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    Natural Sciences

    Decipher SciFi

    Decipher SciFi explores the how and why in science fiction with conversations about technology, humanity, and the future. This is not a review show, nor will you see much criticism or snark. It is a rationally optimistic look, through film, at where society and technology are and where they are headed. Also, butts.

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    Latest Episodes:
    Terminator Genisys: surprise anthologies & time travel spaghetti w/ Joe Ruppel Oct 08, 2019
    Show notes

    The curse of the Terminator

    Why do all these production companies go under after making these always-profitable Terminator movies?

    VFX

    Twelve months to make a fake Arnold.

    Time travel

    Time travel but, like, way more confusing. And possibly nonsensical. Five movie in and we FINALLY we see a time machine. Operation Cronos. Trying to count timelines and getting very confused because they broke everything.

    Skynet

    Skynet in the government shadows vs Silicon Valley public launch. UbiquityOS. Engineering to let the AI our of the box. The dawn of “apps” and how it was important. “Genisys does what Nintendon’t.” Skynet takeoff scenario, altered yet again.

    Terminators

    A review of the T-3000 and T-5000. Doctor Who. Bio-nanite replacement. Ship of Biorobo Theseus: is the T-3000 still the same person as it was?

    Kyle Reese

    Old Nikes! Scrappy Kyle vs jacked Kyle. David vs Goliath.

    Who wants to go do my mom

    • John Connor
    Arnold

    build_time_machine.bat . Time traveling at 1x speed. Various messy strategies for re-encasing your robot arm in flesh.

    1. Mortal Kombat 11 Kombat Pack – Official Terminator T-800 Gameplay Trailer: YouTube
    2. Scientist Man Explains Terminator: Genisys by Red Letter Media: YouTube
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    On Decipher History: Gangs of New York Oct 01, 2019
    Show notes

    The taste of another episode of Decipher History! Featuring gangs fights in 19th century New York, etc.

    On Decipher History: Gangs of New York: history of The Five Points, immigration, and archaic criminal lingo

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    Terminator Salvation: body donation, realistic time travel, and the legal shmegal defense w/ Joe Ruppel Sep 24, 2019
    Show notes

    Is this a sequel? A prequel? Our progress in covering the entire Terminator series. The possibility of the future war trilogy, dashed.

    Body donation

    Donating your body to science. Body donation vs organ donation. Size and BMI standards. Medical education via cadaver. “Body brokers.” Why do blast testing on bodies? Are we learning to cure “acute dynamitism?”

    Lethal injection

    How to make a body unsuitable for whole-body donation. Donating to Terminator-science. Executions as disincentive. The role of the medieval executioner. How the guillotine was an early example of the robots taking our jerbs. Execution showmanship. The Ultimate Warrior was nuts.

    Time travel

    The only sorta realistic time travel in the whole Terminator series: pausing your exiistence and turning back on in the future! The nature of self, and the “legal schmegal” defense.

    Terminators

    The most human Terminator yet? Robocop vs Wolverine? Head transplant or body transplant? Terminator production volume and just-in-time delivery. The first T800. A T600 review. Austrian bodybuilders always make good Terminators.

    Skynet

    Technological anxieties over time through the Terminator series…. but not really in this one? Or are just jumping straight through to concern with AI takeoff? The Skynet-iest movie in the Terminator series, so far. Personifying Skynet. Explaining the human prisoner project with the design of the T800.

    Madness

    Amazing alternate endings that Chris is sad didn’t happen! Skinning John Connor, for fun and profit.

    1. Terminator Salvation the Machinima Series: YouTube
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    Species: alien bio-containment, the Arecibo message, and Von Neumann trolls Sep 17, 2019
    Show notes

    Species

    Wow there some really good movies in 1995! Geiger alien designs. Not “Alien,” but “alien.” This time, with nipples.

    Ptosis

    Forrest Whitaker. Chris’s history of eyelid laziness variability. Being either a dolphin or a flamingo. Eye farts?

    The Arecibo Message

    The limited utility of sending messages to aliens 25,000 light years away. The Arecibo Message sent in 1974 toward the M13 globular cluster. A cluster containiner millions of stars. 1679 bits: not a lot of bits!

    A colorized visualization of the 'Arecibo Message' sent in 1974 Arne Nordmann CC-BY-3.0 Bio-executable Von Neumann machines

    Von Neumann trolls. Self-assembling bootstrapping biological systems. What if DNA is very common across life in the universe?

    Containment

    How to combine biological containment and prisoner containment. Lots of “fire” buttons. Biocontainment protocols. Integrating what we’ve learned from prison-escape movies. Considering the Magneto-vault.

    Cocoons

    Vulvic wall-pods. What the hell even is up with cocoons anyway? Cocoons are basically alien material already. The “soup method” of metamorphosis.

    Fat-bergs Support the show!
    Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines: hacking cars and supercomputing Skynet FLOPS w/ Joe Ruppel Sep 10, 2019
    Show notes

    Meta

    James Cameron blank checks and record-breaking budgets and payouts.

    Arnold

    Getting re-jacked to your original shape at 56 years old. Screening your movie at Saddam’s palace.

    Terminators

    The broadness of the term “nanotechnology.” Upgrading your liquid-metal nanotechss32 robots.

    Data Collection

    Placing this movie in the data collection timeline: after the dawn of big data digital government spying, but before smartphones when we willingly began to give up all the data. But there’s a Terminator movie for that too!

    Hacking cars

    Direct linkages in car systems. Driving by-wire. Hacking automobile computer systems. Wired hacking and modern wireless car hacks.

