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“When we travel to space,” bonsai master Kaori Yamada says, “I think that bonsai should accompany us, bringing a natural and spiritual thing to a place that is considered inhospitable.” japantimes.co.jp/life/2024/03/ #life #lifestyle #bonsai #master #japan

i was this old when i found out that the icelandic word for computer is tölva, which apparently comes from tala and völva which translated literally means "number witch"

i will be only referring to myself and computing as number witch and number witchcraft

I am always a mite disturbed when people advocate the banning of fascist literature on the grounds that reading it will turn people into fascists, like some dreadful contagion.

Gentles all, have you _read_ any fascist literature?

It's badly-written puerile shit that couldn't convince anyone whose brain hasn't already been eaten.

Far from banning it, we should put it on a big shelf in libraries labeled "CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT THESE MORONS ACTUALLY THINK?" for people to point and laugh at.

trolling people by referring to roughly 2/3 of the globe as "unceded English land"

Everyone wants to dismantle capitalism, but no-one wants to mantle capitalism.

In, I hasten to add, a purely Elder-Scrolls-metaphysics sense.

I SHALL BECOME IT IN EVERY ASPECT.

AND IT, NECESSARILY, SHALL BECOME ME.

Among the many things I have learned in life is the vital importance of not confusing a tsunami with a tsundere.

Or vice versa.

@nyrath @Hcobb @isaackuo @MeiLin

(You can patch this with some notions like "every colony sends out n expeditions of its own then suddenly gets permabored with the whole idea of expansion", but like you say, it only takes one defector to blow up the whole thing.)

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@nyrath @Hcobb @isaackuo @MeiLin

Applying the same principles to growth-obsessed societies/peoples suggest to me that GFGS civs are acutely vulnerable to breaking down into civil resource wars - and, if you're using relativistic transports, probably the kind of civil resource wars that leave nothing behind except the Cancer Emulation Is Not A Viable Strategy Memorial Stellar Graveyard of 3162.

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@nyrath @Hcobb @isaackuo @MeiLin Actually, while I contemplate cancer analogies for growth-for-growth's sake, it occurs to me that there are obvious modes of failure that apply to tumors which also apply to GFGS civilizations.

Necrosis, in which logistic problems starve the center; and cancer-gets-cancer, in which attacking your neighbors to expand into their territory provides better returns than trying to expand into the now-distant margin of the tumor/sphere.

(Step two, for those not paying attention, is the part where you conclude consciously or subconsciously that your immense caring grants you an exemption to all the ethical rules standing between you and the full fascist fucknuggetry you just thought of.)

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I have seen many variants of this meme, and one day, I hope one of these caring folks will have the empathic chops to realize that what makes people mad is invariably _step two_.

Why did we call it "energy conservation" when we could have called it "philenthalpy"?

At some point, I really need to come up with a filter algorithm patch for Mastodon that can spare me the necessity of having three and counting different variant spellings of "tech bro" in my cutlist.

I think about estimates of how long it would take a determined civilization to expand itself throughout the universe, and I ask myself --

Does cancer have fun?

Vice President should be the modern title for the Master of the Revels.

Change my mind.

@cstross
It's OK to like the engineering of space X without agreeing with the personal politics of Elon Musk.
If every inventor in the world had to pass an ideological purity test, we'd still be struggling with taming fire.
It's when we start projecting "the engineering is good so the politics have to be good" we get in trouble.

Also: "Inviting a Communist Party into our market, even as it bars foreign competition in its own, is no one’s idea of advancing capitalism. What exactly do these groups think they're defending? Is this really their conception of the free market?"

I will defend to the death the right of my enemies to believe half-baked economic theories which lead them to subsidize cheap goods for me at their expense, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone not prone to leave free money on the table.

> But now [...] find themselves hoisting aloft the Chinese Communist Party’s banner in the name of “liberty,” arguing for the CCP's right to a free market and free speech.

YES, BECAUSE WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE BETTER THAN THEY ARE, YOU FASCIST FUCKNUGGET.

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