Nobody did that by hand even before Gen Ai was invented. Even before photography or computers, there were techniques to get textures without manually drawing them. The splotches, for example, could be accomplished by shaking the brush at the canvas.

Aging sucks though.

Car transit is literally the least cost efficient method of travel, and only affordable because it’s heavily subsidized.

1. Low level thugs tend to not earn that much money. Also applies to organized crime. There’s always superiors taking a cut.
2. Going with follows you for the rest of your life, it could easily be that a later regime decides to hold you accountable for having been part of ICE. (Funny thing though, in Germany, the Nazis who got sentenced earlier tended to get more lenient sentences, assuming they weren’t at the top. For example, Hans Bodo Gorgaß, vergasungsartzt in Hadamar, who was after the war convicted of 1000 counts of murder, got out after 11 years and got to live a mostly normal life afterwards. Today teens who worked as Death Camp guards get life sentences. Though, those “teens” are by now in their nineties, so life sentence is not that long)

It comes at the cost of being an ICE member, and that will follow you for the rest of your life.

I wonder if vampire brains freeze mentally once they’re turned

“Vampire: The Masquerade” has that as a downside of being a vampire. Vampires are less creative than humans, to the point that being turned into a vampire is said to hurt their talent worse than aging ever could. They also can’t properly adapt to new technology. Basically, vampirism comes with creative sterility.

So, do they just keep buying 40% of the production in perpetuity? What if production of those chips gets scaled up, do they just buy more?

The problem isn’t the data center, but rather that the data center is being wasted on running AI. AI is a uniquely wasteful application, like crypto mining. If the data center does something actually useful, then it might provide utility greater than its expenses and externalities.

People claim to be effective altruists when they can’t claim that they’re altruists.

Not so fun fact: Gun suicides are far more common than any other type of gun related death. Having a gun in the house is a big risk factor for suicide.

So, what’s the pun behind “Light Yagami”?

They are quite useful, actually. They predate on various vermin that are attracted by humans. They’re kind of like cats.

So, suppose all of this is true, why did they always win with >99% of the vote?

the bourgeoisie or the proletariat.

There’s more than just those two options, e.g. the nobility (which we don’t have anymore). If you had done some research on the topic, you’d know that a class is a group that shares a common relationship to the means of production. You could perhaps argue that career politicians constitute a sort of “political class”.

The USSR had democracy - there were voting structures up and down the entire structure of the union.

In their worst election (1946), the Bloc of Communists and Non-Partisans received 99.19% of the vote. I don’t know who their opponents were, the other 0.81% of the vote simply went to “against”. Results like this are impossible in a free and fair election.

The communist party of the soviet union was in control of the country, with absolutely no accountability to the proletariat they were supposed to be representing. Were they working class? No, because they did not work. They were a new kind of nobility, with the head of state effectively being a new Tsar.

Without democracy, you simply create a new ruling class. Workers had no say in the Soviet Union, even less than they had in the US back then.

And somebody buying from the scammer could get a legitimate card, thus allowing the scammer to blend in.

He’s imagining them as physical things that can be hurt. And apparently, the voices can feel his violent fantasies. At least, that’s what’s implied by the story.

What’s that, and why should it be destroyed?

Million dollar company sounds impressive, but I don’t think that is impressive. Like twenty employees already imply a million or more in expenses annually, and require corresponding revenue to sustain.

More like a terabyte.