I specifically ask for sources to my questions and to notify me of any possible controversies or counterclaims.

Some of the capabilities of todays’ AI’s are incumbent on the user, not the system itself.

Before AI’s existed you could also get badly sourced claims or outright misinformation. The key is to remain critical and sceptical about ALL your sources. I don’t see AI as a new source of information, just as a new way to get and organize that information.

Down bad son?

“This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years!”

Ferdinand Foch, 1921

Conversely, there are many other people from his time that definitely did exist and verifiably so. I have a bronze coin minted in Judea by Pontius Pilatus. I can look at it, I can touch it, it’s real. Even as an avowed agnostic, I see no reason why Jesus couldn’t have been a real person (minus the miracles that were almost certainly later additions).

Exactly this. In ancient Roman times, emperor Caracalla was infamous for having many of his enemies outright killed. One of these was the brother of a soldier who was assigned to his personal guard at the Rhine border regions. When Caracalla got off his horse for a piss, he got a gladius thrusted between his ribs. For all his might and power, he very much brought that on himself.

Sometimes people like that soldier are the last line of justice in the world.

I’m gonna go with “no” judging by how things have been going in the past. I hope to be proven wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.

I agree, all the evils of yesteryear are still there and active, just either well-hidden or people simply don’t care/pretend not to know (cfr football world championships in Qatar, …).

We’ve made enormous progress technologically, but humans are still the exact same as 2000 or 5000 years ago. We’ve changed exceedingly little in that time, and the few things that have changed could be reverted very quickly if shove comes to push concerning climate collapse etc.

Best I can do is a token effort as long as it doesn’t upset the shareholders.

Yes!! Such a classic.

My hognose once surprised me by “throwing” rocks off his ridge. He was trying to burrow and apparently thought they were in the way, so he carefully yeeted them down one by one. I was rather impressed by that as well.

A few years ago, mid pandemic, I started collecting ancient coins. I was really passionate about it even thinking about finding ways to make it a small after-hours job or such, but I’ve since run into a few walls and have subsequently lost my drive. For example, I wanted to take very high resolution pictures of the coins and then compose a catalog of sorts, but while I have all the gear that I need (camera with a macro lens) my shots keep coming out wrong and I’ve since kind of given up on the idea altogether.

My entire life is one long succession of passionately started projects that got abandoned either midway or after heavy setbacks. If I ever find one that brings me lasting happiness, I’ll gladly share it, but for now I’m just as much on the lookout as you are.

I’ve seen at least one video where a snake of similar size manages to depress a door handle and gets it to open, although that might’ve been lucky coincidence.

As for my own snakes, they definitely grasp the concept of a sliding door and how its mechanics work, since they try to get it open regularly. That’s why they sell locks for those.

since this battery update was forced on laptops originally released in 2020, this issue has also bricked hardware outside of the warranty window, when previously users could simply send in the laptop for a free repair.

I hope HP aren’t surprised when they get accosted with bricked laptops through their execs’ windshields at random intervals…

Yeah, this smells of “He saves, but he rapes. But he saves more than he rapes!”

Don’t care, hug kitty!

He’s totally going to get away with it, isn’t he?

If he does get elected (god forbid, from a jail cell), I’m taking a long walk off a short pier.

Brave souls. Space is one thing, but Boeing… Godspeed heroes!

Google has a feature that lets you automatically send your account login info to an address of your choosing if you haven’t logged in in over, say, three months. If I croak unexpectedly, my family will eventually receive access to my email and will be able to subsequently access anything that email was tied to.

Not a huge fan of Google in 2024 but this feature is worthwhile.

20% in 2020 alone. If they kept up the same rate, that would make 80% in 2024 which isn’t THAT far off of 95%.

You’re correct, 95% is overblown, but it’s still mindboggling: 20% of the total M2 supply was created in 2020 alone, and it has gone up since:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/53091/were-a-large-fraction-of-us-dollars-in-existence-printed-since-2020

Which still amounts to theft by inflation, which is something the founding fathers warned explicitly about.

If we still had “real” competition, this wouldn’t have happened. Even during the pandemic competition would’ve/should’ve kept prices normal-ish. But of course we all know this isn’t how it works. Turns out that if a dozen or so companies own the grand majority of whatever their industry is, they behave like monopolists. Who could’ve possibly predicted such a thing?

There was this bearded fellow in the 1800’s, but I’m sure he had no idea what he was talking about.