Is there a way to take care of billionaires that’s not so hard to carry around on a bike?

Don’t necessarily need to have a Ph.D. A professor of history once published a paper saying “No Irish Need Apply” signs were a myth. A 14 year old found counterexamples, and did a good enough job to get the takedown published.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/rebecca-fried-the-14yearold-student-who-outwitted-a-college-historian-10437603.html

I demand the Magna Carta and the Code of Hammurabi be posted, using the same argument.

Stop expecting politians to be the source of change. The results will be lackluster, at best.

Yes. Since that clearly doesn’t work, what’s next?

My doctor has added a few extra checks to visits so it can be billed to the insurance company as a general checkup, and not the specific thing I came in for that would bill at a much higher rate. I appreciate him doing that, but he shouldn’t have to.

By the time the system has consolidated enough that there is little effective competition, those companies have also become so large that they can lobby for regulatory capture. It’s not zero regulation, but rather a form of regulation that solidifies their position while still providing the same shitty service they always have.

Regulation won’t work. The system is too far gone.

That’s about right.

Federal prosecution is rare. If they charge you with marijuana possession at the federal level, then there’s probably a list of a dozen other charges on top of it, and at least one of them is the serious thing they’re actually after you for. Feds don’t waste their time with this shit unless there’s a bigger reason.

So what Biden did has very little practical effect. A bunch of people got one charge among many taken off their record. That’s what he’s able to do with just a stroke of a pen. The rest is dependent on states, federal congress, or the vast federal bureaucracy.

We go orders of magnitude faster than evolution on tons of things. It’s not that big of a claim.

You’re not doing yourself any favors with this reply.

You’re right that consciousness and intelligence are not the same. Our language tends to conflate the two.

However, evolution created consciousness over billions of years by emergent factors and no source of specific direction besides being more successful at reproduction. We can likely get there orders of magnitude faster than evolution could. The big problem would be recognizing it for what it is when it’s here.

Your lips do important work in making a trumpet play. Dolphins don’t have the fine control over their lips that would be necessary. Maybe the blowhole does?

Grading on a curve, here.

This is why Dooku made a shitty Sith. His underlying reasons were just, but didn’t stop to think about who he was hooking up with. He’s ultimately a tragic figure of someone who meant well and fucked it up.

Sith ethos doesn’t work like that. It’s a self-centered philosophy; you gain power for the sake of doing what you please. Palatine was never going to have Dooku as an apprentice long term.

Anakin’s reasons were selfish. His relationship with Padme was always toxic, immature, and selfish. Him wanting to save her was fundamentally selfish. It wasn’t for her sake as a person apart from Anakin. That’s exactly the kind of behavior the Sith philosophy encourages.

Turns out, it’s easier to break stuff than to create actual policy.

Which party voted for all the state level legalization efforts?

Notice that other than Baldur’s Gate and Elden Ring, those are pretty old titles at this point. The AAA studios are doing everything they can to make sure those nightmares never happen again.

“You don’t actually read the bible, you just cherry picked some bits out of the atheist meme book” - actual response I’ve gotten when I’ve brought this up.

It’s not just nudes, though. This could happen for any deleted picture. I’m not really expecting them to zero out the file system block or anything, but this implies they’re not even doing file system level deletion.

Let’s fix climate change except for the part where Florida sinks into the ocean.