We genetically engineered mosquitoes to have gender dysmorphia - weird times.

For some reason, this seems more at home in Iain Banks’ culture series than Dune.

I’d love to have seen Jodo’s Dune though - if seemed like it would have been wild if it ever saw the light of day.

The part I find remarkable is how far we’ve slid backwards in the last century. I don’t see a modern version of this narrative being run in contemporary US papers.

Because the lack of privacy is the point?

What did science and medicine ever do for me?

If you paywall publication and peer-review, you suppress a huge amount of science that doesn’t have the kinds of checks that corporate sponsorship and review introduce. This means studies of things like the dangers of CFCs, smoking, microplastics, thalidomide, and countless other things that’ll kill you will never see the light of day.

The greatest flaw in the system is the fragmentation and consequential cost - when things were consolidated under Netflix, things weren’t perfect but it can’t be said that they weren’t far better.

The true underlying flaw is capitalism, but isn’t it always?

What are you talking about? David kicked kinda good while having hair, and Victoria was in a band called the Spice Girls despite being a set square haunted by the ghost of a rice cracker.

I came here for this, and I appreciate you.

Edit: I’m not sure if that advice is apple-pie specific.

Because the AI isn’t needed, and would be computationally expensive.

Extensions like ublock origin and sponsorblock work just fine.

What if we swap “gender” for “cool”? I think it’s pretty inarguable that’s a social construct. I think I’m cool, and while walking around in socks and sandals isn’t cool, I know I’m cool nonetheless.

Yes, gender is inherently associated with sex, and correlates with it the majority of the time, but it’s not defined by it. This is similar to driving and being an adult - most adults drive, and most drivers are adults, but some grow up on farms, driving as kids, others live in live in accessible cities and never get their license.

Why bother when you can just do it with Google search?

That’d be if he sentenced himself to death to appease himself for everyone else breaking the rules he wrote, then re-vivified himself.

The ol’ single deity circlejerk.

Likewise!

Yeah - I think we more or less agree… I’ve loved watching The Expanse, but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet - though I’m keen… This might just be the nudge I need - thank you!

More spoilers (though I’m pushing at the bounds of my memory here, so possible inaccuracy)…

!The attack on the three Trisolaran stars worked because it was a trinary system, and that was sufficient to destroy the civilisation. In the case of 3 standalone star systems (what I assume is the case here), the destruction of one star is unlikely to eliminate the residual threat of the remaining systems, and gives them motivation to develop deterrent, defensive, or offensive capabilities. The first priority of the attack is to destroy the civilisation (presumably because they’re a would-be threat). Efficiency is a secondary concern. A single-system attack on a multi-system civilisation gives no assurance.!<

A relatively low-tier K2 civilisation could almost certainly do it, but why the fluctuation in the IR signature rather than a more steady “shadow” indicative of a more consistent harvesting/drain?

Well that’s a lot less terrifying than the possibility of a multi-star-destroying dark forest attack.

No worries!

The upside of synology (and I say this without having used them) is simplicity, and low power usage at the cost of flexibility.

On unraid, I can toss in extra drives when I like (or remove them with slightly more hassle), and spin far more up, including VMs.

Feel free to check in whenever though.

Welcome to the fun!

If you need any guidance from this idiot, feel free to reach out.

The best general advice I can give is if you want something reasonably large and flexible is to start with Unraid from the outset - I mucked around with a good number of alternatives, with all the hassle that involves before finding this straightforward, super-flexible solution. Otherwise, maybe look at a synology-type appliance for something smaller-scale and less versatile.

TBH, it would depend on how many services I’m theoretically replacing, and whether you count the people I’ve shared my library with. Before I went down the rabbit hole, cost was the motivation, but I’m long past that.

Between the usenet subs, paid search engines, power for a 24 bay server running 24x7, and adding a new drive every few months, I can’t really defend it on a cost basis for my own use (though that’s not to say it can’t be done considerably cheaper).

Similarly, I’m giving my data to a handful of usenet search engines and 2 usenet providers my data (though I trust all of them more than the likes of Disney and Netflix)

With all that said, I’ve never looked back. It’s a hobby project for me, I have total control, can help out my friends and family, and use the server for other stuff like private cloud hosting, home automation, network ad-blocking, etc…

…and now I’m paying for power, usenet, search, hardware upgrades, and so on.

I regret nothing - I’m in control now.