Go ahead, cry a little, as a treat

Bipartisan is such a weird concept for us living in the rest of the world. We have so many more parties than the two in the US.

Science fiction is in it’s essence the exploration of a situation when all the confounding factors have been magicked/scienced away.

Not uncommonly it explores the requirements of the technical solution, what would the machine need to do for this to work out? And/or What happens if it doesn’t?

Take for example “Do androids dream of electric sheep” by Philip K Dick, it’s about finding androids advanced enough not to know they’re artificial and how to identify and relate to them when the only diagnostic is slow, clumsy, and suspect. It’s more an exploration of what makes a person than it’s around the marvels of The Machine™.

During the 1900s the vehicle for science to magick with had been machines, computers and AI. Remember that space travel, fission power, psychology, modern medicine were all new, hope inducing breakthroughs just this same period.

There’s also the issue that the definition of the genre came after it becoming large enough to matter. The edges between scifi, punk/cyberpunk, speculative fiction, isekai and even to fantasy are all made after the fact, meaning modern machines go into scifi, old machines go into steam-/diesel-/etc-punk. The main difference between Science, Magick, and Eldritch horror is how detailed the mechanics of the solution are described, and speak to different people.

But on the topic of the story not being centered around a machine: try the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons.

Or go the entirely other way with Ring World by Larry Niven. There’s plenty of machines-did-it in the fringes, but the central theme is to figure out what would be needed for a Ring World to exist, what would happen on it, and how would it be managed. It’s an exploration of physics more than anything - more “what is the machine” than “machines-did-it”.

And the Foundation series (Asimov) famously explore the premise “what if sociology works”, and the other details solved by throwing machines at them.

You also have The Culture (Iain Banks) series that center on/around post-scarcity society and explore that.

Apparently privileged (cis, white, educated middle class or equivalent) men apply when fulfilling 60% of the requirements. Women and minorities 100%.

Maybe that’s why they have the ridiculous reqs?

It’s scary to me that the daily casualty rate just keeps rising.

Definitely a grinding war…

Aww, I thought we were talking about Rimworld

Thank you, will check it out!

I came across the topic of AI security, and been reading up on it, but as I have a weak background in Machine learning, I’m not really able to follow the frontier discourse.

I’d very much appreciate any recommendations as to where to find more foundational level materials for getting into it. Any tips?

I have a background as a technical specialist and consultant, but not in software. Is the best way to transition through a re-education? Or are there other steps to try out the industry before committing years of school?

Also, how is the career prospects within the current mass IT layoffs?

So happy for you! The world is better off for your empathy and care <3

Thank you for letting me help, and hope you both have a better life from your encounter!

I’ve also done the 'sup head jerk with cats around the neighborhood, they start in surprise the first few times, then do it back.

It’s apparently an acknowledgement/greeting between cats.

And yes, heed the advice to “ignore” cats until they approach. Sit calmly, do your thing, let eachother know you’re there, and then wait. Often doesn’t take more than 15 minutes.

Getting a cat to come to you is easy, you give it food and pets, and then stay calm when it’s eating/enjoying.

Repeat until you’ve built trust, a sick or hurt cat will typically take longer to trust. Count on several days of repeating this without hitches (no sudden loud noise while you’re doing it, etc).

Sometimes cats are desperate and everything turns up in a magical, calm way without bloodshed. But more commonly the next part is trickier, the cat will resist you picking it up (especially if hurt) or shutting it in.

Trick here is to be decisive and clear in your body language. Prepare a cat carry box with hard sides, feel free to prepare it with some textile smelling of you, be mindful that it will almost certainly be pissed on. Also bring a towel.

You will have to, in a calm manner, put the folded towel over the cat, and with it lift the cat into the carry. The towel is to trap legs so you won’t be scratched, and if you manage to have it snugly around the cat, there’s also a way to calm cats by gently pressing them down.

If you are unsure, slow, nervous, or hesitate in your movement, the cat will bolt. If you’re too fast, loud, or big in movements, it will as well. Relax and do it in a deliberate motion.

If you release the cat from the carry, it will take considerable time to rebuild trust. Consider either going with it to the vet at once, or let it out in a quiet spare room with food, water, and litter box, and giving it a day or three to get accustomed to the room before letting it explore the rest of the place.

Don’t get scratched by the cat, they can have some pretty nasty stuff on the paws, and some transmittable pathogens if anything draws blood or gets in your face/eyes.

Good luck!

Cats do pant, but also run hotter and enjoy higher temperatures than humans (24-26 °C depending on race).

Also, cats have lots of ways to release heat, cats can arrange their fur to release more heat (or burr it to trap more), they lay on cool ground, they can lick themselves for evaporative cooling, and of course seek shade when it gets hot.

We had a hot summer with temperatures of over 30 °C indoors and I got worried my European shorthair would overheat, got them a gel pad that wicks away heat when laid upon, but they thought it was ridiculous and just laid on the concrete floor in the shade whenever too hot and was super comfy and lazy.

That’s actually a very cool idea.

Do a proper SS leather jacket but with a defiled swastika all over the back (so no one can mistake it) and reclaim it?

I’d probably not use the red band.

And would this become problematic in a decade when the jackets get normalised and mainstream (probably without the punk defiling)?

I’ve used Spotify with subscription on android for years and never had any issue with it. The Web and desktop apps have also worked well for the last decade or so.

Deezer, Newpipe, YouTube have all had their places, but Spotify does it’s thing the best.

That’s probably exactly what I was thinking of.

I mostly see them in US media, and they always seem so thick. But then again, the Russian vest doesn’t, so I guess they’re for different uses.

Interesting, I learnt something new today.

Seems delightfully medieval as a solution. What does the Kevlar do? Mostly anti-spalling?

Maybe I just don’t know how bulletproof vests work, but shouldn’t there be some layers of energy dispersing material on top of that plate?

Is it a fair comparison without?

Dozens!

That’s almost an hour of soldiers at the current casualty rate

A conceivable way could be to disrupt the nuclear force of the target atoms, maybe like an anti-Pion/Gluon ray that self-propagates the reaction through the released energy.

(As we might remember, splitting the atom yields a bunch of energy, and uncontrolled such reactions go Hiroshima)

It might be controlled by sub-particle lensing, probably some kind of magnetic field, to be active at a specific distance.

For the reaction to be contained, either there’s a radially limiting component (air is not particle dense enough to propagate the reaction, or atoms not energy dense enough) or it’s a cascade triggered by the beam which stops when the beam stops (or the reaction gets too far away from it)

As I believe Pions and Gluons are their own anti-particles, I don’t know how we would go about doing this, but hey, that’s for Science!™ to solve.