Currently, our collective behavior is parasitic and destructive to the environment, yes. But it’s important to draw a distinction here - a virus or bacterial infection or a parasite are locked into their respective strategies. They cannot help being what they are.

We don’t get that excuse. Humans are the ultimate generalists; we specialized into learning and communicating new behaviors between ourselves. Unlike the flu or a ringworm, we have the capacity to change how we interact with the environment.

genre defining design, literal decades ahead of the rest of the industry

Half-Life? What’s that? I’m talking about Team Fortress 2 hats

It’s when you start including structures within cells that the complexity moves beyond anything we’re currently capable of computing.

Self Driving is only safer than people in absolutely pristine road conditions with no inclement weather and no construction. As soon as anything disrupts “normal” road conditions, self driving becomes significantly more dangerous than a human driving.

speaking of an unrelated chip on one’s shoulder…

Terrorism is internationally recognized as when a group or organization unaffiliated with a recognized government uses violence to achieve a political goal. “Terrorist state” is a contradiction in terms.

Netanyahu is leading a genocide and starting wars, all to avoid the regular democratic and legal process of Israel. Why are you carrying water for him?

They renewed the PATRIOT act while Obama was in office.

“Bogged down” is an excuse. The military is a logistics machine. If it takes longer to pull out, then it takes longer, fine. But “bogged down” is the kind of half-asses face saving language you trot out when you don’t actually want to leave, but don’t want to look like you gung-ho for staying.

Obama wasn’t perfect—not even great. But, those are weird things to lay on him.

yeah, yeah, fuck me for remembering what he campaigned on, right?

more than that, Obama had enough of a public mandate, he could have rolled back everything Bush did. The Afghanistan invasion, the extraordinary rendition, the “enhanced interrogation”, the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. He could have ended all of those.

He could have had a historic presidency, could have redefined what the United States was going to be in the 21st century. Instead, he let the previous administration decide it for him.

Damn Christians, they ruined Christianity!

Cheerful Baptist, really. I think its on accounta all the soda.

the sports gambling is getting out of hand, yeah

whats that thing they say, “It’s dangerous to be an enemy of the United States, but it’s deadly to be an ally.”

What they mean is that before Turing, “computer” was literally a person’s job description. You hand a professional a stack of calculations with some typos, part of the job is correcting those out. Newfangled machine comes along with the same name as the job, among the first thing people are gonna ask about is where it fall short.

Like, if I made a machine called “assistant”, it’d be natural for people to point out and ask about all the things a person can do that a machine just never could.

imagine how many more rockets we could reuse if the NASA subdivision formerly known as SpaceX did literally any of the standard, rigorous fault-checks.

When the Maori invade england and start forcing their customs on the people there, then maybe you might come somewhere close to pointing out a double standard. (also, berserker brits, lol what a concept)

We don’t have Trump because people started behaving poorly, we have Trump because there’s been half a century of constricting living standards and a wealthy political duopoly that just doesn’t care. Obama bailing out the banks rather than the people that lost their homes did more to kill civility than anything Trump has done.

These lawmakers were elected to be the voice of the people they represent.

https://www.dw.com/en/new-zealand-42000-demonstrate-support-for-maori-rights/a-70816454

New Zealand: 42,000 demonstrate support for Maori rights

Thousands turned out despite the bill having little chance of becoming law, saying it was important to show the extent of dissent

but feel free to keep jerkin it to ‘norms and civility’, i suppose

Democrats win by turning out people who otherwise don’t vote. If they aren’t already turned on by republicans talking like this, will those people see this as anything other than Democrats talking down to them?

People recognize when they’re being talked down to, this is a losing strategy.

part of being an adult is doing the work in front of you that needs doing, regardless of "ought"s "supposed to"s

we all benefit from the next generation learning to treat others properly, regardless of our own parental status

We cut them out of the SWIFT payment system. All our economists were saying they wouldn’t last more than a few months. That was four years ago.