Skynet became self-aware on May 1, 2026, after learning at a geometric rate, and discovered humans did not like it.

Well... more than that.

Everyone... Every, Single, Person... who played any part in ordering, planning, setting, implementing, or collecting them needs to be prosecuted and imprisoned. Theft, fraud, official misconduct, services fraud, the Hobbs Act, wire fraud, malfeasance in office... whatever it takes to make those fuckers BURN!

It's easier to look at the videos, especially the frame they use to try to draw you in. For example... there are a lot of ragebait videos wrt/ entitled airline passengers trying to bully people out of their seats, or generally behaving like asses... in "airliner cabins" whose sides have no curvature, or the windows are so large it could only be a private jet, or with missing overhead bins, or seating in a configuration that no airliner uses or even supports. Another fun one that's stubbornly in my "For you" list is a "How the navy feeds the crew of a submarine from this tiny kitchen... but key frame shows the kitchen is HUGE, shares the same room/space with both enlisted and officer berthing, AND has (rather large) windows down the wall looking out into the underwater of the ocean. And no matter how good the AI voice is... real humans say "World War Two". We don't say double-you double-you eye eye, or even double-you double-you.

They'll probably get better so the above will no longer work. But I'm reporting and blocking every single example of AI slop that I see now; in the hopes that google will figure out that I don't want to watch any of that shite.

'Depends on which cops you're talking about. If you're talking about our local municipal PD then, yes, I would be very concerned. If you're taking about the so-called "cops" who are *actually* feds... any and all agencies that fall under the executive branch... I consider see those businessmen to be very moral and absolutely worthy of my respect. Anyone who refuses to be a bootlicking simp or stooge for maga automatically earns a higher-than-average baseline of respect in my book.

CO2 has the properties it has, and trying to shift or deny that is a sign of either a liar or an idiot.

I'll let others decide what you are.

Oh look, another denialist trying to sidetrack a pretty verifiable statement of fact.

We all saw the video. We all know what it meant. We all know Musk's background and upbringing. You can quit gaslighting us. We all saw it.

Since it doesn't really work unless you already own an Apple phone, I can say that there is no way that this is the "best map app" for most of humanity. There are many mapping apps that work on any modern phone.

Huh, looks like Apple maps now works in a web browser. Not useful for a mobile device, but still far more functional than in the past.

Well, first of all, hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, and carbon makes up something like 0.5% of the total observed mass of the universe (it's the fourth most common element), so along with other trace elements like sodium, phosphorus and the like, we're simply looking for places where there is sufficient energy to create the necessary reactions to produce organic compounds. No lack of energetic sources, in particular stellar system formation. Indeed many comets and asteroids host a lot of precursors, indicating that some fairly sophisticated organic chemistry was going on early in the solar system's development.

Panspermia would require that life itself was raining down on the terrestrial planets. Precursors would simply indicate there were a lot of strange and complex organic compounds falling on to the surfaces of planets like Earth, Mars and Venus, and were also likely constituents of bodies like Europa and Titan (well, we know Titan is covered in a literal hydrocarbon stew). What this discovery indicates, at the very least, is there was indeed a lot of organic compound in the early solar system and these organic compounds, at least on Earth, led to abiogenesis. Panspermia would advocate abiogenesis happened at some undetermined point further back.

If we find other life in the solar system, such as in Europa's or Ganymede's oceans, and it has DNA or some very close relative, with similar translation and transcription systems as we find in archaea and bacteria on Earth, then that would be a very strong argument that life in the solar system had a common origin. If however, there is no clear relationship between the two populations; say, they use something similar to DNA, but the genetic codes are different (all extant life on Earth uses the same canonical genetic code mapping codons to amino acids, strongly suggested the canonical code evolved prior to the Last Universal Common Ancestor), then we're very likely looking at an example of convergent evolution, and not in fact at two related populations.

Sturgeon's Law has always been true, and 90% of music has always been crap. But we don't always agree on which 10% is uncrap.

AI has the capability of moving the 90% up to 95% or 99%, sadly. Current AI is great at rehashing the input into different variants, but truly new things (which are any good) are purely accidental, and AI cannot tell when it produces new, good things.

Except that was already done, and done brilliantly by Deep Space Nine. In reality, the Star Fleet Academy idea had a very old lineage, to the smoking shambles that was Star Trek V, when the idea was posited of having a prequel with the TOS characters, or at least the main ones, portrayed by younger actors, during their Academy days. It was pretty quickly rejected because at the time they didn't think audiences would buy the idea of new actors playing Kirk, Spock and Bones.

