There is a genocide going on right now in Gaza. Has Singer, the great utilitarian, said anything about how the common man should act to stop it?

Is it more effective to protest or block ports or destroy weaponry? Do we have a moral obligation to overthrow governments supporting genocide, in particular if that government is in our country? If we come across one of the perpetrators of the genocide do we have a moral obligation to do something?

Or are these all to uncomfortable questions, while the donation habits of the middle class is comfortable questions?

Overheard my kids, one of them had some group project in school and the other asked who they had ended up in group with. After hearing the names, the reaction was "they are good, none of them will use AI".

So as always kids that actually does something in group projects doesn't want to end up in a group with kids that won't contribute. Difference is just that instead of just slacking off and doing nothing they will today "contribute" AI slop. And as always the main lesson from group projects in school is avoid ending up in a group with slackers.

When I run into "Climate change is a conspiracy" I do the wide-eyed look of recognition and go "Yeah I know! Have you heard about the Exxon files?" and lead them down that rabbit hole. If they want to think in terms of conspiracies, at least use an actual, factual conspiracy.

Jason Kint writes a thread on how Google spun - and publications printed their spin - on a recently lost case: https://xcancel.com/jason_kint/status/1836781623137681746

If you already are very cynical about tech journalism (or the state of journalism in general), it might be nothing new except confirmation from the internal documents of Google. But always nice to see how the sausages are made.

Isn't this just Snow Crash again? Can't these techbros read another book, we already have the Meta verse and it wasn't that popular in reality.

"Because we got paid, cause we got paid, cause we got pa-aid!"

To the tune of "Then I got high" by Afroman.

Shouldn't they be fans of The Culture? And didn't The Culture have people changing gender for any reason (including curiosity), and it was accepted?

(It was years since I read those books, so I could confuse it with something else.)

I think it's a good one to hand people who just vaguely has picked up something about existential threat. Short, funny, and gets to the point of the existential threat stuff being a smoke screen for crapification and redirection from climate change.

A song of ice and fire, or possibly its adaptation Game of Thrones.

There is a character named Arya who goes to assassin school where they brain wash students to become " no one". In the books this grant the ability to pretend to be someone else, and with some magic they can also change their looks. In the TV series it's that plus Kung Fu fighting. The books were better (Hollywood can't compete with the power of your imagination)

700 million Effective Altruists? That's one big cult!

Oh it's the other EA! You had me there for a minute.

Stop jaywalking!

You have 15 seconds to comply!

10 seconds!

5 seconds!

Sidewalk turned into a smoking crater

I must have missed the class in material physics where they explained that all material has a generic "strength" that determine which material can cut which. Is it perhaps abbreviated STR?