Ivanka is flailing. She can lie for her father and face jail; plead the Fifth and try to maintain her innocence independently: or tell the truth and send trump to jail.

The 1% really believe AI is their golden ticket to get rid of all of us. They’re going after professions with strong unions first and publicly, so that they can try to poison us all against collective bargaining, which is our only chance against them.

Five week trial and a 4 hour jury verdict? That’s insane. The jury listened to a month plus of evidence and came to a verdict before they bothered to order food.

It is incredibly refreshing to not be inundated with ads. Reddit absorbed all the web 1.0 communities one-by-one, then changed just slowly enough to boil the frog. The recent changes went overboard, rushing for the ipo. They showed their real hand. I won’t be going back.

But at the same time, I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to stay there. Hopefully, they’ll find their way here, but if not I wish them all the best.

Contempt of court that arises during a trial has zero effect on the outcome. A judge can throw you in jail for violating decorum, much less violating an order.

Trump’s legal team needs to watch My Cousin Vinny again.

When a character endures for 60 years, as Kirk has, it’s going to need an update. I’m not knocking Chris Pine, but I think what he was given to work with was shallow.

Kirk had a lot of layers to him, but he was also developed in the 60s cultural context. Hugh Hefner was a sexual freedom icon. The culture up until then was incredibly puritanical. Kirk being so lascivious and women loving him for it was liberating.

Now, we’re much more in touch with reality. Men in positions of power being sexually suggestive with women they employ is deplorable. We live in a different world now.

To endure as an icon, Kirk has to change. Nice to see more thoughtful writers get a chance to bring the character to this generation. I sincerely hope that decades from now new writers will adapt Kirk to make him outgrow our archaic and comparatively barbarous values.

A murder mystery with no suspects. Forever.

Your community culture will adapt to service our ad revenue.

“I’m calling in sick and playing video games today. They better not bother me unless there’s a battle or first contact. I was so much happier on the garbage scow.”

The actors’ strike is unique in that compromising on AI kills the existence of their profession. Once their likeness and voice can be replicated by machines, they are all fired and have zero job prospects moving forward.

TPTB will churn out endless drivel at zero cost, pay actors nothing, and drown the world in more shallow, meaningless deepfake AI culture.

They’re going after the arts first for a reason.

A thought experiment occurred to me. What is the absolute best subject for a zero tolerance policy? Genocide is the first thought. The most horrific evil that could ever be inflicted.

But let’s say hypothetically, there was a virus that was highly-transmissible and has a 100% fatality rate. A virus killing all of mankind. And let’s say somehow this virus is sentient. We have no idea how it works, but we can confirm that it thinks, feels, etc. The virus is provably sentient for our hypothetical purposes.

If someone develops an absolute cure to the disease, it will save everyone, but it will also wipe out the sentient virus. That is technically genocide, but it saves all life from death. Should a zero tolerance policy govern? Or can we at least have a conversation about wiping out the sentient virus?

Zero tolerance policies ensure injustice in outlier cases. Yes, it’s unethical to interfere in a civilization’s development 99.9% of the time, but there are always exceptions. Ignoring outliers is pretending your system is above the fundamental laws of the universe.

The shakedown crew figures everything out. That’s the job.

Thanks for being on top of things and thanks for this instance

“Fuck 21st century physics. FTL, bitches!”

One of the all-time best episodes of all of trek.