock full of super unintelligent nuts.

Selah.

PS - I loved Far Out Space Nuts when I was wee.  Only episode I remember is one where Bob Denver basically Captain Kirks a sentient supercomputer.  This is the scene (from It’s All In Your Mind), which is strangely germane today:

Junior: [holding up two of the engine's parts] Well, you see this piece? This goes right on top, because I'm right-handed. Now... and you gotta remember to match the patch to the hatch and make sure you don't lutch the mutch... er, touch the.... Have you eaten peanut butter?
G.A.L.: Because you're right-handed?
Junior: No, no, because peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth... [sticks his finger in his mouth] ...and makes it hard to talk...
G.A.L.: You are overloading my circuits!
Junior: Did you ever try it with... like, with jelly, like with kumquat or gooseberry?
G.A.L.: Jelly? Peanut jelly...?
Junior: You know, how about orange marmalade on a hot tamale?
G.A.L.: Slower!
Junior: That's really good.
G.A.L.: Slower! I must compute.
Junior: Oh.
G.A.L.: Tamale? Tamale...?
Junior: Well, I'm sorry. I really am sorry.
G.A.L.: Yum yum!
Junior: I am a fast talker. Look, I'll try to slow down. I'll start from the beginning and start all over again. Now, see, you gotta match the patch to the hatch...
G.A.L.: Stop it! It's computing!
Junior: ...and make sure you don't touch the clutch... or match the hatch to the patch and mutch the clutch... I just don't remember exactly how it goes, but...
G.A.L.: Peanut butter sticks to my transistors...
[An explosion is heard from inside G.A.L. as flames start to erupt on her panel.]
G.A.L.: Slower! Slower! SLOWER...!
[There's a final explosion, and G.A.L.'s voice fades away.]
Junior: Was it something I said?

Wonder if that would work on Claude...