I think the first step to getting the party back on track is to invest in getting the message out there. Have a network or three on the radio or TV, have news sites, etc that can explain what the ideas are and why they work and where they’ve actually done good things. Start talking about your ideas.

And when you do something TELL THE PEOPLE. It’s like the democrats almost want it to be top secret. I’ve had this conversation a few times with conservatives convinced there’s a conspiracy to poison Americans with additives in foods. Exhibit A is that a lot of things that are common in American food are not in European foods. So the government is obviously trying to kill us, population control and so on. No, the European Union is simply much more willing to ban poison from their foods than our FDA is. So this would be an excellent thing for democrats to be actually talking about and making the case for smart regulations to protect people. They’re generally MIA. And the same is true of other things. The infrastructure bill Biden passed is building lots of highways. Not one will have any sort of signage telling people that this is the infrastructure bill at work making roads better.

Democrats are not doing anything because they’re captured. They take money from the same business interests and banks that the Republicans do. It’s almost a controlled opposition party— they exist to hold things in place until the next republican term. They aren’t there to do things, they barely bother to pretend to be interested in that. In fact, I’d say they’re not even really an “ideas” party. If they had ideas, they’d want to get them out. They don’t, which is why Heritage Foundation can spend millions on Right Wing media outlets, radio, TV (multiple channels), websites, and so on. Democrats had Air America, but didn’t really invest in it. So now it’s NPR, MSNBC, and Bread Tube. That’s how into getting things done they are. Podcasters, Vaush, and MSNBC and the three political shows on NPR. They don’t even believe in their message enough to bother getting it out there. The way most people find out about anything the democrats actually want to do is republicans telling them it’s bad. Completely rearguard action.

Honestly, to me, the world of the people making it is so insular and insulated that most people involved have been involved since the early days of Trek. If you read the roster there are a lot of former Trek actors moving on to directing Trek. Another produce is … Adam Nimoy famously son of Spock, who married a former Trek actress. These people are probably nice and have at least middling talent. But at the same time, there’s no fresh ideas, no interesting takes, no story ideas that haven’t really been done before. That means you end up stuck with either warmed over old stuff (Strange New Worlds clearly wants to be TOS but made by people who never understood what TOS was in its time) , deconstructions (Picard and Discovery) or remakes of other, better ideas … but in Trek (the upcoming Academy show sounds ridiculous, basically Hogwarts but Trek with none of the charm because Trek features overly serious Starfleet Academy and a distinct lack of Hagrid).

If I were in charge, I’d start by cleaning house. Get some young hungry directors, producers, and writers passionate about really great science fiction TV, and tell them to pitch me the next Trek as if nobody had ever heard of Star Trek, Starfleet, the Enterprise, or Kirk. They’d be more or less bound by the canon, but even within that boundary, there’s a lot you can do with the universe. Set an entire series in the Ferengar. A series featuring the Marquis. Maybe and entirely Mirror Universe series set in a fascist Federation. Even the Klingon Empire could be somewhat interesting. But come up with a concept that isn’t “hey, look, we got the TNG crew out of retirement, please clap”, or “Hey, look, we pot Kirk and Spock on a set together,” or “Hey, we heard you guys like Harry Potter, but have you seen Star Trek: in school”. In short, start trying to figure out the interesting settings in your universe for great science fiction series, then make episodes that fully explore the concept and the settings.

Just for an example, the Marquis show is literally about people who we consider insurgents or terrorists or freedom fighters. And in main it’s about people fighting for freedom in their home worlds against a much more powerful enemy. Fully exploring the concept of things like whether or not the Federation gives them weapons because of threats from Kardassia would be interesting. I think dealing with the topic of what happens to civilians in areas like that again could be interesting. You’d also have to deal with the tactics used, and the basic necessity of fighting a war like that.

The Klingon one might look a bit like Game of Thrones, although I think it would also be a bit like Dune. Lots of political games and occasional actual fighting to secure your house’s position in the Empire. There’s plenty of drama in tha5 kind of setting. I’d be disappointed if they have.a dwarf, but political intrigue is probably good frame in the right hands.

A fascist federation would be a bit on the nose ATM, but I think if you play it straight and lean into it, as in Warhammer levels of leaning into the fascism, it would be fairly interesting. Exaggerating th3 hell out of it, just doing really terrible things because of some supposed external enemies (maybe Borg or Q or something). Do an I can’t believe it’s not an exterminatus. Have fun with it.

Part of the problem with screaming about fascism is that the claim is vague, and political rhetoric is absolutely full of “most important election in the history of forever.”

