If it’s named after Trump can we call it Fatball? It kind of sounds similar and the F is the same so it can still be the NFL.

I actually would kind of like ai in games. Not slop visuals though. What I really would love would be in a VR game, going up to an NPC, and getting a feel for different cultures of the world I’m in through talking. Maybe you have to have a certain type of conversation to find out the plot for a side quest, or talk to a guard at a bar and work your way to find out the shift rotation as he gets drunk or something so you can infiltrate the castle.

I feel like ai could be useful like that…but getting rid of artists in favor of ai slop is just the worst way to implement this AI thing.

Do you have a source on that? I tried googling his name but all I got was that 13+ year olds have a right to privacy for their mental health treatments, not having to notify their parents.

Ah so the Uber business model then

Could have avoided it with one single (major) change: keep money and politics separate. Have an elected position that can control stock prices? No individual stock picks for you. Campaign contributions, bribes gratitude payments, etc, gone.

We need the good hearted intelligent people back, not the well funded candidates that then get to make more money from the position. But the underfunded well meaning people cannot compete. Take the excessive money away and it wouldn’t be this way.

What volume are we on now?

Have you not been paying attention? Trump tested the waters of attacking Panama, Greenland, and absorbing Canada as a “51st state”. He really wants a war SOMEWHERE so he can try to halt the next election. It has to be close and scary, or Americans won’t bat an eye. We are so used to wars elsewhere.

MAGA will 100% believe it if he says Canada is sending fentanyl over on a nuke or something and they will be excited to go to war over it.

Western society: “Overruled”

Not sure about this. People told me I would not be able to learn piano as an adult, but after 5 years of playing 15 - 30 minutes per night I feel like I am about as good as a child or teenager who put in the same amount of time. I am starting to see how people can sight read at full speed (vs me for an intermediate piece I might be able to get 20% speed, with probably poor accuracy).

I think you might be comparing someone else’s 20 - 25+ years of experience (eg, someone who has consistently played piano their whole life) to your ability to pick up a new skill from scratch. There is just a huge time sink for a brand new topic and it takes anyone a ton of time. So if you really wanted to pick up some theoretical physics or something, but are currently bad at math, it might take 15 years just to get to the beginning to really be one someone’s level who… Started 15 years ago.

Unless I guess if there is unlearning time. Like the smarter every day video where they made a reverse turning bicycle that was impossible for people to use unless they spent forever relearning, vs his son who picked it up relatively easy. I think they had to unlearn what they knew so well.

Rather than the idealistic “get minority representation”, which might not resonate, think of it differently. It’s currently being framed incorrectly as “getting someone not qualified the job because they are [minority]” when really it is “get the talented individuals from the ENTIRE labor pool, not just limiting to what can be found in the white male US born protestant applicants”.

For an extreme example, we tried very hard to make our own rockets during the space race. We absolutely did NOT want a German to help. But we were unsuccessful and after several rockets blew up without even coming close, we asked an engineer from Germany who had defected to the US. We ended up winning the space race based very largely on his input. Like, within months of him leading a team. How many other opportunities are lost because we don’t want to include [example minority] for our goals?

I had a patient say to me “The only vaccine I ever got in my life was Polio, and I regret it. It was about to be eradicated from humanity!”

Dude totally doesn’t get it.

I’ve been with the same company almost 20 years, and I’m that time have taken so little time off, I have accumulated 75 days. But I just had a child a couple years ago, and this year I took 8 days off throughout the year, since she brought home so many sicknesses. One of those required 3 days off, and I actually got a doctor’s note because it was 3 consecutive days and that’s the policy.

It still came up in my review. I basically got a “barely passing” score with “needs to be more reliable”.

Not really. I’m not sure how it ended up so rounded, but getting a degree is more than just “get skills for the job”. When you are getting any bachelor’s degree, you also have to take a certain amount of history, music appreciation, etc, heck my school even required lifetime fitness. It’s also learning alongside your peers to suffer together, I mean work together.

