Says guy originally made famous by real estate deals.

Andean Condors - multiple of them. I want them to fly me around. “Today we fly, my birds!” - in exchange, I will give them as much food as they would ever need.

Isn’t it ironic

Slightly more political now, I feel like there used to be a lot more learning and sharing of culture. We did have some other oddballs though - flossdaily, Unidan, voilentacrez - not sure we have as much of that on the fediverse…at least not those that reach the front pages.

Scientists said our generation were getting food allergies because we weren’t getting exposed enough to things.

So we start stuffing our kids chock full of Pb&Js again and now they’re dumber. Great. Explain that one scientists!

For someone to completely uproot their life, separate from most of their family, their friends and their upbringing takes guts. I’ve moved within my own country a few times and it was jarring enough.

People who are willing to such should be celebrated. I personally appreciate the culture, entertainment and food that they bring with them.

That said, I worked at UConn for a few months for a project, and I was taken aback by how many students were of Asian descent compared to how many were white or black. It made me reflect just how much more populous that part of the world is.

And while I do celebrate culture, and am even a proponent of open borders generally, I do think culture needs to be preserved. I live in the US and not China for a reason. The people who move from China, for more than a short term visit, should expect to follow American laws and social norms. That is to say, come freely to add onto our patchwork quilt here, but be ready to add to it, rather than replacing an existing patch with your own.

As for what people think here. I live in a small college town. We have folks from other cultures here already. I think they would be welcomed in town generally, but the outlying county folks would have more reservations - they’d be more accepting for those that talked or acted like them, hunting, fishing, 4-wheeling, big trucks and all of that.

There was this one time a few years back that I had to go to the dump to dispose of some various large material. Our dump is more of a transfer station with a big warehouse where everything is disposed of, compacted by giant bulldozers and then loaded onto other trucks to take to a nearby landfill in a separate county.

This particular visit it had been rainy for a few days, and I guess I must’ve gotten there right after the transfer trucks picked up all the refuse. Except for the floor, it was covered in a slippery stink-filled film. I carefully threw my truckload in, making sure that I didn’t fall, though I did slip a bit. It took some time to do so, so I came up with this little ditty. “Trash juice, trash juice, oh bring back my trash juice to me, to me!”

I did my work, shuffled my shoes and got into the car. Next stop was the grocery store. I’m fumbling around in the cheese aisle, and I guess I was still singing my song at a quiet mumble. Well, this old blue haired lady must’ve heard me. She turned around and recoiled “what are you singing!” In that way where it seemed like her whole life was built around cleanliness and my recitation was an affront to everything that she stood for.

Well, I got a good laugh out of that reaction, still do. Moral of the story is that singing to yourself does not necessarily negate other people thinking you’re a crazy person.

I got onto design there for a while. Sketchup Make is still free out there if you can find it. Blender is also an option.

Learning is another option. Khan Academy, MIT Open Courseware.

Brewing, taking care of plants, terrariums, puzzles, bonsai, yoga. All good stuff.

Came here to say this. I attend 1-2 times a month and mine has so far taught me about breathing exercises for meditation and the shadow self from Jung. Just a group of great people also searching for community.

Someone produced a puff piece about the line and how it’s transformed Saudi Arabia. It’s biased (so keep that in mind) but it’s also well produced and answers some questions retroactively on why the Line was so important to SA even if it failed to become reality. It’s worth a watch:

https://youtu.be/bOG4qCx0peA

I came in to comment Bosch as well, but it seems they’re already well represented here. That said >$1000 was a steep friggin price for a dishwasher, not sure I’d do it again.

Buy land from the lunar embassy. Guaranteed to go to the moon!

I really like that you put a lot of thought into this. I did not, just wanted to be tongue in cheek about that third one since our dumbass is acting like the world is his playground.

Also, if this was a legit list, it should get some additional gender representation.

Just like our servers, as the gods intended:

• Spider-Man
• Venom
• Captain America
• Ragnarok
• Thanos
• Thor
• Black Panther
• Groot
• Dr. Strange

You just named them after your poops, didn’t you?

It’s his same old song. Tear down what already exists, then huck a new version of it out for the very low price of $19.84.

I’m surprised he hasn’t added his name to the title of it yet.

AI is in the hype section of the emerging technology curve. A lot of good will come out of AI once we calm down and stop losing our damn minds.

It won’t be just cheap GPUs either. It will be things like more accurate cancer diagnoses, as Cory says near the top.

What we need is for regulation to catch up and start incentivizing the right things…that is, the things that will benefit society as a whole, not just the oligarchs.

Why not just work with Denmark to add some defense bases there if it’s so important? Oh that’s right, we already do.

Shew, what a headline. Keep in mind that AI is not just all LLM. I’m not sure how much more juice we can squeeze out of LLMs, but we’re just scratching the surface with other prediction models.

The ability to have smart cars that improve fuel efficiency by adjusting to traffic conditions may very well compensate for the increased electricity demand created by data centers.

New chemistry models may finally help us produce batteries that can meet the demands of a renewable energy grid.

We’re standing at a precipice. What we’re doing as a society is not working today - it’s not sustainable. And I’m not shy to say that I’m one of the few here on ActivityPub that think we may be able to leverage AI to dig us out of this hole we’ve started to dig ourselves in. But, in order to do that, we need clear heads, with clear goals and the incentives to encourage others to execute on them.

What we’re doing right now, just complaining about what’s not working isn’t going to save us.

• The great awakening (the original woke, bit ironic now, ain’t it?)
• Redeemer / post reconstruction era
• Fascism after the New Deal
• McCarthyism
• The “Contract With America”

I should probably throw in the Gilded Age too as it seems to fit with our current situation nicely. We had a decent progressive push after the last one. History rhymes, so here’s hoping.

And yes, Australia is probably great. Would love to visit one day. However, politically, It has been led by their conservative party for the majority of two decades now - and has outsized influence from China due to it being a major importer of Ozzie’s natural resources.