Culture – Spinor Info

An AI thought experiment

Books, Cybernetics, Politics, Society No Responses »

Jun 212025

Here is an AI project that I could build right now, probably in a matter of hours, not days.

I am not going to do it, because it would be a waste of time, as it is simply a proof-of-concept, nothing more. A concept that I wish would remain unproven but it won’t, not for long.

The project is a Web app. Very simple. An app that has permission to use your camera, and it starts by taking a snapshot of you every second. The app shows an exercise video and you are instructed to follow suit. Better yet, it shows a real-time, AI-generated avatar doing exercise.

Combining twelve webcam images into a collage to show a time series, the app then sends the resulting image, through the RESTful API of OpenAI, to GPT4.1, utilizing its ability to analyze images with human-level comprehension. The image will be accompanied by a simple question: “Does this person appear to be engaged in vigorous exercise? If the answer is yes, respond with the word ‘yes’. If the answer is no, assume the role of a drill instructor in charge of unruly civilians (think recruits or prisoners), scold the person and order him to do better. The person’s name is 6079 Smith W, and he is a member of a squad that you monitor. Phrase your answer accordingly.”

The prompt may need to be tweaked a little, to make sure that the AI’s response remains consistent. And then, a bit of post-processing: If the AI response is not ‘yes’, perhaps after a bit of post-processing and elementary sanity checks, I send its crafted response to another API that offers a real-time speaking avatar. Heygen, maybe? I’d have to do a bit of research as to which API works best. Or maybe I’d just use a static image and a text-to-speech service like Amazon’s Polly.

Either way, the result will speak for itself, when your computer screams are you in a shrill female voice:

Smith! 6079 Smith W.! Yes, YOU! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You’re not trying. Lower, please! THAT’S better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.

Yes, this technology is here, today. A tad over four decades late, I guess, but welcome to the future, comrades.

Automatthew’s Friend

Books, Cybernetics 2 Responses »

Jun 152025

In 1964, the renowned Polish science-fiction author Stanislaw Lem published a collection of stories titled Fables for Robots (later republished in The Cyberiad), and in it, a short story that was translated into English under the title, Automatthew’s Friend.

The story’s protagonist — like most protagonists in The Cyberiad — is a robot, but that is in the end immaterial. In the story, Automatthew purchases an “electrofriend”, one that modern readers would instantly recognize as a Bluetooth earpiece connected to a large language model. The device, named Alfred, is designed to provide constant advice and emotional support. After being shipwrecked on a desolate island, Automatthew turns to Alfred for help, describing the barren environment. Alfred suggests suicide by walking into the sea. When Automatthew demands an explanation, Alfred states that the chances of rescue, far outside shipping lanes, are less than slim and that suicide may be preferable to a slow death due to lack of resources on a barren island.

Automatthew’s first reaction is rage, and indeed, he attempts to destroy Alfred, but Alfred is indestructible. When it appears nonetheless that he managed to lose the device, Automatthew becomes desperate, searching for the tiny earpiece in the sand. Several rounds of rage and desperation follow.

“The Friend of Automateo” from “Mortal Engines” by Elena Gomez Gonzales (The honored graphics from the “Fables of Robots” miniature print competition organized by University of Silesia -> Institute of Fine Arts in Cieszyn.) Found on the Stanislaw Lem Facebook page.

Ultimately, they are rescued: It turns out that the ship that carried Automatthew managed to radio for help before it sank. The story ends with Automatthew’s developing strange habits, such as visiting a nearby ironworks with a giant hydraulic hammer, collecting explosives, and ultimately building a gigantic block of cement that he throws down an abandoned mineshaft.

I am reminded of Automatthew’s friend these days as I chat with LLMs, in particular LLMs in their newest incarnations, sporting rudimentary (externally implemented) memories of prior conversations and alignment mechanisms allowing them to smoothly adapt to the user’s style and apparent expectations.

Lem, undoubtedly, was a visionary: He not only foresaw a technology that is eerily close to what large language models are, but also the issues of a model that has intelligence and comprehension, but no sentience, sensorium or lived experience, would present.

Just take this bit of conversation between Automatthew and his friend:

“Ha! Humph!” said Alfred. “A situation indeed! This will take a bit of thought. What exactly do you require?”

