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[Pluribus SPoilers] 5/5 ... by extreme adoption of simplistic and absurd principles.

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[Pluribus Spoilers] 4/n ... to read it and to rebroadcast the virus signal further, quickly, just before they starve themselves to extinction within a few years. It's not a master plan for domination; it's a toxic meme that leads, through "best intentions", to the end result of death ...

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[Pluribus Spoilers] 3/n Millions of years ago, some creatures became infected with this mind-altering virus, either accidentally in nature or through intentional drug design. Ever since then it has been spreading through the universe, here and there infecting planets with the capability to ...

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[Pluribus Spoilers] 2/n Aliens aren't softening us up for invasion. The tragic, ironic, dark comic-realization is when Carol says the whole plan of disseminating the virus, and refusing to survive by engaging in the circle of life, is "a mental illness".

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[Pluribus Spoilers] 1/n I just rewatched the trailer and there is zero visual or audio about the virus or its alien origin. This could be a virus-free human cult as far as a new viewer knows. But by episode 7ish you know the whole plot. There is no alien invasion coming. Instead...

Matt Jensen @mattjensen.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

@tolonen.bsky.social, I would be interested in the resulting proceedings, but I can't seem to find a page for this conference. Link please? Thank you

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Matt Jensen @mattjensen.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

New temporary character limit? Let us never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever abuse it.

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Matt Jensen @mattjensen.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Reminds me of Bob Newhart's standup bit. Ken you know he was an accountant before trying comedy, and he said his theory of accounting was "as long as you got within two or three bucks of it, you were all right. But that didn’t catch on … "

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Matt Jensen @mattjensen.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Looks interesting! Please pass on this "invalid date" issue via your contacts?

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Matt Jensen @mattjensen.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

He didn't ask it for parenting advice. He asked it for long-term career advice (for his children). He realized he was blinkered by his past, and maybe his coworkers, into assuming a tech/code career is still a good path, but the LLM offered a broader viewpoint of big trends. That's all he asked for.

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Matt Jensen @mattjensen.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

To clarify for readers who still think military aid $ went directly to Ukraine: the vast majority of $ stayed in the USA, paying for domestic manufacturing of new items for our own military. We then sent older/obsolete versions of those items to Ukraine.

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Matt Jensen @mattjensen.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

( "[w]hen Allen arrived" should say "[w]hen Miller arrived" )

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Oh, also there's a 20-year-old musical ("Floyd Collins") about this, and it's opening on Broadway this April. For a great step-by-step of the rescue attempts see www.mentalfloss.com/article/5447...

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[1] F.L. Allen, "Only Yesterday", a 1931 social history of the 1920s. [2] Allen, p.162.

(Maybe Miller's "youngest ever" wasn't so big a deal in '26 because the Pulitzer's had only been around for 8 years. So when Jackie Crosby won in 1985 at 23, Miller was missed. Then when Welsh won in 1996, she was only compared in age to Crosby, the recently-described "youngest".)

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(BTW it seems Miller was likely the youngest Pulitzer winner for journalism ever, despite the Web saying that Stephanie Welsh was the youngest at 22. T announcement, Miller was 22 years, 19 days old, & Welsh was 22 years, 9 months old. @pulitzerprizes.bsky.social pls correct me if I'm wrong.)

It accelerated the spectacle and interefered in the already competitive rescue efforts. And/But it did show how the entire country's live attention could be quickly focused on one event.

Now the bad. Well, Collins didn't make it. After two weeks he died from hunger and exposure, and they had to leave his body pinned there for several months. The young radio industry sent many broadcasters to the scene, which led crowds of up to 4,000 to amass there over the next two weeks.

He turned a faceless accident into a personal tragedy that people felt. Meanwhile a mine cave-in in North Carolina a few weeks later killed 53 miners "attracted no great notice"[2]. Miller's bravery and articles led to 100+ rescuers quickly showing up.

Miller made at least 7 dangerous trips down to Collins and back, through cold, slimy water and sharp, skinny passages. He gave Collins food, drink, prayer, and hope. He worked tirelesly to move what rocks he could. His first-person reporting gripped the public emotionally...

He was down a 10ft-deep pit at the end of 100+ feet of difficult passages, and his friends couldn't get to him to even discover how bad off he was. But Miller could. "Skeets" was short for "mosquito", which his pals called him because at 5'5" and 117lbs, he was tiny. Tiny enough to reach Collins.

Collins had explored caves for years, and that he had periodically become stuck and then freed himself is why the Courirer Journal had waited 3 days before sending Miller there. But the problem was that Sand Cave was very fragile, and Collins was trapped by boulders.

According to F.L. Allen [1], "[w]hen Allen arrived at Sand Cave he had found only three men at the entrance, warming themselves at a fire and wondering, without excitement, how soon their friend would extricate himself."

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William "Skeets" Miller, a then-20yo reporter for the Louisville Courier Journal, was assigned to check out cave explorer Collins' situation after he'd been trapped for 3 days. #SkeetsMiller would end up winning the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting on this, and his nickname "Skeets" is a clue. 🧵

It was 100 years ago today that Floyd Collins got trapped in a Kentucky cave. It became a riveting national story, and then the first news spectacle to be covered by radio. The metastory combines some of the very best and worst of the news /media business. #FloydCollins #History

Public domain photo of Kentucky cave explorer Floyd Colliins wearing a suit and a badge reading "Great Crystal Cave".

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[1] www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Pigeon...

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They just couldn't get over how unusual it was, despite the great results.

The spectacle of actually seeing pigeons pecking around inside the machine was too much for them to take it seriously.

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* At a final demonstration to make the case to the military, a pigeon performed in a simulator perfectly, despite having been harnessed for 35 hours of train travel, etc., and being subjected to bright lights and many faces after the officers took the lid off the simulator to look closer. And yet...

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* Once trained, a pigeon could steer for up to several minutes, or around 10,000 pecks, without needing reinforcement (a reward of seeds). This was long enough for expected missions. ...

* "The [training] map which came most easily to hand was of a city which, in the interests of international relations, need not be identified." It later was revealed to be a map of Stalingrad. ...

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* Even though a single pigeon typically had a high success rate, Skinner decided to use a majority-of-three system to increase the military's confidence. ...

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Surprises: * General Mills (Skinner taught at UMN) supported the initial research. They wanted their engineers to use their food manufacturing expertise for the war effort. ...

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Short version: his program trained groups of three pigeons to peck at a projection of an approaching target on a map or photo, while harnessed in a nose cone. The pecks steered the test device if at least two pigeons pecked in the same direction. Wisdom of tiny crowds. The surprises? ...

The U.S. needed remote control of air-to-ground and ground-to-air missiles in order to hit targets precisely. At the start of the war there were no good electronic options. Skinner's idea was inspired by seeing a flock of birds navigate. ...

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