Words arranged in interesting ways

The Best of The Week

Dead Internet Theory proposes that the overwhelming majority of the content you encounter on the Internet is not the product of living human minds, but something else entirely. Under this theory, the rare human browser is like a rat trapped in a maze built by unseen intelligences, manipulated by impostors and algorithms for their own opaque purposes. That lukewarm product review, the pointed film criticism, those heated political arguments are not a manifestation of genuine human sentiment but rather the automated output of repetitive spambots, a rogue Markov chain or nowadays, perhaps a Large Language Model trained on the previous iteration of synthetic web content.

Yes, that includes this text you're reading. I could promise that I am made of the same flesh as you (although most of you may well be bots scraping E2 for training data to feed the next

 

 

In bed, seeking calm 

Tossing and turning 

trying to block out the sound of traffic 

 

Head on pillow but

mind at 100 miles an hour

racing through the list of forgotten calls and misplaced keys

 

Sometime after one, 

her thoughts move to a low hum

search engine shifts to idle 

 

If Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky are to be believed, our wills are merely the result of what came before. Everything has a prior cause and our actions are inextricably linked to what preceded it and that which preceded that is also governed by what came before and so on until the beginning of time.

Do our choices matter? Paradoxically, yes it still does since our choices also affects what will follow.

This is not to be mistaken for fatalism or an excuse to not make choices,

News for Noders

May 1: May day.

May 3: Happy birthday ImConfused!

May 4: May the Fourth be with you!

May 8: Happy birthday E2D2!

May 10: Happy birthday BIII!

May 12: Mother's day in the USA.

May 27: Memorial Day in the USA.


If you have an item for this calendar, /msg Tem42.

April 1: The E2 Dadaism Quest starts today! Please show off your Dadaist chops with lots of fig inverted urinal.

April 1: The 2024 LieQuest has been cancelled.

April 12: Yuri's Night

April 22: Happy Earth Day, fellow earthlings!

April 23: Saint George's Day.

April 24: Happy birthday, Rancid_Pickle!


April 30: Walpurgis Night.

If you have something to add to the monthly news, /msg Tem42.

March 14th: Pi day.

March 10th: Daylight saving time celebrated by many.

March 19th: The first equinox of the year.

March 31st: Happy birthday mad girl's love song!


Get ready for LieQuest 2024, starting on April 10th!


If you have an item for this calendar, /msg Tem42.

February 2: Happy birthday Auspice!

February 2: Happy birthday npecom!

February 5: Happy birthday wertperch!

February 8: Happy birthday to panamaus

February 15: Happy birthday Admin to the goo!

February 15: Terse Quest 2024 begins!

February 23: Happy birthday Samuel Pepys!

February 29: Happy birthday Browncoat!


If you have an item for this calendar, /msg Tem42.

January 1: Gregorian New Year.

January 16: National Nothing Day.

January 24: Happy Birthday Silverai_me!

January 26: Happy Birthday Segnbora-t!

January 30: Happy Birthday O-Swirl!


If you have something to add to the monthly news, /msg Tem42.