Ooooh, are we doing another stint of coups and attempts across West Africa?

Last time was so lame. Do Togo next!

Wait… Does DJT actually like real football?

Posting all over social media about the pagan origins of modern Xmas and wishing I knew enough people that were cool to have a proper Saturnalia feast. Because that’s what cool people do.

Also a funny Photoshop holiday card.

Yet it’s very much a weekly topic of conversion. The religious leaders are the ones pushing it.

The last president said the same exact “I’ll sign it when it passes” thing. Parliament knows the EU and the US will drop funding if they pass the same draconian shit that Uganda passed.

Your premise is a bit flawed here, and I appreciate where you’re coming from with this.

I would say it’s probably true that no human has read every book written by humans. And while reading about those experiences are insightful, any person of any intelligence can go through a full and rich life with lots of introspection and cosmic-level thought without ever reading about how other people experience the same things. If two young kids are abandoned on an island and grow up there into adults, and have the entirety of human knowledge available to them, is that the only way they would be able to experience love or sadness or envy or joy? Of course not. With or without books makes no difference.

Knowledge is not intelligence in this sense. An LLM is no more able to understand the data it’s trained on than Excel understands the numbers in a spreadsheet. If I ask an LLM to interpret Moby Dick for me, it will pick the statistically most likely words to be next to each other based on all the reviews of Moby Dick it’s trained on. If you take an LLM and train it on books with no critiques of books, it would just summarize the book because it doesn’t know what a critique looks like to try and put the words in the right order.

Also, AGI is not well-defined, but emotions are no where in the equation. AGI is about human or better intelligence at cognitive tasks, like math, writing, etc. It’s basically taking several narrow AI systems specialized on one task each and combining them in a single system. AGI is not “the singularity” or whatever. It’s a commercially viable system that makes money for wealthy people.

“We will keep doing this until one time people aren’t paying attention and we get this.”

Most likely of means someone from a place where wild polio remains, Afghanistan or Pakistan, is in Hamburg. Could be an adult, as they won’t be symptomatic but can spread the virus.

If you’re posting this somewhere that anyone else can see it, then it’s going to get scraped. There no corner of the internet where you can post stuff and expect it to just sit there. People scrape Patreon, people scrape FB and IG, which require logins and can limit who sees what. People scrape the fediverse. Short of a Whatsapp or Signal group with like 10 people, it’s going to get scraped.

I suggest you find a balance with what you want to share and who is going to see it. Ask yourself why others want to see what you share, and why you feel they want to see it, then understand you have to take the risk of loss of privacy with anything you post. As others have said, if you don’t want it online, then it should never be typed in the first place.

Y’all, please remember that the Tesla Board only offered to pay Elon $1T if he made it the most successful car company in the history of the planet.

Functionally, no. It’s like the no tracker request in browsers - only the stupid ones would honor that.

Yep.

It’s very important to remember that between 1991 and 2001, the US saw 10 years of a world that was the epilogue of the End of History. We had won the Cold War, and while there were problems, they were largely distant, the politics fairly civil, things like the internet changing life quickly, and even the moments of hard times gave us great music. It took 2-3 years for the effects of Columbine and 9/11 to really change the country and world.

25 years is also not nothing. 25 years before 2001 was 1976. Star Wars was new. Ford was president. Disco was HOT. Apple and Microsoft were founded. Things can change a lot.

Holy Fuck, how can a world leader be so pliable as to capitulate to the last rich person to talk to them? JFC, show some self-respect!

Stahhhp.

Nooooooooooooooo!

Hey. Hey.

Y’all remember when he closed USAID for sending too much taxpayer money overseas?

USAID’s budget was fucking $44 billion to work in 130 counties.

Now T is sending that all to one guy. Literally one guy.

This is typically for seasonal work. The legal max is 37 days per year, only for 1 employer.

Considering Greece’s tourism industry is just an inhumane crush of cruise ships and pale dickbags for 3-5 months a year, and large scale construction projects can demand what are essentially “sessional shifts” of surge work, there’s ample room for young people to get paid hardcore for 3 months of grueling work, and then, as one Greek person explained to me what tourism industry folks do off season, go hole up in a house on a mountain all winter and not see people at all.

Source: Have worked in tourism industry; Greece is one of my most favorite places.

1 million percent correct here.

100% yes.

I am privileged to be able to travel for fun, but also live in and get immersed in other cultures thanks to work.

The Americans that spend 5 days in Cancun, an all-inclusive in DR, or “went to Africa” by touching Morocco on a day trip from Spain…ugh. Y’all look bad saying box-ticking is anything else than that. It’s not a competition; what did you actually personally gain from the experience? What makes you grow as a person with greater understanding of our world? Sometimes the answers surprise you, but largely, it’s about saving money and being a dick to people you wrongly assume don’t speak English.

Yeah. I’m aware, and it makes me sick.

But not as much as the fact that the Republic is over. Strap your survival pants on, pal.

What does seem to be a point of agreement for Europeans that live in the States for years is that the US is so huge that for most people, there’s no reason to leave. Whatever landscape you want can be had, from the tropics to the Arctic Circle. Geography makes it easy to never have a passport and experience 20 lifetimes of places. It actually is an amazing and diverse place.

That being said, getting an outside perspective of the world is an entirely different thing. Until an American gets their exceptionalism challenged by someone, it’s an internal emotional paper tiger. It typically benefits Americans to leave the country.

I won’t touch your point about most dangerous. I don’t agree, but won’t engage because I don’t want to end up in a Palintir database. Delete this post unless you want CBP searching your phone next time you re-enter the country.

I really loved when, a few years ago, he fell ill and flew to France (IIRC) for medical treatment. His family was so sure he wouldn’t make it, they filled a commercial airliner with people ready to flee the country.

Then he bounced back! GD Methusala over here. And they all had to go home and pretend like nothing happened.