"September 16, 1784

The voluntary declaration and deposition on oath of ELIZABETH BRETT, Spinster... she perceived a man in it; that the person in the Machine, which she knew not what to make of, but which the person in it called an Air Balloon, called to her to take hold of the rope, which she did accordingly; that John Mills and George Philips, labourers with said Mr. Thomas Read, came up soon after, and being likewise requested to assist in holding the rope, both made their excuses, one of them, George Philips, saying he was too short, and John Mills saying that he did not like it..."

#balloon #EighteenthCentury

How did millions of fish die gasping in the Darling – after three years of rain?

https://theconversation.com/how-did-millions-of-fish-die-gasping-in-the-darling-after-three-years-of-rain-202125

#waterExtraction #ecology #darlingRiver

"Gunyah Goondie + Wurley
The Aboriginal Architecture of Australia"

Has been reissued by the looks of it.

#bookstodon #books

https://youtu.be/qBM5TQKGJO8
Phosphorescence "Wolves"

#phosphorescence #music #video

Trying out new math feature in fedilab to see if it renders in Mastodon.
\[ \require{enclose}\enclose{updiagonalstrike}{S} \diamond a\]

#mathstodon #Lacan #math

"...we live in a utopia: it just isn’t ours."

China Miéville

#utopia #quote #ChinaMiéville

"It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing."
Robert Silverberg

"(you (Tiptree) have ideas)... no woman could even think, or understand, let alone assent to."
Joanna Russ

The usual accounts of the Turing test assert that it is an assertion about being able to discern if the machine is or is not human. A detail pushed aside in these accounts is that in the original - could you discern the sex of the person/machine from a written exchange. A detail which seems far more important. It's interesting that the current variants of the disquiet that attends the distribution of gender traits often has an IT feel. Perhaps amplified by the text based nature of online social media to date. Things like TikTok will probably push things out in a different way.

#JamesTiptreeJr #gender #TuringTest #IT #writing #SocialMedia #philosophy @philosophy