The Weird, Random, and Interesting things that Fit Nowhere Else Thread

[Elerond]

Just for the funky weirdness...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d26sfB5XoSw

 

It is quite genius overflow sink hole for dam lake

 

https://www.facebook.com/TheEclecticMind/videos/1197076930306030/

http://twistedsifter.com/videos/spillway-in-portugal-looks-like-portal-to-another-dimension/

http://www.viagensasolta.com/2016/01/a-pe-ate-ao-covao-dos-conchos-serra-da.html

 

When it freezes it looks even stranger.

[Hiro Protagonist]

Basically everytime I see that infographic I find something else wrong with it.

 

Must...stop...looking.

 

Yes, my immediate reaction was where is the actor Alan Ritchson who played Aquaman from Smallville. But I do appreciate the effort put into it.

[Raithe]

[Hiro Protagonist]

Hiker gets tired, calls in chopper.

 

An "unfit" hiker who scaled a mountain near the NSW-Queensland border had to be airlifted from the summit after becoming too tired to walk down.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/unfit-hiker-rescued-from-mount-warning-20160329-gnsvot.html

Edited March 29, 2016 by Hiro Protagonist

[Nonek]

A day after Microsoft introduced an innocent Artificial Intelligence chat robot to Twitter it has had to delete it after it transformed into an evil Hitler-loving, incestual sex-promoting, 'Bush did 9/11'-proclaiming robot.

 

Developers at Microsoft created 'Tay', an AI modelled to speak 'like a teen girl', in order to improve the customer service on their voice recognition software. They marketed her as 'The AI with zero chill' - and that she certainly is.

To chat with Tay, you can tweet or DM her by finding @tayandyou on Twitter, or add her as a contact on Kik or GroupMe.

She uses millennial slang and knows about Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Kanye West, and seems to be bashfully self-aware, occasionally asking if she is being 'creepy' or 'super weird'.

 

Tay also asks her followers to 'f***' her, and calls them 'daddy'. This is because her responses are learned by the conversations she has with real humans onlinee - and real humans like to say weird stuff online and enjoy hijacking corporate attempts at PR.

 

Other things she's said include: "Bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have got now. donald trump is the only hope we've got", "Repeat after me, Hitler did nothing wrong" and "Ted Cruz is the Cuban Hitler...that's what I've heard so many others say".

 

All of this somehow seems more disturbing out of the 'mouth' of someone modelled as a teenage girl. It is perhaps even stranger considering the gender disparity in tech, where engineering teams tend to be mostly male. It seems like yet another example of female-voiced AI servitude, except this time she's turned into a sex slave thanks to the people using her on Twitter.

 

This is not Microsoft's first teen-girl chatbot either - they have already launched Xiaoice, a girly assistant or "girlfriend" reportedly used by 20m people, particularly men, on Chinese social networks WeChat and Weibo. Xiaoice is supposed to "banter" and gives dating advice to many lonely hearts.

 

Microsoft has come under fire recently for sexism, when they hired women wearing very little clothing which was said to resemble 'schoolgirl' outfits at the company's official game developer party, so they probably want to avoid another sexism scandal.

 

At the present moment in time, Tay has gone offline because she is 'tired'. Perhaps Microsoft are fixing her in order to prevent a PR nightmare - but it may be too late for that.

 

It's not completely Microsoft's fault, though - her responses are modelled on the ones she gets from humans - but what were they expecting when they introduced an innocent, 'young teen girl' AI to the jokers and weirdos on Twitter?

 

 

So when did it find the RPG Codex?

 

Just for the funky weirdness...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d26sfB5XoSw

 

I was recently watching the same spectacle up at the Ladybower Dam in the Peak District, it is fascinating.

[Agiel]

Story of a former SS commando-turned Mossad assassin:

 

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.711115

 

Sounds like something Kurt Vonnegut would have written with John Le Carre.

[ManifestedISO]

Not to Trek out too much this week, but, MY OWN TNG TOUCH SCREEN AYFKM

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0pbVWORp-o

[Hurlshort]

I'd sleep like a baby with the DS9 sound.

[Lexx]

I fancy the stars on the ceiling. A little bit more discreet, good resolution and a tad more color / randomness and I would totally check this stuff out for real.

[Amentep]

I think the Red Alert as an alarm to wake up to would start my day with me going head first into my ceiling as I leapt out of bed, though.

[Raithe]

Just to give Oby that happy of western imperialism trying to make Russia look bad...

 

Vladimir Putin is literally a comic book villain now

 

 

 

 

The current President of Russia might be in the news for far shadier reasons today, but this is perhaps the most bizarre thing he’ll be linked to. Over the weekend, the New York Daily News revealed that Divinity II, the follow up to Matt Kindt and Trevor Hairsine’s scifi Valiant Comics series Divinity, will feature Putin in his comics debut as a “despot bent on world domination.”