    Technology progression

    Finally, a Terminator in the age of the ubiquitous cell phone! Still not smartphones yet, but it’s a start! Hydrogen fuel cell failure modes and the danger of tiny hydrogen bombs. MRI dangers.

    Skynet

    AI escape scenarios. Supercomputing at “60 teraFLOPS” and wth is a “teraFLOPS” anyway? Computing power measurement and FLOP precisions. Recognizing the actual utility of supercomputers only becoms apparent with very paralellizable tasks.

    1. Decipher History: Decipher Media
    2. Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on a Highway by WIRED: YouTube
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    On Decipher History: The Last Samurai w/ Isaac Meyer Sep 03, 2019
    Show notes

    A small taste of our new episode of Decipher History to remind you to subscribe to the new show. This week featuring our new friend Isaac Meyer from The History of Japan Podcast!

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    Roundtable: Colossus The Forbin Project w/ Chris Noessel, Damien Williams, and Jonathon Korman Aug 27, 2019
    Show notes

    Weirdly prescient and quietly influential

    AI portrayal in film. Recognizing 2001: A Space Odyssey. Command and control. Unintended consequences. Personal movie connections and impact decades before Bostrom’s Superintelligence. Game of Thrones??? 70s scifi cynicism.

    Benevolent AI dictator

    The Cold War and looming climate catastrophe. What are Colossus’ goals? What goals does it think it has?

    AI Portrayal

    Period conceptions of computing as centralized and institutional. Computing in the era of the first moon landing. The “big board.” Computer scientists a la Mad Men. Colossus as a Golem story. How to take over the world with no subterfuge or tact. Gendering AI.

    Realism

    Portrayal of telecommunications literally before the invention of networking. Packet switching was first implemented after the novel was written and only just before the film! Computer communication syntax. Computing language. Computer interfaces and code checking.

    Getting weird

    The books get weird. And weirder! How sometimes books are accidentally way better than their author is capable of.

    Paperclip maximization

    Colossus as utilitarian “peace maximizer.” Showing the monkeys the gun to get your point across.

    1. Works by Madeline Ashby: Amazon
    2. Person of Interest: iTunesAmazonNetflix
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    Terminator 2: advanced puppetry, Skynet, and liquid nitrogen handling w/ Joe Ruppel Aug 20, 2019
    Show notes

    People

    Love and appreciation for the humans involved. James Cameron is amazing. Arnold, always our favorite. Linda Hamilton playing one of the most iconic characters in film. Robert Patrick doing the robot. James Cameron doing everything himself.

    VFX

    VFX and CG and the high shot counts for the time. The expense of CG and the appropriate use thereof. Budgets. Incredible animatronix! The value of high-quality practical FX from the 90s and how they hold up.

    Ict hot stuntaz

    Motorcycle jumping. Harley’s Fat Boy. Jumping into helicopters.

    Technology

    The Terminator series as a window into our concerns over technology in different decades. Computing miniaturization. Quantum stuff. Read-only Terminator modes, IRQ switching, and ro cassettes.

    Terminators

    Terminator models and designs. Possible Billy Idol T-1000, or Kyle Reese-bots. T-1000 shiny grey goo nanite flow robot.

    Liquid Nitrogen

    Pork chop sandwiches! Inert gas asphyxiation. Steam barriers, sugar work, and dipping your hand into hot lead.

    1. T2 Stunt Trailer by Peter Kent: YouTube
    2. The Forgotten Art of Blockbuster Cinema by Mike Hill: YouTube
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    Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse: particle colliders, art, and magnetic monopolies w/ Adrian Falcone Aug 13, 2019
    Show notes

    Colliders

    Particle collider scales. Increasing energies. Finding the Higgs Boson. Different ways of smashing things. Straight colliders, ring colliders, and rings so large they kinda seem straight at a certain scale. Adrian’s new area of expertise. “Natural experiments” in particle physics. Imagining future colliders and subsequent discoveries. Confirmation of supersymmetry. Probing the edges of the standard model.

    Collider danger

    Stragelets and black holes and other things that won’t happen. Anatoli Burgorski taking a load in the eye. Magnetic monopoles and winning “Magnetic Monopoly.”

    Art!

    OMG the art. Chromatic aberration. Offset printing errors. Smearing vs motion blur. Animating on “twos” or “threes” and the use of fluidity as a storytelling tool.

    Spider-ones

    Favorite Spiderman movie?

    1. Exhalation by Ted Chiang: iTunesAmazon
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    The Terminator: bootstrapping, machine uprising, and time traveling meatballs w/ Joe Ruppel Aug 06, 2019
    Show notes

    People

    James Cameron’s first film! And Arnold is amazing! The possibility of casting O.J. Simpson as the T-100. Harlan Ellison lawsuit.

    Robots

    The thawing of the AI winter of the 70s. Robots finally showing up in our lives and in the workplace. Terminator bootstrapping. Robotics and machine learning.

    Skynet

    The possibility of AI becoming “self-aware” or “conscious” and whether we even know what those things really mean. Big data feeding skynet.

    Terminators

    Jacked-up and oiled beefcake “infiltration” models. Franco Columbu. Robotic Ahhhhhnold blending in. The “rule of cool.” Feeding and maintaining a terminator’s “living tissue.”

    Persistence of information

    The persistence of human knowledge after the nuclear apocalypse. The fragility of magnetic storage media. Storing your data under a mountain. The weakness of encryption over time.

    Time travel

    How to not sound crazy when telling people in the past that you’re from the future. Meatball time travel. Using the “living tissue” time travel rule to transport large weapons into the past. Stuffing a whale or elephant. Realizing that maybe (probably), no one (not even SkyNet) has the slightest clue what they are doing with the time travel.

    1. Harlan Ellison and the Terminator: YouTube
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