magictransistor:

SubGenius

The fact is, I don’t think SF can be really utopian. I mean utopia presupposes a pretty static, unchanging, and rather tyrannical world. You know: ‘I know the best way to live, and I’m going to tell you how to do it, and if you dare do anything else…’

—Samuel R. Delany, interviewed in 1986, “On Triton and other matters” (via notesonresistance)

There are already entities with vastly greater than human intelligence working on the problem of augmenting their own intelligence. A great many, in fact. We call them corporations. And while we may have a variety of thoughts about them, not one has achieved transcendence.

Let’s focus on as a very particular example: The Intel Corporation. Intel is my favorite example because it uses the collective brainpower of tens of thousands of humans and probably millions of CPU cores to.. design better CPUs! (And also to create better software for designing CPUs.) Those better CPUs will run the better software to make the better next generation of CPUs. Yet that feedback loop has not led to a hard takeoff scenario. It has helped drive Moore’s Law, which is impressive enough. But the time period for doublings seems to have remained roughly constant. Again, let’s not underestimate how awesome that is. But it’s not a sudden transcendence scenario.

–Ramez Naam

livelymorgue:

July 19, 1954: One of the more boastful cruise ships to set sail since the Titanic, the superliner United States (“America’s largest, fastest and newest passenger liner”) had an appointment with its own special “beauty parlor” in Bayonne, N.J. “A spokesman for the line said this would be the third time in her two-year career that she would be looked over below the waterline,” The Times reported. “Work to be performed at Bayonne will include bottom scraping, painting and a check of her propellers.” Photo: Robert Walker/The New York Times

Now rusting in South Philly.

Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.

Yes, some cyclists may ride on the sidewalk to annoy the universe. Many more no doubt do so because they find sharing the road with cars to be exceedingly dangerous.

—Tired of Cyclists Riding on the Sidewalk? Build More Bike Lanes (via thisiscitylab)