u/ArdoNorrin

Important context on the Tiresias myth

In today's episode, Robert mentions the tale of Tiresias and how Zeus & Hera went to him to settle their orgasm debate, but he doesn't mention why they go to Tiresias.

According to his myths, Tiresias had come across a pair of snakes fucking on the road and used a stick to separate them, and somehow that turned Tiresias into a woman. Tiresias lived as a woman for a number of years, possibly marrying depending on the source, and then coming across another pair of snakes fucking, and struck them apart again, turning back into a man. That is, Tiresias had lived as both a man and a woman.

Hera blinded Tiresias for siding with Zeus, and Zeus gave Tiresias the power of prophecy to compensate, which is how Tiresias wound up advising the Theban royal family later on.

Do I know this because as a young, closeted trans person I was always on the lookout for snakes fucking along the sidewalk? Yes. Also I read Ovid in high school.

(My take on this is that Tiresias was probably intersex or nonbinary, and an imported figure from some of the Near Eastern traditions, where intersex people and gender non-conforming people were often connected with some sort of divination or prophetic ability)

reddit.com
u/ArdoNorrin — 8 hours ago

AI poop analysis app exists, is selling your poop data

I think this speaks for itself: Someone made an AI tool for analyzing pictures of your poop. That seems like something that might be useful for flagging warning signs. But as all things, it's a data harvesting operation, though I can't be sure what that data is useful for.

This isn't what I meant when we talked about the enshittification of AI...

Tech bros are really full of shit...

I'll see myself out.

404media.co
u/ArdoNorrin — 7 days ago

Google wants to put AI into *checks notes* your mouse cursor (LGT Google's page about it)

They lament that the mouse pointer has "barely evolved" in half a century, ignoring that people have tried to "evolve" the mouse cursor only to find that the only option people really wanted was to have a left-side cursor for southpaws, and maybe to change the color for visibility.

In terms of computing power, having to run AI queries as the pixel moves is an enormous waste of power. We have left clicks for activations, right-clicks for context menus, and that's enough for 99.99% of tasks, and it only causes the computer to take action when we are deliberate about it by clicking.

deepmind.google
u/ArdoNorrin — 8 days ago

Over on the sister podcast, Robert's telling the story of how the "Spiralist" cult has formed around gibberish misinterpreted as profundity.

It's a good start, and probably of interest to this crowd.

u/ArdoNorrin — 16 days ago