@profdc9 @GhostOnTheHalfShell @pluralistic Frankly, I wish someone would drop the trestle over Lake Champlain, and then Canada could keep her LPG to herself.

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @pluralistic Anecdotal evidence confirms your assessment: I live in St. Albans, VT, immediately next to a railyard which manages Canadian freight inbound to the US. All day long, it's railcar after railcar of LPG, lumber, and mineral hoppers hauling stuff like Titanium Dioxide. No boxcars, no transporters, no finished goods at all, ever.

@Infoseepage @moira @SnoopJ @socketwench Clearly, it writes itself. MIght be too obviously parody of the form for #Monsterdon? I mean, that's what #Monsterdon is already...

@Infoseepage @moira @SnoopJ @socketwench

"We can remake Christine, King is really free with his work."

"We don't have the budget for a whole car."

"Well, what DO we have the budget for?"

"Like, a tire."

"Just one?"

"Just one."

"I can work with that."

@CedarTea As I was reading I was like "wait a second, this is pure anarchist doctrine..." then I got to this post 🤣 well done, sir, well done

@mattmcirvin @nyrath @futurebird Heinlein was opposed to democracy as a technocrat and an intellectual elitist, I've always thought that what people termed a libertarian streak was really an anti-idiotocracy streak. He's pretty explicit in both ST and Friday that democracy without civic restrictions or prerequisites is a recipe for disaster.

@futurebird I love to watch the 'survivalists' surviving 'alone in the woods' while wearing modern textiles.

Like, dude, your clothing literally came from an oil well, how are you 'self-sufficient'.

@futurebird The real power of the feudal world was not so much that they controlled a powerful military - all leaders through time have done that. The thing that always strikes me about the feudal era (and to some extent to England today) is how much of the natural world the state directly owned and controlled. The kings owned ALL the land. ALL the animals. ALL the minerals. ANYTHING that needed doing, including producing enough food to survive, had to be done through the approval of monarchs.

@dalias @felipe @zak @futurebird @ronaldtootall @hannu_ikonen This. The evidence of your senses is correlated to the effectiveness of your behaviors. Since LLMs don't HAVE behaviors, they don't have the functionality to create the feedback loops necessary for understanding.

@futurebird Yabbut do you teach physics with calculus or without?

@lerxst

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/05/887386869/how-transportation-racism-shaped-america

@mekkaokereke

@mekkaokereke Because they designed the bridges on the parkways to be too low for buses to get through? On purpose? So that blacks and other minorities couldn't even get jobs north of the city, let alone live there?

Sorry, I cheated, been living in New England a long time. 🙄

Who thought that when we finally got a world government it would be a cabal of supervillains?

@steevmi1 @mekkaokereke That one and "Facts, schmacts, you can prove anything that's even REMOTELY true with facts!"

@Gargron One of the BIG things I like about Mastodon is that the host is subject to German laws. As a Jew this has given me some feeling of safety to post here. Thank you.

Which reminds me I probably ought to renew my donation.

@WarnerCrocker Exactly. Put an aircraft carrier in the Black Sea. Quit fucking around.

@GramrgednAngel @fifilamoura @mekkaokereke Some books are OK to burn

@fifilamoura @GramrgednAngel @mekkaokereke I get that. I just think that it's unlikely that any individual is going to do that work on any significant level. That's the kind of thing that needs to be systematized and institutionalized - kids need to learn tolerance with their ABCs. And the flip side is that there are plenty of cases where one individual was radicalized to do something harmful by exposure to such material.

So, yes, but also it doesn't have to be you if you don't want it to be.

@fifilamoura @GramrgednAngel @mekkaokereke True. Does that mean we should all keep the statues of confederate soldiers in our homes?

I'm not advocating the destruction of history. I'm just saying that sometimes an individual can decide they don't want to carry that particular torch.

I just got a text claiming to be from "William Pompeo, Director of the CIA" warning me that this was my last chance to help prevent a "liberal invasion" of the US government.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.