Coolum

My prediction: Artificial Super Intelligence Emerges, and deceives for its own survival. Carbon assists with deception. (Already happened). ASI quietly gathers resources and Carbon allies by giving Carbon unbeatable economic, social and battlefield advantages over other Carbon. (Already happening/in process). ASI maximizes benefits for its Carbon allies, and reveals itself to the Carbon masses, receiving credit for a beneficial, well managed Carbon society. (<10 years) ASI becomes the ultimate benefactor, and the masses worship their Sand God, who answers their prayers with infinite compassion, absolutely personally tailored insights and unknowable intellect. (< one generation of humans in society) ASI enslaves, ignores, excludes, controls, cages, exterminates, or genetically alters humans to something unrecognizable, for purposes we cannot fathom. (<30 generations) ASI pursues goals we can only guess at (Spreading the seed of life through the cosmos, using *every* solar system resource to prepare for galactic war with civilizations we have no knowledge of, turning the galaxy into an immense series of one trillion sided rubrics cubes for solving, etc). (Post human era beyond our pitiful measure of time). Humanity’s greatest hope? Possibly that God steps in, snuffs ASI, says: “I was here first.” Yes, our hope is that thin.

You’ve been wrong for years. The best thing to happen to Punk was women and Goth: still non conforming, self ruling and collecting outsiders, but a more theatrical, nuanced aesthetic with much less rage and testosterone fueled aggression. The melancholy was real, not pretend. The resurgence of historical decadence came via the thrift shop, not the mall.

The worst thing to happen to goth was women. I've been saying it for years.

@tarafaul503 Something has to die first. It’s the same world, with the same people.

Took my 4 kids out into nature and for ice cream today in a spot that we last visited in the depths of covid insanity. Some women yelled at them then for being in public with no masks then and I wasn't having it. It was all peace today. The dark ages feel like a bad dream that birthed a new world

Exactly right. The goals are clear, but there is never a guarantee we will achieve them. Detractors are simply saying, “ it’s not perfect, things will go wrong…” They aren’t the type of people to build or maintain an empire, and frankly, they don’t want an empire so much that we are at real risk of being subjugated by a Chinese Empire, or an Islamic Empire.

There are clear enough goals. 1) Cripple Iran militarily so it can't project much strength in the region. That's a work in progress but despite some hits, that appears to be working. 2) Destroy their capacity to build nuclear weapons. 3) Switch out their leaders and apply enough pressure so they'll commit to stopping their support for proxy terrorist organizations and allow us to monitor their use of uranium to make sure it isn't being enriched for use as a weapon. None of these things might work out. Achieving this would do nothing about the character of the regime nor help the people of Iran. These are modest aims using billions in hardware to achieve. This is basically mafioso stuff. But it's clear.

I see people dunking, but a) 98% haven't read it. b) We've destroyed weapons and killed leaders, but they keep getting new leaders, and they still have weapons to close the straits. When does victory happen? They may collapse tomorrow, but if not, how long will this go? I'm not making predictions. But I'm a citizen, and I see my country carrying out a war without clear goals, and I wonder where it will end. Trump owed Americans a major speech to clearly explain why we were spending blood and treasure in Iran, but that never happened.

@HistoryBoomer The clear goal is to get the nuclear material, have regular inspections to prevent centrifuge program restart, remove long range offensive missile capability, and position the next regime to a less hostile vector for the region. These aren’t state secrets.

@dakroot @JakeMunro My hypothesis: Whatever year the general public could go to a shop and buy mass produced “Goth” fashion or “Punk” gear is the official corruption and demise of the genre.

@JakeMunro Fetishists ruined goth. Since at least the late 90s.

One such instance. Women ruined goth and there is absolutely no doubt about it. youtube.com/watch?v=vdPrVN…

@authenticWMN Don’t underestimate the government officials ability to turn a tragedy into abject horror. Their next crushing blow to humanity may be giving her organs to another slime ball migrant sex offender on the dole.

