Every now and then I think paragliding would be an interesting thing to try but I have to tell myself another expensive hobby is hard to justify when I’d like to actually own a place to live some day.

What do you mean? You will simply live in your paraglider! You’ll be like one of those birds that stays aloft for months at a time. There you will be, a child of the sky. No need for land. No need for rent. Just a literal leaf on the wind.

You can’t take the sky from me…

That’s why you steal someone else’s kidneys!

Of course, then you’ll need to develop a collection of surgical gear, and likewise you would want to improve that with time…after all, why not take pride in your work?

Remember, you are mortal.

It’s a Fargate. It makes things go far! We are not getting sued!

Current building codes allow the construction of wood frame buildings up to 18 stories tall. You need to expand your knowledge of wood construction beyond what you learned reading The Three Little Pigs.

I agree. Wood is clearly the superior material.

The key difference between all previous civilizational collapses and the one we potentially face is that most people in the past were farmers. Even in the grandest empires like Rome, less than 10% of the population actually lived in cities. Most people lived in the countryside working the land. The city of Rome lost something like 95% of its population. But those people didn’t just crawl in a hole and die. They abandoned the city and joined the vast majority of the population that was living in the countryside. Many in the countryside actually saw their quality of life improve substantially. Many who had been slaves found the old legal system enforcing their slavery no longer existed. Rome collapsing just meant the end of the grand cities; political and economic systems could fragment, and people would just live more locally.

But today? Less than 5% of the population actually works on a farm. The vast majority of the population lives in cities. If the political and economic system collapses, the countryside can’t just absorb all those extra people. Hell, the farms can’t even operate without the equipment, fuels, and chemicals produced by the larger economic system.

Historically, when civilizations collapsed, the common folk just left the cities, abandoned the corrupt elites to their madness, and returned to small villages and rural life. But now there is simply nowhere for people to retreat to.

AAPPOMBUANYNTKTUWTHSITA

Really? I never would have thought Captain Planet would take up that much space on a hard drive. Are you storing fucking Captain Planet as a 4k video? It was a cartoon from the early 90s. I think 480p would be more than enough! Sure there were 114 episodes, but they weren’t that long. How much space can the complete Captain Planet really take up?

We should demand mastercard shut down all payments to everyone, as their very business model clearly falls afoul of the laws of the People’s Republic of North Korea.

500 cigarettes.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/26/blackstone-group-accused-global-housing-crisis-un

https://pestakeholder.org/reports/helter-shelter-how-blackstone-contributes-to-and-profits-from-californias-broken-housing-system/

https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/almost-a-crime-report-finds-blackstone-hiked-rent-nearly-double-market-rate/

https://prospect.org/education/2023-02-28-university-california-blackstone-housing/

https://www.archpaper.com/2025/01/blackstone-cushman-wakefield-landlords-justice-department/

While I don’t support mass shootings in general, if someone is so far off the deep end that they’re going to throw their life away in an act of random violence, I at least hope they choose targets like Blackstone instead of a random elementary school. At least they’re smiting someone who deserves it, for once. The country would be a lot better off if we had several hundred corporate shootings and zero school shootings each year. No shooting period would be better. But if you’re going to go on a rampage, at least go after evil people first.

How are those related? It is possible for some conservatives to want to purge LGBT voices from the internet at the same time other conservatives want to advance crypto. These are not mutually exclusive goals.

“Flight risk criminals and terrorists had their accounts frozen!!!”

Yes, those criminals, for example, LGBT people who conservatives believe are pornographic simply for existing. God forbid LGBT artists want to have a way of earning a living. Crypto is relied on by a lot of marginalized groups. It’s used by artists who make perfectly legal art, but whose content conservatives object to. Crypto is used by many queer content creators as they face being cut off from payment processing systems, as again, conservatives consider queer people pornographic simply for existing. Crypto is used by sex workers, often people with few other employment options. Oh, and crypto is used by trans people to get access to healthcare that is quickly being criminalized.

How insane do you have to be, in 2025 Trump’s America, to fall back on the idea that anything criminal is bad. Republicans are trying to criminalize the existence of entire swathes of the population. And those people face being cut off from the banking system entirely, if folks like you, who blindly consider legality=morality, have their way.

Get the audiobooks. Listen to it in the car. But yeah, one of the plot points is basically exactly this, where people can effectively have a “save point” in life. I won’t spoil it, but it’s great.

Read Peter F Hamilton’s Void saga.

deleted by creator

Every 10 years the Israelis have to all move to Gaza, and the Gazans get to move into Israel. They trade places every ten years.

Let’s leave the border the same. But just to spice things up, we’ll move all the South Koreans to North Korea and all the North Koreans to South Korea. Then they’ll just swap places every ten years. It will so whimsical!

Yeah I recommend. The chief antagonist of the series, Morning Light Mountain, is one of the best examples of a truly “alien” alien that I’ve read in sci fi. It’s about as far from the trope that aliens are just humans with crap glued to their foreheads, or stand-ins for various real-world human cultures, as you can get.