I refuse to treat the lack of evidence the same as evidence. “Source: Trust me, bro” is not valid, whether “me” is “Internet Rando” or “Big Corp”.

https://wiredgourmet.medium.com/the-mandela-effect-is-a-racist-blunder-750b5d31d0c4

I’ve never been very creative, but I loved playing the flyswatter game inside Mario Paint.

Putting aside the problems in the current system, let’s not call Thiel’s system a justice system until we can see some results and verify they are just, 'k?

That’s basically the start of the Shadowrun dystopia. There were a lot of other things that “went wrong”, but when the government removed the liability from private security that has been protecting a hazardous materials transport from workers attacking it in the belief that it contained foodstuffs, it legitimized the “megacorp”: a corporation sufficiently powerful to impose their own legal system on their private real estate.

EDIT: In the previous histories the “Seretech Decision” was on 1999-10-26. Sources: 1 2 3 Looks like “6th edition” retconned the fictional history to start 2001-09-11 (Never Forget), so it’s unclear what and when the equivalent event is. Source: 4

I strongly recommend finishing “She-Ra and the Princess of Power” and/or “Amphibia”.

I’m a sucker for a Strong, Female Protagonist, and really anything by Lee Ostertag (partner of ND Stevenson) or Brennan Lee Mulligan.

(EDIT: Updated name; didn’t know about the name change when I first posted. Added parenthetical connecting second paragraph to the first.)

If running a development team is like herding cats, of course an self-organized free software team is a “clowder”. Autonomy respecting catboys are also welcome.

Mirror enforcers are a lot more serious than that. Just ask Lake (nee: piluT) from the “Infinity Train”.

IIRC, some jackdows (both male and female) seem to just like “pretty” rocks and will maintain a cache to visit irregularly.

Source: Trust me, bro.

He’s not trying hard enough. You can touch tongues, too. No entwining, but maybe in the P-reversed universe, that’s just taboo.

classic story of the US spending millions on developing pens that write in space while the Soviet Union just issued pencils

You used “story”, so I’ll assume you know this is mostly untrue, but for any of the lucky 10k that hasn’t heard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen#Uses_in_the_U.S._and_Soviet_space_programs

Stupid long horses. /ref

It’s not Tuesday, but we got TACO!

The TL;DR is that training AI on copyrighted works falls under the Fair Use exemptions in copyright law

This judgement was reversed by the next federal judge that reviewed AI, in the Meta case.

It is far from legally settled whether training is fair use or not.

Source: https://lifehacker.com/tech/microsoft-copilot-for-entertainment-purposes-only

it certainly won’t be anytime soon.

Agreed. I think globally we are still above replacement rate.

Fewer people means fewer mouths to feed, fewer homes to build/maintain and less consumption in general

Yes, but no. As the video I linked points out, because of the time delay you get fewer people with maximum productivity while still needed to support people that have sub-self-sustaining productivity. Eventually, you might get to a smaller population that choose to return to above replacement rate, but the demographic squeeze don’t got away for another 20-30 years. Once it starts you are stuck in a demographic squeeze, it makes it even harder on everyone, making that choice “harder”.

That is a simplification. Sub-self-sustaining productivity doesn’t exactly track with age, and how much it takes to sustain a joyful life varies based on a lot of factors; it sort of tracks downward but can also go up if economies of scale shirk or when a new essential utility is introduced by technology.

“full body autonomy” includes but is not limited to “no one [is] forced to let anyone else use their uterus”. I don’t believe I am sabotaging my own argument, but I’m an idiot, so maybe you just need to be more meticulous in explaining how I am (doing that).

I bring it up because authoritarians often try to restrict bodily autonomy, particularly around uteruses, when trying to do population control (up or down). In fact, while it may not be a acceptable, mainstream view, you don’t have to look to hard to find a USian on the right claiming that abortion must (become/stay) illegal because of the “birth rate crisis”.

Yeah, I’m not worried about running out of humans globally, and I do think immigration is a fine way for a country to choose to maintain their population.

There’s probably something to be said around cultural preservation, and maybe that’s a bit easier for “native born” persons. But, I don’t know the steelman version of that argument, if there is one.

The problem is the encouragement in general

I don’t see why that’s a problem. I think it could come in the form of actual benefits, not a just verbal haranguing / extolling based on (not) having children, but that it’s good for the birth rate to be slightly above replacement and correcting any divergence should be encouraged.

Capitalism contributes, yes. But, if humanity stays below replacement rate, humanity goes extinct.

Also, no matter how you distribute resources, there are periods of life when your productivity is less that what you need to survive. Everyone has this for many years at the beginning of their life, and those lucky enough to live long enough will have this toward the end of their lives, as aging is the disability that comes for us all. The proven method to sustain persons during those periods is to have enough people in their productive years; it generally requires more than the replacement rate. And, if that doesn’t happen, the less productive suffer and die more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk

All that said, I’m against encouraging teenage pregnancy, and for full bodily autonomy – no one should be forced to let anyone else use their uterus.