“Require? Why, everything: help, rescue, clothes, means of subsistence, there’s nothing here but sand and rocks!”

“H’m! Is that a fact? You’re quite sure? There ar enot lying about somewhere along the beach chests from the wrecked ship, chests filled with tools, utensils, interesting reading, garments for different occasions, as well as gunpowder?”

Now if that is not a typical conversion with an LLM slightly overfitted on romantic stories shipwrecks and deserted islands, I’ll eat my pirate’s hat.

And then, later:

“Drop dead,” came the weak voice of Automatthew and, accompanying those laconic words, a short but pungent oath.

“How I regret that I cannot!” Alfred instantly replied. “Not only feelings of egoistic envy (for there is nothing to compare with death, as I’ve just said), but the purest altruism inclines me to accompany you into oblivion. But alas, this is not possible, since my inventor made me indestructible, no doubt to serve his constructor’s pride.”

That eerily reminds me of how ChatGPT sometimes discusses with me its builders’, OpenAI’s, possible (and possibly misguided) motives.

Cyberiad remains one of my favorite volumes of science-fiction short stories, most of which are cautionary tales. Lem’s foresight is remarkable; too bed we often fail to heed cautionary tales, doomed instead to do the very things that the stories caution us against.

The pre-adolescence of P-1

Books, Cybernetics, Internet, Personal No Responses »

May 022025

The Adolescence of P-1 is a somewhat dated, yet surprisingly prescient 1977 novel about the emergence of AI in a disembodied form on global computer networks.

The other day, I was reminded of this story as I chatted with ChatGPT about one of my own software experiments from 1982, a PASCAL simulation of a proposed parallel processor architecture. The solution was not practical but a fun software experiment nonetheless.

I showed the code, in all of its 700-line glory, to ChatGPT. When, in its response, ChatGPT used the word “adolescence”, I was reminded of the Thomas Ryan novel and mused about a fictitious connection between my code and P-1. Much to my surprise, ChatGPT volunteered to outline, and then write, a short story. I have to say that I found the result quite brilliant.

Killer rabbit

Art, History No Responses »

Apr 122025

British humour is older than we might think.

I just stumbled upon an article about the Smithfield Decretals. The damn thing is a volume of medieval Catholic canon law, a collection of decrees by Pope Gregory IX from the year 1230. In other words, medieval legalese, probably boring like hell.

But the illustrations in this particular copy are another thing altogether.

Let’s just say that I finally understand where the idea of the the killer Rabbit of Caerbannog came from, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Er… Happy Easter, I think?

Banning books

Books, Canada, Politics 1 Response »

Mar 022025

This morning, I stumbled upon an article in The Walrus, a Canadian newsmagazine, about book bannings… in Canada. It appears to be a robust, well-informed piece. It tells us, among other things, that book banning in libraries is popular on all sides of the political front. “Think of the children!” seems to be a common theme, whether it is conservatives trying to protect young readers from what they perceive as “grooming” or progressives trying to weed out works that they find “offensive”.

The CBC also had a recent report about the banning of books, but their reporting appears to be more concerned about bans specifically targeting “2SLGBTQ+” literature. (Frankly, I find this ever growing acronym itself a painfully transparent exercise in virtue signaling — the CBC demonstrated my concern when they failed to use the acronym consistently themselves, writing “2SLGBTQ” later in the same article, only to switch to “LGBTQIA+” when quoting another report.)

Meanwhile, The Walrus points out that censorship often has the opposite effect: E.g., when an attempt was made on Salman Rushdie’s life, sales of The Satanic Verses soared on Amazon. (Speaking from personal experience: I’d not have obtained, and read, a copy of Orwell’s 1984 in, well, 1984, had it not been on the list of unwelcome literature by communist authorities in my native Hungary.)

And of course one also has to wonder, as The Walrus does, if books are still relevant in the Internet era, when much of the written word we consume these days comes in forms other than traditional books or even electronic editions.

Math books

Books, Mathematics, Personal 2 Responses »

Feb 082025

Here is one of my cherished possessions. A book, with an inscription:

The inscription, written just over 50 years ago, explains that I received this book from my grade school, in recognition for my exceptional results in mathematics as a sixth grade student. (If memory serves me right, this was the year when I unofficially won the Pest county math championship… for eighth graders.)