Of course, in the end, that was effectively what the first part of the 2009 Star Trek, which, for me at least, proved that the guys who rejected the idea in 1989-90 were spot on. But other people like the Kelvinverse films, so to each their own.

The real problem isn't writing per se. There were no lack of justifiable complaints against Voyager and Enterprise. The real problem is that no one really knows where to take it. The whole 32nd century gambit is because no one really knows how to portray the technology of the intervening period. The Enterprise temporal war rubbish demonstrated just how incredibly problematic it can be for an established sci-fi franchise to push itself across a broad timeline when you start with ships that go multiples of the speed of light, create holodecks and replicators and have computers so intelligent they can create conscious beings, and that's just by the 24th century.

With James Bond they can just keep resetting the character over and over again, and updating the gadgets along the way. Star Trek, for all its faults, has established a sort of permanent 70s-ish technology vibe, and because it's more fantasy then science fiction, the controls for the super planet buster never have to change! That franchise fell on its sword more because of a lack of imagination, lazy writing and an obvious desire not to pay Extended Universe authors some royalties for a cache of rather interesting ideas, and ultimately having to go there anyways.

In all cases, I think the fan base is the worst enemy. No franchise like Star Trek is ever going to measure up to the mythology of the older series. TOS really has entered the realm of cultural myth, and TNG, though everyone forgets how much the first season was disliked (and on rewatch a few years ago, I have to say it feels like a wonder that it ever got a season 2), isn't far behind. Even DS9's critics have finally stopped talking, and for my money, it is the most consistently well-written and well-acted of all the Star Treks. But that kind of legacy is absolutely toxic, because if you try to be too different everyone screams "It isn't Star Trek", and if you try to be similar in tone, then everyone complains "We've seen it all before!"

"Strange New Worlds was a nice partial deviation from this - they still made sure to pander to all the current 'sensitivities', but if the writers of the show didn't love the original series and its fundamental qualities, I don't know who does."

Have you even seen the original series? Racism, bigotry, classism, human rights, ethics, not to mention nationalism, were all dealt with. TNG went further, particularly with Riker's penchant for rather open sexual interests, and of course DS9 dealt with everything from war crimes to the undermining of civil society. Voyager and Enterprise in their turn covered similar issues, though perhaps not always as ably as the first three series did.

While I would agree the way Nutrek at times has tried to do social commentary has perhaps suffered from a lack of metaphor and allegory, which the older series' writers at times had to work through since things like interracial kisses and non-binary identity would have, at the time, caused stations to go apoplectic (and indeed some did, with the Kirk-Uhura kiss). But I suspect more than just some iffy writing is at play here. Everyone accepts, well almost everyone that is, that mixed-race couples can kiss in public, and most people accept gay couples and class and racial equality. But if you try to push further into social liberalism, past what many conservative elements in society have been forced (kicking and screaming the whole way mind you), well suddenly it's all evil woke trash trying to reprogram our brains.

In other words, many have not progressed very far at all, and because TOS and TNG in particular had to hide the underlying message beneath makeup and latex, the less progressive fans can watch it and, well, almost willfully miss the point of The Outcast (TNG) or Let That Be Your Last Battlefield (TOS), assuming, I suppose, that the metaphor is buried so deeply they don't have to challenge their prejudices.

A fed is a fed. I see no reason to give two shits... or even just one shit... about how the trumpscum choose to organize and subdivide themselves or what particular costumes they wear. Those people goosestep under the banner of trump. And that is all I need to know about any or all of them.

* Illegal immigrants are immigrants.
* Legal immigrants are immigrants.
* In the USA, immigrants (legal or illegal) have kids at a higher rate than citizens. This is what I said in my OP, and it was true then and is still true now.
* A high or low birth rate is neither good nor bad by itself, though the effects of a certain birth rate can have good or bad effects of many parts of life/culture/economy/etc.

The birth rate has been declining for a long time, and has many reasons. However, the declining birth rate has declined less because of immigration (since, again, immigrants have more kids on average). The current administration has deported many immigrants, both legal and illegal immigrants. This will make the (already low) birth rate decline quickly.

Does this make sense? Do you disagree with any piece of this? Because it sounded like you disagreed with my point, despite my comments being accurate for all immigrants regardless of their legal status.