Quality Bear

@justalexoki Jesus’ message comes from a civilization at the end of time (as do the messages of all true prophets and deities witnessed by man). An intelligent civilization somewhere in the Universe will need to create heaven for them to even exist let alone exist forever.

what did Jesus mean when he said "the kingdom of heaven is at hand"?

@owenbroadcast What are the philosophical implications of mountains breathing? The valleys breathing in warm air and expelling cold.

gnomes are often classically depicted with mushrooms: obtaining them, living around them: if mushrooms eat other life forms and breathe oxygen, we could say this gnomish activity is almost like a form of ranching - cultivating a somewhat domesticated relationship with an animal.

it seems significant that mushrooms breathe in oxygen, like animals, unlike essentially all other plants. this lesser known fact has some philosophical implications - we can imagine spiritually filing them as the “lowest animal”, rather than the popular view of an atypical plant:

@JohannesAchill @dissidentwest The hero’s main complaint with American society is that the government gave up on technological progress and was censoring the truth of what Americans have achieved. I think there’s a strong conservative message in that.

Yes. Nolan’s flicks are all nothing but suck-ups to the current ideology. Interstellar is predicated on climate change mania. His Batman is a neocon who promotes the Patriot Act. And that’s aside from the ridiculous air of pretentiousness his flicks have about them. Nothing of the ease with which Kubrick produced his masterpieces.

You may have the courage to hate The Odyssey, but do you have the courage to hate the rest of Christopher Nolan’s overhyped and grotesquely pretentious filmography?

@justalexoki Take them to the store and have them pick out some foods they want to try. Get a bunch of options between what everyone in the family wants. Make a board of the options and gently encourage exploration of different foods. Don’t push it but model trying and describing the foods.

how do you fix a fussy eater?

@mimi10v3 It is impossible to predict the future because the creation of new knowledge (and how that knowledge is deployed) is inherently unknowable. If we knew what knowledge will be created we’d already have that knowledge.

to predict the future you have to build a model that corresponds to features of reality and play it forward faster than time advances in reality so you can make the prediction before the event occurs. model fidelity depends on scale and choosing the right abstractions, as the model scales at some point it becomes more of a simulation. but if it fits within the system being modeled and runs fast enough to make useful predictions it has to be way smaller than reality. planning is prediction with branching between alternate actions an agent might take. we all plan all the time- worrying, daydreaming, rehearsing our future behavior. i expect all intelligent agents would. sometimes i wonder if our whole reality is a simulation running inside the mind of a superintelligence

@Howlingmutant0 You strike me as more of a Gertrude.

I may transition - God knows I’m a sexual failure and I could certainly use the attention. But I’m not gonna be a Madison or an Amber or something cute, I need to be realistic about it and be an Edith or a Helga or something

@DrewVento @djmommytrance call her a slur

@djmommytrance Would

the gay allegations continue

man, this is such a scummy post. I have serious substantive disagreements with Nicholas, but his resume, and his willingness to put it in public, is a strong positive signal. do stuff. think in public. be willing to be embarrassed. let the peanut gallery mock.

@Caxapa617 @JonahDispatch Caxapa raped me when I was a minor

@JonahDispatch Israel rapes people with dogs.

This will end with ruined careers and reputations, and deservedly so. May take a while though.

@matthere1 @simonsarris @max_spero_ This is a contradiction. It can’t be said that bison don’t want to be domesticated and they are incapable of making future plans. If they’re incapable of understanding the consequences of plans then their present desires hold no weight. It’s not an informed choice.

There is something that it is like to be a wild bison roaming on the plains for 20 years that has nothing to do with "solving problems" that humans solved for themselves. Even violent death by wolves isn't something bad for it. It's part of the natural lifecycle for this once wild animal. It doesn't want to be domesticated so it can live a more comfortable life. Humans are different than bisons of course. We can think into the future and plan for what's next. But even our "solving problems" is full of unintended consequences that aren't understood until later. Smartphones are a good example.

Can anyone explain to me why we don’t have ethical meat? Surely we can give the farm animal a significantly better life than it would have lived in the wild.

@matthere1 @simonsarris @max_spero_ Why is the natural world which is filled with starvation, disease, stress from predators and the elements better than a cultivated world that has solved all of those problems for domesticated animals?

@simonsarris @max_spero_ “live (and die) better lives…” is subjective. domestication changed what that means for some animals, but the bison being killed in the wild is natural and normal for him. we need more of this natural world, not less.

@rockets_enjoyer @simonsarris @onsoc63 @max_spero_ @AcornBluffFarms Reading comprehension issue. The question is why don’t we have this. The answer is we do but people tend to continue buying the cheaper option.

@simonsarris @onsoc63 @max_spero_ @AcornBluffFarms This comment feels a bit whitewashy. 98% of pigs and 99.9% of chickens come from factory farms, where the animals live horrendous lives from birth to slaughter. In practice, almost everyone purchases the cheap factory farmed meat from the store

@softminus A nuclear power plant is not the same as nuclear weapons. This ignorance is why we’re polluting the planet with carbon instead of enjoying clean energy.

"more Americans would rather live near a nuclear power plant than a data center" the AI industry and AI guys are such optics nvkes that people would rather live next to literal nukes

@GarrettPetersen Time to introduce him to the mushroom suits that turn decaying bodies into trees.

2.8 year old figured out death and is very sad. He asked, "will I grow back?"

@bryancsk Did you enjoy the Eiffel Tower?

Inside you are two Australians

Leor is being his usual sober self, but note that this is at least the FOURTH hoax by the NYT since October 7. 1. The headline story of 500 dead in an airstrike on Ahli Arab hospital on October 17, 2023. There was no Israeli airstrike. There was a defective Palestinian Islamic Jihad artillery rocket – meant for Israeli civilians – that went off-course and hit the hospital parking lot, killing 0-50 people. The NYT even used a false photo – of a completely different area – to back up the wildly false headline with an image of destruction. 2. A bizarre story alleging that IDF soldiers were shooting young Gazan children in the head, citing fake medical scans. The "scans" showed an intact bullet perfectly centered in a child's head with no entry wound, no bone fragments – just an unfragmented rifle round magically resting peacefully dead center in the brain... 3. Photos of purportedly starving Gazan children, with strangely well-fed mothers. The children had medical conditions like cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy, which the NYT did not disclose. 4. This week's magic rape dogs. The NYT is not a credible news organization. They're Tucker Carlson tier, frequently making large false claims. They apparently have no framework or process to mitigate their extreme ideological bias and monoculture, and they lack basic journalistic standards for sourcing.

@EmeraldRobinson Over 60% of Americans use an AI service multiple times a week. Americans are overwhelmingly voting for AI.

Nobody in America voted for data centers. Nobody in America voted for AI. Nobody in America voted for surveillance capitalism. The entire fabric of our society is being changed without the will of the people. Without a vote.

@tautologer Unless she’s talking about Israel

it's crazy that the "no bananas under socialism" lady ended up being one of the most reasonable leftists on this entire website & one of my few good overtly political follows

@GeoffWacker @RyanBelleman The California utility company has made it clear no one is losing their power.

@GeoffWacker @RyanBelleman So the California utility will just buy energy from another company. Big whoop. We have energy markets for a reason.

The datacenter/water is just insane, because most people have no idea how much water goes into everyday things that are already embedded in 21st century American life. For example, it takes 23 gallons of irrigation to produce a gallon of almond milk.