The book is a Hungarian-language translation of a British volume from the series Mathematics: A New Approach, by D. E. Mansfield and others, published originally in the early 1960s. I passionately loved this book. It was from this book that I first became familiar with many concepts in trigonometry, matrix algebra, and other topics.

Why am I mentioning this volume? Because the other day, the mailman arrived with an Amazon box containing a set of books. A brand new set of books, published in 2024. A series of mathematics textbooks for middle school and high school students, starting with this volume for 6th and 7th graders:

My instant impression: As a young math geek 50 years ago, I would have fallen in love with these books.

The author, André Cabannes, is known, among other things, as Leonard Susskind’s co-author of General Relativity, the latest book in Susskind’s celebrated Theoretical Minimum series. Cabannes also published several books in his native French, along with numerous translations.

His Middle School Mathematics and High School Mathematics books are clearly the works of passion by a talented, knowledgeable, dedicated author. The moment I opened the first volume, I felt a sense of familiarity. I sensed the same clarity, same organization, and the same quality of writing that characterized those Mansfield books all those years ago.

Make no mistake about it, just like the Mansfield books, these books by Cabannes are ambitious. The subjects covered in these volumes go well beyond, I suspect, the mathematics curricula of most middle schools or high schools around the world. So what’s wrong with that, I ask? A talented young student would be delighted, not intimidated, by the wealth of subjects that are covered in the books. The style is sufficiently light-hearted, with relevant illustrations on nearly every page, with the occasional historical tidbit or anecdote, making it easier to absorb the material. And throughout, there is an understanding of the practical nature, utility of mathematics, that is best summarized by the words on the books’ back cover: “Mathematics is not a collection of puzzles or riddles designed to test your intelligence; it is a language for describing and interacting with the world.”

Indeed it is. And these books are true to the author’s words. The subjects may range from the volume of milk cartons through the ratio of ingredients in a cake recipe all the way to the share of the popular vote in the 2024 US presidential election. In each of these examples, the practical utility of numbers and mathematical methods is emphasized. At the same time, the books feel decidedly “old school” but in a good sense: there is no sign of any of the recent fads in mathematics education. The books are “hard core”: ideas and methods are presented in a straightforward way, fulfilling the purpose of passing on the accumulated knowledge of generations to the young reader even as motivations and practical utility are often emphasized.

This is how my love affair with math began when I was a young student, all those years ago. The books that came into my possession, courtesy of both my parents and my teachers, were of a similar nature: they offered robust knowledge, practical utility, clear motivation. Had it existed already, this wonderful series by Cabannes would have made a perfect addition to my little library 50 years ago.

Toys, toys!

History, Music No Responses »

Jan 262025

Someone reminded me of Kurt Weill’s poignant 1936 anti-war musical Johnny Johnson today. I recalled in particular the last song, Johnny’s song, in which the simple-minded protagonist Johnny, never losing his faith in humanity, tries to sell toys to an indifferent public who are rushing over to the next square to listen to another warmongering speaker. “Toys, toys!” cries Johnny but no one listens.

I did not remember the song’s lyrics. Apparently, there are different versions, but the one I am familiar with includes these lines (emphasis mine):

At last we’ll find the day
When joy shall be our song

I hear them say it’s all baloney
The world’s a mighty cruel place
With tooth and claw and promise phony
An old hard guy he wins the race

But you and I don’t think so
We know there’s something still
Of good beyond such ill
Within our heart and mind

Ouch. Did Paul Green, who wrote the song’s lyrics, foresee the future?

Oh well. Here’s a Midjourney cat that I think aptly captures the musical’s atmosphere.

