The Future Of

Aggregating news of futurist topics

[femmenietzsche]

Don't like that the English Civil War gets called *the* English Civil War just because it was the biggest. There were others! If you must have a term for the war in England specifically, as distinct from the "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" (cumbersome but w/e) call it the Parliamentary War or somesuch

[m-accost]

The Anarchy was QUAINT

The War of the Roses was GRAND TRAGEDY

The English Civil War

The Glorious Revolution was HISTORICALLY PROGRESSIVE (EXPANDED DUTCH INFLUENCE)

[parasitoidism]

Being a weird little girl as a kid provides two options to you: becoming transgender or becoming a weird adult woman. Both of which are things the world needs more of

[stellatheknave]

[yeahokayillreblogthat]

yeah okay ill reblog that

[auntyproton]

Or if you're lucky, both.

[auntyproton]

Breadcrumbs and Balls of String

How do you find your way through a metaphor?  

In an appropriately science-fictiony version, I have often thought of life as being the Voyager spacecraft.  Long years in the frozen black broken by frantic moments of activity in dangerous environments.  

In what might be an appropriate fantasy-ish version, I have also thought of life as the Black Maze.  Imagine the Backrooms only all walls and floors are absolute light absorbing black.  You cannot see the walls, you cannot see the floor, and you cannot see when the floor falls out beneath you.  You can only feel your way along and for all you know gravity itself is wrong.  You could be walking on a wall or the ceiling and wouldn’t know it until you fell.  

The interstellar probe is my metaphor for loneliness, the Black Maze for depression.  I realize now I was trying to conceptualize being autistic, to run the unconscious knowledge through the Metaphorizer circuits to put it in symbols.  It didn’t help in either condition, but it gave it a thoughtform.  So it was a Thing that could be thought about and manipulated and re-contextualized.  

I may not be able to name these things as their true selves thanks to the alexithymia but I can make them into symbols.  At least then they have a form enough to squish.  

Not the first time I’ve done it.  Remind me to explain someday about my idea that cyborgs are the Green Men of the technosphere.  

The Voyagers are on an eternal journey, and now that they have left our solar system they likely won’t encounter another solid object ever again in their existence.  It is entirely possible -- probable, even -- that they will still be travelling in a straight line when Sol reaches the red giant phase and destroys Earth.  They will outlive the planet that created them.  

The Black Maze... well.  A mind can be divided into smaller and smaller rooms, and the mind trapped inside them unable to find a way out.  There are times I’ve become more and more frantic, trying to find keyholes that were never there.

I call it “hamsterwheeling” -- running at top speed and getting nowhere.  At some point, you’ve got to stop and say to yourself “what’s keeping me here?  Why do I think I can’t stop?”

So many times it’s because someone else said so.  And because we’re afraid to take that first step. And we’re afraid of what others will think of us.   And we’re afraid of the unknown.  

The unknown is my home.  And Voyager navigates by the stars.  

My last day of work at the phone job will be Friday.  

[auntyproton]

The past three centuries of progress have been powered by coal, oil and gas. Burning much of what’s left will lead to environmental and economic catastrophe. Here’s how to save the earth without giving up on growth via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

We already know that recruiting is an imprecise activity, and degrees don’t communicate much about a candidate’s potential and fit, but now data is confirming this. Employers need to know what a student knows and can do. via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

It is predicted that the total cost of electric car ownership will dip below those with internal combustion engines by 2022. via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

My name is Christine, and I get food stamps. I've had to apply off and on over the past 16 years in order to make sure my family was fed. I don't feel the least bit ashamed of myself for this, but apparently some people think I should. Some people think I, and people like me, am lazy. via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

Some say all jobs may be automated. Perhaps next thing consumption will be automated, too, and then we are really in trouble. Seriously, something does not make sense with this way of thinking. Instead, innovation may disrupt unemployment. via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

Google scientists and engineers have created the first ever computer program that is capable of learning a wide variety of tasks completely independently, in what is a giant leap towards true general artificial intelligence. via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

The expectation that your iPhone keeps getting thinner and faster every two years. Happy 50th anniversary. Components get cheaper, computers get smaller, a lot of comparison tweets. via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

Recent sunny labor market reports have generated lots of buzz that the economy is coming back. Unemployment is down to 5.6%, the lowest it’s been since 2007, and Wall Street’s bull market is charging ahead. via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

What happens when we teach a computer how to learn? Technologist Jeremy Howard shares some surprising new developments in the fast-moving field of deep learning, a technique that can give computers the ability to learn Chinese, or to recognize objects in photos, or to help think through a medical diagnosis. (One deep learning tool, after watching hours of YouTube, taught itself the concept of “cats.”) Get caught up on a field that will change the way the computers around you behave … sooner than you probably think. via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

Let’s imagine we’re in a car together on a road trip. We’re on our way to visit your family. We’d have actually preferred to fly, but that route wasn’t in the budget, which is very limited. Times have been tough lately. Sometimes it feels like the economy is only working for everyone else. via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

A new artificially intelligent computer system called 'Amelia' – that can read and understand text, follow processes, solve problems and learn from experience – could replace humans in a wide range of low-level jobs In February 2011 an artificially intelligent computer system called IBM via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

Zoltan Istvan is a futurist, philosopher, journalist, and author of the bestselling novel The Transhumanist Wager. He writes an occasional column for Motherboard ruminating on the future beyond natural human ability. via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

Dozens of reading rooms have been reincarnated as de facto coworking spaces. Jonathan Marino has just arrived at his tech startup in D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood at 9:45 on a Monday morning. via Aunty's Pocket

[auntyproton]

Symbol of capitalism The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a pro-establishment, pro-market thinking organization has released a report predicting a collapse in global economic growth rates, a rise in feudal wealth disparity, collapsing tax revenue and huge, migrating bands via Aunty's Pocket