Zink

For real! In the first screen of comments here I've seen two that mention weed as a bad thing.

Weed is making my day much more comfortable so far, and I am being productive as hell with the things I actually care about. Working on my hobby projects outside while watching the dog I'm dog sitting play with our own dogs. Then in a bit, some more time on the computer here for some LAN game time with my son.

Over here in the good ole US of A, "socialism" usually doesn't refer to collective ownership of the means of production, or some other fancy book-learnin' version.

Socialism is when the government takes some CEO and/or redneck's hard earned tax dollar and tries to do something that helps poor people.

If the government wants to spend money on poor people, it has to be to blow them up on the other side of the world.

Back home there are way too many big hands to fill with handouts, between corporations and rich people. We can't get to the poor beggars until some time after the fusion power rollout. And please think of the economy!

... the hero we need?

Everything converges to generic sameness

When I hit this sentence in the OP, I realized AI is going to remain very popular with the average joe for a long time.

People who are tech literate, actively curious about the natural world, and do crazy shit like care about humanity (so most people reading this, most likely) will still reject it for the junk it is. But it seems the vast majority of people around me are not like Lemmy users. I mean, they are called normies for a reason, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way.

Generic sameness seems to be what the rat race pushes people towards. Maybe being burned out and having the economy constantly innovating new ways to bleed you dry makes the pre-packaged commoditized comforts from the advertisements too easy to accept. I look around and I see people anger-driving their pickup trucks and luxury SUVs to their jobs that they hate so that they can afford the cars they drive to get there. Plus they need to be able to afford beer and snacks for the game after they fill up those gas tanks!

These people don't care if the stories and tiktoks scrolling past their glazed-over eyes are AI generated. It only matters if those things can shake that stubborn drop of dopamine loose that just won't fall from the faucet. Just get through the day so we can do it again tomorrow.

A wise man once said

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.

Yeah the whole "big rip" or whatever the colloquial term is, is an interesting one to think about if the expansion just keeps on accelerating.

But from what science news I follow, I think our models and theories in that area are in for a shake-up. It will be interesting to see!

I think that is kind of orthogonal to the concept of heat death, though, which is more about entropy. Any universe that has a solar system or galaxy in it is far from reaching the state of heat death.

The funny thing is that I was joking and I am actually HYPER aware of the qualities I model and try to instill in my son.

I guess that's the one benefit of a lifetime of masking.

Plus not everybody sees every news story.

Trump tends to be nice to people who act fully subservient to him -- those he has dominated.

And wasn't Kirk on the "we should see the Epstein files" side of the MAGA divide except for that one afternoon when he said he was over it?

Having a problematic person publicly killed and then "honored" like this sure feels on brand for the wannabe mafia shitheads pulling the strings. It's like how they revel in their hypocrisy rather than hiding it because they care much more about rubbing it in their enemies' faces than they do about their own integrity.

That reminds me of the fascist playbook, where the enemy is both strong and weak.

Maybe we should just call it the "lying to control others" playbook.

I resent your implication that just because I have a great relationship with my kid and I find my family relationships fulfilling that I must know wtf I'm doing.

Yeah, it literally helps me experience and respond to the world around me the way I rationally want to. And that includes caring for my family and pets along with any hobby/work benefits.