Fascism is vague because we do an absolutely terrible job in explaining what it is and what it actually means. Most people know precisely two things about fascism. First, Auswitz, and second, goose stepping and straight arm salutes. This doesn’t explain anything, and can lull people into a very false sense of security because until someone hangs up a swastika or starts making angry speeches about minorities, it simply doesn’t look like fascism to the average American who was given a Marvel Comic Universe understanding of fascism.

Second, we’ve been playing the exact same game in every election. George W Bush was a threat to democratic ideals. That was 24 years ago. Every election I can remember has had democracy on the ballot and has been the most consequential election ever. It’s been done so much by all parties that nobody’s going to be convinced to vote for someone because their opponent is a “danger to our democracy.” It’s been done too many times. And people are now pretty suspicious of “my opponent is Literally Hitler” not because it cannot happen, it obviously can, but because it’s been used for decades as cover for basically not having to convince anyone you can do the job. Trump is Fascist, okay so tell me, what are you going to do about Russia? Or the price of food? Or education? Or … anything of actual importance to regular people who are listening to you prattle on about democracy while they’re figuring out whether or not they can cut something else out of the budget because gas is high and groceries are high, and they just want to live life.

I’m going to give the same pep talk I’ve been giving for a while. For the vast majority of people, unless you’re directly interacting with the government, you can pretty much tune out and not care if you want. In fact, I contend for most people, unless, again there’s a specific policy that’s going to affect you or someone or something you actually care about (in which case obviously follow that and take action on that) you can safely ignore most of the news that people think is important. Of the stuff that will be important, it’s almost always going to be something that people are still talking about a week from now. I think that unless you are going to be involved, you’re probably paying too much attention to news and that’s why you’re freaking out. Take a breather, touch grass, and stop worrying. Take the time to decide which issues you actually care about and can take action on. Get involved in that stuff, contribute to organizations that fight those things. Go to a protest rally or three. But as for the rest, you really don’t need to be breathlessly reading every news article and angry tweet. It’s actually not good for you.

I’ll be honest in saying that the fundamental problem is that democrats don’t understand power. They have this idea that you come up with policies and that people will thus hand them power. Republicans understand that power is the first order of business. If you don’t take power, your policies don’t matter. You want to help people? Cute. You aren’t even trying to take power, and when you do, you don’t use it to consolidate your power, you pretty much give it away.

Case in point was RBG. She knew it wasn’t a given that there would be a democrat in power when she retired, she didn’t quit when there was one. And thus Trump got a free SCOTUS pick. When it’s the GOP, they only resign when their party will pick their successor.

I think that unless you’re a minority or LGBT life isn’t going to change that much. Americans have seen far too many horror fantasies about WW2 or Soviet Union stuff or Shariah to really understand what life in those states is like. It’s not tanks, goose stepping and speeches nonstop. It’s normal life. Go look at video of China. It’s not horrible.

I’ve been trying to write short stories and while I’m thinking at the moment of getting a blog to put them on, I’m wondering what else is out there where I could get them in front of eyeballs without getting tons of spammers trying to sell me services related to writing fiction.

I think it depends. If it doesn’t matter to the overall project to have it perfect, then as long as AI is good enough it will be used more often than not. That’s why I’m laughing at writers who are all in on forcing the idea of “save the cat” forcing every story ever done to fit a single structure. AI can do stuff like that super easy. While it probably can’t make a great arty movie it can absolutely churn out formulaic crap easily and cheaply. And as long as people choose formulaic crap over arthouse cinema (which they reliably do) AI will take over most film jobs and make do with whatever minor inconsistencies and inconveniences that AI introduces to big blockbusters because it’s not like anyone goes to a marvel film to gawk at cinematography. As long as your film franchise is McDonald’s levels of formulaic, and that’s what your fans expect , there’s no reason to waste money on expensive humans.

I tend to agree. I don’t see things like this or glass or that stupid Apple holodeck thing ever coming into common civilian use. They have too many negatives and are too expensive to replace the nearly ubiquitous phones already in use for home entertainment. I could see industrial use, for example using a device like that to give engineers the ability to see heat signatures, metal fatigue, or other signs of wear and tear. I could see this having a military use where, much like video games, a heads up map display is extremely valuable. Even engineering where you might want to have a virtual tour of the design in ways that let you touch controls or parts in VR without needing a prototype built.

