Great story, but it descended too far into muscle-wank for my liking.

When I was a kid, my family went to go visit some extended family in rural southern France. It was going to be over Halloween, and since the French don’t celebrate it, we brought some American Halloween candy for them to try. To our surprise, they loved it, especially the Reese’s cups. We had expected them to find it gross, since they had much higher quality chocolate in Europe.

And yet there can never, and will never, be a situation where an infinite number of people are tied to a railroad track. So this thought experiment is meaningless.

Okay, so what’s the point of “proving” that there some “infinities” are “bigger” than others? What’s the practical application here? Because an infinite hotel with an infinite number of guests is physically impossible, so I don’t see the point.

I’ve been trying to think of a way to have a nuanced discussion about art and AI, but hesitant to do so since people online can get incredibly vitriolic about it if they suspect that I’m in favor of AI. For the record I dislike AI being shoved in my face, from the uncanny-valley line art to the shovelware game apps that I keep seeing ads for.

To get to the point, I’m struggling to understand the moral difference between an AI model scraping art to use as training data, or an aspiring artist studying it to learn how to make it themselves. In both cases, the original artist has posted their work to a public website fully knowing that people will look at it. What’s the difference between an AI model vs a human learning from it? And how is it theft when the product is demonstrably different from the original?

I want to be clear that I just want to understand the logical underpinning of the arguments, and not arguing for one side or the other.

Case in point: All the 9/11 memes today

Yeah, a natural source of uranium ore wouldn’t be a great place to be around, if you don’t have the right protective equipment. Lots of potential for dust in the air, or on surfaces that you touch. The danger becomes inhalation or ingestion, bringing the radioactive material into your body.

I mean, as an alpha emitter the radiation can’t penetrate your skin. As long as you wash your hands afterwards it’s probably fine. You wouldn’t see me trying it though

The pace at my job is so damn slow, I only do about four hours of actual work in a 40-hour week. Most of my time is spent waiting for my boomer coworkers to do their jobs, I finish my work blazingly fast by comparison. I could ask for extra work to do, but nah. I keep getting good performance reviews and raises, and this is the most stress-free job I’ve ever had.

Dude, heterosexuality isn’t some kind of disease that needs to be cured. I would take intuitive understanding of Kojima’s plots, though.

I…what?

Guys like this get girlfriends and yet I’m still single.

I’ve always seen tomatillos for sale in supermarkets (western US). Are they not common elsewhere?

That’s what everyone was saying in 2024.

I’m sorry what? Since when was this a thing??

Something something featherless biped

Aren’t you legally required to have some kind of backup propulsion source anyway?

Well, childhood mystery solved. When I was younger, my family went to France to visit some relatives. One of the dishes we were served was a salad, and my mom told me it was called pee-the-bed salad. I was so confused and was terrified that I was going to wet my bed that night after eating it. I didn’t, but I had been wondering ever since then what it could have been and why it was called that.

Your lateral velocity is changing. Change in velocity = acceleration. In fact, you’re now traveling in a circle, which requires constant acceleration towards the center.