Matt Arnold @matt@penguicon.social

Looping Generative Art from @Yann_LeGall
https://twitter.com/NemoRathwald/status/1535360257106526216

Found on the birdsite.
https://twitter.com/Tjdriii/status/1519675083895283712

Back on the laser cutter again after an extended pandemic absence. This new laser cutter is an enormous improvement on the last one!

I made this response to a comment on a Substack that I subscribe to. It's subscribers-only, so I can't link directly to it, so screenshots will have to do.

Here's one of the boxes with my Carcassonne #boardgame with several expansions. Its original box broke down completely over almost two decades.

I ordered blank, unprinted game boxes to store my prototypes, and ship them to reviewers. Also I need to rebox some games whose boxes are completely destroyed. This is more than I need, but they're sold by the case. I figure I might sell some at Protospiel or board game conventions or something?

Today I received this thank-you gift to commemorate the ten years I spent on the Penguicon Board, before I stepped down this year.

I'm so thrilled! I spent a couple of weeks extracting the data from dozens of CDs and DVDs I've burned over the past two decades.

On one of them I found my old website, with essays, fanfictions, artworks, recordings, and game PDFs I made in the aughts, which I had thought to be lost forever.

Here is one such. It's a poem I wrote based on Jabberwocky, about trying to build a computer around a terrible motherboard.

Gwern Branwen has been experimenting with the GPT-3 text generation model. He fed into it "Trurl's Electronic Bard" by Stanislaw Lem, a 1965 story about a computer that could write poetry. In response, GPT produced the text in this image. Gwern posted it to Birdsite.

"...progressives “saw [COVID] coming” through the lens of public health funding being slashed dangerously. Ethnonationalists “saw it coming” through the lens of dangerous dependence on China and globalized production. Singularitarians “saw it coming” through the lens of a generic existential-risk fetishism. The religious right “saw it coming” through the lens of verses in Revelations. Hollywood “saw it coming” through the lens of the “competent man” narrative archetype."

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/05/07/leaking-into-the-future/

I'm so amused by the text output of this #AI model, GPT-2. Type a sentence or paragraph, and it will auto-complete an entire article.

#artificialintelligence

https://talktotransformer.com/

This link helps you take part in a letter-writing campaign to give every American an unconditional money transfer #ubi during the #covid-19 #pandemic!
https://www.incomemovement.com/covid19?fbclid=IwAR31ai4gvWGE-eXkwjQjs0Wrdb_E18ZAoymEGmdoZLjreRUJsRPcjuQncTI

Why is the world in love again?
Why are we marching hand in hand?
Why are the ocean levels rising up?
It's a brand new album for 1990
They Might Be Giants brand new album,
FLOOD

Working on a game design that I plan to present at Penguicon. This is the exhibition version, not the publishable version.

Past Penguicon Guest of Honor Ada Palmer has finished writing "Perhaps The Stars"! This is the fourth and final novel in the "Terra Ignota" series which began with "Too Like The Lighting", for which she won an Astounding* Award for Best New Science Fiction Author.

* (formerly named the John W Campbell award)

************** I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS **************