Reagan enacted gun control in California

If only we were so lucky. Americans aren’t going to stop this themselves, the rest of us need to arm ourselves and prepare to defend each other

It’s 5% now

Holy shit, will AI cause the Linux renaissance?

Comic is political. Mods, ban this user

Blackface Kardashian

We’ve been in a recession for years

He died. This is mickey8

We need to prepare for WWIII. America won’t stop until they control the world.

Well that seems like a pretty easy hypothesis to test. Why don’t you log on to chatgpt and ask it what will happen if you let go of a helium balloon? Your hypothesis is it’ll say the balloon falls, so prove it.

Well that’s simple, they’re Christians - they think human beings are given souls by Yahweh, and that’s where their intelligence comes from. Since LLMs don’t have souls, they can’t think.

I am, I hate pineapple on pizza that much

If it was hawaiian I’d assume the latter

Take for example “toxic masculinity”. Literally taken, that word means that masculinity is toxic.

Does “hawaiian pizza” imply that all pizza is from Hawaii, or just that this one particular pizza here is from Hawaii?

Coward.

What kind of communist even are you?

An anarcho-communist. You won’t find recorded history of communism in empires. You’ll find it in places like Catalonia and Australia.

Don’t they have something called a slap drone in the culture for people who do things that are unpopular?

Yeah, if you knife murder someone, the Culture will send a drone to make sure it doesn’t happen again. You won’t be able to knife murder anyone again, it’ll use a force field to stop your knife. It’s like a reverse bodyguard. But you won’t get a slap drone for breaking social norms that don’t actually harm anyone. Incest is perfectly permitted, for example. If you want to grab a ship and go adventuring, or set up your own little civilisation somewhere, or establish a consensual death boxing ring, that’s all allowed.

Masaq’ Orbital is a completely engineered environment, an artificial world. And it has a badlands, because Masaq’ Hub likes inhospitable places. They’re fun for going camping. One day, a human decided the Badlands should be covered in pylons. He asked Masaq’ Hub to build the pylons, and Hub said no. So he started talking to other people and asking them to help him build pylons. They got some manufacturing equipment and just started plopping down poles and stringing rope between them, and they made wind-powered cable cars to traverse the pylons. Other people got quite offended on Hub’s behalf, and started removing the pylons. It was a whole drama. There was a lot of debate. Eventually, everyone agreed that the pylons could stay, but Hub wouldn’t have to maintain them. So the pylon project was finished, but now, hundreds of years later, the pylons are in a state of disrepair. Some people decide to adventure across the pylons in one of those cable cars. Hub tells them it’s very dangerous, and points out the lines which are known to be unsafe. And one day the pylons will all be gone.

Also, you can like, leave. And there are lots of other civilisations the Culture has no interest in conquering. You can go live with them, and choose to renounce or keep your Culture citizenship as you please. You can ask for a ship and a matter replicator, and just fuck off to the edge of known space.

The Culture has a limited tolerance for intolerance. The Compact has a limited tolerance for independence. That’s the difference.

I think it’s ethically okay to objectify this “woman”

Means of production are owned by both Affini and independents.

Only to the extent permitted by the Affini. You must understand, in Medieval Europe, most men over 30 had practical ownership of their means of production. Take a farmer as an example. As a young man you would work as a farmhand on an older farmer’s land, and your future wife-to-be would work as a milkmaid. Once you’ve both completed your apprenticeships, you would marry, and you would receive a dowry from your wife’s family which would permit you to inherit or establish your own farm. The land would be yours to work, and you would profit by your own labours and those of your family.

But the land would also be owned by the local lord, in much the same way that a modern corporate farm “owns” land that is also owned by the local government. The local baron would extract taxes from you as tithe for allowing you to work his land. You would be the only peasant permitted to work it; you would have sovereign domain with respect to other peasants, but the threat of state violence would ensure your efforts benefitted your superior.

The land and tools afforded to “independent” vassals of the Affini compact are permitted to be used with a great deal of freedom, but the threat of violence is implicit in the arrangement. The Affini are master. That is why I say the Affini follow a feudalist economic model. The Affini have a monopoly on the use of legitimised violence. De Facto, even if not De Jure, they own everything. The Compact is about as “communist” as the USSR, or modern China.

You look interesting. Have you read Glitch by Jenna Moran? It’s an RPG about retired void gods.

Here is a fanfic that gives me the warm fuzzies. It’s about the best most communist space civ meeting the worst most fascist one. The power differential isn’t anywhere near close, but what gives the fic stakes is the Culture’s ethics. They do not under normal circumstances kill, indoctrinate, or enslave, unlike some people. Can the ultimate commies reform the ultimate fascists and fix their horrible galaxy? And can they do so without being corrupted?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/649448?view_full_work=true