Making Large Language Models work for you
Another great talk from Simon that explains large language models in a hype-free way.
Link tags: alien
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Cooking with Ursula K. Le Guin
Recipes inspired by The Left Hand Of Darkness.
I mostly stuck to Le Guin’s world-building rules for Winter, which were “no large meat-animals … and no mammalian products, milk, butter or cheese; the only high-protein, high-carbohydrate foods are the various kinds of eggs, fish, nuts and Hainish grains.” I did, however, add some hot-climate items found in Manhattan’s Chinatown for their space-age looks and good flavors (dragonfruit, pomelo, galangal, chilis, and kaffir limes).
Serve with hot beer.
Greetings, E.T. (Please Don’t Murder Us.) - The New York Times
Steven Johnson dives deep into the METI project, starting with the Arecibo message and covering Lincos, the Drake equation, and the Fermi paradox.
He also wrote about what he left out of the article and mentions that he’s writing a book on long-term decision making.
In a sense, the METI debate runs parallel to other existential decisions that we will be confronting in the coming decades, as our technological and scientific powers increase. Should we create superintelligent machines that exceed our own intellectual capabilities by such a wide margin that we cease to understand how their intelligence works? Should we ‘‘cure’’ death, as many technologists are proposing? Like METI, these are potentially among the most momentous decisions human beings will ever make, and yet the number of people actively participating in those decisions — or even aware such decisions are being made — is minuscule.
Oats Studios - Volume 1 - Rakka - YouTube
The first of Neil Bomkamp’s series of short films—testbeds for potential feature films.
Visualizing the Alien: A Hollywood Conundrum
Compare and contrast Alien, Starship Troopers, and The Thing with 2001 and Roadside Picnic (and I would throw Solaris into the mix).
Plugging in a monster moves a plot right along, of course, but if that’s all it’s doing, the plot is neglecting to examine how a real biosphere would work. That would be a sensationally complex task, but given the amount of research now going on in astrobiology and exoplanetary science, the suspicion here is that experts could be summoned who could produce such a film. Even so, there is something to be said for not seeing aliens.
Is Dark Matter Hiding Aliens?
Here’s a fun cosmic hypothesis on the scale of an Olaf Stapeldon story. There are even implications for data storage:
By storing its essential data in photons, life could give itself a distributed backup system. And it could go further, manipulating new photons emitted by stars to dictate how they interact with matter. Fronts of electromagnetic radiation could be reaching across the cosmos to set in motion chains of interstellar or planetary chemistry with exquisite timing, exploiting wave interference and excitation energies in atoms and molecules.
Why James Cameron’s Aliens is the best movie about technology
Tim Carmody on James Cameron’s meisterwerk (and technology in sci-fi films in general).
Alien | Typeset In The Future
Typeset In The Future is back with another cracking analysis. This time—following on from 2001 and Moon—we’ve got Alien.
In her final recorded message before hypersleep, Ripley notes that she is the sole survivor of the Nostromo. What she forgets to mention is that she has not once in the past two hours encountered any Eurostile Bold Extended.
The Many Faces Of… Sigourney Weaver
Queen of science fiction.
George Lucas Stole Chewbacca, But It’s Okay « Binary Bonsai
A fantastically detailed look by Michael at the evolution of the design of Chewbacca.
In praise of the sci-fi corridor - Den of Geek
This is wonderful, just wonderful; an in-depth piece on corridors in science fiction movies. Swoon!
frameboX - Salad
Giger's alien made of vegetables, Arcimboldo style.