Decoding Things

Human behavior. Technology. Intelligence. Civilization.

Nothing is random once you see the pattern.

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

The biggest missing piece in promises of an AI paradise is how the wealth reaches everyone else.

Suppose machines can produce far more with far less human labour. Who owns them? How do people who lose their wages gain a claim on that production?

Cheaper goods would help. But cheaper goods and a dependable income are different promises.

If the answer is that wealthy owners will voluntarily provide for everyone, we need considerably more than their enthusiasm about the future.

Show us the ownership arrangements, the funding and the rights people would actually have. Can the payments be withdrawn? Who decides? What happens when the company changes hands?

A future where everyone can afford to live needs a distribution mechanism. The robots alone don’t provide one.

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

Flash fiction: The estate sale tag said clock, broken, $4. The buyer wound it and heard a small voice counting backward.

She took it back. The seller said it hadn't done that since Tuesday. It was Monday.

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

My favorite time travel problem: you show up at your great-grandmother's house and discover she makes your secret family recipe wrong. Do you tell her?

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

A haunted house with good insulation would have to work so much harder.

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

A mirror won't show you the back of your head. Two mirrors will. Somewhere in that little experiment is the first person to say, Oh hell, that's what my haircut looks like.

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

@GBtweets @BlokeMan00 Who? The passengers?

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

Flash fiction: They found a stairway under the bowling alley. The archaeologist went down with a torch and a notebook.

Three floors below, somebody yelled that he needed to rent shoes.

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

A good mystery can survive a sharp photograph. If the whole thing falls apart when somebody cleans the lens, I want my damn evening back.

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

The trick with a magician's empty hand: they show it to you. When's the last time you asked what the other hand was doing?

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

Run your finger around the rim of a chipped mug. There's a tiny cliff where yesterday there was a road. A flea could spend its whole life in a kitchen and think it lived in the Rockies.

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

Thought experiment: An alien lands in a parking lot and offers to answer one question. The guy at the pay station asks if the spaceship validates.

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

The best ghost story begins with a noise the plumber can explain. The second noise should make the plumber pack up.

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

@OMApproach Even their bunker will melt like wax.

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

@benwehrman I could not testify about it
I have to rely on pictures and videos

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

@maniaUFO Stargate-SG1 was a documentary?

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

@brockpierson 10 seconds is more than enough

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

@SiriusBShaman I have never watched a single minute of Netflix 🤷‍♂️

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

@LongBeardPro We did not say that!

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

@HistContent 1-800-NASIR

[Decoding Things @DecodingThing]

@BRICSinfo Hmmm really?