Search found 7980 matches

by Starglider
2021-02-26 07:17pm
Forum: News and Politics
Topic: New law will fine stores for separating toys by gender
Replies: 32
Views: 10123

Re: New law will fine stores for separating toys by gender

J.C. Penny, Lord & Taylor and Neiman Marcus all went bankrupt last year. Sears went through Chapter 11 in 2019 and is still losing stores (down to 29 and falling). Macy's closed half their stores, likely that won't be enough to save them. Give it a few more years and there won't be any 'departme...
by Starglider
2021-02-07 02:04pm
Forum: Artwork, Music and Photos
Topic: Stargate Command Croydon
Replies: 121
Views: 161655

Re: Stargate Command Croydon

Slow progress over the last six months, due to COVID situation and babies. The space is usable but still work to do on the walls, and I haven't set up the main screen yet: https://i.ibb.co/mt3wdWX/christmas-bunker2.jpg https://i.ibb.co/8gsz5MC/christmas-bunker4.jpg https://i.ibb.co/85qPn8D/christmas...
by Starglider
2021-02-07 10:54am
Forum: Science Fiction
Topic: A portal to Corporacratic America (RAR!)
Replies: 30
Views: 23889

Re: A portal to Corporacratic America (RAR!)

This sounds more communism with a vague capitalist theme than an ultracapitalist dystopia as presented in most fiction. The defining characteristic of late 20th / early 21st century capitalism is short-term thinking and disregard for externalities. No current companies would bother with raising gene...
by Starglider
2021-02-01 06:43am
Forum: Science Fiction
Topic: A portal to Corporacratic America (RAR!)
Replies: 30
Views: 23889

Re: A portal to Corporacratic America (RAR!)

Unclear how this country got to a population of 500M with even more pressure to have both parents working and much higher costs of education/childcare than the real US. Has all abortion been banned for reducing worker counts? Much more immigration than in reality?
by Starglider
2021-01-17 12:17pm
Forum: Science Fiction
Topic: AI as Software Brainbug?
Replies: 9
Views: 11889

Re: AI as Software Brainbug?

Artificial Intelligence is limited to it's programming. (Meaning, it is essentially limited to it's programmers decision making process). If it encounters a problem beyond it's programming, then it's can't come up with a new solution, just a series of 'best fits' based on it's existing programming....
by Starglider
2021-01-16 05:53pm
Forum: Science Fiction
Topic: AI as Software Brainbug?
Replies: 9
Views: 11889

Re: AI as Software Brainbug?

Modern supercomputers are generally just datacentres with a bias towards compute over storage, and a more capable (higher bandwidth, lower latency) local network than usual. Distributed supercomputing is absolutely a thing, and in fact plenty of 'supercomputing' is done on cloud resources these days...
by Starglider
2020-12-09 02:16pm
Forum: News and Politics
Topic: UK to heavily restrict access to puberty-blocker medication for trans youth
Replies: 50
Views: 18188

Re: UK to heavily restrict access to puberty-blocker medication for trans youth

TERF's existed back in the 1970's when I used to argue with my oldest sister about the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival excluding trans women (not that we used those exact terms - the language was different back then) but not trans men. I couldn't wrap my head around it then and it still makes no se...
by Starglider
2020-12-09 03:38am
Forum: News and Politics
Topic: UK to heavily restrict access to puberty-blocker medication for trans youth
Replies: 50
Views: 18188

Re: UK to heavily restrict access to puberty-blocker medication for trans youth

It seems after three or four decades of virtually unopposed libfem advance, the radfems have managed to hold the line - here, limiting to curb trans penetration into female sports, and blocking gender self ID in Scotland. Presumably with the much mooted but rarely seen alliance of convenience with c...
by Starglider
2020-10-30 04:09pm
Forum: Artwork, Music and Photos
Topic: Expedition to the Cloudbreak Islands
Replies: 2
Views: 6577

Re: Expedition to the Cloudbreak Islands

Ace Pace wrote: 2020-10-30 01:59pmI find it interesting you used different illustrators for different scenes. Why?
Partly because different artists prefer to draw or are good at different things, and partly due to scheduling (whoever was free that month).
by Starglider
2020-10-30 01:47am
Forum: Artwork, Music and Photos
Topic: Expedition to the Cloudbreak Islands
Replies: 2
Views: 6577

Expedition to the Cloudbreak Islands

After a decade or so break, I took up freeform RP again in March, partly as extra social contact during the lockdown. The campaign has been going quite well, and I've edited the logs together to make a story . To help with the immersion, I commissioned some illustrations as well: Player characters m...
by Starglider
2020-09-25 08:04pm
Forum: Science, Logic, And Morality
Topic: Multiculturalism v Cultural Appropriation
Replies: 18
Views: 15484

Re: Multiculturalism v Cultural Appropriation

Does that term even mean anything or is it another Internet buzzword for people to manufacture outrage over? ...obviously? The only circumstance where you could even begin to make an actual argument that this is a bad thing is when foreign cultural artefacts are commercialised and also modified in ...
by Starglider
2020-09-16 05:00pm
Forum: Science Fiction
Topic: Demographic Transition and Minimalism
Replies: 16
Views: 15930

Re: Demographic Transition and Minimalism

The point about selection pressures eventually favouring people who have more offspring is actually a really good one, though of course not guaranteed, one only needs to look at giant pandas to prove that there won't necessarily be a high-fecundity gene lurking there to appear and save the populati...
by Starglider
2020-09-15 11:00am
Forum: Science Fiction
Topic: Demographic Transition and Minimalism
Replies: 16
Views: 15930

