I’m honestly surprised that any company would sit on $43 million for any substantial period. While I’m happy that American companies and Tesla in particular are being removed from the EV rebate program, I’d be happier if the stupidest trade war ended and Musk stopped being an enormous piece of shit.

The people have an opportunity to remove her every 4 years, more or less. Hopefully enough of them have the good sense to do so. That won’t solve the problem of how she got in in the first place.

Dehumanizing people is the first step in treating them like animals, and then extermination them - genocide. Don’t go down that path. It always ends the same way.

Pretty much any book that is going to have useful information for sex ed, which is taught at around ages 10 to 12, is either going to be useless or sufficiently graphic for hormonal pubescent kids. Back when I was a kid, the go-to source for accessible nudity was National Geographic. Also, there were kids who would read the National Geographics to learn about the world (which included places with different taboos than us). Should the education of some be hampered for the sake of the ignorance of others? Alberta says yes.

This quote from Chris Rock hasn’t aged too well, but the overall sentiment is correct.

“Technically, if your computer breaks and you can’t recover those games after Valve decides to close its doors, those games are gone forever.” Yeah, and? Is there a storefront that doesn’t apply to? Just how long do you think CDs and floppy disks (and the hardware to access them) last, if you haven’t lost them already? Is it more or less than Valve’s lifespan so far?

There were other critical fails, but this is certainly the biggest.

What exactly is the threshold you’re waiting for on this escape plan?

Both distillation and reverse osmosis should get rid of microplastics. Reverse osmosis should get rid of mercury in any form, while it would depend on other chemical properties (evaporation rate, temperature source water is heated to, etc.) on whether distillation would remove chemicals like mercury.

Some further reading.

You aren’t wrong, either, but if you start doing the numbers for how much forest per person we need, there isn’t enough land. It is carbon neutral, though.

And do the same for solar and batteries, so we can stop using fossil fuels for electricity ASAP.

That really is the greatest risk for some of thses features. It’s easy to get complacent when something works well, and then you’re in trouble when it doesn’t.

It didn’t so much as pull as get stiffer to turn out of the lane. Again, that doesn’t happen if your signals are on, so it’s a good reminder to use your signals, too.

Like I said, relying on these assists as replacements for proper driving isn’t something I would recommend. You should still be shoulder checking and using your mirrors. My wife’s vehicle has blind spot detection, which turns on an amber light by the mirror. If you’re changing lanes, it’s an obvious indicator that it may not be safe. A more thorough shoulder check can identify if the vehicle is actually at risk for collision. For example, if you just passed a vehicle and are pulling away, the detection light may still be on, but you aren’t at risk of collision. Alternatively, if I thought the lane was clear and decide to change lanes, the light may be on due to a speeding driver who is approaching to pass me in the adjacent lane. The light will be on even though he isn’t in the way yet, and changing lanes could result in an accident. Or maybe someone has been sitting in your blind spot for a few minutes and you decide to change lanes. A quick mirror check indicates you’re safe, but that amber light says maybe not. If your shoulder check doesn’t catch the problem, you probably haven’t done it well enough.

Again, can be good assistance tools, I don’t think they’re good enough to be replacements yet.

I rented a Hyundai Elantra. Yes, the wheel will move under your hand. Yes, it has hand detection, which is probably trivial to spoof. When I used it, winter had just ended and lines on the road weren’t always clear, so it would occasionally disable itself. Trying to change lanes without signals isn’t terrible, but certainly won’t happen by accident.

I would by no means rely on this, or recommend relying on it, just like I wouldn’t recommend relying on blind spot detection, but they can be handy aids to improve your overall driving, and can help catch your mistakes.

But is it more or less ugly than the Pontiac Aztek?

If you compare the total mining efforts of the entirety of human civilization, it will about to a small enough fraction of the moon that it would do less to destabilize the orbit of the moon than energy loss due to tidal forces.

Most of these costs are in terms of energy, one of the most plentiful things in space. Also, if we do things right (a huge if, I know), the bigger idea is to bootstrap it by sending enough tools to make the tools you need to extract and refine resources. This doesn’t require a von Neumann machine since we can control them, either directly or remotely. Also, if we are going to extract resources in space, a lot of infrastructure will need to be built first, which is cheaper if we use resources that are already in space. And as the saying goes, the surface of the moon is halfway to anywhere in the solar system.

“I like it when my team engages in vigilanteism and ignoring the rule of law, not when the other team does it.”

“What am I without my legs?” “What am I without my eyes?” “What am I without my arms?”

What counts as “the real me” has been evolving for decades, if not centuries. I’m not volunteering for brain implants, but I’m not writing off the idea sometime in the future. As for AI, this is going to be more of the ML variety, not the LLM variety. Think more of “neurochemical levels have been trending in a certain direction for too long, release opposing neurochemicals to halt the spiral” and less of a little voice inside your head giving quite possibly incorrect answers to whatever you’re thinking of.

This is absolutely risky stuff, but less risky than recurring electroshock therapy? Hard for me to say. Note that the article is from nearly 2 decades ago, but there are articles in the news from just the last couple weeks.