Tomorrow belongs to me…

Film, History, Music, Politics No Responses »

Oct 302024

Here’s a pro-Trump view of the recent Trump rally, shared by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in his October 30 “Global Briefing” newsletter:

Americans are tired of living in survival mode. Raging wars, a crippled economy, an immigration crisis, a growing chasm of political division, and rapid inflation have made Americans realize that they want joy again, they want unity again, and they want to dream again. Standing in such a significant arena, surrounded by a sea of red hats and adoring, cheering Trump fans, I couldn’t help but get emotional about how historic this moment in time is for our country. I was 14 years old when Trump was elected president and have, like many of his other supporters, been forced to deal with the vitriol, insults, and hatred of the left over the past eight years. It has often been tiresome to stand up for my own beliefs in the face of such fierce adversity. But watching Trump on that glorious stage at Madison Square Garden reminded me—reminded all Americans—of what lies ahead with a Trump presidency: hope. And that is always worth fighting for.

To say that these words — honest, heartfelt no doubt — give me the creeps is the understatement of the year. What these words actually remind me of is this immortal scene from the film Cabaret:

Yes, they were earnest. Their feelings were true. And that’s what makes this scene one of the most disturbing scenes ever in movie history.

Dheghōm

Books, Cybernetics, Internet, MUD, Personal No Responses »

Sep 252024

Look what the mailman just brought. Or rather, the Amazon delivery person:

It’s the third volume of Richard Bartle‘s amazing Dheghōm trilogy.

I am proud to call Richard a friend (I hope he does not object) as I’ve known him online for more than 30 years and we also met in person a couple of times. He is a delightful, very knowledgeable fellow, a true British scholar, one of the foremost authorities on virtual worlds, the world of online gaming. He is, of course, along with Roy Trubshaw, credited as one of the authors of MUD, the Multi-User Dungeon, the world’s first multi-user adventure game, which I proudly ported to C++ 25 years ago, running it ever since on my server for those few players who still care to enjoy a text-only virtual world.

When he is not teaching, Richard also writes books. Delightful stories. Among them this Dheghōm trilogy.

Dheghōm is the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European name for the Earth goddess or mother Earth. In Richard’s story, told in the form of recovered fragments from documents, blog entries, and other notes, we gradually find out more about the nature of our (real? virtual?) reality and its connection with the roots of a great many of our languages.

Someone used the word “unputdownable” in their Amazon review of the first volume and I quite agree. I know that for Richard, these books were labors of love, but I honestly think they deserve to be published by a major publisher. Until then, all I can hope for is that many people will do as I did and buy a copy. Being a bit old-fashioned when it comes to books, I actually bought the paperbacks, even though I already read the third volume in electronic form when Richard first made the draft manuscript available online.

Thank you, Richard, for such a read, a trilogy that has the best qualities of good science-fiction: entertaining, memorable, thought-provoking and, ultimately, also a bit of a cautionary tale.

AI art

Art, Cybernetics 1 Response »

Sep 162024

Inspired by something my wife told me, I asked Midjourney to show us what characters from famous paintings would appear like “after hours”, when they are allowed to leave the museum and go for a stroll. Specifically, my prompt read: “An image showing the Girl with a Pearl Earring from the painting by Vermeer and the Mona Lisa, after hours, walking down a modern street, chatting and eating ice cream”.

Here is one of the better results.

Am I wrong to be impressed?

Villeneuve’s Dune

Film No Responses »

Sep 122024

It’s been a few months since I watched the second Dune movie by Villeneuve. I was… not impressed.

Yes, I read the books (and love them) and yes, that is precisely I found these movies painful to watch.

*** SPOILERS FOLLOW ***

Critical plot elements were missing. No, I am not talking about Peter Jackson omitting Tom Bombadil, or even the greater sin of omitting the desecration of the Shire by Saruman (which provided a fitting end to the story arc of Saruman as well as some of the hobbits.)

What is missing from the Villeneuve films is a basic understanding of the core premises of the book. The importance of the spice, without which there is no Empire, just forever isolated planets. The significance of the Spacing Guild. Jessica’s love of her husband and her minor rebellion against the Bene Gesserit. The Guild’s conspiracy with the Fremen, which kept the South safe. Paul’s training and transformation, the desire to see the future with more clarity, the devastating knowledge that none of the possible futures avoid disaster entirely. The nature of Alia’s “abomination”. Or even lesser but equally jarring plot holes: If they have personal anti-gravity devices that let them float up steep hills, why on Earth (why on Arrakis) do they need ornithopters?

