erin (she/her)

I happen to love those types of games, so I’m here for it. Luckily, there is plenty of games out there.

Plumber, carpenter, construction, woodcraft, metalworker, etc etc. There are plenty of good reasons to own a large vehicle. People who use a large vehicle for its intended purpose aren’t the problem, it’s the assholes driving them for fun that makes everyone else unsafe.

Do you think the first long truck sprang into existence in 2008? We’ve had super long trucks for specific use cases as long as we’ve had trucks. This is like one of the few times a person has a good reason to have a large vehicle, and is being safe and polite about it by staying out of the way and writing a polite note to explain. Large vehicles aren’t the problem, people owning large vehicles who don’t need them are the problem.

If you think that this:

Replace “machine” with “film crew”, “rerun” with “do another take”, and “tweak the prompt” with “provide notes”. If they’re giving notes to a computer or a person doesn’t really change the nature of their work, only the language they use to provide those notes.

is what a director does? You have no clue what you’re talking about. They’re far more involved in the creative process on every level than you understand.

Your question about who AI helps is a valid one. I agree that that’s what’s important about AI use. I use AI in my work, but not to replace human beings, but as a tool to make easy mock ups or test ideas. I find trying to replace human creativity in a way that replaces jobs or the human spark that makes art, art, abhorrent. AI art cannot exist without humans to train on, so humans cannot be fully replaced, but I hope to never see a day where AI takes the positions of well compensated artists leeching off the work of unpaid or underpaid humans.

I’m not suggesting that the director has full responsibility for the art. They are part of a team, and the creative style of a director heavily influences the finished product. You can tell who directed a movie just by watching it. There are very important creative decisions and directions that point the team of more specialized artists in the right direction.

This is not analogous to AI art. That would be like the director of a movie telling a team of interns to cut together clips of other movies as best they see fit, within a general outline of the script. A person using AI to generate art isn’t part of the creative process in the same way; they tell a machine what to do, and decide whether to rerun or tweak the prompt after seeing the result. This takes some small modicum of creativity, but it isn’t creating art. It’s fine for fun, or to use as a stand in tool, or to mock-up designs, but it will never have the creative direction of a human being, or stand on the same level with true masters, regardless of how well it can copy their style. It can’t understand the art.

Directing is an art form of its own. The cinematography, the pacing, the set design, acting, and so much more is all influenced by the director’s decisions. It would be like saying a conductor or a music producer isn’t an artist. Easy to say if you don’t have an understanding of the art form, but dead wrong. There are a ton of creative choices at all levels made by directors, and there’s a reason we’ve been using them in one way or another since we first started performance art. I’ve worked under and beside directors in the past, and I have only the utmost respect for what a good director can do for the art.

A bad director however… I might agree with you.

That certainly is an opinion

Do you know for sure they were protesting cars, not emissions, not raising awareness for any other cause? It doesn’t matter, I’m just curious.

Your complaints about public transportation make no sense. “Public transportation is bad so don’t spend money on it.” Obviously, if we spent money on it, it would be a viable alternative. I spent some time in Austria this year, a country with excellent public transportation. I could step onto a bus (there was one at nearly every stop about every 10 minutes), be at my destination with no delay, hop off, all without ever needing to show my ticket or talk to anyone. Cars would have been vastly more inconvenient to get around the cities, finding parking takes time, and you almost never have the right of way over other vehicles/pedestrians (as you shouldn’t, you’re in the safe metal box and they’re vulnerable). With effective public transportation, I was able to get out into the Alps, go hiking, and come back into the city without needing to worry about any of the complexities of a car. I could hop on the tram, grab dinner downtown, and be back, without ever getting stuck in traffic. It was so much easier and more convenient than anything I’ve ever seen living in the US, and I fully don’t understand the argument against it. No one is stopping you from owning a car! I own a car, and I won’t stop. There are some things I need one for. This movement is about effective public transportation, and there is no reason to be against it except insecurity, and apparently a fragile ego. What’s next, antifascism protestors block your way to work and you start wearing a swastika? Being reactionary accomplishes nothing good for yourself. If you’re that easily manipulated, every false flag will work on you with no questions asked.

My experience is so different, and so are the market statistics. A “forever mouse” is a dumb idea just looking for a subscription cash grab, but the PC mouse market is expanding year over year as more people get desktop computers, and especially for PC gaming, an expanding market in its own right. The customer base of people who use mice might be shrinking in some Linux communities, but stating that across the board is just incorrect.

