Self serve gas was actually lower priced than full service back when the transition was happening, so there was actually a reason to do the work yourself.
If it had been the same price, only I have to do the work of pumping it, damn straight I would have felt the same.
In retrospect it was a bad deal because once full service went away entirely, so did the price difference, so I’m smarter now and wouldn’t use self checkout even if they gave a discount.
I can’t think of a single thing built in the last century that will still be there in a thousand years. We may still build some cool stuff, but none of it is durable anymore it seems.
If I had to choose between global high speed internet access, and ground based astronomy, I’d pick the Internet every time. I’d completely blot out the sky forever if that’s what it took.
We don’t need ground-based astronomy to learn about the universe, I’d rather encourage more space-based astronomy. Or build some observatories on the moon if you really want to build on a solid space body.
However, Starlink is a for profit company run by Elon Musk. I don’t really want them doing it, because they’re not going to provide unlimited global Internet to everyone. So as the guy said, the idea is good, but Starlink is bad, although it is currently the only such option.
No, but they should be public to everyone, and not hidden unless you jump through hoops.
Lex Luthor is actually a super genius. And he can actually improve the world tremendously, such as in Red Son.
That said, Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg was still a more positive and likeable character than Elon Musk.
“AI”, especially art. I’ve spent years trying to learn to draw on and off and have never gotten good at it, but now I can use words to create illustrations I want in a level of quality and detail I could never dream of.
Now I just want the interface to be easier and more able to understand natural language and be capable of making directed changes better.
That would be hilarious if someone prepared a bunch of little clips of things Hitler said that Trump also says very similar things to, and then anytime he says one, just respond by playing a clip of Hitler saying basically the same thing, and giving a ‘Do I need to say more?’ look.
From what I hear he was actually rather inexpensive. If I was in his place I’d be insulted by the price he gets.
This is why PS3 is the last PlayStation that I owned, and I didn’t even buy it retail.
After they discontinued the backwards compatible model I sought out and bought one secondhand, and swore never again to buy a PlayStation product unless they release one on which I can play all my PlayStation games all the way back to 1.
Some of them, sure, but there are a lot of stories of how many lies recruiters will tell you to get you to sign on, so a pretty significant number are genuinely bad people.
If it can possibly be done without a revolution, that is by far the better and easier choice.
Revolutions are messy, difficult, a great time for power seekers to consolidate power and eliminate the competition, and in the history of mankind, most of them have not resulted in positive change.
They are extremely dangerous, and should never be considered anything other than an absolute last resort when nothing else has any hope of working anymore.
Famine is probably a good indicator of when the situation is bad enough for a revolution to be a potentially rational choice. If significant portions of the population are in danger of famine, then it may be time for a revolution. We are quite far from that point still, fortunately.
More like 1997, or even 1983, when the UK handed them back to China, or the earlier date, when they decided to prevent them from having British citizenship.
If everyone in Hong Kong had the right to emigrate to any British territory, China would have to be a lot lighter touched there, or there might be a mass exodus.
This is what I said to someone who asked a very similar question about the same thing a while back:
‘Females’ is, effectively, a ‘technical term’ you might say, that isn’t used in normal conversation. It’s used specifically in situations where distance from the subject being discussed is intentional. It is the sort of language used in police reports, medical reports and the like…when it’s even being applied to humans at all. Its use is perhaps more common referring to animals; it’s the sort of terminology you’d expect to hear in a nature documentary.
The people trying to push its use are intending to make the subjects - women - sound ‘other’ and separate and alien by referring to them as ‘females’. Not everyone who is picking up this terminology intends it that way, but the connotations are unavoidable because of how language works in common use, and therefore if you don’t intend it that way, you badly need to be made aware of it so you can stop.
Schlock Mercenary. Amazing webcomic, by one of only like 2 webcomic authors that I’m familiar with that have the simple capability of putting out a comic on time (although this no longer applies as the story is finished) and is a fantastic story from beginning to end.
Yet, none of the friends I’ve ever recommended it to have been willing to read it
If it was me in their place, I’d try giving up as little as possible then seek some sort of binding defense agreement, whether NATO or something else. And if necessary do it in secrecy so Russia doesn’t hear about it until the agreement is fully in force.
Honestly I just think the US is simply not reliable, and with Ukraine seemingly relying heavily on the US, they need to be looking for the quickest exit strategy they can come up with at a moment of strength.
Hopefully, if Republicans prevent continued US support, other countries will still provide enough…I just fear it may not be, and that seems like a worse outcome for Ukraine’s people.
I hope they do, but this is why I’ve always thought Ukraine needed to be a little less hard-line on not giving up any territory. Because I figured it was only a matter of time before the Republicans (and other similar parties/groups in other countries) ratfucked the support away from them.
I don’t know if Russia was ever open to negotiating, but if they were, Ukraine may find themselves wishing they had negotiated at a high point, instead of their support being pulled out from under them.
Sadly, the US is simply not a reliable ally or source of support right now, and probably won’t be until getting the internal insanity under control. Until there are two parties actually willing to govern instead of one party trying to govern and the other acting like a deranged shit-flinging baboon, the US will be unreliable.
Honestly, I don’t know for sure since I’m not an expert; my reasoning was the hope that being able to examine the entire line of advancement would allow the necessary technical knowledge to be extracted and duplicated. I knew that just bringing the latest one would definitely do nothing.
That’s why most of the stuff is technical or scientific information for the researchers; things that aren’t subject to change, just technical info. The money stuff I would hope to manage in less than 6 months from my arrival, because even in that short time I’d expect a lot to change by the end of it.
It’d just be a question of getting that initial funding off the ground with which to set up my research institution. After that, the few things I don’t release for free should cover expenses.
Sidenote since I didn’t address it in the original reply, taking over the world is impractical even with future knowledge, but as the person in charge of this outfit that would quickly be the world’s most advanced research tank, I’d probably have a lot of influence, which is the best anyone can practically hope for, I imagine. A lot more than the last 25 years of advancement would be needed to actually take over I figure.
Get every flagship CPU and GPU from 2000 to today that I can get my hands on. Also as much open source code as I can get hold of. And especially AI stuff - there’s several fully open source models, so bring those, and as much technical writings on them as possible.
Speaking of which, download every science paper published since 2000 that I can get hold of, in every possible field.
Get as much info on the 2000 election as possible, to hand to Al Gore, see if he can win that election with a solid unassailable margin.
Research stocks, lottery, and everything else I can to get fast money within the shortest possible period of time after I get there, so I can get super rich before the butterfly effect makes predictions impossible, I need billions in seed money and I need it fast.
Then use that money to start a private research group, and hand them all the scientific papers I brought. Get those experts to work studying all this knowledge and figure out what can be turned into practical technology. Turn some of this into profit-making devices to fund continued development, but release as much as possible for free.
Essentially, deluge the world in as much new technology as possible, mostly free and open source, holding back only as much as necessary in order to fund continued research.
And oh jeez the pharmaceutical industry. Release for free every drug made since 2000, so the pharmaceutical industry can’t get their patents in them.
Big list of stuff there, but if I pulled off even half of it, the world would probably be a much better place in 25 years than in my original timeline.
Don’t feel like a dick for that! That again is management’s fault!
Remember that bagging your groceries used to be part of the service and part of the price, they eliminated that job to increase their profit margins!
At least around here Walmart still bags them for me, except they now have the cashier doing it instead of a dedicated employee for bagging.