AKThis website (akarlin.com) contains all the blog/website archives I have been able to get my hands on, everything that is too minor to go to my Substack but too big to just Tweet out, life observations and events, and most of my book reviews and travel writing.
Oppenheimer (2023) ★★★
Although Oppenheimer is a solid and historically accurate film, it is overly long – making its missed opportunities all the more glaring – and the key dramatic tension rests on speculation that was considered entirely fictional long before 1945.
Barbie (2023) ★★★★★
This might be a “Woke” film, but it is Wokeness with a human cafe.
Some modest suggestions for AI terminology of a fantastical nature
The cryptocurrency space can provision a putative malevolent AI with discrete decentralized compute, storage, and opportunities for secure accumulation of cryptographic assets and social capital. Consequently, there might be an AI Control Trilemma: Ban further AI software development; cap hardware; criminalize crypto – pick two.
The coming of AI has made Universal Basic Income a political and technological inevitability in the long-term, regardless of whether there are extensive attempts at AI control.
Wheel of Time: Season 1 (2022) ★
Rafe’s adaptation of Robert Jordan’s world of eternal return keeps your eyes glued to the screen just on account of how utterly bad and cringe it is.
Fictional short story in which an AI takes over the world by leveraging its financial dominance in the cryptocurrency space.
It has now been three years since I moved to the Unz Review, and ten years since I started blogging. Retrospective here. There is a more complete account of my writing history, including lists of my best posts, at this page. My main hope for 2018 is to wrap up my Russia watching career – […]
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD RATING: 8/10. (Please note my ratings system is harsh and virtually no films get a 10). In 2011, American sci-fi giant Neal Stephenson bewailed the pessimism prevalent in the genre and called for writers to start thinking more positively about the possibilities of technology in order to inspire new generations to “get big stuff […]
Civilization V (2010) ★★ I think it’s by far the worst of the series. This is “Civilization for Dummies,” so to speak (as one reviewed called it). Consider: 1. The AI is primitive, as if it’s actually going backwards rather than forwards with time. Difficulty levels are determined by artificially giving the computer controlled civs […]
Could The Mongols Have Conquered Europe?
One of the most frequently asked questions in alternate history discussions concerns whether China could have been first to the Industrial Revolution had Europe also – or instead – been conquered by the Mongols. Answer: It’s sort of a moot question. It seems to be quite unlikely that the Mongols were capable of conquering Europe in principle. In […]