One thing that absolutely floors me about tech-bros and their approach to technology is that they still, 3-4 generations into the use of technology don’t understand a simple concept that’s always been obvious to me: if the technology doesn’t significantly improve on what’s already out there at a similar price point, nobody will buy it. People didn’t buy cell phones because they were cool, they bought them because cell phones untethered them from landline phones that were connected to the wall. iPads became popular because they’re smaller, lighter and easier to use than laptops. Google Glass solves no actual problems. There’s nothing that the technology does that couldn’t be done with the cellphone. If you want augmented reality, it’s going to do much better as an app that you download to the phone and point at an object you need more information on than as a device you buy and wear and struggle to use.

Right now, Artemis by Andy Weir. I like his stuff because he creates a future that’s a lot more of a blue-collar space experience. His heroes are not the graduates of space academy and don’t necessarily have their shit together. They mess up, they do stupid things. They just plain don’t know what they’re doing.

Not only does being so online skew what you see about your own world, but it actually creates alternative realities where what you see is only a small fraction of reality. If I wanted to, I could essentially watch nothing but Kdramas and anime, read news from Korea in English. I can do so in the same house as someone who watches nothing but sports. A MAGA person never has to see, hear or read anything that isn’t MAGA. The streaming services, explosion of content, and the ability to have private screens mean living in your own universe. I think this might be rather dangerous as shared, lived experiences and knowledge are what bind a society together. I don’t know how you can find common ground when we don’t share a set of facts or experiences.

I’m in a similar space though I seem to have landed on a more Stoic Taoist path. I follow Shi Heng Yi on YouTube which got me interested, but I landed on Stoics simply because I find most of Buddhism to be so passive that it’s simply an excuse for navel gazing and escapism. Stoicism promotes active participation in the world and trying to make it better (while remaining unattached to results) where a lot of people practice Buddhism tend toward meditation and being personally nice while not caring what happens in the wider world.

I think a huge problem for the debate on whether robots and AI are conscious in any meaningful sense is less about the capacity of the machine in question and much more about the fact that consciousness is a hard problem in itself. We simply lack a good enough definition of consciousness to make any meaningful tests for consciousness that are based on real theory.

The general philosophical definition is that a conscious being has a subjective experience of the world. Or to quote the common question “is it like something to be an X?” Does it have an internal thought process, will, wants, and desires? Does it experience things subjectively? Does the robot experience something like pain when it falls off a platform? But how do you define pain? An amoeba will react negatively to a stimulus, and it will be attracted to others. But if it encounters water too hot for it and moves away is this a biological equivalent of machine learning, or is it pain? Keep in mind that amoebas have no CNS or brains, just a single cell. To my mind the amoeba could be doing either of these. It could be doing exactly like the robot falling off a platform. “This event is negative, avoid.” Or it could experience pain.

Couldn’t that definition apply to anything electronic? My cell phone matabolizes energy from a battery which i charge from a wall socket. It responds to commands I give it via a touch screen. Other than needing a factory to reproduce, it’s meets the definition.

It’s called the “hard problem” for a reason. Consciousness and free will are extremely hard to provide good definitions for, and in fact there are good philosophical arguments on how we — Humans — may not really have either one. Now if we can’t be sure that WE are conscious, that WE have the ability to exercise free will, is really not possible to make coherent arguments about whether anyone or anything else does. It ends up something like arguing about souls — and it’s amazing how groups of living things we didn’t historically see as “equal to us” were seriously considered to maybe not even have a soul. There are historical arguments during the pre-civil war era arguing about whether Black people had souls. We argue in much the same way about animals — are animals “conscious” which TBH is a stand in for the discussion people don’t want to have about rights. If you can deny souls or the modern equivalent of consciousness to a being whether it’s an amoeba, a cow, a robot, an alien or a human, then you don’t have to give them rights.

My interaction on the topic is fairly shallow. Mostly reading about it, although I’ll admit that science fiction has shaped my thinking as well.

Except that in almost every instance where a profession has been automated, that’s exactly what happened. Having a computer that keeps track of your inventory makes the workflow better for the logistics department, and then using a computer to schedule deliveries makes that part easier as well. And you keep doing that and eventually you’re doing the work of twelve professionals and your team shrinks down to 1/12th of what it was. And then you chip away at those tasks until you halve the workforce again, and eventually the computer is doing all of those tasks and the people who used to do those things are obsolete. Then they go back to school hoping to find a training program where they can make money before AI takes those jobs too.

