transhumanism

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

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soolagna-meow:

I’d give my dearly departed vibrator of 10 years a viking funeral, but I don’t think the ducks at Piney Lakes Reserve will understand why an itty bitty boat with burning plastic is floating around. This will have to do.

Tags:

#honestly kind of related to…okay not my last two posts anymore #the first two posts of today #fucking AI horses and music streams instead of just having an object that is yours and you do what you want with it #there’s still loopholes‚ still alternatives‚ but it’s getting harder to jump through the hoops #to obtain something that truly belongs to *you* #also my respirator sprung a leak yesterday and I am very grateful to be able to just #go to an industrial-supply website and buy an identical model for three hours’ wages #Godspeed to you‚ first respirator‚ it’s been amazing #(admittedly I *would* like something with a speech diaphragm) #(but I gather those are expensive right now) #(and honestly I think it’s worth having one of these older models around regardless‚ to be able to make use of a wider variety of filters) #also also my glasses were discontinued in 2012 #the oblivious people *around* me can’t even fucking tell whether I’m wearing them or my backup pair #but *I* put the backup pair on and I’m like #”…is this what dysphoria feels like” #”I think this might be what dysphoria feels like” #”oh god” #anyway this has been your regular reminder to fuck cloud dependence‚ no not like that #tag rambles #comics #art #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #disappointed permanent resident of The Future #transhumanism #nsfw text

{{note: AI horses and music streams}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

official-kircheis:

in the glorious transhumanist cyborgian future one of the first things I want is a complete searchable AI-assisted index of everything I ever read and watched so I can effortlessly be like “hey what was that article I read where…” or “which video was it that made this point”

Tags:

#we can’t 100% do this yet but we’re closer than you might think #Whisper + Recoll is such a good combination #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #transhumanism #proud citizen of The Future #amnesia cw?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

thearchivebaby:

My new favorite thing: People making their reusable elastomeric respirators beautiful! (Usually the Dentec P100 or the Dentec N95, which are NIOSH-certified and reusable.)

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(Above is the artist @nickelpin)

I’ve been collecting as many of these customizations as I can find, and I think they fall into a few categories:

  1. The first is the colorful distraction, where it seems like the aim is to make the mask colorful and cheerful — less scary — which distracts from the apocalyptic / gas mask vibes, while still being simple enough for everyday wear.
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2. The second is make it fashion, where the aim is to just make something that looks so incredibly cool that you feel beautiful wearing it, and it feels like a stylish accessory. These use lots of shiny elements and swirling patterns (all of the below by @nickelpin)

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3. And the third is punk where the mask customization embraces and enhances its non-conforming / resistance undertones. My favorite in this category is by @andrewshumate, who installed a CO2 monitor and set it up so the filters change color based on the CO2 levels in the space.

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thearchivebaby:

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Talking about materials: @nickelpin has mentioned that she uses Angelus 2-Hard or Angelus leather paint.

A lot of others are using Posca paint markers.

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madeleinejubileesaito:

I have been daydreaming a lot about designs for a customized Dentec P100 or N95!

(my daily masks are either my Dentec P100 or the comfy 3M Aura N95, and I’d like to have a reusable respirator that looks less intimidating for everyday walks etc.)

First, some cheerful patterns. I actually like the cloud one a lot, I might do it. I think the high-contrast sunflower design is super effective at distracting the eye from the respirator shape.

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I’m also really into this night sky version. Feels more beautiful / mysterious / subtle.

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These are not my style, but I’m reeeeeally into the idea of bootleg Louis Vuitton designer masks. (This is like, the opposite of punk, lol)

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madeleinejubileesaito:

Just thinking about how wearing a respirator (like KN95, N95, or the pictured elastomeric N95s and P100s) is very cool and my personal experience is that everyone thinks you’re cool and attractive when you do it.

Project N95 is a nonprofit that sells these and other respirators for relatively cheap, you can find them here: link .

