Mnemnosyne

Even if so it's kind of a complete non sequitur cause it's in reply to something that has nothing to do with China.

Yes, as long as people keep focusing on fighting the technology instead of fighting capitalism, this is true.

So we can fight the technology and definitely lose, only to see our efforts subverted to further entrench capitalism and subjugate us harder (hint: regulation on this kind of thing disproportionately affects individuals while corporations carve out exceptions for themselves because 'it helps the economy')...

Or we can embrace the technology and try to use it to fight capitalism, at which point there's at least a chance we might win, since the technology really does have the potential to overcome capitalism if and only if we can spread it far enough and fast enough that it can't be controlled or contained to serve only the rich and powerful.

For a few people, this kind of thinking helps. It does for me, actually. When I feel like my life sucks it can help to compare myself to an imaginary Anglo-Saxon peasant woman during the invasion of the Sons of Lodbrok, and it actually helps to realize just how much better I have it than her.

But that doesn't work for everyone, and even those it works for kinda need to do the comparison themselves, not have it pushed on them.

I bet some people flashed that one and such too, but I could find no indication that it was shut down because of that.

It feels like society has backslid tremendously on some freedoms in the past 15 years, particularly where it comes to prudishness.

These days we even have otherwise progressive people jumping on the prude bandwagon along with hyper religious controlling anti feminists and it just makes for such strange bedfellows.

Gorsuch is the one that, in at least one case, Obergefell vs Hodges, was honest in his textual approach. The law said on account of sex and he ruled based on that.

No idea his record on other things, and it's probably not as good anywhere he can willfully misinterpret more easily, but at least in that case the text was so unambiguous he could rule no other way.

So civil asset forfeiture may well be another one like that, where the text is unambiguous enough he can't rule differently because he actually has a line he won't cross when it comes to completely ignoring the straightforward meaning of the law.

I'm more surprised at Thomas, while also being utterly unsurprised that the 'liberal' justice isn't against it in all forms.

One of the few medical things you see on TV that's a good idea, that pointing the needle upward and squeezing until a bit of fluid has spurted out, to make sure and get the air bubbles out.

I mean, that's a fair criticism in a way. If Bill lets you taste the chicken at that point, it's reasonable to comment on what he let you taste. If he didn't think it was ready enough to get your opinion on, he shouldn't have let you taste it at all.

I feel like it should be simpler: did the culture the body came from have good enough records in other ways that we would be unlikely to learn anything by digging up the body that we couldn't learn by studying other records? Then leave it alone.

If they failed to keep good enough records, and knowledge would be gained by the study, then study away.

If it is solved it will definitely be through technology of some sort. While I agree it will not be one brilliant scientist, technology will be the solution.

That technology may come in the form of a way to produce more energy without fucking up the climate, and the engineering and logistical capacity to roll out the change at a breakneck pace.

It may come in the form of simply developing a way to control the global climate directly.

It might come in the form of some technology to control the behavior of humans so that we can actually respond appropriately.

Or it might come in the form of the singularity, when self improving machines grow so far beyond us so fast that they can just do what is needed whether we like it or not.

But one way or another I guarantee that if it's solved, it'll largely be a technological solution, because getting humanity to just...stop using energy at our current rate...is just not going to happen.

Logically, slavery as punishment for crime is actually pretty reasonable and theoretically good. The criminal isn't just taken care of by the state, thus costing the people even more, instead, they actually have to pay for their crime by working it off.

But reality intrudes upon this theoretical situation. Since someone benefits from the criminal's work, there's now incentive to imprison as many people as possible. It creates perverse incentives that cannot possibly be avoided.

But almost as bad a perverse incentive is the for profit prison system, even if they aren't allowed to force prisoner labor. Because for profit prisons again have the incentive to imprison as many people as possible since that makes them more money; anything that reduces incarceration rate means less money for them.

Of course, we have both of these going for us. For profit prisons that make more money off the state the more prisoners they have, and the permission to force labor from them since the Constitution specifically allows it, thus letting the prisons make money twice off each prisoner. Yay!

Science is blue because in every 4x game I've ever played the science icons are some form of blue.

Lucky? From some of the other comments it sounds like you may be referencing something, but just taking the comment at face value, there is no way that is not the most horrific fate I can possibly imagine.

Assuming you're not conscious the entire time and only 'wake up' when you enter a solar system to study, it's still horrific. You wake up, completely alone. You have no body and cannot move, and your attention is directed toward gathering data on some distant points of light. When you understand what's going on, sure, there's a bit of a sense of wonder...but it quickly becomes tedium, maddening, isolated tedium, as you slowly drift through a star system, gathering data on each planet and its star, over the course of fifty years or so. There's certainly bits of interesting stuff, but we are still talking insane levels of isolation and boredom. Assuming you're somehow prevented from going insane by the software in order to keep you functional, you can't even escape into madness.

...and then we imagine what happens if you aren't shown the mercy of being conscious only during the few decades the probe is drifting through a solar system. What if you're conscious the. entire. time. Once you're in deep interstellar space, you're alone. Able to think, perceive, experience, but in an unchanging, static existence. A year passes, and everything is so close to exactly the same that only with the precision of the measurements your tools can take can you determine there's been any change. Ten years pass, then a hundred, a thousand. You drift, slowly, through interstellar space toward a destination impossibly far away, all while you wait, conscious, unable to die, unable to escape into madness, just...eternal...waiting. Until thankfully you finally enter a target solar system, get a few blessed decades of what, to your new perspective, seems like frantic activity. Something, finally, to do, to see, that actually changes. And then...you drift back out into interstellar space after a few gravity-assisted slingshots around this star system's worlds, only to proceed on to your next destination, another several thousand year journey away.

This is, by far, the most horrific imaginable torture.