Also, for something like engineering, you don’t want a job to teach the basics of safely designing a building. You want that in school so when your job asks you to do something dumb, you can explain to them why it is unsafe and correctly refuse.

I like how my friend put it: “You COULD go to a technical school to get a job, but you wouldn’t be very interesting to talk to.”

Ugh and I just imagined if they made something like “Walgreens pharmacy school” that would train you to be a pharmacist but only for Walgreens. Imagine if your ability and certification to work in any field was tied to a specific company. No way to leave to CVS or whatever unless you go to “CVS pharmacy school”. Sounds awful.

“You can always trust Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other options.”

We need actual like, American rebuilding from the ground up change. But for that to happen we need actual, America is completely broken and people are going hungry. Until that time we will keep going back and forth between “normal” and fascist, with the “normal” slowly creeping towards fascism anyways.

So we will probably go back and forth a few more times because Donald Trump will die happily of old age soon, and Democrats will claim a quiet victory and pretend nothing bad ever happened. Reverse a couple meaningless law changes. Keep the rest. And then be shocked when the new Donald Trump takes the reins.

We won’t ever as a country look ahead and be like “ah yes, that is the correct course of action. It’s okay to lose some profits now because the long term prosperity of the nation is what’s important.” We always try the easy but wrong path first.

Eh, it can be fixed. Once Trump passes of old age, they lose their charismatic leader and they begin to fracture. Democrats retake the house and Senate and win the presidency and… Keep a lot of the nonsense that was started under Trump. We kick the can down the road a few more cycles and we are back to being slaves to corporations hoping we can keep our healthcare. While hoping the next Trump doesn’t win.

That’s probably what will happen. It’s quite profitable to keep us slaves.

Only way we get back to actual good times is if we get a New Deal kind of presidency who really reinvests in the workers rather than chasing short term profits and grifts. We have a good location so with enough time that will happen. In our lifetimes? I’m not sure about that.

Ehhh agree that it frequently happens from poor planning, but I think we should do what we can to improve safety rather than blame victims. Learning about and paying for obscure satellite tech only helps those people who already know a lot about hiking, whereas this could bring the tech to everyone with a phone.

But also I think they could do it with a lot fewer satellites than this. They don’t need absolutely great coverage. Just a message service. The government could provide this on an emergency basis.

It’s not for streaming. As far as I know it’s just text messages. Absolutely agree we should not be using screen time when out and away. We just need that little bit of safety.

It’s still a good thing for cell coverage in remote areas for hiking emergencies though. The few satellites that currently do that are stupidly annoying and expensive to use. You have to carry specialized equipment, and if you use Garmin, you pay a yearly fee for the privilege of signing up for the low tier plan, then a monthly fee for the service, and then pay by the text message after the first few. Starlink just added T-Mobile so if you have a newer phone and use T-Mobile you can skip all of that and message out in emergencies without all that nonsense. Hopefully more brands will be added soon, but I don’t know.

Great lakes then?

Good question. Maybe some sort of similar mind games but with the goal to get towards the truth. For like a commercial, maybe put Trump on a throne and show how he sees the working class. Make him say stuff like “okay see if we can make them believe in Jewish space lasers next!” While laughing at some gaudy party. Then have some totally normal looking guy look up from a tweet and be like "they really think we are that dumb? Weird ". Maybe internet trolling could be just accounts that say things like “no one is believing this bullshit anymore. Can’t they think of something more clever to try to fool us with? My insurance rates are skyrocketing with all these hurricanes and fires from the whole damn world getting hotter. If they don’t want to give up profits at least make a believable lie for us.”

Maybe that’s too many words but basically make fun of the messaging the right is sending and try to put everyone on their own side by pretending they themselves, and anyone agreeing with them, is smart. It’s the exact same brainwashing format the right is using. Just use it back.