ao3tagoftheday:

ao3tagoftheday:

ao3tagoftheday:

[Image Description: Tag reading “I wrote this out of pure spite”]

The AO3 Tag of the Day is: Someone please take this opportunity to ask me about the Pumpkinification of the God Claudius

Ok, it is my great delight to introduce you all to one of the most absurd pieces of political satire ever written. It is a work of pure spite, entirely scurrilous and utterly delightful. It also has the distinction of having the best name ever: Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii, which is translated various ways, but which I’ve always thought is best rendered as The Pumpkinification of the God Claudius.

Now, Claudius was a Roman emperor in the first century and a pretty good one, all things considered. He was careful and thoughtful and did things like reform the judicial system and balance the budget and other boring, necessary stuff like that. He was also, and I say this factually and without prejudice, fat, ugly, physically disabled, and possessed of a severe speech impediment. For reasons unknown (but possibly related to the fact that he was all of those things and humanity basically sucks sometimes), people hated him. Hated. Which meant that when he died and his stepson took over, people were really excited. One of those people, Seneca, celebrated by writing the Apocolocyntosis.

A note about the fundamental joke of the Apocolocyntosis: when a Roman emperor died, it was customary for the Senate to meet and vote to make the dead emperor a god. After Claudius died, the Senate duly deified him, and, though we don’t have the exact decree, would likely have issued a proclamation along the lines of “The Deification of the God Claudius.” See where this is going? Yeah.

Here’s an incomplete list of shit that happens in the Apocolocyntosis:

  • Claudius orders Hercules to be executed
  • This doesn’t work out so well, because, you know, it’s Hercules
  • The line “The last words he was heard to speak in this world were….“Oh dear, oh dear! I think I have made a mess of myself.” Whether he did or no, I cannot say, but certain it is he always did make a mess of everything.“
  • The gods apparently have a Senate too, where they meet to vote about whether Claudius should become a god. In this meeting, Claudius’s grandfather stands up and makes fun of him in front of the entire God Senate
  • (The God Senate runs on the Roman version of Robert’s Rules of Order)
  • Hercules physically threatens some god senators, because he’s, you know, Hercules
  • There’s a clown parade
  • Claudius ends up getting sent to the underworld, where literally everybody yells at him
  • No seriously. They hold an entire legal trial so that all the dead people can yell at him
  • Claudius ends up having to do the “tantalus reach out for the food or water and it runs away punishment thing” except with gambling for some reason
  • Another dead emperor shows up and announces that Claudius is one of his slaves and then just walks off with him
  • I feel like I should back up and mention again that there’s a clown parade
  • I’m serious. It’s a fucking clown parade. I have no fucking clue why

One thing the Pumpkinification does not involve? Pumpkins. There are no pumpkins in this pumpkinification book.

(Important side note: Claudius’s stepson who took over? Nero. Yeah, that Nero.)

A couple of people have sent me asks wanting to know why the book is called the pumpkinification if there aren’t any pumpkins.

Because the word Apocolocyntosis, meaning pumpkinification, sounds kinda like the word Apotheosis, meaning deification. And because Claudius was fat. You know, like a pumpkin? Ha ha. Fat jokes are so funny.

Source: ao3tagoftheday

a-fragile-sort-of-anarchy:

a-fragile-sort-of-anarchy:

You know what makes me monstrously, irrationally upset?

When I was in high school, we had to go to a meeting for extra credit in AP Government, and I asked Pennsylvania State Representative George Dunbar how he felt about gay marriage, and his answer was basically, “I understand your struggles because I had a black friend in high school, but I’m a Catholic,” and every time I remember it, I get dedicated to destroying his political career for about five minutes before I forget again because I got hungry or saw a cool bird. But one day I’m gonna’ commit and that fucker’s gonna’ get what’s coming to him.

……what…

Other techy updates

  • Britain is still having problems with a gender gap in STEM – only about 8-10% of people in STEM apprenticeships are female 
  • These people made an invisibility cloak or Stealth Shield that hides people and cars and other warm things from infrared vision!  
  • More on gender gaps!  Facebook data seems to show gender gaps pretty clearly, but the surprising news is that using Facebook actually benefits women more than men, probably because of preexisting information access barriers for women that don’t exist on social media
  • AI researchers are trying to help Siri and Alexa stop giving unhelpful answers
  • These people in Munich literally printed electrodes on freaking GUMMY BEARS and that’s actually really helpful for figuring out what’s going on with human cells.  Normal electrodes can’t do that because they’re usually on hard materials that might damage or reshape the cells.  So there’s a valid science reason for it.  It’s still really cool.  
  • aaaaand Deep Learning is making computers better at guessing your password.  

That’s all.  9oS out.  

Technology news update

China and America have this supercomputer rivalry going on.  Right now, America has the fastest supercomputer in the world, the Summit.  It works for the Energy department and takes up about 5,600 square feet.  

  • What is a supercomputer?  

Wikipedia defines it as a computer that has “a high level of performance compared to a general purpose computer”.  Which doesn’t really answer anything.  Hyperion Research defines a supercomputer as a machine that costs more than $500,000.  The Washington Post claims it has to harness the power of multiple units, at least the size of a refrigerator each.  It seems like there’s more of a general rule of thumb rather than a formal definition, but basically if it takes up an entire room, costs more than five cars, and does way more in one second than one normal person would ever need a computer to do in their lifetime, that’s probably a supercomputer.  

Back to the rivalry:  Every year, the Top500 Project lists the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world.  From 2013-2016, a Chinese supercomputer, the TH-2, was the fastest in the world.  In 2016 and 2017, that was the Sunway TaihuLight, also from China.  This year is the first time in five years that America’s finally built something faster than anything China has and taken the top spot.  

Success?  A triumph for America?  Kind of.  In terms of the rivalry, China’s still gaining.  

According to the Top500 Project, while the world’s #1 fastest supercomputer is currently American, China has made more of the 500 fastest supercomputers than any other country.  206 of the 500 top supercomputers are Chinese, compared to only 124 of 500 from America.  

According to the Washington Post, this is the modern-day equivalent of the Cold War-era space race, and America is simply not running fast enough.  

But that’s only one way to look at it.  From a global perspective, the Summit is a huge accomplishment, and absolutely a success of humanity.  It shows a trend of exponential development – the Summit is already 8 times faster than the fastest supercomputer from 2012.  It performs 200,000 trillion floating point operations per second.  It’s more than 10,000 times faster than the fastest computers from thirty years ago.  This is an accomplishment that has meaning well beyond international politics.  

While supercomputers play roles in economics and national security, and can certainly serve as a feather in the cap of the nation that builds them, they have a vast range of uses well beyond measuring a country’s status in the Who’s-The-Most-Hi-Tech competition.  Supercomputers can help save babies from genetic liver failure; predict tropical storms; test nuclear weapons without, you know, actually firing them; and recreate the Big Bang.  Regardless of what it says about international rivalries, the Summit is a huge step toward being able to one day do all of those things better for the entire world.