Mothers, don’t let your babies grow up to be game devs…

AI generated art is everywhere now.

Edit: The ai comment is a joke because the postman has six fingers.

I believe that’s not the law though. The law outlines the conditions under which a person has an “expectation of privacy.” If you’re inside your house, you have an expectation of privacy and so should not be filmed. If you’re on the sidewalk in public, you have no expectation of privacy. If you’re in a private establishment (restaurant or store for instance), the owner or their representatives can ask you not to record and you have to comply.

All of street photography depends on this kind of legal framework.

No wonder they think we’re all commies. They can’t read a map.

This is the effect of having an authoritarian in charge. The propaganda that gets produced is done to convey a sense of power of the person/party, its popularity, and the scale of the internal and external “enemy threat.”

I think a lot of people have their fingers crossed on this one.

How could she post this and not post the discrete math joke?

Thats a good point. We should design the system so that it can be adapted to population changes with planned transitions and levels of support, no matter what generated it. However, we should probably not base a funding model intended to run for multiple decades around an edge case like what happened during Covid.

Theoretical biologist here. I consider viruses to define the lower edge of what I’d consider “alive.” I similarly consider prions to be “not alive,” but to define a position towards the upper limit of complex, self-reproducing chemistry. There’s some research going on here to better understand how replication reactions (maybe encased in a lipid bubble to keep the reaction free from the environment) may lead to increasing complexity and proto-cells. That’s not what prions are, but the idea is that a property like replication is necessary but not sufficient and to build from what we know regarding the environment and possible chemicals.

I consider a virus to be alive because they rise to the level of complexity and adaptive dynamics I feel should be associated with living systems. I’ll paint with a broad brush here, but they have genes, a division between genotype and phenotype, the populations evolve as part of an ecosystem with all of the associated dynamics of adaptation and speciation, and they have relatively complex structures consisting of multiple distinct elements. “Alive,” to me, shouldn’t be approached as a binary concept - I’m not sure what it conceptually adds to the discussion. Instead, I think it should be approached as a gradient of properties any one of which may be more or less present. I feel the same about intelligence, theory of mind, and animal communication.

The thing to remember when thinking about questions like this is that when science (or history or literature…) is taught as a beginner’s subject (primary and secondary school), it’s often approached in a highly simplified manner - simplified to the point of inaccuracy sometimes. Many instructors will take the approach of having students memorize lists for regurgitation on exams - the seven properties of life, a gene is a length of dna that encodes for a protein, the definition of a species, and so on. I don’t really like that approach, and to be honest I was never any good at it myself.

I really think there are two different aspects to the classification of the threat. It’s actually pretty analogous to the Afghanistan War.

First, neither Al Quaeda nor Hamas represent an existential threat to their opponents. The US hasn’t really faced a believable existential threat since the collapse of the USSR, Israel hasn’t really faced one since the 80s. Countries in Eastern Europe face an existential threat from Russia. And so on. Killing 1200 (or 3000) people, no matter how brutally or unjustified or evil it seems, it does not threaten to destroy the state of Israel. It is, of course, now an existential threat to Netanyahu, which is one reason why it’s being pursued with such enthusiasm.

The second aspect builds from the first and questions whether the solution pursued by Israel (and the US) were both efficient (ie proportional to the threat so as not to divert attention and resources from other threats) and effective. They have to be expected to achieve specific and measurable goals and timelines.

The ability to pull off an Oct 7th might have been equally well but more efficiently and effectively with intelligence and commando units, and Israel would have been given free rein by most of the planet to do so.

Hamas never posed an existential threat to Israel.

Well, the suit that overturned his bonus was a single shareholder suit and that one was obviously successful.

I have been surprised there haven’t been more shareholder suits to be honest. They could challenge fiduciary responsibility on the basis of him robbing Peter to pay Paul by raiding Tesla for engineers, not to mention dividing his own time and effort between too many unrelated interests.

Supporters say the new law aims to stop men from poisoning pregnant partners in order to induce abortion without consent.

Any time they make up this kind of excuse for passing onerous and unnecessary legislation - whether it’s abortion medication or drag shows or bathroom bills - we have to ask two questions:

1. How common is the behavior that this is intended to address?
2. How much do you expect this to go down as a result of the legislation, and how long should it take?

If they can’t answer that, they should face having their legislation blocked as failing to establish an evidence-based argument.

“I’m going to ban electric vehicle sales and also appoint Elon Musk as a White House advisor.”

-TFG

Bye, Felicia.

Are the Indian soldiers a UN unit or is that their regular uniform?

Is that supposed to be a gotcha? I’m asking because you entirely dodged the fact that he’s grifting the republicans, which calls your point into question.

It would be stupid if the Dems didn’t also fund third party candidates. That doesn’t change the fact that Kennedy and Stein are grifting Republican money to try to run as spoilers. You’re so all in on the line about democrats being evil I really have to question whether you’re arguing in good faith.

He’s gotten tens of millions of dollars from large money RNC donors, my peaceful friend.

No, like Jill Stein he’s just grifting. He’s gotten tens of millions of dollars donated.

Come on Brian, cheer up!

I mean, what have you got to lose? You know, you come from nothing You’re going back to nothing What have you lost? Nothing!

Always look on the bright side of life!

Seventeen is also easier to fit into lyrics. Dancing Queen by ABBA. Sexy + 17 by the Stray Cats (although the song was about ditching high school classes). At Seventeen by Janis Ian (who was singing about herself at 17). Paradise by the Dashboard Light by Meatloaf (again about both being high schoolers, but he’s a bit of a creep anyway).

I might be giving my age away here.