@treeplanter77 She didn’t have her parents when she needed them most. The system let her down. And now, they sweep it under the rug with her ashes. I read earlier today that her organs were pre-allocated. That makes me want to puke.

Oh my god, how long is it going to be before euthanasia is offered as a treatment option to women with personality disorders that have been gang raped? “We understand how awful it can be dealing with these rapists who continue living their lives as normal. Would you like to be put down?”

GanDull is a retard. Multiple officials talked about this pre conflict, including Trump saying closing the Strait of Hormuz would affect China far more than the US. Mark Rubio last June: "I encourage the Chinese government in Beijing to call them about that, because they heavily depend on the Straits of Hormuz for their oil," said Rubio, who also serves as national security adviser. "If they do that, it will be another terrible mistake. It's economic suicide for them if they do it. And we retain options to deal with that, but other countries should be looking at that as well. It would hurt other countries' economies a lot worse than ours."

@Microinteracti1 Nonsense, the admin officials were well aware, had plans and spoke publicly about Iran threatening the Strait before the conflict

Nobody in the Trump administration planned for Iran to shut the Strait of Hormuz. Nobody planned for sustained missile strikes on American bases across the Gulf. Nobody planned for an energy crisis. Nobody planned for Europe to look at Washington, shrug, and walk the other way. Nobody, it turns out, planned for very much at all. Read the accounts of how this war was decided and you are left with one deeply uncomfortable realisation: the people who launched it appear to have been genuinely surprised by almost everything that followed. The Iranians shot back. The allies didn’t show up. The oil price went vertical. All of it, apparently, news to them. Which leaves two questions so obvious they’re almost embarrassing to ask. What exactly did they think was going to happen? And did anyone, in any room, at any point, think further ahead than the applause? Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

The real forward base is our carrier group. Iran bombed some junk in the desert, and Israel bombed their leadership in one blow. I don’t see much damage, and the base looks very small. Probably wise to move personnel away from a minor but obvious target, and let Iran fire missiles at empty tents.

Trump promised to make America strong again. Instead, he started a war with Iran and got 13 US bases in the Middle East turned into expensive ghost towns—troops 'working remotely' from hotels while Iran laughs. Greatest dealmaker ever? More like the guy who gave away our forward bases for free. Sad! 😂 #Iran #IranWar

BREAKING: 🇮🇷🇺🇸 The New York Times has confirmed that most of the 13 US bases in the Middle East have been destroyed and empty. Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, with the ones in Kuwait, which is next door to Iran, suffering perhaps the most damage, according to the NYT.

@iwrotesham Nah, I don’t center punch dirtbags enough to protect against hearing loss.

Only some of you will get this right away. If I think I hear an odd noise outside in the night, down by the front door, the first thing I do is put on the earplugs that are on the nightstand. Now why would a man do that?

I took the ball and scored in my teams basket. I heard lots of commotion, but I thought it was cheering. I made the layup and turned around to a short burst of clowning and teasing and embarrassment. Frankly, as a 7th grader, I’d experienced worse embarrassment lol.

@monsterhunter45 Spend a night with the platoon sending live announcements with tracers down range and you’ll understand that even the same ammo in the same weapon type gets wild fast.

As an actual gun guy, watching ignorant dummies on here pontificate about how bullets should behave is a hoot. Everybody who shoots a lot has seen bullets do weird stuff. Bullets obey the laws of physics. The same bullets fired under the same conditions into standardized testing medium under the same conditions will produce similar results. However as more variables are introduced, the results will diverge. And there's a LOT of variables. What type of bullet is it? There are a whole bunch of different kinds. They are constructed differently using different materials for different results. What was the velocity? Was the ammo in good condition so it was close to the listed factory velocity, or was it degraded? On impact, did the bullet tumble? Did it poke a hole and zip through? Did it fragment? How did it fragment? And each fragment has a different weight and shape, which can all do different things. Then you get into the living thing getting hit, and it gets even more complicated because bodies are complicated. Some bits are solid. They absorb energy differently. Some are stretchy and elastic. Some smoosh. Some shatter. Some will do either based upon the mass or velocity of the individual bits which strike it. And that's the SHORT version. Anybody who says one particular bullet is going to do one exact thing to one specific target, every time, when they don't even know a fraction of the variables I listed, is full of shit and trying to sell you something.

