More tech that does not need the internet at all would be great.

Just making sure you’re not equating the Middle Way with political centrism.

Is the “middle” based on reality or on wherever the Overton window happens to currently be?

But you’ve identified the differentiating factor. In Fantasy, the hand-waving is mystical. In Sci-Fi, the hand-waving is technical. If ya mix the two, you get Shadowrun, or Star Wars before the midichlorians.

Need is a strong word. There are much more efficient ways to cool data centers. They’ve just chosen the most wasteful way because it’s the cheapest (for them).

Oh, PFAS, yeah. We passed the planetary boundary with that a few years ago.

levels of PFOA and PFOS in rainwater often greatly exceed US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Lifetime Drinking Water Health Advisory levels

Here’s a map of the known concentrations in the U.S. But they’re in everything now, including our blood.

I’ve been stuck in the Adobe ecosystem for 25 years, and until there’s an After Effects equivalent on Linux, I don’t really see getting out. But silver lining, generative fill and harmonize in Photoshop make inpainting breezy. And generative extend in Premiere is great for persnickety edits. I’ve generally found visual AI more useful than the LLMs.

if tolerance doesn’t win then the right will win.

Would you mind expanding on this? I can think of a few very different interpretations.

It’s good to be humble and open to being wrong. It’s bad to stop looking for objective truth. The “post-truth” stance is easily weaponized against the actual truth. Rules should protect the truth.

I thought we were trying to move away from psychopathic leaders?

We’ve only tried hierarchy with humans at the top.

Francis acknowledged that America never had a national myth of a glorious past but thought it was a good idea to invent one. As Ganz archly observed, “the word for the politics that makes a pastiche of past glories to create a new type of regime is ‘fascism.'”

Brain Candy and Strange Days

I’m a video producer who occasionally needs to code. I find it much more useful to write the code myself, then have AI identify where things might be going wrong. I’ve developed a decent intuition for when it will be helpful and when it will just run in circles. It has definitely helped me out of some jams. Generative images/video are in much the same boat. I almost never use a fully AI shot/image in professional work. But generative fill and generative extend are extremely useful.

It portends the arrival of the Anunnaki.

YouTube sponsorships and ads keep telling me about Ground News. I’ve also heard of AllSides. I have used neither of these and cannot attest to their usefulness.

Yeah, that’s morph cut in Premiere, which they added a decade ago. There’s also generative extend, which is the more recent AI addition.

Guess they’re not worried about political agendas in how we teach, say, economics.

Forgive the Haters

Like Cyberpunk 2077