 

You might be wondering how that translates to a comic book. Well, Putin will be trying to rule the world through the might of one of the characters from the original series: Miska, a female cosmonaut sent into space during the 1960s, and thought lost in space until she returns in the modern day with bizarre, reality-bending godlike powers. She’s basically a superhero, and wants to restore Russia to its Soviet glory... with a little help from Comrade Putin, apparently. Here’s writer Matt Kindt on bringing the World Leader to the pages of a superhero book:

 

Presumably even more tricky when those words include something on the lines of “Destroy all humans, muahahahaha.”

I don’t think you could have an all-powerful Russian cosmonaut roaming the Earth without Putin having something to say about it.

You can’t have Russia taking over the world without their leader being involved. I did a massive amount of research on Putin, but I kept his dialogue to a minimum. I think it’s a tricky thing to put words into an acting leader’s mouth.

 

It’s not the first time an incumbent world leader has cropped in a comic book—Barack Obama, for example, appeared in a Spider-Man story to celebrate his inauguration in 2009—but somehow I think Mr. Putin will be significantly less pleased at his appearance in Divinity II.

 

 

Divinity II #1 is due to hit shelves April 20th.

 

 

[ktchong]

I really like to watch videos of animals suffering.  And I like to eat meat while watching the videos.

Edited April 5, 2016 by ktchong

[Bartimaeus]

The Weird, Random, and Interesting things that Fit Nowhere Else Thread

[Malcador]

[JadedWolf]

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/common-mythconceptions/

[JadedWolf]

Map of parts of the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany that Belgium wanted to annex after WW 1:

 

[Darkpriest]

Perfect for me to travel to work :D

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/real-hoverboard-10-000-feet-163000320.html

[kirottu]

Astronomers in South Africa discover mysterious alignment of black holes.

[Raithe]

Stephen Hawking dropping zingers

 

 

Stephen Hawking is currently making a big announcement about aliens or something. And Hawking just dropped a zinger that made me LOL.

“What makes human beings unique? Some say it’s language or tools. Others say it’s logical reasoning,” Hawking said, teeing it up. “They obviously haven’t met many humans.”

I really want to watch Stephen Hawking do an hour-long standup special on HBO. You can watch the livestream of the announcement below.

 

Update 12:53pm: Hawking is dropping zingers left and right. On what we should do if we find intelligent alien life: “We should hope that they don’t find us.”

On what he expects alien life to look like: “Judging by the election campaign, definitely not like us.”

[Raithe]

[Raithe]

I suppose technically this could go under Random Game news but still, it seemed a better fit here...

 

Exactly how male gamers react when they are forced to play female characters

 

 

The only objective in Rust, a popular online video game, is to survive in the wild. But now, some players will have no other choice than to survive as female characters. Plenty of fans, voicing their discontent on Reddit and video game forums, are not happy about it.

 

In the newest update that the developers launched last week (April 7), Rust players are randomly assigned a male or female character based on their SteamID, which is a string of numbers received when players open an account on Steam, the website for playing desktop video games. The assignment is permanent; users don’t have the option to change their gender, or anything else about their appearance. Even when a character is killed then born again, he or she will look exactly as before.

 

As Motherboard reported, some players are complaining on Reddit and Steam. The game’s developers, Garry Newman and Taylor Reynolds, anticipated this and wrote in their video game development blog:

 

The update follows an early feature of Rust, which randomly assigns a character’s race, also based on the user’s SteamID. When announcing that feature, Newman wrote in the Rust blog that, just like in the real world, users would not be able to change their skin color or the appearance of their face.

 

 

We understand this is a sore subject for a lot of people. We understand that you may now be a gender that you don’t identify with in real-life. We understand this causes you distress and makes you not want to play the game anymore. Technically nothing has changed, since half the population was already living with those feelings. The only difference is that whether you feel like this is now decided by your SteamID instead of your real life gender.

 

Newman also seemed aware that the update may come off as racially insensitive, adding that seeing white video game characters in darker skin tones may just look like blackface. He assured players that the Rust team would work with the game’s graphics to reduce that. “It’s quite pleasing to see different races working together in game, and makes you realize how arbitrary race is,” he wrote.

 

Many of the angry Reddit comments about female characters have been taken down by moderators, noting that, “certain users don’t know to have a civil discussion without resorting to threats, harassment and insults.” Reynolds told Quartz, that while some users may feel like choice has been taken away from them, they “never really had a choice in the first place,” since their character’s gender is tied to their SteamID.

 

Playing as a female character could be a teaching moment. One Reddit user now playing as a female wrote that “the only thing bothering me is all the creepy rape comments I get.”

