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Yeah, the definition of “conscious” really is a puzzle. My guess is that the “nothing is conscious” model has a great deal of crossover with the “free will doesn’t exist” one; for both of those, I don’t consider them useful models even if they end up being true: if I’m not actually conscious and just think I am, I might as well behave as though I am.

Regardless, we really do need to define what exactly we mean by “conscious” before we can have a meaningful discussion about it. Where’s Socrates when we need him?

Unexpected Jethro Tull!

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Anyone have any good sources for predictions of effects of this? It sounds like AMOC is a particularly complex system, and I’m sure the ripples from it collapsing are at least as complex, but it’d be nice to have some idea of where might be a good place to move to, if this is as inevitable as it sounds.

There are over 5000 Kanji

Did you drop a zero? The number I was taught when I was studying Japanese in college decades ago was 48,902. I don’t know why it stuck in my head so hard, but it did.

I found kanji to be both difficult and fascinating. It’s tempting to just focus on them as a writing system, but I think the readings are at least as important.

Huh, interesting; that’s a good question. I’m not actually sure about that; it’d be a good thing for me to dig into more. Thanks for the thought!

I mean, they specifically point to post-quantum cryptography and advise people to move towards it in the article:

Google said: “We’ve adjusted our threat model to prioritise post-quantum cryptography migration for authentication services – an important component of online security and digital signature migrations. We recommend that other engineering teams follow suit.”

The issue here is not that there aren’t solutions; it’s that organizations are not interested in taking the time and effort to move towards them. I’ve been beating this particular drum at my org for about a year, and I’ve gotten zero traction. This is a concern because moving to New encryption means taking all the data you’ve got, decrypting it, and re-encrypting it. That’s not fast when you’re talking hundreds of terabytes.

With keycloak you can have a single local password to all your selfhosted apps: you sign in to keycloak, then you sso into everything else from there. I’m building that out on my homelab right now, and it’s working fine.

One place I’m familiar with actually just deidentifies data when they say they delete it. They also have ways to re-identify if needed.

Yeah, surely nobody would ever like Batman… /s

“plotting” != “conducting”

They explicitly don’t:

The law does not require photo ID uploads or facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age, setting AB 1043 apart from similar laws passed in Texas and Utah that require “commercially reasonable” verification methods, such as government-issued ID checks. Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who authored the bill, said this “avoids constitutional concerns by focusing strictly on age assurance, not content moderation,” in a press release. The bill passed both chambers unanimously, 76-0 in the Assembly and 38-0 in the Senate.">

I’m still hopeful about https://veilid.com/ but I suspect that’s a long way out; the protocol is still in development stages, let alone implementations of it.

Your formatting makes this wall of text even worse

[citation needed]

Just use Obsidian without using folders, then? They’re completely optional.

Don’t do it; they’re a security nightmare: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/is-your-android-tv-streaming-box-part-of-a-botnet/

There are safer ways to acquire content to view.

Can you clarify what you mean about the folder structure? As far as I know, Obsidian doesn’t change up the directory structure at all; it just uses what’s already there: if you’ve got folders, you’ll see them in Obsidian. If you don’t, all the notes will be in one big directory.