And these are the exact same stupid “it will never happen to MY industry” horseshit that has happened to every industry just before it got automated away. Nobody thought that computers would mean the death of stores, until they enabled people to shop from home and get it delivered. Robots were never supposed to replace workers in restaurants, except now even mid scale restaurants have discovered that it much cheaper to put a Wi-Fi enabled iPad on the table than pay a human to take your order. They pay one person to take the food out to all the tables. They reduce headcount and make more money. AI is taking over a lot of office jobs now too. But don’t worry, your industry is specialer than every other job that’s ever been automated away. I mean we NEED mailroom staff, because all the people who work in offices started in the mailroom (in the 1980s) except now there hasn’t been a mailroom since 1990s because people realized that they could reduce their labor costs by using emails instead of inter office memos hand delivered by humans.

People watch machinema and play video games with hours of cutscenes. If people were okay with animation, machinema, game cutscenes and so on before AI, they aren’t going to reject a film because it doesn’t have real actors. We watched this (https://youtu.be/jzQPYuwzwH8?si=FCsQoM2IE797BgQR) in 2000. I dare say that AI could produce something this good within five years.

In fact the fact that SAG has to fight so hard to prevent such a thing tells me exactly how scared they are of it. You don’t fight to ban things they you don’t think can take over your industry, you fight the things you fear will. If AI can’t do anything to threaten the livelihoods of people making movies and TV why was it critical that all production stop for weeks to make absolutely positively sure that no AI will ever be used to make an American movie? And what happens when other countries don’t honor that ban? If I make an AI show in France using no SAG has. No say. And it might cost a tenth of the cost to use real actors and crews.

I actually consider it bad that kids aren’t misbehaving anymore or at least at the same rates. The problem with that is that getting in trouble (provided it isn’t crime or hard drugs) does two things that are important for making stable healthy adults. First, it allows kids to make mistakes and learn how to make better decisions, and second it teaches them that even pretty serious mistakes are things you can recover from. The biggest problem for anyone raised with screens from birth is that they just don’t seems to develop the same sort of independence older generations did. We got into all kinds of Trouble. But the things that let us get into trouble made us independent: time alone, unsupervised with our peers. We fucked up, paid for it, fixed it, and realized it wasn’t that terrible. They never do it, don’t learn from making the bad decision, and never learn that those mistakes can be corrected and you’ll be okay.

To be honest, if I’m hiring and I want a leader, I want people who fucked up at least a little. Not because I want someone who makes bad decisions, but because I want somebody who isn’t afraid to try things. Someone who can make a mistake without going to pieces. Any kind of leadership, design, creative work, or even just getting things done requires a mindset that you need to move fast, break things, and figure out how to recover from that. Meekly sitting around waiting for someone to tell you exactly what to do and exactly how to do it not only means that you’re never going to get good at anything, but that you’ll have anxiety because you don’t think you can. In the mind of these kids who are afraid of messing up is the fear that if you make a mistake, you’re just done.

I’m not sure of that. People love to say that about technology. The problem here is that the humans being replaced are pretty darn expensive and depending on the application, it’s probably going to save money on an order of x/5 just by getting rid of actors and actresses for films. That’s before considering things like cameramen, directors, writers, and crew to set up and take down sets. With sufficient resources, I don’t think you could easily tell the difference between a mid-budget TV show made this way and perhaps voice-acted (or maybe AI can do that too, not sure yet) given just how good video game graphics are already. And if I can make my sci-fi show for 1/10th the cost by not needing actors or a big crew, then I can put more money into writing and I don’t even need the same sized audience as other shows.

This is what worries me about the West’s insistence on spending trillions on Ukraine. The public will for this kind of aid is already falling and has reached the point where at least a third of the country doesn’t support it. And this is for a country with limited strategic value. For Russia, having Ukrain means a buffer again invasion, but as far as it goes Ukraine is mostly farmland outside of Donbas that has mineral wealth.

China isn’t supporting Russia because it likes Russia or thinks it can win. They’re using the situation and trying to keep it going so we shoot our entire wad on Ukraine, demoralize our population against the idea of sending trillions in aide to a country to defend itself, and to take the opportunity to get off western oil markets. Once the public turns against Ukraine, I think they make a play for Taiwan. Taiwan is important, almost all of the high end computer chips we use are made there. It’s something we can’t let go of unless we want to be subservient to China in exchange for keeping our computers running. But how can you sell that to a public that’s already tired of seeing so much money sent to Ukraine in the billions every month?

I’ve been into Stunna Gambino, KB Mike, and Public enemy (a throwback from the 1980s)

I’ve been into Stunna Gambino, KB Mike, and Public enemy (a throwback from the 1980s)

My experience of internet recipes is that they’re often over complicated and use ingredients that are rare in the USA. The typical internet recipe has two or three pans going, a home made sauce, and a garnish. If you’re not comfortable in the kitchen, that’s a lot of things going at once. Add in the expense of the exotic ingredients, and the pressure of comparing yourself to semi-pro cooks as far as how your food looks, and I honestly don’t blame people for giving up early.