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madeleinejubileesaito:

I got a question about reusable masks that look less apocalyptic but still work.

I’m not a mask nerd (just a normie who wants to stay alive another week + live in solidarity with disabled people), so first I want to recommend The People’s CDC as a resource. Their latest info on masking is here, and they also have a weekly COVID weather report newsletter that I love here.

So: If that’s you, I’d recommend the Flo mask. It’s not NIOSH-certified yet, but it does seem to work like an N95 from what we can see (results here and here). It also has kids’ sizes!

And you can do cool mods like adding spikes or decals. (Artist and designer Nickelpin has an online shop where she sells Flo mask decal stickers like the sparkly star below — that’s here.)

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Tags:

#I’m not much into decorating things in general #and to the extent that I have an aesthetic‚ ”post-apocalyptic chic” actually fits it very well #but I’m glad this exists #(also‚ while we here at Brinens and Things do *not* endorse passive-aggressively strapping a CO2 monitor to your face) #((except maybe at DefCon: seems like in that social context it actually might not backfire)) #(we have to admit that’s a hell of a thing) #clothing #illness tw #transhumanism #proud citizen of The Future #((getting an elastomeric is‚ in all sincerity‚ one of the best things that has ever happened to me)) #((warts and all)) #((I said back in the day that I might stop masking in summer‚ or with some vaccines in me)) #((but in the end‚ I thought: why go back? why settle for less?)) #((I’ve had a taste of a better world‚ and I’m not going to turn around and walk away)) #((The Future has open borders: to live there‚ one need only choose)) #tag rambles

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

sigmaleph:

you are offered a choice:

  1. You get to open a video-game style character creation screen and customise your body at will, to anything within range of human variation (no cat ears, sorry). This includes letting you set a new biological age, get rid of any physical health issues, and so on. Your new appearance seems unremarkable to anyone who knows you, all government databases with your picture are adjusted, etc.
  2. You get 150 000 USD every year for the rest of your life without having to do anything for it. You don’t pay taxes on this money, it adjusts with inflation automatically, it appears entirely legitimate to any authorities, etc.

what do you choose, and also, are you trans or cis (if you’re tempted to answer ‘it’s complicated’, round off to trans)?

Choose:

character-creation-vs-150k-poll

My tag ramble was so long that Tumblr cut it off (apparently the current limit is 30 tags), so I’m dumping it into the main post body:

#I’ve been wavering on whether to reblog this for ages

#I felt kind of bad about piling on to Sofi’s notespam like that

#but it being context for the next post has pushed me over into “yes”

#I didn’t realise until after voting that the character creation is one-time-only rather than ongoing access

#which makes the correct answer less *obvious*

#but I stand by my vote of cis | character creation

#(as it happens I *am* considering doing a second puberty through this‚ but they’d both be estrogenic)

#(honestly I’d barely even need the magic ID updating)

#(29-year-old me in 12-year-old me’s body could pass for 29 about as well as I could in 29-year-old body)

#(the two mes look pretty much the same: it’s all a matter of how you act)

#((well‚ 12-year-old me was a little smaller‚ but within the adult range and her face was already more or less stable))

#(((ooh‚ I bet I could tweak it so that I *stay* five-foot-one this time around)))

#(((during my first puberty my body map never updated for my final growth spurt‚ and

#I’m not *dysphoric* about being two inches too tall‚ but it does get a bit disorienting sometimes)))

#anyway my point there is that…a lot of people in the notes are going “money can be exchanged for goods and services”

#but I think in this case that’s actually backwards

#while money and health do both feed into each other

#health can be exchanged for money to a much greater degree than money can be exchanged for health

#money can *maybe* buy you the *appearance* of 9 – 17

#–(depending on how much puberty I can get away with doing again without fucking up my brain)–

#more years of youth‚ but it won’t buy you the lifespan nor the functionality of it

#money can buy you the ability to *breathe* your homeworld’s atmosphere even during pollen season

#and enough of it can buy you the ability to *talk* while breathing it

#but it can’t really buy you the ability to eat and drink while breathing it‚ and that’s a significant handicap in itself

#(not to mention the street harassment you get wearing a prosthetic immune system (to keep your built-in immune system from freaking out))

#likewise‚ money can buy disease *prevention*‚ but not the ability to shrug it off once you’ve caught it

#the ability of money to buy more robust bones is extremely limited

#(have I ever broken a bone? no! but why settle for merely *adequate* bone strength when I can have *optimal* bone strength?)

