If that were the case, wouldn’t the ones who didn’t get the genetic engineering be far more likely to reproduce and stride along with natural selection? I have a hard time seeing that event ever happening, short of the human population en mass deciding to engineer every baby on the planet before a single generation of which could have lived life and been studied for its effects.

What I think is more likely as a great filter is humans eventually settling on the idea that organic matter is really terrible medium for life. So, something with much more longevity, strength, efficiency, and brain power gets synthesized and we move in. At a certain point, wouldn’t biological life die off because life tends to yield to its more evolved forms? If us meat bags had to compete, how could we?

and I think there are more interesting answers to the Fermi Paradox than the Great Filter. For example, the expansion of space not being something we can overcome in travel. Or, maybe the way we perceive space is just so anthropic—we’re making poor assumptions about other beings.

Why would you use something useless like kg that means nothing in 99.999…% of the natural universe?

By my math you’re referring to a backpack weighing about (3.7–4.6) × 10⁸ Planck masses.

Trust me, as some weird modern form of atheistic deist, I am not advocating for religion. But there’s something to be said about community values and how it overcomes the issues you’ve mentioned. Church goers don’t seem to struggle as much with getting their schedules in order, making time for community events, doing community service… when these things are seen as virtuous under the eye of their god, they get it done.

What are we missing now that makes modern life lack this community connection it once benefited from and religious folk seem to still have? What’s missing, why’d it go, and how can we get it back?

Exactly. I wouldn’t put it past them to regard the scrubbing as an “ongoing federal investigation” — which the article clearly mentions can still be redacted.

There’s an obligation not to believe it. If the Grinch fucks up your Christmas 10 years in a row, then tells you he’s ready to turn a new leaf, you don’t respond by telling him where you put the tree this year. You instead wonder if this is the newest trick up his sleeve, trickery. When he later does a good deed, you now wonder if he’s playing the long con here. When fellows start to advocate for the Grinch having changed, you wonder if your fellows are either naïve or in on the trick. I don’t know at what point the Grinch deserves trust, but it’s probably proportional in some way to the amount of trust they proved themselves not to deserve.

Also, if you later discover that the Grinch turned a new leaf only after discovering that the police seized his computer, found support for a pedophile in chief, and plans to make it public… then you wonder if the whole thing is just Grinch trying to survive the blowout. Grinch has been very bad.

Those poor raccoons have no idea they’ve picked the wrong side. They’d have been better off adapting to moles and burrowing beneath our climate catastrophes.

And why the fuck would companies get the refund? The costs of their import fees were passed onto consumers. Another fucking payday for the slime fucks while the actual population of human beings suffers?

All that but we can’t grow new teeth in our mouths. What’s up with that, nature?

Not unless you’re ready to change “hung up” to “tapped end.”

Bamboo as well.

I’d buy stock, bonds, or perhaps a lifetime supply of an air freshener. We’ll see.

You need to wipe it in honey first, and cover the honey in cinnamon. Then take a toothpick and push it through the center of that. Then, kid you not, chocolate syrup. Put it in the freezer and it’ll last a millennium.

PC gamers under 30 would be considered a significant minority compared to other <30yos?

Hmm… I don’t know. 30-50yos are raising kids right now. That’s a whole lot of 0-21orso year olds living in the bracket where people have PCs.

Then you have college students filling the gap, who likely have a laptop at least.

Her answer was insightful enough to know that Schumer leaving could mean you just get Schumer 2.0. The problem is bigger than one person. Schumer should go, yeah, but more importantly—the problem (of which Schumer is a manifestation) should go. Fight for change, not a facade thereof.

If Trump and Epstein’s relationship were the 2015/16 October surprise, could have worked. Like the emails, the photos, the rumors of Trump’s coordination via his beauty pageants, … all of that.

I think part of the problem is that the damning evidence comes right after slightly less damning evidence in every case. It’s like walking his follows up a steady staircase until they’re all full on fascist and can no longer recognize themselves (nor care to).

intergalactic tour guide: now if you look to your left, you’ll see the natural habitats of the Xpheno217 species. This is the only location in the whole universe they can live. And to your right, a brand new residential community fit with Walmart and their very own Chick-fil-A.

1-4¢? Eh, make it $2 nobody will notice. /s

People will get the deltas shipped in from global shops or try making it themselves with dangerous chemicals that need be properly removed afterward, don’t worry. The price between delta 8 and delta 9 is just too wide that a country built on market capitalism and class-based disenfranchisement won’t be able to resist. You’ll have a less safe blackmarket soon enough, but the good news is that drug dealers don’t check ID so it’s technically more accessible to kids now too. /s

Something something, capitalism innovates and Integrates technology … something something, a “one-dimensional” society … something something, gadgets keep people docile … something something, technology serving corporate/military power … something something, higher military spending driving technological innovation … something something, capitalist accumulation requires expanding markets/resources … something something, military power instrumentalized to secure economic advantage globally … something something, technological/ military capacity dominate others … something something, cycles of innovation, capitalization and domination continue while underlying imperatives unchallenged.

There was once a time when people educated themselves not because they wanted a particular job in the economy, but because they saw value in education and wanted to participate in the human tradition of advancing the specie’s ability to understand and use nature. You didn’t need school to be a blacksmith, for example, but perhaps just an apprenticeship (experience).

There’s a point to be made here, about how this degrades the value of education. It’s great for capitalism, making survival—or “living well”—contingent on qualifications derived from paid education. But what have we lost in this process? It feels, to me at least, like we’ve created a culture where education is a mere lineitem on a checklist. How might that change what education is, what it’s expected to be, and what sort of innovation comes from it?