If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

This quote from LBJ centres me. Its been the conservative tactic for literally decades, from African Americans, to lgbtq+, to immigrants; it’s always been the same grift:

• Choose your marginalised group-du-jour.
• Convince a whole lot of stupid people that that group is the cause of all their problems.
• Profit.

Its honestly astonishing how blatant it really is.

Science is never “sure”. And I’m not a quantum physicist. But that’s the gist of it, yes. I’m not smart enough to know all the details though.

or the human mind dilates my final moments into an eternity because it cannot comprehend non-existence.

Gawdamm I never thought of that possibility. You’ve broken my brain sir/ma’am. I’m going to be useless for the rest of the day contemplating this.

Basically it’s related to the uncertainty principle; the cat is both alive and dead until you look inside the box.

Let’s say i’m about to roll a dice. The result of that dice throw is in a state of superposition until it’s thrown. Meaning that until it is thrown, all results exist. And it’s only when the dice is thrown and the result is observed that the wave function collapses to a number from 1 thru 6.

From there, there are two camps of scientists:

One camp believes that all other superpositions dissipate once the roll is made. So if you roll a one, then the universes in which you rolled a 2 thru 6 just kind of evaporate, for example.

The Second camp that believes that all superpositions exist, and branch off into 6 different universes (one where each number was rolled) and they all continue unaware of the other universes existence (Multiverse theory)

Don’t you find that just a tiny bit wrong?

Nope.

I save my empathy for people who actually have empathy of their own.

You and the Candles by Hawksley Workman

At this point there is nothing that they could do to make Creation Engine feel “new”. I don’t understand why they keep beating that dead horse.

A couple of months ago, I had some extra money, so I bought Starfield because I had an itch to go back into my Crimson Fleet character.

The problem was that a couple of weeks before that, I had also purchased a game that I had wanted for years, but could never justify spending the high price of new games on, Red Dead Redemption 2. In comparison, Starfield just felt so…lazy… in ways both big and small, beyond the common issues like repetitive dungeons, barren worlds, loading screens, etc…

The biggest thing I noticed immediately was the effect of bumping into people as you’re walking. If you compare a Rockstar Game (Or even an assassin’s creed game), where npcs will make a comment, will move out of the way, get upset, etc… Whereas in Bethesda can’t be bothered to do anything except slide you to the right when bumping into a character, who doesn’t react or flinch in any way.

I started noticing those little things fucking everywhere. And I have to believe that little limitations like that are because it’s running on an engine that is older than dirt.

This was honestly my biggest fear for a lot of FOSS applications.

Not necessarily in a malicious way (although there’s certainly that happening as well). I think there’s a lot of users who want to contribute, but don’t know how to code, and suddenly think…hey…this is great! I can help out now!

Well meaning slop is still slop.

My theory is there are 100s of timelines where humanity nuked itself. 100s of timelines where I was never born, or got kidnapped during that “running away” incident, or got murdered by my brother during a fight, or died of suicide.

From a quantum theory, wave function collapse perspective, that’s as good a theory as any, and it’s also one that that personally subscribe to.

What pissed me off the most about Lost is that, very early on, I pegged onto the fact that they were naming a lot of characters after prominent social philosophers; all of whom wrote about things like inequality, the social contract, human nature, etc…

• John Locke (John Locke, Liberty and the social contract)
• Desmond Hume (David Hume, treatise of human nature)
• Danielle Rousseau (Jean-Jacque Rousseau, discourse on inequality and the social contract)
• Boone Carlyle (Thomas Carlyle, the importance of belief)
• Juliette Burke (Edmund Burke, Philosophy of Conservatism)
• Mikhail Bakunin (Mikhail Bakunin, Russian Anarchist)

And a few others. As they introduce these characters, they set them up in opposition to each other and I’m thinking "okay…this means something. They’re trying to say something about society in a Lord of the Flies type of way.

I remember myself and a friend of mine discussing the show endlessly after each episode wondering what it all meant in that context. And then…nope…they were all just dead all this time. It meant…precisely…jack…shit.

And it couldn’t have been an accident that they so many promininent social philosophers showed up. They CHOSE to name those characters that…for no other reason than a fuck-you-red-herring.

I can’t even begin to describe how much that angered me. I’ve despised JJ Abrams ever since.

Is it because they execute pedophiles?

If Europe survived Napolean they’ll survive a syphillitic dementia patient from a country that is less than a quarter of it’s age.

Life finds a way…if there is a reason to do so.

My point is, once we’ve secured all the resources in the solar system, there is no reason to find a way.

Does alien life exist somewhere? Yes. Absolutely. It would be impossible for it not to given the size of the universe and the laws of probability.

Is that alien life multicellular? Again. Yes. For the same reason as above. In a functionally infinite universe, the roll of the dice is going to come up at least a few times.

Is that alien life intelligent? Maybe. But in my opinion, probably. Intelligent life arose here after many many stops and starts. It’s probably that given enough kicks at the can, multicellular life can evolve intelligence on any planet where it arises if the conditions are right.

Has that intelligent life visited us? No. No intelligent life has ever left their own solar system except possibly in the form or a one-way generation ship.

Life evolves, either biologically or technologically, because of competition for resources. From the most basic amoeba competing for the heat from a steam vent at the bottom of an ocean, to humans competing for oil and minerals, life is about resources gathering.

So what happens when we finally are able to access the resources of the solar system, which are effectively limitless (at least from a human perspective)? Nothing. We stagnate. There’s no impetus to go further than that. Scientists may want to. But pure science is a myth. People paying the bills are what drive us forward. and it’s reasonable to assume that any life that evolves would do so facing the same pressures.

Obviously Brian May from Queen.

Can’t go fishing witout bait.

Sloth from the Goonies could outsmart the current administration, let’s be honest.

I absolutely agree. I wasn’t trying to defend the company’s practice. Just explaining why they make those kind of decisions.

It absolutely sucks, but from a company perspective it’s not about greed, it’s about legal liability. If they provide food to a charity and someone gets sick from it, they are responsible for it. So the legal danger of giving away your “close to be expired” food is fraught with corporate danger.

Does it suck. Yes. Absolutely. But Joe opened them up to a potential lawsuit.

Whoops. Thanks for the catch.