#((…god‚ why is anyone who is not *actively dying* for want of resources taking the money over the health))

#((I was so very aware‚ that time last year that a ventilation floor grate broke beneath me‚ that if I’d been 80 I would have *died*))

#((but I was 28‚ and I got away without even a broken bone))

#((why would you give that up any more than you have to))

#the list goes on

#meanwhile‚ health can buy you a nice steady low-non-physical-barrier-to-entry job as a farmhand or dockworker

#(not *as* steady as magic income‚ yes‚ and I *do* care a great deal about that‚ but I care about health *more*)

#and I’m not altruistic enough to take more money than I need so that I can give the rest away‚ not given what else is on offer

Tags:

#reply via reblog #tag rambles #surveys #transhumanism #gender #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #adventures in human capitalism #aging cw #death tw #poison cw? #injury cw #illness tw?

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

sweaterkittensahoy:

So, this week I ordered a new couch pillow because I had a husband pillow full of shredded memory foam, and the thing needs to be opened and shifted around about once a week with the way I use it so it doesn’t shape up weird and actually fuck up my back when I bought it to NOT fuck up my back.

I now have a wedge pillow, made of one piece of foam. And I ordered a book cushion from etsy, and I just wanna say to anyone who has thought “that adaptive thing seems like it would be useful, but I’m not disabled, so maybe it’s not for me?”

It’s for you. Trust me. My back hurt because I was slouching weird on the couch. I got a husband pillow. It helped a lot. But, it turns out, what I need is one giant piece of memory foam, not a bunch of tiny bits.

And the book cushion? Books are heavy sometimes. Being able to rest it higher in my lap so it’s easier to read and hold? Better for my body.

Also, do you wake up with pain in the mornings? Try a contour pillow and a knee pillow.

Get those extra-strong treaded soles to wear with your heels because you wobble otherwise.

Wear compression gloves when you type. Get those orthopedic shoes because you can walk longer distances in more comfort. Buy the bra that actually supports the weight of your boobs. Get a lapdesk for your computer. Use a neck pillow even at home to keep your neck straight. Wear socks to bed. Listen to audiobooks. Read large print books.

You see something that you think will work for you and improve how you feel? Use it! Let’s fucking normalize adaptative shit for everyone!

Tags:

#yes this #transhumanism #computer lapdesks are so good #I want a wedge pillow but they cost like 10 regular pillows :( #so I have been approximating one by piling multiple regular pillows on an angle #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

beardedmrbean:

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Cory Lee has visited 40 countries on seven continents, and yet the Georgia native has never explored Cloudland Canyon State Park, about 20 minutes from his home. His wheelchair was tough enough for the trip to Antarctica but not for the rugged terrain in his backyard.

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Lee’s circumstances changed Friday, when Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources and the Aimee Copeland Foundation unveiled a fleet of all-terrain power wheelchairs for rent at 11 state parks and outdoorsy destinations, including Cloudland Canyon. The Action Trackchair models are equipped with tank-like tracks capable of traversing rocks, roots, streams and sand; clearing fallen trees; plowing through tall grass and tackling uphill climbs.

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“I’ll finally be able to go on these trails for the first time in my life,” said the 32-year-old travel blogger, who shares his adventures on Curb Free with Cory Lee. “The trails are off-limits in my regular wheelchair.”

