Oh absolutely. It’s basically a spiritual successor. The only reason I didn’t bring up the comparison is because I don’t want people to dismiss it as just a Hotline Miami clone, because it’s a lot more than that. For one thing Hotline Miami doesn’t have Dark Souls style boss fights.

GRAB. THIS. GAME.

Otxo is really good. Pure hyper-violence oozing with style and pulsing to a demented soundtrack. Well worth your time to check out.

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Every time I see a picture of her I think it’s one of those attempts at humanoid robots, or a silicone sex doll or waxwork or something. She immediately triggers that uncanny valley “that’s not human” response in the brain. I don’t understand how anyone can find her attractive.

This is very definitely one of those problems where you really need to define, mostly for yourself, exactly what you mean by “without AI.”

What you’re describing is automation, and it is, by necessity, artificially intelligent automation. That’s because human beings don’t make the same sounds the same way every single time, and those sounds aren’t going to be made against the same background noise every single time. So there is no way that you can ever deterministically transcribe spoken word to text. It requires guesswork, and when you’re talking about computers and guesswork, you’re necessarily talking about technology that falls within the general purview of “artificial intelligence.” This has been true for as long as computer assisted transcription has been a thing.

So what exactly is it that you’re trying to avoid here? Is it specifically your data going to an AI company that concerns you (ie, would a local model be an acceptable solution)? Are you perhaps trying to avoid giving money to certain AI companies? These are the sort of issues that might be addressable. But just a broad “no AI” prescription will basically rule out any useful answers. I hope that makes sense.

Actually… pushes up glasses… the word shot is Middle English and describes the flinging of a projectile, including from a bow. It predates the use of gunpowder weaponry and derives from the Old English gesceot.

That’s because it was written at a time when nobles were considered the only natural choice of leadership class, so you’ve got military forces being lead by people with zero practical military knowledge. It’s literally meant to be babies first strategy and logistics guide. Sun Tzu is intentionally dumbing shit down for his audience.

A Desolation Called Peace. It’s the sequel to A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. Very strongly recommended. Really excellent political SciFi thrillers with amazing world building, really good character work and a lot to say about the nature of culture as a form of power.

Try reading the explanation in the post again, because it’s pretty clear that you didn’t get it.

Yeah, hi, um… Fuckface McParasite… You have literally zero fucking say over what people do in their home you fucking moron. If that means your precious fucking lightswitches wear out faster, too bad, so sad.

I have three copies of I Kill Giants, because every time they release a new edition I buy it again.

It’s a really, really good book.

I literally addressed this exact argument in the comment you replied to, but you just skipped right past that part.

I disagree. I don’t think that’s the reasoning at all, because they don’t even think about it that deeply. It’s not about the idea that logically this course of action will somehow make the world better. It’s about the feeling that the world needs to conform to their twisted ideas of fairness, and that feeling overrides any reason or logic.

“He’s not hurting the people he’s supposed to be hurting.”

The problem is that to most Republican voters, the fact that this didn’t actually impact drug supply isn’t really all that important. What matters to them is that - theoretically - “bad people” got killed. They’re more interested in punishing people they see as evil than they are in actually improving the world. Even the ones who won’t openly admit - or even admit to themselves - that they just like seeing brown people get killed will still defend this as an ultimately good action because it satisfies their twisted notion of justice. The meting out of punishment is what matters to them, far more than whatever social good that punishment is actually supposed to achieve.

It’s the same reason why they have so little interest in welfare policies even when those policies are demonstrably cheaper than the alternative. They won’t give shelter and money to homeless people even when it’s shown to reduce crime, for example, because the most important thing to them is that no one should ever be given something that they “don’t deserve.” They’re less interested in reducing crime than they are in seeing the poor suffer for whatever imagined sins made them poor.

It’s not actually a bad metric. Basically the demand for cocaine is going to be more or less constant over something like a 6 month window, but the supply is going to fluctuate, so the dealers are going to cut what they have until it’s enough to meet demand. That means you can basically use the purity as a good proxy for available supply; when it goes down, the dealers are feeling the squeeze and having to stretch their limited supply, when it goes up the dealers aren’t having a hard time getting the goods so they can afford to adulterate it less.

More circular financing. Definitely a sign that everything is going great.

For the record, at least one character from MR is explicitly, textually trans. Pay close attention to pronoun choices in the narration.

Well, yes it does, but I’m not sure what story exactly. It’s certainly not the easy “Trump did it” that we would - with good reason and precedent - usually assume. Seems like he actually inherited this one.

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The really obvious question here is “Why should the president be the final arbiter of what is or isn’t accurate history?”