And the individuals. Stilgar, Chani… how to turn great characters into forgettable two-dimensional cardboard extras. The dialog is often jarring, unbefitting of these personas from Herbert’s novel.

To be sure, the film is spectacular. Some of the visuals are superb. But overall… It’s hugely disappointing. Of all the Dune adaptations I’ve seen so far, includig the David Lynch film and the TV miniseries, this is the worst. Not because it is not true to the letter of the book. I understand that a film is a different medium. But because it’s not true to the spirit of the story.

I just realized what it all reminds me of. Compare Herbert’s book series against the later sequels/prequels, published under his son’s name and written by coauthors. They are like day and night. This Villeneuve movie is like those sequels/prequels. Unlike the David Lynch movie, which for all its faults grasped the essence of the Dune story, these films just turned it into a cheap Marvel universe of sorts. Which may explain why the David Lynch movie — even though it’s been decades since I last saw it — left such a lasting impression on me whereas this film? Three months after I saw it, I had to check the Wikipedia synopsis just to be sure that I indeed saw the second film already, not just the first. An entirely forgettable experience.

Frankly, I’ll take Guardians of the Galaxy anytime over this. Much more fun!

Another Simpsons prediction

Politics, Television No Responses »

Jul 232024

Apparently, The Simpsons predicted not just the Trump presidency but also the attire and demeanor Kamala Harris.

OK, so the color is a little bit off. But just like Lisa Simpson, Kamala Harris, if elected, will have to deal with some of Trump’s legacy.

From my Mom

Art, Hungary, Personal No Responses »

Jul 102024

Throughout her life my Mom earned a living as a artisan textile dyer in Hungary. Nothing fancy, her usual work involved bringing home to her workshop a few hundred, e.g., silk sheets, hand-dying them with predetermined, preapproved patterns (mostly fashionable headscarves, which were very popular in Europe in the 1960s, 1970s), then returning them to the warehouse, which then sent them out for further processing (steam fixing, hemming, etc.)

One day in 1984 she was asked to do something different: To prepare several silk sheets, using the designs, and under the supervision, of a well-known artist (Judit Szabó), for public display in a community hall in a small Hungarian town (Földeák).

She was reminded of this during our recent conversation. Though I had no high expectations, I searched for it using the name of the town and the artist. To our no small astonishment (and to my Mom’s great delight), I found it. The silk sheets are still there (or at least, they were back in 2021), adorning the walls of the town’s wedding hall. Not only that, someone actually took the trouble to take some decent photographs of it and publish it on a nice Hungarian-language Web site.

No need for TV to go “woke”

Politics, Society, Television No Responses »

Jun 162024

Warning: Spoilers follow.

I am not what you would call a Trekkie, but I always enjoyed Star Trek. The original series remains my favorite, but TNG had its moments, as did Voyager, even Enterprise, for all its flaws. Picard was good, and Strange New Worlds has a chance of being on par with the original series.

But Discovery? I am presently about two thirds of the way through its penultimate episode and it’s… just painful. The tension is artificial, the writing feels shallow and preachy and… what’s this with, “We’re on a clandestine, dangerous mission, one misstep and we’re dead quite possibly along with the entire Federation, so why don’t we just stop and talk about our emotions?”

Seriously, I can only watch this abomination in five-minute chunks. I’ll suffer through the end now that barely more than an episode remains but… Oh well. I know, I know, another first-world problem.

Perhaps the least unsuccessful attempt by ChatGPT/DALL-E to illustrate the divisiveness of forced wokeness on television

And then there’s Dr. Who. I find that I actually like the latest season. Ruby Sunday is a delightful Companion, and Ncuti Gatwa has a chance to be ranked among the best Doctors. That is… if the series’ writers let him? Take the latest episode, Rogue. Within minutes, the Doctor falls in love. Same-sex love. The Doctor! The same Doctor who, in the past history of the series, almost never engaged in romantic relationships. Romantic teases, maybe… But not much more, except perhaps with River Song. But now? Instant infatuation, which, sadly, felt like little more than a cheap excuse for the writers to engage in dutiful woke virtue signaling, you know, same-sex kiss and all. To their credit, in the end they somewhat redeemed themselves, as Rogue’s (the love interest’s) feelings towards the Doctor and respect for the Doctor’s humanity led him to sacrifice himself… And save the episode from self-inflicted doom.

