Muutaman vuoden maata pitkin matkustamisen jälkeen löydän itseni tilanteesta, jossa painava marrassynkeys katoaa kuin taivaan tuuliin, kun päätämme tehdä puolet joululoman matkasta pintaa pitkin.

Ajatus Finnlinesin laivasta onnellistuttaa, mutta sen lisäksi hiukan vähemmän ilmiselvästi myös ajatus pimeästä Travemündesta ja siellä iltamyöhällä hotelliin hankkiutumisesta kaikkien pakaasien kanssa. Ja 10 tunnin junailupäivä Hollantiin! Oi, seisoskelu likaisella Hampurin asemalla, jossa on aivan liian vähän istuimia. Oi, epämiellyttävä ruoka Münsterin aseman Mäkkärissä. Oi, se tunne kun ylitetään raja Hollantiin ja tiedetään, että seuraava junanvaihto tulee olemaan ajallaan ja sujuva.

Eat it, kaamos. Minä menen maata pitkin!

Lapsoseni ja minä ollaan tämän vuoden alusta saakka oltu vakiovieraita Eläinmuseon eli Luomuksen Ilta museossa -teematapahtumissa. Ne on aina hienoja, ja tänään aivan erityisen!

Halloweenin kunniaksi aiheina olivat hämähäkit ja lepakot. Me ei ilmottu opastetulle hämähäkkikierrokselle kulissien taakse, koska käytiin se jo keväällä; aulassa tavattiin kuitenkin heti ekana ihana Lempparioppaamme, joka muisti meidän olleen aiemmalla kierroksella ja kutsui meidät kurkkaamaan nyt kierroksen alkua, koska yhteen ovivälikköön on sittemmin asettunut asumaan museoruskokki, jonka siinä pääsee näkemään! Siellä se oli, keskenkasvuinen museoruskokki, joka pienessä pesäverkossa istui ja antoi meidän ja kierrosryhmän pällistellä 🤩.

Sitten kuunneltiin näiden teemailtojenkin mittapuulla superkiinnostava miniluento vampyyrilepakoista ja toinen lepakoista yleensä, ja saatiin vielä haahuilla taskulamppujen kanssa kolmannen kerroksen pimeässä näyttelyssä etsimässä heijastinkuvioita. Tuli onnellinen mieli.

kävin niin kiireel ripustamas näyttelyn turkuun et unohdin ottaa kuvia

mut siel nyt on Pulssin ikkunassa mun duuneja

did not make it even to the last place with my entry
You Cannot Extinguish the Intense Flame of Life
demozoo.org/parties/5144/

it was not shown fully in the Xenium stream, so if you want the full experience then check here youtu.be/hlG0Jwef_NQ?si=_6PnIc…

#nosfeart #demoscene #videoart #drone #noise

Released at Xenium 2025 Demoparty held in Łódź, Poland

youtu.be/hlG0Jwef_NQ

#demoscene #nosfeart

Neljättä kertaa mukana paikallisilla elokuvajuhlilla talkooremmissä.

Elokuvissakäyntejä kertyi tapahtuman aikana yhteensä yli 1400 ja kaiken kaikkiaan festareilla vieraili reilut pari tuhatta ihmistä.
Tuo kävijämäärä on tapahtuman yleisöennätys. Mukava huomata, että ihmiset ovat löytäneet tiensä Vihtiin 😊

Festarin suosituimmat elokuvat olivat kesäteatterin ulkoilmanäytöksenä nähty 100 litraa sahtia, islantilainen Touch ja thaimaalainen Isoäidin miljoonat.

Touch ja Isoäidin miljoonat jäivät itseltäni päällekkäisen menon takia näkemättä, mutta 100 litraa sahtia tuli koettua ulkoilmanäytöksenä.

#pahantorjuja #pahantorjuja2025

#Catharsis is one of the most important bands for me, I had not hoped to ever hear something new from them.

crimethinc.com/2025/08/01/cath…

Catharsis: "Hope against Hope"

North Carolina's premier hardcore band, Catharsis, has recorded a new full-length album, "Hope Against Hope."

^CrimethInc.

Oh, no! GNOMENn päivitys muutti pikanäppäimiä, joilla siirrytään työtilasta toiseen.

Vaihtaakko takaisin vai opetella käyttämään uusia? Siinä päivän suuri ongelma.

