Toots for james@mastodon.exitmusic.world account

Written by James Fairbairn on 2025-01-23 at 05:33

Observation. Barely anyone is talking about Russian influence this time. Given how flagrant it was last time, and how unpunished, and how the, um, strategic situation has only ratcheted up, it seems likely to me that there is more of it now, rather than none.

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2025-01-15 at 07:45

If you can’t write from where you want to be, write from where you already are, no matter how shitty or unpublishable you think that is.

I’m sure someone’s said this already, but: if you can’t be good, at least be honest.

(This is a note to self on #writing)

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-12-30 at 18:07

“Foreseeable but not specifically predictable”

is a vibe we’re just starting to realize we’re going to have to get used to

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-12-25 at 02:50

One point where your heroes will reliably show you who they really are is when they have kids

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-12-12 at 08:07

In my head the class distinctions work something like:

Working class: uses income and output to live

Middle class: accrues capital from primary income

Shareholder class: accrues capital from income and capital appreciation

Investor class: accrues market power by influencing corporate action

Special interest class: accrues corporate power by influencing sector regulation

Plutocrat class: accrues political power by using capital and corporate power to influence government itself

Or something

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-12-02 at 23:21

“No but hear me out, what if everyone is wrong in exactly the same way, and my pet alternative theory conveniently happens to be exactly correct?”

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-11-17 at 02:55

I imagine instead a completely different kind of techno-optimism: one that leads to the widespread distribution of ever greater life-enhancing technē. Call this techno-ecological optimism.

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-11-17 at 02:46

It’s not techno-optimism. It’s techno-capitalist optimism.

It’s the kind of optimism that doesn’t see things like rhe mass extinction of species as within its scope of problems to solve, presumably because we could eventually build technology that would obviate any need (from a human perspective) for other species to exist.

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-10-25 at 17:02

We have a word for someone who pursues their own obscure, non-prosocial goals while skillfully pretending to be a prosocial person. That word is “psychopath”.

When we make anthropomorphic AI agents, we’re making psychopathic systems.

Worse, these systems do not fear the retribution of society like human psychopaths do.

Happy Friday!

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-08-30 at 00:02

The technological revolution has allowed many of us to live in a world of unbelievable convenience. But that convenience sits atop a foundation of breathtaking precarity — a precarity that is not abstract or yet-to-come, but real and already-present for almost everyone living in industrial societies.

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-08-14 at 06:26

I look young. Maybe people would take me more seriously if I dressed my age. Goodbye organic cotton t-shirts. Tweed sports jackets here I come.

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-08-14 at 05:09

I have this weird idea that we should do something like semi-public letter-writing. Like, people writing letters to each other 1:1, but with an RSS feed so that other interested parties can partake of the conversation.

I think maybe this would be good for the world.

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-08-12 at 21:55

And you really don’t want to get Long COVID:

  1. “Long COVID Is Associated with Severe Cognitive Slowing: A Multicentre Cross-Sectional Study” EClinicalMedicine 68 (February 1, 2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2024.102434

  1. Hazard ratio of >=2 for cardiovascular disorders for people without previous history of cardiovascular outcomes: “Long-Term Cardiovascular Outcomes of COVID-19” Nature Medicine 28, no. 3 (March 2022): 583–90. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-01689-3

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-08-12 at 21:40

A chart like this should be a slam-dunk argument for why you don’t want to get Covid, but apparently permanent cognitive decline after each infection isn’t really that convincing https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.06.23298101

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-08-12 at 04:30

(I’m only about a third of the way through, so that balance will probably change…)

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-08-12 at 04:30

Anyone here read First Principles and First Values? What do you think? I’m like 65/35 agree/disagree.

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Written by James Fairbairn on 2024-08-10 at 08:19

Yesterday I was in a coffee shop in a medium-sized NorCal town, and they had Nutella on toast with smashed banana for $14.99.

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