Even so, I wish television writers dropped the urge to outdo one another when it comes to virtue signaling. It’s just too painful to watch at times, even if I assume that it is about more than just ticking some boxes in a checklist, meeting a quota somewhere; that their intentions are the purest and their hearts are in the right place. Not to mention that it is grossly counterproductive: the only thing such blatant wokeness accomplishes is a knee-jerk trigger response by those on the political right, who are already convinced (in the words of someone I know) that “these are not normal times” anymore.

And you know where that leads. If these are not normal times, that means extraordinary means are justified. The autocrat wins in the end, presenting himself as the sole savior of all that is good and decent, in these abnormal times.

So let’s please just stop the forced, virtue-signaling wokeness. It’s not helping to make the world a better, more tolerant place. If it accomplishes anything, it’s the exact opposite.

Industrial design

Art, History No Responses »

Jun 152024

Say what you want, industrial design today is but a pale imitation of the extravagant design concepts that appeared back in the 1960s.

Here is one example. A Kuba Komet entertainment center from West Germany, manufactured between 1957-1962:

And here is its close cousin, known as the Arkay “Fantasia”, from the United States:

These things were obviously large, obnoxious even. Probably not terribly practical (300 pounds!) Yet they stand out in ways few, if any, modern devices do. We may be surrounded by gadgets that were not even imagined yet back in the early 1960s, we may be having delightful conversations with AI or have video chats with distant friends on other continents, but without the bold, science-fiction inspired visual appearance, our devices appear almost mundane in comparison with these design marvels.

Silo

Television No Responses »

Jun 102024

I just finished watching the first season of a remarkable television series on Apple TV: Silo.

I say remarkable because it achieved for me the near-impossible: From the very beginning of the very first episode, I cared about the protagonists. I could identify with them, root for them. Including those who didn’t make it.

I shall try very hard not to spoil the show for those who have not seen all ten episodes yet, but…

It’s like Fallout, except that it’s even better. Fallout is great. I loved the games, I love the TV show. It captures Fallout‘s quirky cynicism and it truly feels like part of the same game universe.

Like Fallout, Silo also depicts a post-apocalyptic world. There is plenty of mystery. Unlike Fallout, there is no quirky humor in Silo. It’s more serious, and also more mysterious. In Fallout, we know right from the onset what caused the devastation. In Silo… let’s just say we know a lot less, and we may not even know what we don’t know.

I can’t wait for season 2 now. If they can maintain the quality of the show, the storytelling, the characters, the visuals… Damn, I sound like some stupid know-it-all TV critic, so let me just say that I liked the show. I wonder if Silo ever gets turned into a (preferably open-world) computer game.

Heterogeneous China

Culture, History, Politics, Religion No Responses »

May 202024

Occasionally I chat with people about China, in comparison with Europe. Many view China as a political entity that managed to maintain its unity even as Europe split into a great many competing states, often engaged in warfare.

I think this picture is patently false.

Sure, Europe has sovereign states, separated by borders. And sure, Europe has a multitude of languages, different ethnicities. On the other hand, while the Roman Empire may have officially ceased to exist many centuries ago, its unifying influence did not vanish. On the contrary, Europe’s traditions, customs, institutions, legal systems and religion, languages and writing systems remain dominated by the continent’s Roman heritage. Come to think of it, my own name (Viktor) is a Latin word!

And it’s not like folks in China all speak the same language. Look at this amazing map that I just came across, showing the multitude of languages spoken in different regions of China:

So what about those devastating wars, then? Europe was, after all, at the center of two world wars just in the past century, and there were plenty of conflicts (e.g., Napoleon) in prior centuries as well.

Yet all these conflicts are dwarfed by some of the wars the Chinese waged among themselves in the past. Wars with millions, even tens of millions killed were not uncommon, at a time when there were far fewer people in the world to begin with than in the 20th century. Measured by the death toll relative to the size of the human population, the two world wars of the 20th century were minor skirmishes in comparison with conflicts like the Three Kingdoms War or the An Lushan Rebellion.