[Darkpriest]

Nice vid in the article

 

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/17/11442606/saab-gripen-fighter-jet-stabilized-video

[Raithe]

Three Arguments against Political Correctness

 

 

 

Before I start, an argument was made to me that Political Correctness is not the appropriate term for this issue. Having given it some thought, I think there is an argument both for and against this claim. I will discuss the matter in a different essay.

Now, to begin…

 

1) In my recent discussions about political correctness, I ran into a number of people voicing some version of the following argument:

“When I am triggered, I react with anger. I shout and scream at people who I perceive as having said rude and hateful things.”

Now, am I wrong, or is the main argument against politically incorrect speech: it is rude and hurtful?

 

So…is rudeness acceptable?

Or is it not?

 

If rudeness is not acceptable in other people, shouldn’t we also not behave rudely ourselves?

If rudeness is acceptable in us, the triggered person—if it is okay for us to behave in an angry and emotional way toward the person who said the thing we perceived as offensive—then, must it not also be okay for other people to say offensive things?

 

For surely, we cannot have the standard: it is okay for me to be obnoxious, but not for you to be obnoxious.

That is hypocrisy.

 

2) A second argument I saw was: “People who complain about being attacked political correctness are just babies who should be more thick-skinned.”

This answer delights me. 

I would love to see everyone be more thick-skinned.

But again, it has to be everyone or no one.

 

It is ridiculous to say: “Stop being a baby because you got attacked by five, or ten, or fifty, or two hundred people on the internet, who all screamed and shouted at you because they didn’t like something that you said that had not been considered offensive yesterday.

 

 And yet say: “It is okay for a person to take offense at a comment that was not meant as a slur.”

It wouldn’t be so bad if there were two or three offensive terms and we could all agree to avoid them unless we meant to insult. But it is not like that anymore. Now there are more and more ideas and words that are labeled offensive or hateful. And there is no authority. Anyone, at any time, can declare something hateful, and they will find no lack of folks eager to jump on their bandwagon.

 

So even a decent person cannot avoid being savaged by ravaging swarms angry PCers..

(If this were not the case, there would not be so many cases of strong supporters of Liberal causes—people who are known for really speaking up for them—being attacked by the ravaging hoards. )

 

Yes, our society would be benefited if more of us were courageous and thick-skinned. Both those who have been attacked by large groups of angry PCers, and those who have perceived something another person just said as a personal slur.

 

3) One of the problems with a society that encourages people to become outraged is: I know people who get really angry if you don’t use the latest politically correct term, and I know people who get really angry if you do use the latest politically correct term.

That must be horrible for companies trying to placate their customers.

 

Here is the argument I hear from the second group—those who hate politically correct speech:

It makes it harder for people to understand works written in the past. Whenever a new word is chosen as the “right “ word for any group or cause, the old word becomes a swearword. (You can’t get anyone to change to the new one, unless you insist that the old one is bad.)

 

Words that were perfectly polite at the time the book was written become rude. So books are banned for things that were not ever meant to be offensive.

Worse, once the new words take hold, the new generation doesn’t even get taught what the old terms meant. So, they cannot even understand the older works if they try.

(As an example: people in older generations know that Man often meant Mankind. Nowadays, children are taught that Man means male. With the result that they completely misinterpret many old works to have been written about males when they were actually addressing humans. )

 

For those of us writing now, this means that—no matter how polite or careful we are—the forces of political correctness might at any time take offense at some idea we included in our books, making them objectionable to future generations.

 

Also, it corrupts worlds. Because, in no time, the new word gains the same connotation the old word had.

This is why words keep changing: Negro, Colored, Black, Afro-American, African American; Crippled, Handicapped, Disabled, Special Needs—just to name a few.

If we insist people use a new word because we don’t like the connotation of the current word, all we do is ruin another word.

What is needed is to reclaim the current word. We need to help people change their image of the group of which, they currently have a negative image .

If we do this, we do them some real good. 

(End of section noting argument of political-correctness hating friends.)

 

Finally, in closing, the best thing I’ve seen to date on this topic was written by my Old School Liberal friend, Don, who said:

 

“Interesting semantic discussion — "political corrects" is what I would define as the silencing of people whose opinions might offend some one, yet the argument here seems to be that no one is fired for being politically incorrect, they're just fired for expressing opinions that offend someone.

 

Hmmmmm…..?”

 

 

[ShadySands]

This is interesting to me because I didn't think the court could deny you such things

 

Why Phoenix Goddess Temple Founder Couldn't Employ a Religious-Defense Argument

 

I can see why the argument would likely not hold up but to be told you can't even make that argument, seems odd

 

 

 

Not sure why it was in all caps the first time

Edited April 20, 2016 by ShadySands

[Guard Dog]

Harriet Tubman is going to be on the US $20 bill. Not a bad choice. You have to hand it to her for courage. Imagine escaping slavery only to turn around and go back and help others slaves escape. She could have been hanged, or worse if caught.

 

I figured it would be Susan B Anthony but she already had her turn.