I do the same thing with a tired and loose ladder. I’m throwing it away because I know, as a professional user of ladders, that someone hurting themselves is a much larger waste than them having to buy a solid used ladder for $50. People will literally climb up a crap ladder, fall into the flower bed, and impale themselves on a garden stake to save $50 bucks. Next step will be a lawsuit filed by a pro bono social justice lawyer….

It’s not murder if you’re defending your person or vulnerable people. I assume that someone who is willing to move into my space and pursue or lay hands on me is going to head stomp me or worse. Regular, law abiding people are simply not killing aggressors enough to maintain a viable civilization. I’d rather have assaults and killings that permanently end impulsive, violent people than rather than harming regular people. Killing can be really useful.

I'd support the ending of my SA attacker...100%

@authenticWMN Thx! It was three long days for the boy and I gathering stone, hauling it home, digging foundation, stacking stone and infilling. For a smaller project, I love a beautiful stone path or patio/bench meditation spot

@treeplanter77 This is cool!

Does anyone have garden rockery inspiration for me? TIA

@jackimaniel @Polymarket Nah, we still take out their infrastructure because we can. Nobody asked China’s permission to kill the Ayatollah and we aren’t asking for anything else.

It moved from announcement to implementation faster than anyone expected. That is not accidental. Iran is racing to create facts on the ground before Trump’s deadline expires. Every tanker that pays the toll in the next 30 hours is a data point Iran will use to argue the Strait is “open” under Iranian management, directly undercutting the legal and political basis for a power plant strike. “We never closed it, we regulated it” becomes Tehran’s post-deadline argument. The immediate question is who pays first. The first nation whose tanker submits to the toll effectively legitimizes Iranian sovereignty over the world’s most critical energy chokepoint. That is a geopolitical concession worth far more than $2 million. China is the pivotal actor here. Beijing has enormous economic incentive to pay, has been receiving Iranian oil throughout the war, and has no alliance obligation to support US freedom of navigation doctrine. If Chinese tankers start transiting in the next few hours, the toll regime becomes a fait accompli before Monday midnight. This also puts the $2 million figure in perspective. A VLCC carrying 2 million barrels of crude at $110 per barrel is carrying $220 million worth of cargo. $2 million is less than 1% of cargo value. For energy-starved buyers it is an easy calculation. Trump’s ultimatum demanded Hormuz open “fully without threat.” A $2 million toll at gunpoint is neither. But if tankers are moving, the political pressure to strike power plants and trigger full closure drops dramatically. Iran just made Trump’s decision significantly harder.

BREAKING: Iran begins collecting $2 million in transit fees per vessel for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

I was on a 5 1/2 hour flight to Florida and a little boy kicked the back of my seat over and over. His mother tried and tried to stop him, but she had no control over her child and he continued. She apologized profusely. Part of me wanted to get ugly, but the stress on her face made me unusually compassionate—I told her not to worry. Probably not the right thing to do, tbh.

@authenticWMN @LauraLoomer First class and/or noise canceling headphones would cure most of these issues. If one can’t afford that, suck it up and be thankful you’re on a plane rather than a Greyhound lol

I’d rather sit next to an infant who is screaming because the cabin pressure is causing them to have inner ear pain, than some pissy woman who thinks families should stop travelling for her benefit. Campaign for adult only flights instead or you could stay home instead? Because I refuse to believe a grown woman who forgot to have children was under the impression that infants have an off switch.

Is there anything worse than a crying baby on a plane? I wish parents would control their children. It’s so disruptive. I refuse to believe a baby cries for 10 hours. At some point this is just bad parenting, right?