@carlitoscohones @techtakes See also Frank Tipler, “The Physics of Immortality” (or: Astrophysicist goes cray-cray, tries to prove TESCREAL bullshit only takes a left turn into evangelical Christianity by way of the fine structure constant)

@self He hasn’t even caught up with what Vernor Vinge was talking about in his 1993 paper on the Singularity, which the current crop of starry-eyed singularitarians seem not to have read: https://accelerating.org/articles/comingtechsingularity

@gnomicutterance The basilisk is just an AI rip-off of Dispensationalist Satan. So it’s not surprising that Roko’s position on women echoes that of the most reactionary strains of Christian thought.

@gerikson Heh. Am waiting for the next Apple ads—“It’s a bit like Microsoft’s ARM laptops, only better and there’s no spyware.”

@gerikson The name predates the white nationalist band by *several centuries*. Per wiki: “In classical and medieval literature, ultima Thule (Latin “farthest Thule”) acquired a metaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond the “borders of the known world”.”

I suspect they renamed the KBO Arrokoth precisely to avoid the unfortunate recent connotations of the name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule

@V0ldek NoNoNo, Excel is *sometimes* useful. For ultimate uselessness, try PowerPoint.

@dgerard We need to yank Dilbert Stark’s driving license and chauffeur and force him to travel everywhere on an e-bike or sailboat for a year or two before he’s allowed to have anything to do with Tesla again. (Or to use his private jet.)

Actually, Dilbert getting e-bike religion might be the best thing he could possibly do for the climate …

@dgerard @techtakes I don’t read PG (life’s too short, and so is my sanity) but doesn’t this merely suggest the folks he exchanges email with have paltry, stunted vocabularies?

@froztbyte Have you tried Jennifer Warnes’ cover album of Cohen songs, “Famous Blue Raincoat”? (Asking because her voice is *very* different from his, but she totally owns his songs.)

I’ve met Pinker and it is my considered opinion that he is an elitist dick. (Sticks tongue out.) Srsly, not surprising that an eminent prof at Harvard provides emotional felatio for the moneyed class at every opportunity. @skillissuer

https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/9372418

@self Really? And here I thought Mastodon existed for the convenience of Reply Guys like that!

@dgerard If you’re looking at awful.systems via a Mastodon client you never see the sidebar. Or even any indication that it isn’t a Mastodon server.

@dgerard “B-B-BUT prison is meant to be for TEH POORS!! This is WRONG!!!”

@dgerard @sneerclub he’s gonna start a Basilisk cult in prison, isn’t he. Get out in 25 years and head straight for the executive suite in the temple his followers will have built for him.

@skillissuer Basically a drug (chemical that has a pharmacological effect) is not a medicine (a formulation for delivering a drug to the tissue where it will have the desired pharmacological effect) any more than a naked internal combustion engine is an automobile.

@skillissuer Ex-pharmacist here: this just touches the tip of the iceberg. For example, what’s your source of pure oxycodone? If you’re grinding up tablets, you’re also getting bulk adjuvants, bursting agents, probably fragments of osmotic release membrane, and a bunch of other non-pharmacologically active chemicals. And what’s your output? Sure naloxone is injectable, but you’re going to want it dissolved in an isotonic solution, sterile, with preservatives, and a syringe …

@blakestacey Oh dear, George Galloway complaining about negative coverage, how sad, much hardship. (Galloway is an utter shit.) John Pilger had credibility for a critique of US/western foreign policy, but the rest of the listed folks are just cranks.

@dgerard Whiteness is a movable feast. (Ask anyone who’s Jewish, or LGBT+, or Italian/Irish in the USA in the 19th century or Hispanic in the USA before/after the 1970s).

@maol 25 years ago I saw one for sale in the Scottish borders for £250K. An absolute steal—if you could afford the £25K/year for heating and the extra £100K+ to repair the leaky roof. Never mind the £50K to install double glazing and insulation and the £200K or so in renovation it urgently needed. Etc.

@Amoeba_Girl The far right are all about beating up on the Other, and those with acute mental illness are in continuous supply. (Latest twist: if you’re a grifter and antipsychotic meds have crimped your supply of Others to demonize, you can gaslight your followers on social media and convince them that everybody *else* is crazy. See also Q, Trump …)