I wouldn’t endeavor to engage in stereotype. I’m an American Jew, I just happen to strongly dislike the Israeli government and IDF.

A swiss advocating for universal conscription is rich. Is that really something you want? You want to see the US military expanded by orders of magnitude? China? India and Pakistan? You think that ends well for the world, and doesn’t just provoke more armed conflict and more death? Forced conscription is just another form of violence from the ruling class to control the regular people. It’s absolutely insane to say that it would be a net good for society, or even to say that all political ideals should be tolerated. Why should I tolerate someone that advocates for the extermination of people like me, or anyone, for that matter? I can respect their rights, but I cannot respect their ideas.

It was a general assumption, and apparently not an accurate one. I don’t presume to actually know how you think from one comment. There are dog whistles on all sides, because it’s essentially a term for an “inside joke,” minus the humor (usually). It comes up most often with Nazis and racists not because they’re the center of attention necessarily, but mostly because dog whistles are needed primarily by groups that are not socially acceptable. You cannot be openly racist except with other racists, or openly a Nazi except with other Nazis. Dog whistles allow people to declare allegiance and signal to others that believe the same without needing to openly state it. Usually, we still know anyways, but it gives them plausible deniability in their eyes.

What? They used the word correctly. How are you gonna pull out “both sides” when they’re correct? It hasn’t lost its meaning, you just don’t like hearing it so often because, surprise surprise, there’s an awful lot of dog whistling going on in the current political cycle. It means a signal used to communicate loyalty or belief to an idea, group, platform, etc, that is understood by other people who agree, and not necessarily obvious to the neutral observer. In this case, the word “woke” is a dog whistle for bigots. It was applied correctly.

That’s rather selfish. There is harm, but not to you. You’re okay with hurting other people for your own gain to avoid having one difficult conversation. I can only assume that you wouldn’t feel good if a partner treated you like that, so why do so to them? Either you have a general lack of empathy, lack introspective ability, or are just perfectly okay with the idea of being cheated on, and also the idea of someone else hurting because of your own actions. I’m fascinated, and also recommend you try consensual polyamory next time instead.

Yes. “Cis” is just a description, like “straight” or “white.” Calling someone “cis” is not an insult, but some conservatives take it as such. The common phrase they echo is “I’m not cis, I’m normal.” They’re trying to denormalize trans people by making an inoffensive and common descriptor an insult. The same people sometimes have a problem with being called straight by queer people because they see themselves not as straight, but normal, and anything different is abnormal. In reality, “gay,” “straight,” “trans,” and “cis” are no more abnormal descriptors than calling someone “black,” “white,” “American,” or “tall.” It’s all just “othering” those they perceive as political opponents.

They’re seismically isolated

Or much much longer. It’s not going anywhere. It can’t escape its cask, and outside human intervention the casks won’t be breached. It’s just locked-up metal that gives off some radiation, fully contained within the cask. It isn’t oozing green goo.

The casks waste is stored in would take bunker buster yields to breach.

All the waste a plant ever produces in its lifetime can be contained with ease on site. Waste certainly isn’t the main issue, though it’s portrayed to be. Cost of deployment and staffing are more prohibitive issues, and both are surmountable. I don’t think it’s a bandaid for all power issues, but it’s a powerful tool that should be used more often, not phased out.

“Doesn’t believe in transgenders”

Genuinely funny.

I think your prejudice is blinding you to something that makes good sense in context. I don’t expect to change your mind, or even that I could, but it seems odd to blanket denounce a behavior present throughout North and South America on such a weak premise as “we don’t do it here.” How can you be blind to the use in communicating shared histories in an increasingly multicultural society? I think you’ll find that the same behavior is present in many primarily immigrant nations. The US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and others. It’s just a shortcut we make because those categories, however arbitrary, mean something to us and allow quicker sharing of information. “America bad” is such a tired argument. Americans may have a generally high opinion of themselves, but I think you’ll find similar behavior in the defensive nature of those that belittle them as well. Humans are humans wherever you go. Step down off your high horse and recognize that maybe a behavior that naturally develops among hundreds of millions of independent people from different backgrounds entirely might be due more to its intrinsic value than some bizarrely specific American thing. Because it isn’t. Americans are just an obvious example of it since they have such an overwhelming presence online.