Hmm…that one’s probably around 150 gently used.

This isn’t Elon’s hyperloop. It’s a company called Hyperloop One, predominately funded by Richard Branson.

No one reads the article, my guy. Everyone just assumes it’s Musk’s imbecilic project, when in reality it’s Branson’s imbecilic project.

Growing up? I think you mean “getting drained of any creativity or energy with age.”

Also 8.2 billion dollars is a fucking pittance in terms of national rail service. That’s barely enough to expand an already existing rapid transit network in a moderately sized US city.

“You must hate your job because you think putting stickers on laptops is tacky!”

Touch grass.

I don’t talk about the specific details of my employment on the internet with strangers. Especially with those who are fishing for a fight in which I have little interest.

Extensively. Nobody has stickers on their laptops. Maybe that’s some “fresh out of college” shit.

I’ve never been in a corporate environment where stickers on laptops that weren’t branded for the company itself was considered acceptable or professional.

We both know the answer to that question. And boy howdy am I stoked for cars to get fully enshittified where you have to have a yearly subscription for the software that allows your tires to move, otherwise you functionally just bought a 45,000 dollar paperweight.

That argument never held much weight for me years ago, because a lot of subs were trash back then, too. You just picked whatever trash you wanted and let the weabs on the internet be damned.

The article says

Aitana, a 25-year-old woman from Barcelona, is described by her creators as the first Spanish AI model, Euronews first reported.

Which means the article is stating that the model is an AI. The article goes on to compare this model to "Caryn Marjorie, a 23-year-old influencer, [who] created an AI version of herself that served as a virtual girlfriend to 1,000 men. Customers of CarynAI pay $1 per minute of time with the virtual Marjorie, which is described by her owners, Forever Voices, as an “extension of Caryn’s consciousness.”

Did no one read the article?

It seems like this isn’t even an AI model. They just had an AI create fake pictures of a person that doesn’t exist based on design specifications. Does this thing engage with users automatically, does it generate new “photos” on the fly and upload them? Like, what part of this is intelligent? Because if it’s not, the article is simply lying at worst, and wrong at best.

Biden literally signed an executive order blocking railway workers from striking. If he has that kind of authority and is willing to use it in that way, then all he has to do is make an executive order declaring all strikes illegal. Also, not trying to be a naysayer, but a general strike is a pipe dream. You can barely get people in the same union to cooperate, let alone multiple unions cooperating for a general.

“We’re too deep in the hole we’ve dug for ourselves. Just keep digging and hope we eventually come out the other side.” That’s what that logic effectively equates to: doing the same stupid thing and hoping it eventually works out for you.

Unions are tragically toothless when the federal government can just decide a planned strike is illegal.

It’s an effective tool at providing introductory information to well documented topics. A smarter Google Search, basically. And that’s all I really want it to be. Overrated? Probably not. It’s useful if you use it correctly. Overhyped? Yeah, but that’s more a fault of marketing than technology.

Why the gay one?

Because the gay one is hella cute and I’m all about that shit.

The intent of Black Mirror is to make you think about how you use technology

This is the intent of the vast majority of most science fiction. It doesn’t make Black Mirror’s execution good or insightful. Much of Black Mirror focuses on people “surrendering control” to technology in ways that prove self-destructive or just generally destructive. At their best, many of the stories aren’t really about technology. Technology serves as an aesthetic component, but you could still make the stories work without them. The Orville actually has a better version of Black Mirror’s Season 3, Episode 1 episode “Nosedive.” It actually engages with the underlying themes and ideological basis of a world that operates like that and suggests that the technology isn’t really the problem: it’s how people elect to perceive and judge one another and the ease with which we condemn one another from a distance. It’s not a technological problem, fundamentally, but a cultural one. Technology can facilitate bad behavior or exacerbate negative societal tendencies, but it doesn’t sit at the functional center of them. Because, functionally, it’s just a Salem Witch Trial story with additional technological flavoring on top. This is something that Black Mirror never seems to “get.”

Which is why, and I will stand by this, the best Black Mirror episode is the gay one.

“What if technology was…(wait for it)…bad sometimes.”

So thought provoking. I stand by my opinion that the only good episode of Black Mirror is the gay one.