That's actually the area of my interest. This would seem to be a natural situation for local power grids without the need for investment in long distance high voltage transmission. There can be an advantage to skipping over the earlier technologies if you pick the right stuff. The problem is knowing what "right" means because that's largely dependent on the "maturity" of the technologies in question.

But where is the angle to go for the funny? I'm not really seeing any good ones for this story. Something about the AI advice to investors in Africa? (Maybe something about what the AI said when it found Dr Livingstone?)

Mod parent funny. Too obvious and low-hanging for insight, if'n I ever had a mod point to give.

So is this a legal marriage or one of those common law things? Maybe the expenses you avoided involved the expensive wedding and so forth?

Trying to bridge to the "state of sin" joke that I was expecting on this story. Yours was the best of the jokes on offer, but I had much higher hopes for the story.

Me? If an AI certified the system as random, then I have my doubts.

Oh yeah, I suppose I better complete my citation of the ancient joke, hadn't I?

"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." -- John von Neumann, 1951

Should have picked a different room, but typical Japanese houses are so small...

That is exactly what it programmed to say, said exactly in the way it was programmed to say it. Even if we humans are too stupid to understand how the programming works. But what is it really "thinking"?

Last week's https://existentialcomics.com/... is relevant. SMBC often gets into the same territory, as in https://www.smbc-comics.com/co... from a few days ago.

But what's at the top of the list? I think it's a fundamentally fake problem: More profit. There is NO number of digits of profit that could possibly solve the need for more profit. Or you could call it the gold rush mentality. The result is that they will work really hard and with extreme energy feeding their greed. Another result is that "We can't get there from here" where here is any stable solution state. These CEOs are always looking for fresh pyrite.

In contrast, most people are normal and easily satisfied. They want a comfortable life and some leisure time to pursue their interests. But they aren't the ones making the "big" decisions and they don't have the resources to implement any major decisions.

The typical counterargument is that things are getting better, and that has mostly been true. However it's a long term average and the oscillations matter. I think the velocity and size of the oscillations is increasing, and there are many oscillations that can produce "game over" states by dipping below zero. How soon they forget the last (and greatest yet) financial implosion? (Just one example. Population oscillations are probably the most threatening from the Darwinian perspective.)

Mostly concurrence, though "ignorance of the joke is no defense" is the obvious joke in response.

My joke was supposed to something about people being incapable of moral neutrality.

So how about a joke about the General Principle of Relatively Funny Stuff? But what is the elementary particle of humor? The old bozon joke?

Anyone get the joke?

I don't find your defense of technology persuasive. Didn't help that you propagated a vacuous sock puppet Subject with no relationship to your substantive thought. Did you even think about it? Defaults are dangerous.

This reply is on the premise that you are nice guy with good morals. Is there any reason why anyone should be worried about what you are going to do with technology? I hope not, though sometimes good intentions lead to a famously bad road.

Now about that thar' Pope fellow. That's long enough to be book, but I'm skeptical that it would be worth my time to read it. Now if he was a Jesuit, then I might hope for him to say something scientifically interesting, but as things stand...

Disclaimer needed: I, too, am using generative AI. Sometimes experimentally and deliberately and sometimes because it's in the way and cannot be avoided. Rarely for an application, though right now I'm doing a database front end using Claude. Much improved over previous probes along such lines, but I still can't tell if it's mentally harmful to me.

Quoted in response to moderation censorship. Convenient that no substantive response is called for?

And no, I don't really care what offended the "angry" sock puppets. It's sufficient to know that the trolls have no response save feeble censorship. (But there are a number of prominent websites where the feedback/moderation problems were worse. Have to use past tense because I only rarely and erratically check back to see if they improved or fixed anything. I can't think of any examples where I've noticed improvements over time... (The usual pattern is for a new website to appear with some good ideas, and then it fades away. Sometimes slowly, sometimes with an impressive implosion, sometimes into some sort of commercialization swamp.))

No jokes here. Already a large discussion, but nothing Funny.

Don't look at me. I can't help. Just finished some books about Facebook and only reinforced my theory about greedy fools winning. Not because their ideas are better or even good, but just because they are motivated by dreams of money to work much harder than other folks, even when the other folks actually have the good ideas that might make the world better.

Nothing in the discussion about Facebook, though I have heard reports that internal morale is terrible there. Does mesh with my tentative conclusions from those Facebook-centric books I recently finished. One conclusion is that the idea of connecting the world was bogus from the git-go. The REAL motivation was "domination" and Zuck used to be much more up front about that. The line about "connecting the world" was always limited to marketing hoopla, but the reality of following the money actually led in the opposite direction and Facebook has become the world's best tool for dividing and conquering people by dividing them into as many tiny clans as possible. Natural result of wanting to get as much money as possible from as many advertisers as possible, where each advertiser dreams of targeting AKA conquering the "perfect customers" AKA suckers for whatever they are selling. That's the second conclusion, leading to: For the morality-free investor, snake oil and cryptocurrency are probably the hottest investments now...

So on to the book about TikTok. The "boom" in the title may be giving away the plot?

I can't figure out which way your joke is pointing? Who is aligned with which cult leader? Pretty sure it has something to do with climate change, that famous Chinese hoax. (Or maybe I'm just confused by the book about Chinese Buddhism?)

But I can force fit a thought of the day onto the topic. The YOB's strings are being pulled to oppose change, especially towards the wind power he hates so viscerally. I'm not saying I want him dead, but dropping dead might be the least harmful thing he could do now considering the size of the hole and the available options (in his legendary mind)? (It's not like the veep is the anti-christ. More like the anti-charisma. (Then again, the veep is a close friend of all the top suspects for anti-christ, so...(Except for Xi?)))

My favorite conspiracy theory is that he's getting too sick to carry on much longer, so many of the distractions are to draw attention away from the increasingly visible signs of his sickness. Fundamental problem there because the YOB loves attention, but I'm sure that some of the puppeteers pulling his strings understand how bad he looks more and more often.

Much as I like Funny, I'm not seeing any place for it around this story. Unless some of the UFO videos are funny? Or maybe a link to an Onion video about UFOs?

'Nuff said.

'Nuff said?