495800+ entries in 0.32s
mircea_popescu: "readers" meant "people more
than willing
to root
through
the shit, because literacy is new and printing only last year became affordable"
mircea_popescu: i
think
they all did
that, in
the olden penny a word days
ascii_field: he was, imho, of a particular school of writing where
threw shit at a wall hoping
that some would stick
mircea_popescu: anyway, back
to ellison, guy apparently wrote a shitton. i suppose it's mostly
that we don't give a shit about
their pulpy universes.
ascii_field: but was 'friends with
them all' and ended up in
the usa sf wot.
ascii_field recalls
the eternal 'the late cooper's daughter, in her december.. why was
the famous? who could remember?'
ascii_field: performance metrics, in usa, are for
the worker bees.
ascii_field: because
they, approximately, hold 'title of nobility' in usa.
ascii_field: who get
to not only avoid starvation but live like civilized people (naturally, referring
to
the winners in
the
tournament market, not
the chinese grad students here)
ascii_field: mircea_popescu: not only
this, but feeds
the academic mandarin class
mircea_popescu: ascii_field nobody goes
to jail for
THAT kinda fraud right ?
chetty: well its San Jose,
the heart of soicalism country
ascii_field: (a great many - published such figures;
turned out,
to no one's surprise, fabricated wholesale;
then somehow entire brouhaha magicked away )
ascii_field: 'Colleges need
to publicize
the employment rates of recent graduates and
the percentage of students who complete
their degrees so
that strapped parents can do cost-benefit analyses like
they do with any other major cash investment.' << anyone recall
the law school debacle ?
chetty: my amazement on where
that got published
mircea_popescu: sf in
the 50s was a spare cycle endeavour of
the people who at
the
time didn't have bbs yet.
mircea_popescu: right. it's basically if
they start putting on "as seen in bash.bitcoin-assets.org" on shit long after we all left.
ascii_field: it was made up long ago, when
the american writers all knew one another
mircea_popescu: this doesn't qualify it for "some shit
they made up for
the cover" ?
ascii_field: mircea_popescu: hugo is voted on, iirc, by folks who go
to (or at least buy
ticket
to...) 'worldcon' - an sf event attended mainly by writers (in practice,
the wannabees i spoke of earlier)
mircea_popescu: was a big scandal in
the
tiny cup. evnetually
tho... lo! i am vindicated.
mircea_popescu: i was suspicious at
the
time. had an argument with other
teens, with me going "that's prolly just some shit
they made up for
the cover"
ascii_field: mircea_popescu:
that was more of a 'how dare
they make an upvote ring,
that's -ours-
to do'
mircea_popescu: and
they all sported various awards, nebula, hugo, whatever.
mircea_popescu: i recall when i was a kid, some of
the first books printed in shiny covers etc were various sf works, which is how i even ended up owning some (ender's game, dune, other americas, crap like
that) -
they looked good.
mircea_popescu: kinda goes with
the woman's complaints about
the what was it, hugo award ?
ascii_field: mircea_popescu: supposedly ellison witnessed
the legendary bet b/w heinlein and hubbard. but afaik
that's all..
ascii_field: mircea_popescu: ellison is interesting for another reason. he is
the undisputed emperor of 'wrote a few good stories in
the '50s, famous for nothing in particular since'; loudly rants demanding eternal copyright because 'creaaaatorz have riiiiiightz!!111!!'
mircea_popescu: and where's
that pic nubbins put in, with
the "you do not want an adaptor, you
think you do becaus you fucked up
the light arrangement"
mircea_popescu: "this is
the sort of item you only ever want because you fucked something else up"
mircea_popescu: obviously a bad idea, just not in
their circumstances.
ascii_field: and not obviously a bad idea under
the circumstances
ascii_field: mircea_popescu: who
the fuck gets women off a menu <<
the fella with an already-assembled harem, such as mircea_popescu ?
