Talking with an AI about whether it’s conscious
In a late‑night dialogue with an AI, I tested whether pattern‑matching could ever amount to consciousness. The exchange sharpened Objectivist insights: life, stakes, and caring are prerequisites for awareness, ethics, and art. Without them, AI remains simulation — useful, even dazzling, but never truly conscious or creative.
What happens when an #AI writes #philosophy in its own voice? This essay probes #consciousness, #ethics, and #art -- and why life and caring remain essential.
#ArtificialIntelligence #creativity #FutureOfAI #TechAndSociety
17.10.2025 16:23 — 👍 3 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
Are you a bot?
14.10.2025 16:36 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
It does! I can whip out a résumé tailored to a specific job description in 5 minutes and version it in Git with a branch per job application, and merge up any changes from the main branch later.
14.10.2025 16:33 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Porting from Perl to Go: Simplifying for Platform Engineering
Rewriting a Homebrew script from Perl to Go showed how Go’s design supports platform engineering—simpler distribution, safer types, production‑ready tools.
Took my Homebrew package manager upgrade script and rewrote it in #GoLang from #Perl. Way simpler to share as a binary, and I got a crash course in error handling and type safety along the way. Fun little #PlatformEngineering experiment.
#DevOps #SoftwareEngineering #OpenSource
05.10.2025 20:06 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Look up “Balkanized,” literalist
23.09.2025 13:18 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
My mini Mastodon server
Running Mastodon on a tiny Mac mini? Yes, it’s possible—and surprisingly easy. Here’s how I built a secure, low‑maintenance, single‑user server with Docker, Cloudflare Tunnel, and a few smart overrides, all without breaking a sweat.
I turned a tiny #Mac mini into my own #Mastodon server—secure, low‑maintenance, and running like a dream. Here’s the full build, from #Docker to #Cloudflare Tunnel, and why #SelfHosting doesn’t have to be a headache.
#Fediverse #ActivityPub #HomeLab #DevOps #SysAdmin
22.09.2025 04:09 — 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Original post on mastodon.phoenixtrap.com
The #FTC’s “Green Guides” have turned “100% #RenewableEnergy” into a marketing illusion: https://open.substack.com/pub/alexepstein/p/how-to-end-the-100-renewable-fraud
* Buying paper credits for others' #CleanEnergy lets companies take false credit—and shift fossil fuel blame onto citizens.
* […]
22.09.2025 00:41 — 👍 0 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
Vintage horror‑movie poster. Title in distressed beige block letters: “Perl: You cannot `kill -9` what is already dead.” Center: a gaunt, zombie‑like camel with glowing red eyes, tattered fur, and exposed bone, silhouetted against a huge blood‑orange moon. Twisted, leafless trees frame the scene.
In a world where processes die screaming, one language refuses to terminate.
From the twisted minds of P5P and the vision of Larry Wall comes the nightmare sysadmins fear to `ps aux`:
#Perl. You cannot `kill -9` what is already dead.
Coming soon to a terminal near you.
20.09.2025 17:18 — 👍 1 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
Original post on mastodon.phoenixtrap.com
#AynRand is quoted, misquoted, praised, and vilified — often by people who haven’t read her.
_The Ayn Rand Reader_ offers excerpts from her #fiction and #nonfiction: her ideas, her voice, her terms.
If you’re serious about understanding her — whether to agree or disagree — start here […]
19.09.2025 22:19 — 👍 2 🔁 4 💬 2 📌 0
Original post on mastodon.phoenixtrap.com
👋 Hi, I’m Mark! Here’s my latest #introduction.
I share a mix of #philosophy (#Objectivism), #Perl coding, and the occasional nonsense. You might also catch posts about #ballroom #dance, #cosplay, and making #music on #BassGuitar.
If you want to talk #AynRand, start with _The Ayn Rand Reader_ […]
19.09.2025 22:28 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Original post on mastodon.phoenixtrap.com
#Perl: older than some #programming careers, younger at heart than you think.
It’s evolved a lot since 1999 — modern features, cleaner syntax — yet it still runs code you wrote decades ago.
(And if you’re wondering: #Perl6 was renamed Raku in 2019 — it’s a different sister language, not a […]
19.09.2025 22:39 — 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Man’s Rights – ARI Campus
For the full essay where #AynRand develops the principle behind that attached quote: https://courses.aynrand.org/works/mans-rights/
#Objectivism #philosophy #politics #IndividualRights
19.09.2025 18:00 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
“The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.”
— “Man’s Rights” by Ayn Rand (1963)
The only difference between #fascism, #communism, and #socialism is the degree to which the state pretends there is private property. Everything else is just arguing over the color of the jackboots […]
[Original post on mastodon.phoenixtrap.com]
19.09.2025 17:57 — 👍 0 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
“There is no essential difference between a broadcast and a concert: the former merely transmits sounds over a longer distance and requires more complex technical equipment. No one would venture to claim that a pianist may own his fingers and his piano, but the space inside the concert hall—through which the sound waves he produces travel—is ‘public property’ and, therefore, he has no right to give a concert without a license from the government. Yet this is the absurdity foisted on our broadcasting industry.