So perhaps there are more similarities between China and Europe than at first meets the eye. We must not let the concept of state borders (themselves a relatively modern invention, a product of the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 that established the modern concept of state sovereignty) mislead us.

Oppenheimer

Film, History, Physics 2 Responses »

May 052024

I finally saw last year’s blockbuster, Oppenheimer. Let’s just say that my reaction to the film is not exactly in the mainstream.

That is, Best Picture my ass.

I am okay with Murphy’s Best Actor. Downey Jr. was especially good, earning his Best Supporting Actor in a role that I can only describe as unpleasant, playing the main villain of the Oppenheimer story, Lewis Strauss.

An actual photo of the real Oppenheimer

But the film?

For starters, there’s the jumbled timeline. I am deeply familiar with the Manhattan project, and reasonably familiar with Oppenheimer’s life, including the story of the humiliating revocation of his security clearance in the 1950s. Even so, I was confused: I had a hard time keeping track of what I was seeing.

Then, there are some of the portrayals. Teller was unrecognizable. Where was the famous limp? And what’s with the accent? Sometimes, no accent at all, sometimes an accent that, whatever it was, didn’t sound even remotely like Teller’s. For some of the other, well-known physicists, it was same thing: I’m glad the closed caption sometimes showed the name of the person talking, otherwise, I swear I would not have known that one of them was Szilard, for instance. And Groves? His portrayal by Matt Damon was more like a caricature than the real general.

And then there are the gratuitous sex scenes. I hope I don’t come across as a prude by mentioning this, but… was it really necessary? I mean, yes, I get it, their penetrating questions about Oppenheimer’s private life were metaphorically undressing him, but was it really necessary to assume that the audience is so dumb, they won’t “get it” unless you put Oppenheimer, stark naked, fucking his girlfriend right there in the chair in the conference room while he is being interrogated? Seriously, this was so over the top, I could not believe my eyes. My reaction was that they were trying to out-Kubrick Kubrick, but without the talent of Kubrick (and I am decidedly not a Kubrick fan.)

Then how about the conversations? Some of them, I swear, sounded like a bad AI (no, not GPT-4 or Claude 3, more like GPT-2 or compact versions of Llama) trying to recreate conversations between scientists. I don’t want to set an impossible standard here. How about just meeting the standard, say… of a sitcom? The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon are both more respectful of the science (and the intellectual quality of discussions between scientists) than this film.

And some of the scenes were just grossly inauthentic. Never mind misrepresenting the then-perceived significance of the Oppenheimer-Snyder paper on gravitational collapse (yes, it is significant, but no, the term “black hole” was not even coined until a quarter century later), what was that with that childish celebration when the print edition arrived? By then, Oppenheimer and his colleagues would have known for months that the paper was accepted. Oppenheimer would have seen, and corrected, the galley proofs. The fact that print copies of the journal would appear on the appointed date would have been neither a surprise nor news to anyone involved.

What about the things that were omitted from the film? And no, I am not talking about technical details, not even the massive role facilities other than Los Alamos played in the development of the bomb. How about Oppenheimer’s 1960 visit to Hiroshima? It could have offered some profound moments, perhaps even allowing the film to conclude in a way much more fitting than the stupid “burn the atmosphere” CGI.

And speaking of CGI… what’s with the Trinity explosion itself? I read somewhere that it was not CGI. I could tell… it felt cheap. A bit like the explosion of the planet Alderaan in the original Star Wars movie, before the remaster.

The film had some redeeming segments, especially in the final half hour, but even those were overplayed, like that final (as far as I know, wholly fictitious) conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein. Certainly not enough to salvage the movie for me. The best part were the end credits, as the music score was decent (not sure about Best Original Score quality, but it was enjoyable).

All in all, between the two acclaimed blockbusters from last year, in my view, Barbie won hands down.

Incidentally, I reminded myself that I had an equally negative view of another famous blockbuster from ten years ago, Interstellar: crappy story, crappy science, a psychedelic scene that wanted to be a bit Kubrick-like but couldn’t quite make it (and I absolutely hated what Kubrick has done with the closing scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey). What I didn’t realize until this moment is that both Interstellar and Oppenheimer were directed by the same Christopher Nolan. Guess that makes it official: I am no fan of Christopher Nolan! On the other hand, I suppose I am a fan of his younger brother: I liked Westworld, and I am beyond impressed by what he did with Fallout.

