More fun still - prions.

Your autoclave won’t help you now, kids.

Breathing - famous for being optional for those that would like to live.

Yes, there have only been around 3 people killed by them (largely because they’re shy, aquatic, and somewhat uncommon), and intervention can be made to stop them from killing you, but they’re one of the most toxic animals on the planet, and are unquestionably deadly.

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.

You’re trying to insult me with a word you’ve just proven you don’t understand, and you expect that to sting rather than look pathetic?

I’d tell you to just grab a dictionary, but with your tongue buried that deep in the arsehole of the billionaires that are robbing you blind, that’ll be a bit much to ask - maybe take a step back, eh? Sort your life out.

You’re too stupid for there to be any sport in this, and too ideologically chucked to learn - yeah - I’m done with you.

Ohhh - you believe an obvious authoritarian regime when they said they’re communist. I suppose you’ll defend the DPRK as a robust democracy for the same big brain reason.

I’m not sure what any of this has to do with economics, but you’ve made your irrelevant, dumb, definitionally wrong point - I hope it brought you some brief satisfaction.

What party of “worker ownership of the means of production” is too complex for you?

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?