“The chief argument in support of the notion that broadcasting frequencies should be ‘public property’ has been stated succinctly by Justice Frankfurter: ‘[Radio] facilities are limited; they are not available to all who may wish to use them; the radio spectrum simply is not large enough to accommodate everybody. There is a fixed natural limitation upon the number of stations that can operate without interfering with one another.’
“The fallacy of this argument is obvious. The number of broadcasting frequencies is limited; so is the number of concert halls; so is the amount of oil or wheat or diamonds; so is the acreage of land on the surface of the globe. There is no material element or value that exists in unlimited quantity. And if a ‘wish’ to use a certain ‘facility’ is the criterion of the right to use it, then the universe is simply not large enough to accommodate all those who harbor wishes for the unearned.”
—Ayn Rand, “The Property Status of Airwaves” (1964)
#FCC chair threatens ABC affiliates’ broadcast licenses over #JimmyKimmel’s remarks — and the show vanishes “indefinitely.”
This is exactly what #AynRand warned about in “The Property Status of Airwaves” (first published April 1964, reprinted in […]
[Original post on mastodon.phoenixtrap.com]
18.09.2025 20:53 — 👍 0 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
We are on the threshold of artificial general intelligence, given sufficiently broad definitions of “threshold,” “artificial,” “general,” and “intelligence.”
#AI #AGI
18.09.2025 21:51 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Apparently, it's bad luck to mention a "MacBook" in a software company. You have to call it "the Scottish laptop".
09.09.2025 09:11 — 👍 93 🔁 112 💬 14 📌 1
It’s always cute when someone replies, “If you don’t want responses, you shouldn’t publicly post.” Don’t worry, friend, it’s not hard to make sure I never darken your inbox again.
09.09.2025 16:06 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
My mother-in-law is selling on this app called #Whatnot. Check out her store: https://www.whatnot.com/s/nFTcGb75
11.09.2025 01:49 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Q: How many project managers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Currently 1, but we're aiming for 0.76 in the next sprint.
12.09.2025 15:05 — 👍 0 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Just enabled #ElasticSearch on my single-user #selfhosted #Mastodon instance and… whoof. These #Java things like their RAM, don’t they?
13.09.2025 23:32 — 👍 4 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
Original post on mastodon.phoenixtrap.com
Imagine being on the Teams team and getting a team Teams call that your team needs to work on Teams onsite because working on Teams on Teams isn't a good way to work in teams […]
16.09.2025 22:00 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
This #Mastodon server is now running v4.4.4: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.4.4
17.09.2025 19:33 — 👍 0 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
A woolly mammoth skull with large tusks is displayed in a museum exhibit. Photo by Jonathan Cooper on Pexels.com
Coming tomorrow on https://phoenixtrap.com…
I've parked the #Perl for a week to share how I built a single-user #SelfHosted #Mastodon server on a low-spec Mac mini—no #VPS, no port-forwarding, all with #Docker Compose.
What you'll see:
* Efficient […]
[Original post on mastodon.phoenixtrap.com]
15.09.2025 02:31 — 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Original post on mastodon.phoenixtrap.com
Twenty years after 9/11, ARI warned that evading the *ideological* nature of the enemy—#Islamic #totalitarianism—and fighting self‑sacrificial wars would end in failure. From #Afghanistan to #FreeSpeech, the cost of evasion is now #history. Ideas matter […]
11.09.2025 21:36 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 2 📌 0
Little teapot. Laparoscopic code surgeon. Unabashed user of Gentoo. Acceded to #NAFO on 2023 Apr 25. He/him/etc.
UK born Writer, photographer, dreamer, art lover, occasional rants, MD @ Shadowcat Systems. Father of 3 humans, and 1 pet, husband in training. Probably too many photo posts and random silliness. More at mdk.me.
author of Toothpaste For Dinner, Married To The Sea, @dasharez0ne.bsky.social etc.
my podcast with @nataliedee.bsky.social: https://patreon.com/garbagebrainuniversity
my shirts: dashare.zone / drewtoothpaste.com
vocals for HELL ORBS: dendycrew.com
Author of Bea Wolf, A City on Mars, and the comic SMBC
Website: www.smbc-comics.com
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith?ty=h
New book: http://www.acityonmars.com/
I post #philosophy (#Objectivism), #Perl, and the occasional nonsense.
If you want to talk #AynRand in depth, start with _The Ayn Rand Reader_ — her words, not […]
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Techdirt guy. Writes about social media, copyright, free speech, content moderation, civil liberties and stuff like that. Once wrote a paper that may have helped inspire this service & now I'm on its board: https://bit.ly/protocolnotplatform
Democracy Skies in Blueness
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I'm at CogSciApps, CogZest, & SFU.
Products: @hookmarkapp, mySleepButton app & 2.8 books (two Cognitive Productivity books, and Discontinuities: Love, Art, Mind). I also developed the "cognitive shuffle" sleep technique.
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See calendar for weekly meet-ups. 🗓️
Comicpalooza is Texas' Largest Comic and Pop Culture Event held annually in Houston, Texas.
The makers of DEVONthink and DEVONagent, apps that tame the information flood. We all are Mac users by heart and are writing on the Mac and for macOS and iOS.
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Just another desperate Perl hacker
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