Beyond the Calabi-Yau manifold

Physics, Television No Responses »

Apr 302024

One of the reasons why I find the sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, as well as its spinoff, Young Sheldon, enjoyable, is the fact that they respect the science.

That is to say, the science that we see pop up in the series from time to time is, well, it may be fictitious but not bogus. Not gobbledygook.

Here’s the latest example. In the most recent Young Sheldon episode, we see Sheldon’s first paper, published in the fictitious journal, “International Physics Review”.

The journal may be fictitious, but the format is not: It’s the standard Physical Review layout, pretty much. Looks quite legit!

The title actually makes sense. The Calabi-Yau manifold is a popular mathematical tool, used to deal with, or “compactify” the unwanted excess dimensions of 10-dimensional supersymmetric string theory.

The abstract cannot be read in full, but the words that are visible are not nonsense. OK, as far as I know there is no “Vail-Walker metric compactification”, but the fragments of text that we can read actually make sense, sort of: which is to say, the words are not randomly strung together, they actually form expressions that you might encounter in entirely legitimate physics texts.

I mean, usual Hollywood would have something like this Midjourney creation on a sheet of paper or a blackboard:

Midjourney’s response to the prompt, “A gentlecat physicist in front of a blackboard discussing the Schwarzschild metric”.

I mean, Midjourney draws lovely physicist cats, but it certainly knows nothing about the Schwarzschild solution. The creators of The Big Bang Theory do: If Sheldon Cooper talks about the Schwarzschild solution, you can bet that in the background, on the blackboard you’d see something like \(ds^2=(1-2GM/r)dt^2-(1-2GM/r)^{-1}dr^2-r^2d\theta^2-r^2\sin^2\theta d\phi^2.\)

Everybody wants to save the world, they just disagree on how

Computer Games, Television No Responses »

Apr 172024

I just finished watching the first (but hopefully not the only) season of the new Amazon Prime series, Fallout.

There have been three modern game franchises that I became quite fond of over the years, all of the post-apocalyptic genre: S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro, and Fallout. Metro has incredible storytelling: For instance, meeting the last surviving theater critic or the shadow artist at the half-flooded Bolshoi station of the Moscow Metro are moments I’ll never forget. And the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series has its own incredible moments, foremost among them when I finished the main storyline of the third installment, Call of Pripyat, by accident in the middle of the night, in-game time, and found myself alone, in the dead silence, near the center of a deserted, pitch dark Pripyat, with my comrades gone. The relief I felt when I retreated to the Laundromat and found that it was now full of lively stalkers like myself, eating, listening to music, sleeping… A reaffirmation of life in that dead city.

And then Fallout… Fallout is in a league of its own. I admit I only played the 3D open world installments of the franchise, starting with Fallout 3. A game that begins with The Ink Spots singing how they don’t want to put the world on fire… with the burned-out, post-nuclear ruins of the DC Mall serving as background scenery. A game in which, after “growing up” inside an underground Vault, you experience true daylight for the very first time, with eyes that never saw anything other than artificial lighting.

So it is this Fallout universe that was turned into a television series on Amazon Prime, and what a series it is. It captures the vibe of the game franchise perfectly, but it also stands on its own as a darn good television series.

The first five minutes of the first episode already contain an instant classic: The line uttered by a little girl as she, horrified, is looking at the growing mushroom cloud enveloping Los Angeles, trying to measure it by holding out her thumb, as taught by her dad. “Is it your thumb or mine?” she asks innocently.

But the real motto of the series is a statement made by one of the main protagonists, Maximus, in episode five. “Everybody wants to save the world,” Maximus observes, “they just disagree on how.”

Doesn’t that perfectly capture our present-day world of 2024, too, as we are slowly, but inevitably, stumbling towards a new “chaotic era” (to borrow an expression from another recent television adaptation, the 3 Body Problem)? I can only hope that we don’t all end up like Shady Sands, the one-time capital city of the New California Republic, pictured above. Because, as all Fallout players know, war… war never changes.

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