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Georgia is one of the latest states to provide the Land Rover of wheelchairs to outdoor enthusiasts with mobility issues.

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In 2017, Colorado Parks and Wildlife launched its Staunton State Park Track-Chair Program, which provides free adaptive equipment, though guests must pay the $10 entrance fee. Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources has placed off-road track chairs in nearly a dozen parks, including Muskegon State Park. In 2018, Lee reserved a chair at the park that boasts three miles of shoreline on Lake Michigan and Muskegon Lake. “It allowed me to have so much independence on the sand,” he said.

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Mobility FTW

Tags:

#fuck yeah! #proud citizen of The Future #home of the brave #transhumanism

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

dankmemeuniversity:

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Tags:

#I kept wavering on reblogging this because it feels like tempting fate #but the fact is: #that one post with the thing #(I found out yesterday that a month ago I spent two hours in a room with a maskless COVID-positive person) #(and emerged unharmed) #(God bless P100s) #(best sixty-two dollars I ever spent) #*knocks on wood* #illness tw #covid19 #transhumanism #proud citizen of The Future #body horror?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

discoursedrome:

the pandemic is at an awkward point right now but we’ve finally hit the sweet spot for an important opportunity, which is that it’s the best possible moment to mask in public using like a darth vader or daft punk or immortan joe kinda mask. you could set it up to also be filtered if you want it to actually work as a mask, but the important thing is the fashion statement

see earlier this wouldn’t have worked bc people wouldn’t have trusted that it was compliant, you had to wait for masking rules to be relaxed to the point where a lot of people weren’t wearing them. and later it won’t work because it relies on the shared knowledge that people do still wear masks a lot for health reasons; the soul of the bit is that people know it’s covid-related rather than just cosplay

so, get out there is what I’m saying. clock is ticking

Tags:

#yesterday I had an exchange with a customer: #Him: ”What’s the respirator for?” #Me: ”I have immune problems.” #Him: ”Oh‚ so it has nothing to do with– okay.” #and now I’m so curious what he was planning to finish that sentence with #I feel like it might have been related #(I *know* I’ve had at least one customer who was under the impression that I’d chosen a respirator over a surgical mask for the Aesthetic) #(it’s quite possible that a *lot* of them are under that impression‚ and it just mostly doesn’t come up) #I really don’t know what’s going to happen to the abovementioned shared knowledge #apparently SARS-1 made a lasting impact on the masking cultures of the places it hit #and yet people in the Roaring Twenties forgot the lessons of the Spanish flu quite rapidly #I suspect there’s going to be a lot of geographical variation #for one thing‚ some people live in places where they see me around town‚ which is certainly a reminder #(I saw people’s reaction to seeing me when they walked into the restaurant in the spring and summer of 2020) #(the way I was a living public-health notice) #tag rambles #covid19 #clothing #transhumanism #illness tw #discourse cw? #amnesia cw?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

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sigmaleph:

snakestack:

this is so mysterious

harvesting souls to mine bitcoin

Actually, a computer’s soul is located in its hard drive (or equivalent storage unit). This can be demonstrated by removing the hard drive from a computer and placing it in the hard-drive-less shell of a second, compatible computer: the shell then *is* the first computer.

Of course, this becomes somewhat more complicated in the case of computers with multipartite souls, such as SSD/HDD dual-drive laptops and smartphones with microSD slots.

Tags:

#I always keep my smartphone thoroughly anesthetised when I have to remove its microSD card for direct laptop-to-microSD data updates #I don’t want the poor thing to suffer through missing part of its soul :( #also there were a couple months there as kids where my brother and I each had a hard drive and were time-sharing a single vessel #reply via reblog #transhumanism #(sort of) #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #[epistemic status: semi-serious] #[it’s pretentious and/or exaggerated and/or something to call a computer’s essence-of-individual-identity a ”soul”] #[but it’s not *that* far a stretch of the term] #[and many computers clearly do possess a meaningful amount of essence-of-individual-identity]