It’s a Fargate. It makes things go far! We are not getting sued!

Current building codes allow the construction of wood frame buildings up to 18 stories tall. You need to expand your knowledge of wood construction beyond what you learned reading The Three Little Pigs.

I agree. Wood is clearly the superior material.

The key difference between all previous civilizational collapses and the one we potentially face is that most people in the past were farmers. Even in the grandest empires like Rome, less than 10% of the population actually lived in cities. Most people lived in the countryside working the land. The city of Rome lost something like 95% of its population. But those people didn’t just crawl in a hole and die. They abandoned the city and joined the vast majority of the population that was living in the countryside. Many in the countryside actually saw their quality of life improve substantially. Many who had been slaves found the old legal system enforcing their slavery no longer existed. Rome collapsing just meant the end of the grand cities; political and economic systems could fragment, and people would just live more locally.

But today? Less than 5% of the population actually works on a farm. The vast majority of the population lives in cities. If the political and economic system collapses, the countryside can’t just absorb all those extra people. Hell, the farms can’t even operate without the equipment, fuels, and chemicals produced by the larger economic system.

Historically, when civilizations collapsed, the common folk just left the cities, abandoned the corrupt elites to their madness, and returned to small villages and rural life. But now there is simply nowhere for people to retreat to.

It’s not even about needing to exceed the speed of light. Once you cross the event horizon, spacetime around you is so warped that “out” doesn’t exist anymore. Point your ship in any direction and fire up your FTL engine; it doesn’t matter. No matter which way you try and fly your ship, you’ll be getting closer to the center. Once you cross the event horizon, there is literally no way out.

We should demand mastercard shut down all payments to everyone, as their very business model clearly falls afoul of the laws of the People’s Republic of North Korea.

500 cigarettes.

I mean, I have been looking for a cult to join, if you were looking to start one.

I was going to go with Marx. Turns out religion is the LITERAL opiate of the masses!

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What you’re describing is Clarktech, technology sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic. We don’t know remotely how to create an AI artist that can actually create original works of art with their own perspective, critique, and soul. A system like any we know how to design has to create art from what is essentially the averaging of the work of many artists. Everything they make is a work by committee. Any individual perspective is washed out in the generating process.

We simply don’t have any idea how to create an AI that would exhibit the kind of individual perspective of a human artist. Until we at least have some plausible pathway for that, we might as well be arguing about what happens if it turns out magic is real.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/26/blackstone-group-accused-global-housing-crisis-un

https://pestakeholder.org/reports/helter-shelter-how-blackstone-contributes-to-and-profits-from-californias-broken-housing-system/

https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/almost-a-crime-report-finds-blackstone-hiked-rent-nearly-double-market-rate/

https://prospect.org/education/2023-02-28-university-california-blackstone-housing/

https://www.archpaper.com/2025/01/blackstone-cushman-wakefield-landlords-justice-department/

While I don’t support mass shootings in general, if someone is so far off the deep end that they’re going to throw their life away in an act of random violence, I at least hope they choose targets like Blackstone instead of a random elementary school. At least they’re smiting someone who deserves it, for once. The country would be a lot better off if we had several hundred corporate shootings and zero school shootings each year. No shooting period would be better. But if you’re going to go on a rampage, at least go after evil people first.

Frankly, the answer should be for every site to just cut the UK off entirely. Let them have their own little North Korean style micronet. Maybe when the people of the UK can’t visit anything but a bunch of miserable English websites, they will get off their asses and elect competent leaders. If not, well maybe they’re just not the sort of people we should allow access to the global communications network. Let the barbarians stew in their own barbarism.

The test will ask how old the Earth is. Any answer over 6000 years or so will be marked false.

Get the audiobooks. Listen to it in the car. But yeah, one of the plot points is basically exactly this, where people can effectively have a “save point” in life. I won’t spoil it, but it’s great.

Read Peter F Hamilton’s Void saga.

Every 10 years the Israelis have to all move to Gaza, and the Gazans get to move into Israel. They trade places every ten years.

If you have a problem with the number of people your partner slept with prior to meeting you, you really shouldn’t be dating, as you need therapy to work through your issues before you start mucking about with other people.

Let’s leave the border the same. But just to spice things up, we’ll move all the South Koreans to North Korea and all the North Koreans to South Korea. Then they’ll just swap places every ten years. It will so whimsical!

You must have hated Mark Twain.