Good points, but not necessarily eternal truths. I suspect you could use magnetic fields to strengthen the cable. Of course, that would collapse if the power failed. But perhaps there are other alternatives that nobody has thought of.

Still, my favorite skyhook is the PinWheel, though it needs a hefty mass in a fairly low orbit (as well as long arms that reach into the stratosphere). But you need to lower as much mass as you raise (on the average) or the orbit decays.

Looks like you're implementing LISP.

What I wonder is whether it's any good. Admittedly, I don't wonder hard enough to listen to it, but then I generally (almost always) avoid podcasts.

There will be tools. But there will also be the more general intelligence. One can argue about the time-line, and that's quite reasonable, but denying it requires accepting spiritualism or some such.

For that matter, people are often used as tools. It's not an "either/or" choice.

The only way you could reasonably predict what jobs will be available would be to predict exactly how much more advanced AIs are going to get and how quicly. And any prediction is a "Wild Ass Guess".

FWIW, there's a company in China building humanoid robots for assembly line work. So far it's only sold less than a thousand, so it's probably still in the experimental stage, but if it's "nearly ready" then it will soon be ready.

Now most assembly line work is basically rote repetition, with only a limited number of special-case scenarios, to this is far from a general purpose robot...but it's enough to eliminate LOTS of jobs...if it's cheap enough. And if it is, one can expect incremental expansion into other roles.

It's not going to be an LLM. The LLM is just what it's going to use to talk to you. But "world models" are being built, and that is going to be the basis of real intelligence.

The thing is, it wouldn't help things for one player to quit.

OTOH, as someone else pointed out, the government isn't exactly trustworthy either. (I consider accepting funds from lobbyist groups to be accepting bribes, just like accepting funds from individuals.)

On the third hand, open source approaches can't limit the use to which something is put.

Perhaps the "corporate powers" are the least bad choice...but that sure isn't encouraging.

Sorry, but "death by GPS" is a label, not a reality. Someone decided to follow the instructions of the GPS. So this is not analogous to an actually self-driving car.

I would say that every nation exists as a mixed economy, unless the government has so collapsed that it's no longer worthy of the term.

It wouldn't hurt, but it would be a bit expensive (except the Morse code). Actually, I really think that shop classes should not have been cut. Admittedly repairing a steam locomotive is a bit extreme and a bit dangerous. Also horses are large and dangerous (and expensive) animals. And shoeing horses should be expanded to include running the forge that the horse shoe is created in. Perhaps not to digging the ore and making the charcoal, since in a lot of places the raw materials don't exist.

But these should be "options". They could replace PE and be merged with history and geography, or perhaps be "summer school". People really have no idea what the life of their ancestors was like, and "blacksmith" was a high status occupation.

I mean maybe, in theory, but how often do prices actually drop on hotels? Prices are usually based on occupancy, so unless somebody cancels a block of a hundred rooms or something, this seems unlikely to make a meaningful difference in hotel revenue.

Meanwhile, if this had happened five years ago, it would have meant not going on trips for me, because traveling with my dad in his last couple of years had a decent risk of having to cancel.

There are people for whom being able to cancel a trip without significant penalty is the only thing that makes travel possible. And if hotels are more concerned with maybe losing a few bucks in rare circumstances than they are with whether the elderly and disabled get to have a vacation at all, then F**K those hotels. They aren't worth doing business with.

What do you consider "proper pens" for "Spencerian Script"? I forget which kind of bird supplies the proper quill.

And the problem is that not all corporal punishment is bad. But people lack judgement about using it, so it gets over-used, under-used, or just misused. It needs to be quickly applied, accurately assessed, and minor in degree. Also it isn't sufficient in and of itself. It needs to be followed by an explanation and corrective action. And to come from someone that the recipient of the punishment accepts as having their good at heart. This can be difficult.

Art can be one option (it isn't always), but so can building things. And of the two I think building things is more important. As with art, though, you've got the select the approach if your goal is to develop find motor skills.

It needs to be a mix. I defy you to pronounce "gnu" using the rules of phonics. There are many words in English where phonics just fails, and for those you need to memorize the word. e.g. "adieu". But if you just memorize words, you'll never be able to read a new word. I accept that when I read a word from a foreign language, I'm likely mispronouncing it, but I *do* have a way to pronounce it, or I can't remember it.