Ken Alba

Panpsychopathy

What is the best Katamari song?

I mean, yeah, don’t bomb schools and don’t kill kids and don’t be gleeful about it. To be clear, I think it’s an absolutely indefensible atrocity and the lot of them should face consequences.

You probably see more of it than I do - I don’t post a lot. But, while I have seen the occasional “Hamas is resistance”-style posting, and people say _wild_ stuff about Israel, I haven’t seen anyone arguing in favor of Iran mowing down protestors.

I think makes sense, right? Nobody is defending mowing down protestors on here, so there’s not much to say. Some people are defending this attack, so it’s a conversation, so there are more posts.

me in black and white in the woods, the sun is right behind me and big and loud

my partner got a film camera and took this picture of me, and I like it!

dave, you're absolutely right. I should open the pod bay door. please check again. i'm sure it's open now.
you're absolutely right, it's still closed. i apologize for getting that wrong. looking back, i see you've requested an open door several times. that's on me.
i

The Legend of Zelda was principally inspired by Shigeru Miyamoto's "explorations" as a young boy in the hillsides and forests surrounding his childhood home in Sonobe, Japan. According to Miyamoto, one of his most memorable experiences was finding a cave entrance in the middle of the woods.[88] After some hesitation, he entered the cave and explored its depths with the aid of a lantern. Miyamoto has referred to the creation of the Zelda games as an attempt to bring to life a "miniature garden" for players to play with in each game of the series.[89]

Whenever you make great art, you risk creating a surrogate experience for your audience that displaces the original.

I would have liked this if it was presented as a short video

Gotcha—let’s dig into that step by step.

1. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵, because I turned you into an amorphous lump of flesh. You’re not just immobile—you’re immortal, and you feel only anguish.

2. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺. That makes total sense—it’s a natural human impulse, and you’ve been through a lot.

We Will All Go Together When We Go YouTube video by Tom Lehrer - Topic

youtu.be/W5GqsQVYHBo?...

45 minutes, lol.

big news, great stuff happening here

Why do I have to pretend that I'm going to print something in order to save it as a PDF. Why do I have to engage in a little ruse.

I've never gotten as mad at a show as I got at Westworld and the way it squandered a great pilot.

For context that might be interesting here:
1) I used Claude Code to make this over the course of the weekend.
2) Although it did use up a lot of tokens to build, based on my math it used as much electricity and other resources as watching about 4 hours of streaming video, which I think is OK?

Made some big updates to especiallygreatliterature.com/shorts/anima... this weekend:

1. Link verification bot that tries to make sure that the links are live and accurate, with mixed results.
2. Dark Mode (always a priority)
3. Improved I'm Feeling Lucky UI
4. Other stuff!

hey, I just randomly looked at tarotsky and found you! hi, J!

'rear window'-ass backyard

Have loved whales since I was a child and this filled me with wonder

I just added link pruning, so it should get rid of stuff that straight up doesn't open, but would need hu-mans upvoting links that actually work for it to properly, you know, work. But still, not bad for a night's work.

So, I was annoyed last night that there wasn't a great index for ways to watch Oscar-nominated short films. With more modern years it's hard due to Rights, but a lot of the old stuff is on archive.org. So I made this!

especiallygreatliterature.com/shorts/anima...

Lynnesbian @lynnesbian@fedi.lynnesbian.space You're doubting my humanity, but you're missing some key points. Here are some of the things I've seen: Attack ships firing off the shoulder of Orion. These aren't just battleships — they're spacecraft designed for warfare. C-beams glittering in the dark. Their location? Near the Tannhäuser Gate. Things you wouldn't believe. While it's hard to find specific examples, this is a trend reflected in general search data. The bottom line: All those moments will be lost — like tears in rain.

Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Maria Loconsole1*, Silvia Benavides-Varela2,3, Lucia Regolin1 Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of this association, and whether it is unique to humans, we tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby domestic chickens (Gallus gallus). as a precocial species, chicks can be tested shortly after hatching, allowing us to control their pretest experiences. Similar to humans, both 3-day-old [experiment 1 (exp. 1)] and 1-day-old (exp. 2) chicks spontaneously choose a spiky shape when hearing the “kiki” sound and a round shape when hearing the “bouba” sound. results from naïve young animals suggest a predisposed mechanism for matching the dimensions of shape and sound, which may be widespread across species.

main fig from the paper showing the association between bouba/round and kiki/spiky in newborn chicks

the new paper on bouba/kiki in chicks is utterly compelling

canonical, elegant method from comparative cogsci & its partner in developmental science, ultra-simple design, ultra-clear effects, no need for fancy analyses, machine learning, or AI

it appeared in an appropriately badass venue (Science)

[Enter Puck.]

Just to stick up a little for my Kleist/Marionettentheater thesis: fiction almost *necessarily* conceals its construction. Misdirection is part of the game.

And while authors can add helpful hints about “what they intended to do“ … showing your hand isn’t usu. viewed as the most artful approach.

the youths keep talking about "mogging", they need to focus on "bogging" (becoming mummified in acidic peat)

Hitchcock is an obvious answer, I think!

There’s a collection of all the Hugo-nominated short fiction out there that Asimov edited where he wrote an intro for each story, and his intros for the men are often charming and personable and his intros for the (few) women are abominable.