{"id":1477,"date":"2020-11-08T20:03:08","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T02:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/?p=1477"},"modified":"2020-11-16T01:18:29","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T07:18:29","slug":"weeknote-for-11-8-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/2020\/11\/08\/weeknote-for-11-8-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Weeknote for 11\/8\/2020"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"playht-iframe-wrapper\" style=\"max-height: 210px !important;\">\n\t<iframe\n\tscrolling=\"no\"\n\tclass=\"playht-iframe-player\"\n\tid=\"playht-iframe-player\"\n\theight=\"90px\"\n\twidth=\"100%\"\n\tframeborder=\"0\"\n\tstyle=\"max-height: 90px; height: 90px !important;\"\n\tsrc=\"https:\/\/play.ht\/embed\/?article_url=https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/?p=1477&voice=en-GB-Wavenet-B&appId=9W3P762tsiZ6wAx&trans_id=-MLejTWKJwrXQZnUpjkO\"\n\tdata-voice=\"en-GB-Wavenet-B\"\n\tarticle-url=\"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/?p=1477\"\n\tdata-appId=\"9W3P762tsiZ6wAx\"\n\tallowfullscreen=\"\">\n\t<\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Christmas labels<\/h2>\n<p>\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><strong>I&#8217;ve gotten to the part where I create the labels.<\/strong> It&#8217;ll still take some time, so given my pace it&#8217;ll probably take this whole week. But that&#8217;s still miles better than doing it all Christmas Eve!<\/p>\n<h2>Fiction<\/h2>\n<p>\ud83d\ude0e<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>The Outside<\/em> by Ada Hoffman is an intriguing mix of ideas.<\/strong> Even though it had a somewhat Lovecraftian theme, I wouldn&#8217;t call it scary, since it treated it like a science project, sort of like in Charles Stross&#8217; Laundry Files, although without the Laundry&#8217;s apocalyptic expectations. But I do recommend it for the very listenable story and interesting concepts. Unlike in <em>Singularity Sky<\/em>, another one by Stross, where the AI preemptively rejects the idea of being worshipped, in <em>The Outside<\/em> the AIs have set themselves up as a pantheon. But apparently this has entrenched them in an ideological rut. Something I&#8217;m left wondering is whether the AIs would consider hiring heretics as researchers rather than prosecuting them. If they did that, I would immediately offer myself as a sell-soul.<\/p>\n<h2>Politics<\/h2>\n<p>\ud83e\udd14<\/p>\n<p><strong>I&#8217;m relieved Biden won the election.<\/strong> I had the network news livestreams running 8 hours a day all week, with my playlist of ominous music going in the background. I have many thoughts on the election, but I don&#8217;t want to try to summarize them all in this post. What I&#8217;ll say is I think it&#8217;s a mistake to demonize all the people who voted for Trump, because politics is complicated, and people&#8217;s perceptions vary widely, and yet we reduce all the complexity to a choice between a handful of candidates. We shouldn&#8217;t be surprised that reasonable people find reasons to vote for someone we never could.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas labels \ud83d\ude42 I&#8217;ve gotten to the part where I create the labels. It&#8217;ll still take some time, so given my pace it&#8217;ll probably take this whole week. But that&#8217;s still miles better than doing it all Christmas Eve! Fiction &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/2020\/11\/08\/weeknote-for-11-8-2020\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198,186,118,188,167],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christmas-labels","category-fiction","category-podcasts","category-politics","category-weeknotes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1477"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1479,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions\/1479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}