Does Hunger Games, Star Wars, and the Matrix all incorporate a plot of “good guys win, get complacent, government goes back to fascism and they have to defeat it again only it is harder this time around because they are old and people question if doing the same thing again will lead to the same results?”

Wow. Last time I paid attention to him he was leading the push for gay marriage in California before SCOTUS legalized it. Then I remember him running for governor and I stopped hearing about him since I didn’t live in Cali

I haven’t heard bad stuff about Gavin Newsom. Did he turn corporate when I wasn’t paying attention?

stepping back from DOGE after May

Appointed temporary government employee which means he only could work until June without congressional approval. Set this up from the start to take heat off of Trump and allow Trump to seem reasonable compared to Musk when Trump ‘fires’ him in June.

RFK looking over the Autism data: The health implications are clear!

People are use to the color. Dyes get banned. People see what the food looks like without the dyes. People get weirded out over it - like the green ketchup from Sherk promotions. People eat less of it. Health improves due to people eating less (diet and food moderation ftw).

RFK claims success.

I have a feeling that AOC is going to run for Schumer’s seat and Booker is going to be the nominee.

Was watching a clip from “the Crown” about how when Tony Blair was elected, people were contemplating getting rid of the monarchy due to how popular he was. Now a “Blairite” is a slur in British politics due to it’s connotation with the Iraq war debacle. Second biggest modern mistake just behind allowing the Brexit poll and just ahead of the Lib Dems propping up the Tory government.

The underlying unsaid context: “White American with White Name who never has been outside the country told to self-deport”. Yes, WHITE AMERICA it could happen to YOU!

Living expands until just beyond means, then stops. If means shrinks, like lets say someone placed massive tariffs on our main supplier of goods, then living shrinks to meet the means.

Foreigners? No. Money? Yes.

Should make the headstone out of metal so it risks ricocheting onto the shooter.

Dude, it’s been 2 centuries, take a hint

Disney used to be very anti-LGBTQ because a high percent of their revenue came from China. Then China recalculated the ticket pricing and how many “foreign” movies could be brought in. You can literally see the about-face in Disney representation of “dressing up and traveling” people as their Chinese market share decreased bit by bit.

Buy the dip scam is entering into phase 2.

Death from “old age” is more likely.

Sounds like if the ship of theseus burnt to the ground, and years later, someone recreates it by modifying a boat to look like the original, would that be the ship of theseus?

That is exactly why I said it

If you open up your camera app and spin around and take a picture, 99% of the picture will be garbage.

If you boot up a AI art program and type in a random prompt, 99% of that will be garbage.

Photographer have specialize lenses and choices of FOV that affects how the pictures look. Ai artists have specialized weight and loras that affect how the picture will look.

Photographer don’t just take pictures at random. They set and frame the scenes - doing prep work and framing. AI artist can use base pictures instead of random noise to bias the outcome (image to image).

With live subjects, photographer can either give no guidance, or direct the subjects (think “look at the camera and say cheese”, only more nuanced). With AI art, there is a whole subfield of prompt engineering l which is akin to this.

After a photographer take pictures, they do minor touch ups and photoshoping to clean up parts that didn’t come out right. So too with AI artists.

And with both, you can get 100s if not 1000s of pictures of a subject. The photographer and the AI artist true test is being able to pick from those thousands the one or two good shots.

Yes there is a bunch of legal and copyright problems with AI art. When the camera was first invented, people argued that you couldn’t take pictures of crowds without getting everyone’s concent, nor could you take picture of other people’s property with out breaking the law. That the legal realities around photography weren’t settled didn’t mean those taking picture back then weren’t artists, and it doesn’t mean that people doing AI art today aren’t artists. AI generators are like camera in that you get out better results depending on how much work you put it.

“I am a photographer!”

“So you just push a button and steal people’s privacy? Not real art!”

Time to get Hari Seldon and prepare a foundation.