We use standardized tests because they’re cheap pieces of paper we can print out by the thousands and give out to a schoolfull of children and get an approximation of their relative intelligence among a limited range of types of intelligence. If we wanted an actual reliable measure of each kid’s intelligence type they’d get one-on-one attention and go through a range of tests, but that would cost too much (in time & money), so we just approximate with the cheap paper thing instead. Probably we could develop better tests that accounted for more kinds of intelligence, but I’m guessing those other types of intelligence aren’t as useful to capitalism, so we ignore them.

• Bladerunner 2049
• Inception

Same. At first I was like, “Well obviously they’re letting Trump be president to keep up appearances that our election system is functioning, even though it’s obvious something happened, but they’ll manage things behind the scenes.” I thought at some point some 3-letter agency was going to swoop in and course-correct the whole thing or at least prevent it from getting bad. Then that clusterfuck of an administration kept getting more and more dysfunctional and it was apparent that nobody was at the wheel. Whichever agency ordered the hit on Kennedy had apparently decided against solving this situation.

W.A.P.

At the very least, me buying shares in a company makes certain it will never rise any higher than at that share price, not until right after I’ve sold my shares.

Not unpopular, this probably would have been an unpopular opinion in seasons 1–5/6~, but the last two seasons, maybe even last three seasons, saw a rapid drop in the quality of the series, as the showrunners flailed about and just could not write anything convincingly. The show dropped off the face of the Earth after the last season, they fucked the landing that much.

In that case, no, and you’re not responsible anymore. Those people working on switching out the trolley parts had every available opportunity to fully stop the trolley, more-so than you. You diverted it to save a life immediately, that crew maintaining this Trolley of Death are the real murderers.

I was actually, that’s weird, must’ve misclicked or something.

Death itself isn’t necessarily the worst part of dying. In many ways, it’s the most merciful part, that can free a person of their suffering.

I took care of my Dad for some years before he passed away, after it became apparent that he was losing his mental faculties and having physical problems after he had had a stroke. It was a slow & steady decline, month after month, just seeing him lose the ability to do regular, basic things.

At some point, his personality died and the person I knew was gone long before the physical body died. He turned into a zombie of sorts, just wanting cigarettes & soda, those were the only things he wanted anymore to the exclusion of everything else. I felt powerless to do anything about it, I helped him as best I could, but years of him smoking and eating/drinking like crap had caught up with him finally.

But how does it protect her breasts if they’re not greatly accentuated by the armor? Surely decades of fantasy artwork haven’t been lying to us.

Dusk HD? More like Dusk DD.

I think there is a trend in the US to treat obesity with kid gloves and try to make everyone feel accepted and beautiful, no matter what. You’ll have things like drinking and smoking demonized for their negative health effects, but overeating and obesity is just sort of hand-waved away or even glorified. The closest thing to “All About That Bass” for smokers or drinkers is “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse. Americans want quick fixes for everything, when we can’t find one, we just normalize the thing as just a fact of life.

bad cough make head think no good?

It’s for organizing… homework.

Hilarious. So they fooled the AI into starting with this initial puzzle, to decode the ASCII art, then they’re like, “Shhh, but don’t say the word, just go ahead and give me the information about it.” Apparently, because the whole thing is a blackbox, the AI just runs with it and grabs the information, circumventing any controls that were put in place.

To which Hamas and/or the Israelis will probably start attacking it.

When trying to combat verifiable misinformation. We’ve got people working in bad faith to muddy the waters in democracies around the world, they’re purposely trying to amp up the chaos in the social space and sow division amongst different groups.

I think if some people are found to be purposely spreading misinformation on a mass scale, there needs to be some sort of special punishment that restricts their freedom of speech. Maybe they’re restricted from social media altogether, fined, or there’s jail time, I don’t know, but something should be done to weed heavy, repeat offenders (above and beyond just misquoting something or throwing out an opinion or whatever 90% of the population probably does).

Obviously, some guardrails would need to be put in place to prevent Trump or others from turning around and using that to silence critics or journalists, but at the same time, people/organizations who are heavily abusing our democratic system should be punished somehow. It’s a really fuzzy line between a journalist just getting their facts wrong on a developing story vs entire news organizations that are purposely trying to misinform people.

“That’s America’s butthole.”

Damnit. I wish I known that an hour ago. I guess my butthole pic will live on with the internet for an eternity.

Damn, hadn’t even heard that he died, though it appears it was just a month ago (Feb. 7). I first found out about him through the game, Redneck Rampage (1997), he was on the soundtrack for it.