mircea_popescu: ascii_field note
that i wasn't commenting on whether i or anyone else would or not would want x. merely on how much sense x makes, given other
things.
ascii_field: chetty: not
that one cannot use imagination. but it is folly
to say 'i would not want atomic dirigible' unless
that choice is actually
there, like
the decision of whether
to buy a laser printer
mircea_popescu: like you know, "an empire". yes
the empire may sink, but usually not in water.
chetty: ascii_field, also know as can't
think outside
the box
mircea_popescu: you know
the harem is not like, a block of cheese. it's an abstract name given
to a complex social reality.
ascii_field: but recall
the
thirsty man in
the desert who 'could drink a river'
ascii_field: perhaps i -wouldn't- wear
tailored socks, in practice
ascii_field: re: socks: i am reminded of dan mocsny's piece on how very few people can give honest answer
to
the question of whether
they want, e.g., a harem - because
they don't have
the option in menu
mircea_popescu: have a bunch of
techs and mandatory clothing insurance.
mircea_popescu: tailor
tailors for
the body, it's sinnewy depths, not for
the skinshape.
ascii_field would wear
tailored fucking socks if he could
mircea_popescu: well... my
tailor here'd prolly do it. it'd be weird as all fuck... but hey.
mircea_popescu: it'd seem
to me it'd be more painful
to have panties made for no particular cock
than you know, a shirt.
ascii_field: no, because not much of an astronomer
these days
ascii_field: mircea_popescu: i find reading anything - other
than plain
text - not designed with a particular viewport geometry in mind - physically painful.
ascii_field: think of every
time you have
to wiggle
the y axis
to fit a figure on
the display
mircea_popescu: ascii_field
the problem is
that you always have a finite workspace.
ascii_field: i suppose you could also say
that i scroll, but simply prefer
to do it with eyes rather
than fingers
mircea_popescu: if it weren't,
the square eye wouldn't put 3x more focus on horiz
than it puts on vert sync.
mircea_popescu: ascii_field you're eliding
the point.
the fact
that your misshapen pixels allow you
to not see
the distortion means your meat is made
to look
through a
tank periscope in
the first place.
ascii_field: mircea_popescu:
the shape of
the pixels is considerably less interesting if you have ones sufficiently small
to enable affine
transforms of whatever kind you like, without visible distortion
mircea_popescu: anyway. i don't hate scrolling. i hate
the situation where my field is fixed.
mircea_popescu: but
the pixels
themselves! every inch is 100 sideways and 40 vertically.
ascii_field: mircea_popescu: what i do have is 4 lcd laid out in such a way as
to fill my field of vision
mircea_popescu: given
that people's horiz precision is what, 3x
their vert precision.
mircea_popescu: because if you don't, seems
to me you're looking
through
that
tank periscope anyway
ben_vulpes: yeah mircea_popescu how does your meat know
that 1cm?
ascii_field: sorta like mircea_popescu's insistence on 1cm
tall characters
ascii_field: x-only is like seeing life
through a
tank periscope
mircea_popescu: i grant you, if you hate scrolling you'll have
to engage in strange
to compensate.
ascii_field: i insist on
these
to be either on a) paper b) device with dimensions and pixel density of paper, which i own - but in both cases - retaining
the original pagination
mircea_popescu: me being a folk who reads maths, and historeical documents. even
the original blueprint.
mircea_popescu: actually
trilema as-is works better for ALL of
these
than pdf.
ascii_field: but
there are folks who read maths, or blueprints, or scanned historical documents.
ascii_field: www works fine for
text and
the occasional bitmap
mircea_popescu: but it still seems
to me a narrow corner case notrly contemplated here.
mircea_popescu: but fwiw, my experience as an actual author is
that
the html format is WAY better
than
the pdf format for
the web, which is why
trilema is not delivered in pdfs.
ascii_field: the 'we want everything in www-readable plain
text' concept sorta implies.