Hey, don’t threaten me with a good time ;)

I think that would honestly be great. One of the biggest problems I’ve seen with Democratic messaging in the last 5 years is that they repeat terms and insist that we should champion them - such as democracy - or revile them - such as authoritarianism - without recognizing an obligation to communicate what those words mean to our everyday lives. I want christian nationalists to be put in that situation:

‘You don’t understand! Solarpunk is communism!!!’

‘Well… I heard they want to give everyone food and shelter and education and healthcare for free. And build parks.’

‘Okay, yeah, but didn’t you hear me? It’s COMMUNISM!!’

‘Wait… is that what communism is? Giving me food and shelter for free?’

‘No! I mean, supposedly! But it isn’t! Look, you need to stop saying that you’d like food and shelter to be free and just agree to fear this word because I told you to! Just stop thinking fondly about living outside of capitalism! I mean it!’

I remember that. It was during a Q&A session in the fall of 2023.

I think we’re seeing an idea – or set of ideas or facet of an idea – spreading as a meme in the classical sense. For those unaware, Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” to describe a transmissible unit of culture: an idea that takes root and gets received, repeated, imitated, and spread.

Solarpunk is a big bucket (a genre of fiction, aesthetic, style of personal fashion, lifestyle, philosophy, etc.) but I think it really is a meme spreading quickly. Fundamentally, it’s a collection of beliefs that we can live in a radically different, less commodified world of respect for nature and community. And I think people are desperate to discover that such a concept exists and has a descriptor.

What’s also interesting, for those who don’t follow him, is that Ezra Klein self describes as an obsessively self-aware overthinker. He is meticulous in the construction of his thoughts and in the precision of his language. I would go so far as to say that he probably realized with full awareness that his use of that word was likely going to introduce thousands of people to a new word, and/or unconsciously inform people who’d heard the word that it was a respectable term to use in political discussion. I think that bodes well for the direction of our culture as a whole.

I think so too. I am seeing a similar effect in a lot of places.

To second what @JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net just said, to say that cyberpunk didn’t take off as a mainstream concept is bewildering when the richest man on the planet and and emergent fascist leader overtly applies cyberpunk concepts to his entire program of world domination.

It’s like saying that the social media or school shooters never really took off as mainstream concepts. Like… I don’t know how it can get much bigger than this, dawg.

Agreed. Avakian is fascinating because he’s so entitled in the article. If someone doesn’t want to buy his product he just rails against how unfair they were to him.

Bro: it’s business. If your product were nearly as good as you claim it is, you wouldn’t need to force people into using it.

Also, the end of the article points out that Walgreens has been terribly mismanaged and is a very low-performing company, and they’re still experimenting with screens, just not with Avakian. Hilarious.

These are great tips.

I think the solution might be using a bunch of these.

Do you have any advice on speeding up their breakdown? Are there any tools or practices that cause them to shrink in volume faster? I think she’s just trying to manage slipping on walkways and visual effect, and she has a very high volume.

I think making small piles and letting them rot is probably a good idea. I think mulching them and raking them into beds is probably smart. I’ll try stuff and see.

That’s amazing

I think the question is misformed.

As you point out, it’s circumstantial. It depends on what resources are currently in offer and what unmet need you’re looking to fill.

Are you thinking of starting a marketplace?

What else do you need??

I would second this. I’ve definitely spent a lot of time with this question.

For my setting, I try to lean into realism. So the first thing we have to ask is what “hacking” means in these situations. Hacking shouldn’t be magic.

First, hacking typically looks like using a system in the way it was intended by someone who wasn’t intended to use it or in some other modified way. So to break into a CCTV system, ask how proper users would use it, and then how to bypass that.

Second, the more advanced technology gets, the more advanced security gets. Think about what it would take to hack into a CCTV system today. You’d likely need to steal a password to use the actual software or snoop the raw data signal of a camera and then decode it. In the future, this isn’t going to be less secure.

So if you wanted to hack into CCTV camera, players should not be able to roll and then see anything anywhere. They should need to find some physical connection and/or find some way to obtain credentials to a remote access system. This could be by forging biometrics of someone with access, tricking someone with access to logging in for them, or finding leaked access credentials online. And all of these should have limitations: how long they can be logged in; what they can do without triggering detection; how long it takes to call files; etc.

These same principles apply to a social media search. It wouldn’t really make sense for everyone’s data to be readily available to anyone with basic hacking proficiency in some kind of easy database. Assume online privacy moves forward at the same pace or greater than privacy invasion. You can’t just type “HACK!” and see someone’s real-world location. You could probably find a publicly listed address or maybe find a license plate reading with a time and place. But you’re going to have to still do a lot of the conventional investigation work to find someone: figure out where they work, hang out, shop, etc. and look for a point where they slipped up, either in biospace or online.

It was genuinely my pleasure.

Awesome! This is an exciting surprise!

I read a preprint of this, and I really loved it. Everyone should check this book out!

Maybe one day we can get there, but right now it might be better for a lot of folks if the default was “I’m not horny”.

But I’m with you on the dream.

I don’t know if this is a hot take, but I think allowing straight and cis people to identify as such is appropriate, because the alternative assumes that we live in a state of default heteronormativity.

If anything, I want to live in a world where homophobes get mad that if they want to be assumed to be straight online they have to identify like anyone else. No one gets assumed to be straight any more. That’s better imo.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, because over the last year I was writing the world guide for a solarpunk setting to be used with a tabletop RPG or as a writing guide. And while I was working on this, OpenAI came along and put the Turing test out to pasture.

Several existential crises later, the result looked remarkably like I hadn’t thought about it at all: in the game setting, there are robots and they are treated like people. Like Bender on Futurama.

I think @TootSweet@Lemmy.world (love the username, btw!) is absolutely right that our concerns are all largely shaped by the presumption that today, everything someone builds is built to benefit the creator and manipulate the end user. If that isn’t the case, than a convincing android could just be… your neighbor Hassan.

Most machines probably wouldn’t have a reason to pretend to be human. But if one wanted to, that’s basically transorganicism. No disrespect to OP, but if a machine is sentient, trying to restrict it from presenting as organic seems pretty similar to restrictions on trans people using the restroom that matches their presentation.

And if they are trying to deceive you maliciously, well… I currently know everyone I meet is organic, and I already know not to trust all of them.

Damn, that’s rad as fuck

Yeah. I think there’s a lot she could do with the stories, but I really need more hope right now. I think Parable of the Sower managed to provide just enough of that.

I don’t fault her for being so brutal. It’s honest. Reading both this and Parable of the Sower, I couldn’t help thinking that there are people in Haiti and Palestine for whom these books are just their present reality. I even feel bad that I’m so demoralized, because I know that I need to toughen up. This is what the real world looks like. But I need to have enough composure to be an effective dad and activist, and it takes a balance for me to do that. Too much truth can leave me too drained and despondent to be the force in the world I want to be.

That looks very pretty. How old is the kid?

This is cool. When I get a chance, I wanna submit one of these too.

Oh! I was very much confusing those! Thanks for the disambiguation.

I do not know anything about the summit. If anyone goes, please report back.