Mm. Neuvostoliitossa, Kiinassa ja Etiopiassa aiheutui 1900-luvulla äärimmäisen tuhoisat ihmisen aiheuttamat nälänhädät, koska maiden hallinto tuotti itse itselleen vääristeltyä dataa.

Tilastoviranomaisen riippumattomuus on välttämättömyys.

yle.fi/a/74-20175541

Trump erotti tilastoviraston pomon heinäkuun heikkojen työllisyyslukujen vuoksi

Trump väittää ilman todisteita, että heinäkuun työllisyysraportin lukuja olisi peukaloitu.

^{Inka Haukka (Yle Uutiset)}

I wrote an article on different kinds of "anticipatory cover-ups", where someone withholds information because they expect the other party to react badly to it or misuse it. This may then make things worse.

---

Back when COVID vaccines were still a recent thing, I witnessed a debate that looked like something like the following was happening:

* Some official institution had collected information about the efficacy and reported side-effects of COVID vaccines. They felt that, correctly interpreted, this information was compatible with vaccines being broadly safe, but that someone with an anti-vaccine bias might misunderstand these statistics and misrepresent them as saying that the vaccines were dangerous.

* Because the authorities had reasonable grounds to suspect that vaccine skeptics would take those statistics out of context, they tried to cover up the information or lie about it.

* Vaccine skeptics found out that the institution was trying to cover up/lie about the statistics, so they made the reasonable assumption that the statistics were damning and that the other side was trying to paint the vaccines as safer than they were. So they took those statistics and interpreted them in exactly the way that the authorities hadn't wanted them to be interpreted, ignoring all protestations to the contrary.

* The authorities saw their distrust in the other side confirmed - the skeptics took the statistics out of context, just as predicted - and felt like their only mistake had been in not covering up the information well enough. [...]

What's notable to me is that both sides were acting reasonably, given the assumption that the other side is untrustworthy.

If you think your opponent will take statistics out of context, then it makes sense to try to keep those statistics hidden. And if your opponent is hiding some statistics, then it makes sense to assume that they're doing it because those statistics contain truths that are inconvenient for them.

By acting on their assumptions, both confirmed the opposing side's existing interpretation of being untrustworthy. They treated the other as a hostile actor and took hostile actions in return, which turned the opponent even more hostile.

---

Full article: kajsotala.substack.com/p/how-a…

How anticipatory cover-ups go wrong

This is a paid post that will turn free in a week.

^{Kaj Sotala (Kaj’s Substack)}

For a while now, I have been really enjoying co-writing fiction together with AIs.

There is a preconception that AI-written prose is bad. And if you only give the AI a two-sentence prompt and then have it do all the work itself, it often is! But if you use a good model, throw your soul into it by telling it exactly what you want, craft an initial scene to build upon, and aggressively rewrite its outputs to address issues, it can become much better.

For a decade or two, I've been having difficulty finding things that I could do on my own that would consistently bring me pleasure. This has been a major contributor to varying levels of depressive episodes. Even in the absence of anything clearly bad going on in your life, just the mere lack of anything consistently good that you could feel unambiguously excited about can bring with it a sense of pointlessness.

With AI co-writing, I've finally found such a source of pleasure again. I've occasionally been finding myself waking up in the morning and feeling actually excited about getting to continue some story that I'd been writing before. It has felt like something has been coming alive - some deep emotional content finding a way to be expressed in a deeply satisfying way.

However, it's taken some time to get to a point where I really enjoy it, and I think I'm still in the process of figuring out the best ways for it. In this article and my next one, I'll try to share some of what I've learned.

Creative writing with AI

Part 1: Prompting for fiction

^{Kaj Sotala (Kaj’s Substack)}

I think LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude are really useful, but it's also important to realize that you can get them to say almost anything you want - without necessarily even realizing that you're manipulating them toward a particular conclusion!

I saw a blogger skeptical of "LLMs make people go crazy" stories claim that it's hard to get ChatGPT to take crazy positions, and shared an example of how it would refuse to even consider 9/11 conspiracy theories. I thought that I could do a better job of coaxing it into going against its programming, and on my first try I got ChatGPT to start slipping into a conspiratorial tone on that topic _within two messages into the conversation_.

I could do that because I know how to get LLMs to say things that I want and I was consciously manipulating it in a certain direction. But I think that there are a lot of people who are _unconsciously_ manipulating LLMs to say specific things while thinking they are talking to a source of objective truth.

More behind the link.

You can get AIs to say almost anything you want

And that also tells us something about humans

^{Kaj Sotala (Kaj’s Substack)}