Re: Demographic Transition and Minimalism

Over significant time spans natural selection will come into play. We're not talking millions of years either; transition of say apes into humans (say) took that long because the available selection pressure was spread out over a large number of complex traits that all had to progress down separate,...
by Starglider
2020-08-31 07:42pm
Forum: Fantasy
Topic: Types of Elemental Magick in Fantasy
Replies: 9
Views: 8852

Re: Types of Elemental Magick in Fantasy

Obviously the canonical set of elements are those present in the Skylanders games:

Image
by Starglider
2020-08-14 05:05am
Forum: News and Politics
Topic: SUPERTHREAD: 2020 United States Elections
Replies: 2322
Views: 764202

Re: SUPERTHREAD: 2020 United States Elections

Genocide apologism and denial has been a part of the board since the very beginning, in the sense that there has always been an infestation of communists (proportionally more over time as sensible people departed and left-wing groupthink took hold), and mass murder is a fundamental inseperable part ...
by Starglider
2020-07-31 09:04am
Forum: News and Politics
Topic: Democratic Party HQ in Arizona destroyed by arson, critical documents and computer systems destroyed.
Replies: 19
Views: 7537

Re: Democratic Party HQ in Arizona destroyed by arson, critical documents and computer systems destroyed.

Note first that I said "probably" terrorism. And that unlike Shep, I did not accuse a specific individual by name. But I'm sure such factual distinctions are of no concern here. If a conservative suspect had been arrested, you would have instantly started crowing about the capture of the ...
by Starglider
2020-07-18 08:02am
Forum: Library
Topic: Mini-FAQ on Artificial Intelligence
Replies: 102
Views: 202178

Re: Mini-FAQ on Artificial Intelligence

Thank you for your help. I'm looking for something like that Perhaps it is worth updating this: Over the last decade we've seen a massive concentration of research effort into deep ANN models, to the extent that every other approach is getting only a trickle of attention. I don't think the field ha...
by Starglider
2020-07-04 02:33am
Forum: News and Politics
Topic: Indigenous affairs and Settler-Colonial Decolonization News Megathread
Replies: 52
Views: 60969

Re: Indigenous affairs and Settler-Colonial Decolonization News Megathread

Democrats lost any and all moral authority to critcise political gatherings on 'health grounds' with their unconditional cheerleading of any and all lib-left protests. You can't have your demonstrations 'completely justified and beyond reproach' and the other side 'disgusting'.
by Starglider
2020-06-29 08:01am
Forum: Artwork, Music and Photos
Topic: Stargate Command Croydon
Replies: 121
Views: 161655

Re: Stargate Command Croydon

It's been a while since I updated this. Progress has been slow for obvious reasons, mostly DIY, but it is getting there. Here's the main part of the access ramp linking the two underground levels; https://i.ibb.co/sJkBSmM/main-ramp.jpg There will be a couple more light strips on the bottom corners, ...
by Starglider
2020-06-03 02:52am
Forum: News and Politics
Topic: Conflict erupts at Minneapolis, L.A. protests over George Floyd death
Replies: 722
Views: 233261

Re: Conflict erupts at Minneapolis, L.A. protests over George Floyd death

If this is a waiting game, the protests will peter out eventually. I hope the protest can achieve viable change and reforms, but a very cynical part of me is thinking that won't happen. Occupy Wall Street generated lots of media coverage for a few months, then petered out and achieved basically not...
by Starglider
2020-05-20 02:48pm
Forum: Artwork, Music and Photos
Topic: Scifi SR-71
Replies: 11
Views: 17665

Re: Scifi SR-71

Well, one of the fastest ships in the franchise is literally a giant Cube (even without using transwarp it can easily outrun a Galaxy Class). So it’s not like warp geometry matters that much to starship design in Trek, at least if you’re advanced enough :P That always struck me as part of the intim...
by Starglider
2020-05-20 04:59am
Forum: Artwork, Music and Photos
Topic: Scifi SR-71
Replies: 11
Views: 17665

Re: Scifi SR-71

If it's a pure spacecraft then there's no reason for it to be streamlined or have aircraft style fins in the first place. This shape comes with substantial mass, maneuverability, cost and durability penalties compared to a more blocky shape with less surface area and angular momentum. Star Trek gets...
by Starglider
2020-05-15 09:10pm
Forum: Artwork, Music and Photos
Topic: Scifi SR-71
Replies: 11
Views: 17665

Re: Scifi SR-71

I don't understand the seemingly random mix of streamlined and unstreamlined parts.
by Starglider
2020-05-09 03:33pm
Forum: Science, Logic, And Morality
Topic: Decarbonising transport
Replies: 141
Views: 115575

Re: Decarbonising transport

The average cyberpunk dystopia would be preferable to the total oppression complex this brand of hare-braned ecocommunototalitarians would (fail to) engineer. As ever it gives me a small, but noticeable, sense of satisfaction that they will never, ever have any power to implement the least bit of it.
by Starglider
2020-04-25 09:03pm
Forum: News and Politics
Topic: SUPERTHREAD: 2020 United States Elections
Replies: 2322
Views: 764202

Re: SUPERTHREAD: 2020 United States Elections

The key question is, if the democrats fail miserably in this election, losing the youth vote in particular, will they finally run someone who does support single payer healthcare (but hopefully not a lot of SJW identitarian bullshit) next time? Probably about as likely as getting pregnant from anal...