A pasta or a dish over rice is pretty easy. You can cook pasta or rice or even mashed potatoes by boiling them, and it’s hard to get it wrong unless you boil over the pot or don’t have enough water. Sauces I think are something a beginner should purchase. There’s no reason that they need to make a sauce when they’re first starting out. Sauces aren’t super hard, but when you’re trying to get everything else right, adding an extra complication for no reason just makes the process more difficult for little real gain. Use frozen meatballs if you’re first starting. In baking, I think, again making your own crust is a waste of time until you’re comfortable in the kitchen. Start easy. Make simple stuff, and don’t be ashamed of buying the occasional ingredient or substituting expensive ingredients for cheaper common ones that you already have.

The feeling of “I can’t do it” I don’t think comes from not being able to cook anything. Most of the time if you can follow simple directions, you absolutely can cook something. The problem is thinking that you have to make complicated recipes that have to look instagram worthy to be successful. Or that they have to be 100% made from scratch. I’ve cooked for a while, and nothing I’ve made is worthy of instagram, and I use premade mixes and sauces. It’s not shameful, normal people do it all the time.

My experience of internet recipes is that they’re often over complicated and use ingredients that are rare in the USA. The typical internet recipe has two or three pans going, a home made sauce, and a garnish. If you’re not comfortable in the kitchen, that’s a lot of things going at once. Add in the expense of the exotic ingredients, and the pressure of comparing yourself to semi-pro cooks as far as how your food looks, and I honestly don’t blame people for giving up early.

A pasta or a dish over rice is pretty easy. You can cook pasta or rice or even mashed potatoes by boiling them, and it’s hard to get it wrong unless you boil over the pot or don’t have enough water. Sauces I think are something a beginner should purchase. There’s no reason that they need to make a sauce when they’re first starting out. Sauces aren’t super hard, but when you’re trying to get everything else right, adding an extra complication for no reason just makes the process more difficult for little real gain. Use frozen meatballs if you’re first starting. In baking, I think, again making your own crust is a waste of time until you’re comfortable in the kitchen. Start easy. Make simple stuff, and don’t be ashamed of buying the occasional ingredient or substituting expensive ingredients for cheaper common ones that you already have.

The feeling of “I can’t do it” I don’t think comes from not being able to cook anything. Most of the time if you can follow simple directions, you absolutely can cook something. The problem is thinking that you have to make complicated recipes that have to look instagram worthy to be successful. Or that they have to be 100% made from scratch. I’ve cooked for a while, and nothing I’ve made is worthy of instagram, and I use premade mixes and sauces. It’s not shameful, normal people do it all the time.

I think a lot of “can’t cook” is overthinking it. The skills themselves are pretty simple. Sautéing isn’t rocket science, nor are boiling, frying, or chopping. People over complicated the idea of cooking to the point that they think they need to make 15-step recipes using rare and exotic ingredients. I think if people want to learn to cook, the first step is to stop watching Food Network. That’s like trying to learn to draw by looking at famous paintings. It doesn’t work and mostly discourages you because you can’t cook like a chef until you can cook like your mom. Honestly, the best thing is to get a non fancy basic-bitch cookbook BH&G, Good Housekeeping, something like that. Learn to do those recipes and you can pick up the rest later.

I had a coat I ordered online which I didn't know at the time came from China. Months went by, no coat. Like ordered it in November and it didn't show up. At the same time I started hearing all the weird stuff in Wuhan. I eventually put it together when I saw a post on Slatestarcodex about it. Which said that masks probably work. Then everybody bought TP.

I think I’m a bit more conservative on this as an American woman. The big issue even on non-contact sports is scholarships. College sports in America are a critical way that kids who otherwise could not afford a good college get in, especially for minorities. But, women cannot possibly compete for those spots even in the situation where a man, even one on hormone replacement is available. And with the prospect of free tuition on the side of a male student, this might be something they’d be willing to do simply to escape poverty. On the coaches side (again in the USA) there’s huge pressure to build a winning team. Coaches of Division I sports are often the highest paid people in that college. It’s a huge business, and if you can get just under the NCAA hormone levels with a couple of B p-team men, you can wipe the floor with a woman’s team. And thus, now you’ll essentially shut a lot of women out of those scholarships and those teams because they’re unable to keep pace with the men playing.

I don’t see how that’s better. If you allow a country into NATO that means that we go to hot war with any country that invades it (in this case Russia) no matter what. Add in that we’d basically be surrounding Russia, and I think we be at a hot nuclear war.