I think the shooter was good, but not a professional. They knew enough to sight in their scope accurately, but not enough to account for bullet drop. Nobody aims for the neck. Odds are he was aiming for the head. If you zero in your sight for 100 yards, the bullet can drop 3 or 4 inches once it gets to 200. And he seems to have disappeared without a trace, so he planned it well. I assume he cleaned up after himself. Odds are they’ll never find him.

When I hear Nazi I think of concentration camps and killing Jews. Kirk was a big supporter of Israel. Does Nazi just mean conservative fascist now? And if so is B. Netanyahu a Nazi? That seems weird.

Probably Thai and Indian, since they both have a strong vegetarian side.

“Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.”

He didn’t say anything specifically about the ethics of human reproduction. He taught that craving sense pleasures leads to suffering. The monks that followed him were celibate. But he knew few would follow that path. So he taught a simplified code of ethics for householders (don’t kill, don’t lie, etc.) and assumed that there would always be people who want to make more people. Rebirth was an important part of his doctrine. The volitional actions you perform in life create karma which then, after your death, produces another birth. Escaping the cycle of karma and rebirth by letting go of the concept of self, of the idea of me and mine, was the ultimate goal of his path. And it’s only possible to get there in a human body. So in that sense he was not an anti-natalist.

Buy all the corporations and convert them into worker-owned conglomerates a-la Mondragon. End global capitalism. Sponsor legislation in all governments to end the wealth disparity plaguing the world.

Let me explain. Our health care industry is part of our (mostly) global capitalist economy. That means investors demand the maximum profit the industry can produce. Imagine that this industry had the choice of providing an inexpensive one-time cure for cancer, or a long-term expensive treatment. Which option would generate the most profit for the industry? It doesn’t matter if there are people in the industry who would like to find a simple inexpensive cure. The board of directors is elected by the shareholders, which really means the largest and most ruthless capital owners. If the CEO or any officers approve research on an inexpensive cure that will threaten the profits of the corporation they will be ousted and replaced with someone who “sees the wisdom of using existing proven treatments”. So the built-in conflict of interest of a for-profit medical system means we will always be stuck with a system that extracts as much cash as possible from its patients.

Are there alternatives to this approach? Of course, but they depart from a pure capitalist system, and so, at least in the US, we will never see them as long as we accept our current economic structure.

It’s too bad that curing patients is not a sustainable business model. Even if this did work we would only ever see it developed if you had to take it twice a month for the rest of your life in order to survive.

Edit: sorry, I just noticed this is in Uplifting News. So, let’s be optimistic. Maybe global capitalism will collapse and governments will start trying to take care of people.

Newly discovered? I get that it’s Australia, but how could they have missed a two foot long insect that hangs out in trees?

So, what do they do when they run out of people to deport?

Don’t feed the trolls.

Why do you reincarnate? Let’s take the Buddhist view. The cycle of birth and death (rebirth) ends when you let go of craving for existence, craving for sensual pleasures, and ignorance (not seeing things as they truly are). (aka the Asavas.) So, that means these things are the conditions for rebirth. And they are the source of karma in your current life. Do you dream of being rich, healthy, strong, pretty, etc? That’s the first one. Do you have fantasies of sex, dream of the next meal you’re going to make, or just want to see the sunset from a mountain top? That’s the second one. Or are you convinced your individual self is separate from everything else and/or has some permanent existence? (a rough inaccurate summary of ignorance)

If any of these things are true they are probably focused on your current life. You probably don’t have fantasies of sex with odd slugs in proxima centauri. You probably don’t dream of being a brain parasite. The conditions for the next rebirth are set up by your cravings. And, most likely, you crave something distinctly human. Ergo, the next birth generated by your karma will most likely be human.

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I think US popularity is collapsing in the US as well. I know I’m starting to hate it here.

Yup. That was exactly it. I was thinking “I know how to do these” and not even paying attention to the instructions at the bottom.

Why live? What’s the meaning of life? What’s the purpose of life? I hope I don’t have to explain that people have been asking this question since we first were able to form words and start thinking. You’re going to get as many different opinions to answer this question as there are people to write a response. You could spend a lifetime studying philosophy and not find a definitive answer. And in the end you just have to decide for yourself which answer most speaks to you. Are you atheist, materialist, spiritual, philosophical? Take your pick.

Personally, I like Buddhist philosophy for these kinds of questions. And I suspect the Buddha would say that we are here because of craving for sense pleasures, craving for existence, and ignorance of our true nature and the true nature of reality. We live because we want to exist, we want to have experiences and feel the things that are available to us as living beings. Whether it’s food or sex or money or adventure or admiration or love we feel like getting the things we want will make us happy. The flip side of craving is aversion, where we feel like achieving separation from those things that are unpleasant will make us happy.

Volumes have been written about this and it’s impossible to summarize well in a single post. But if it speaks to you there’s a lot more to say about it.

Why do all of these look inverted to me? Like, what should be a mountain is a deep hole in the ground.

I don’t remember navigating menus being particularly onerous.

Getting around is tedious at first, but soon you get vehicles, and, even better, this zipline thing that you can put anywhere. Those are fun to build and navigate.

The only recommended combat is tying your enemies up with ropes, or later, with a rope gun. (I wonder if Kojima is into bondage) I mean, you can kill the enemy couriers, but it’s not a good idea.

Industria. It was free on Epic, I think. Took me a while to figure out the boxes said “supplies” and were meant to be broken open to get ammo. Till then it was kind of frustrating running out of ammo over and over. Gameplay and environments kind of remind me of the half life franchise in a way.

Every time something hopeful like this appears I start wondering if it’s safe to imagine that maybe things could get better here in the US. But so far I’ve been disappointed over and over. Part of me wants to just skip over the “maybe something good will happen” part and get right to the “oh, well, looks like he was assassinated by a blackwater hit squad” part. Money is power. The donor class gets what they want. And I have no faith that working within the electoral system will fix that.

I literally just prompted it with “Please finish this essay” and then typed in what justqueenthoughts had posted. And yeah, I think it followed along in the style of the prompt reasonably well, but didn’t really add anything interesting. Which is no surprise, that’s what LLMs do. Point it in a direction and it will supply an approximation of the mean in the training data that applies.

I have to admit, though, I hadn’t heard of the “Two Cultures” debate, popularized by C.P. Snow.