CarbonIceDragon

when I worked at a grocery store for a bit (until a year go), we had that kind of system alongside the regular and self checkouts. It was interesting to see as I had never heard of it before, but it was very fast when it worked. That being said, almost nobody actually used it, and whenever the random checks happened it was almost always when someone had bought more items than usual (not sure if that actually triggers anything or if it was just coincidence) and the system for looking through everything was frustratingly slow for both me and the customers. I feel like the scanners are a great idea, but the theft-deterrent system for it could use a rethink, though Im not sure what exactly could best replace it

To be fair, that's not really true for fascism. It doesn't usually end peacefully and almost never easily, but historically it certainly has come to an end in various places in various ways. I'm not saying this to say that it's somehow okay, but rather that should it come to pass, people should not give up trying to thwart it.

Just Nebula. I do admittedly rent movies from YouTube from time to time as a sort of special thing to do with my friend (a bit less than once a month I think, I don't think I watch them often enough to justify any kind of subscription to them, which probably wouldn't have all the ones I end up wanting to see anyway, and since at the current pace it might be years before I rewatch something if ever I don't think buying is really worth it either in my case), but on the whole, I just have kind of given up watching "normal" TV anymore. There are a handful of shows I liked watching when living with some family that had the subscription, but there's not nearly enough entertainment in just one show or two for me to want to bother buying a subscription to any of them myself, and I've sort of found that except for only one or two shows I get more enjoyment per unit time out of content made by individuals or small teams anyway, I'm not really sure why, maybe because it can be more niche or something.

That isn't to say that I don't spend any money, beyond that one subscription that is, on entertainment or anything, I just generally spend it on games. (And since I like games with thousand hours or more levels or replayability, usually buy them or any dlc on sales, and don't play games with mtx much and never buy any if I do, the amount of entertainment hours per dollar I get there is rather extremely high I suspect).

I'm using the term to mean more or less the collectively agreed upon "identity" of a state. Not merely a single contiguous government (for the same reason you just bring up, people still consider France to be France even though the government has changed fundamentally many times over the years), but I'm not using it to just mean "nation" either, since were France to be completely conquered and annexed by a foreign power, the French nation, as in the group of people, would still exist, but the country would not, at least until such time as it could be recreated, or for a different reason, that one can have a national identity split between different states, or a state involving different such groups.

To be fair, it's not that old, as far as countries go

I find them comforting in a reassuring, kinda awe inspiring way. Like, they're a visual sign of at least trying to address climate change, and there's something about having a giant, obviously artificial moving structure towering over the landscape that just gives me a sense of thrill and wonder that we are capable of building that. Those things are pretty massive if you get anywhere close to one, after all.

It doesn't really do all the work of an artist though. It generates pictures, but consider that a camera also generates pictures of things, and yet photography is considered an art form these days, and one's results from doing that can vary quite a bit between someone who understands both artistic principles and how their tools function, versus someone who does not. Having an image generator does not also entail knowing what to ask the generator for, or how to make any adjustments to it's output if it gives you something that is close to what you envision but not quite there. If anything, I personally suspect a more mature version of the technology will get integrated into art tools in some way rather than looking like it currently does, because a text prompt is a somewhat vague and inexact way to describe an image. If you ask it for a spaceship, for example, it'll give you some sort of spaceship, and if you ask it for a specific spaceship from pop culture it may likely give you that, but if you're imagining a specific design for a spaceship, with specific details, that does not already exist in existing art, it would be very hard to completely describe that just through text, versus if you could start sketching out and have it sort of act as a kind of graphical autocomplete that you can steer in given directions.

How so? Cancer is something that one would be statistically likely to get eventually if you didn't first die of anything else I suppose, so it'd certainly be useful in extending effective lifespan if you already had a youth serum, but how would a treatment for cancer do anything for other age related disease?

There are certain kinds of market socialism that are intended to work this way I think, still have companies and markets and the familiar structures of a capitalist system but turn all the companies into worker co-operatives

I think algorithms can certainly be useful tools, but if they can somehow be made client-side, transparent in what they do, and customizable/replaceable, that would be ideal. In that scenario, they'd actually be working for the end user instead of the platform owner.

Quite a few of the original nazis were those too, or started that way. Groups like that are known for recruiting the youth.

A modest proposal