Since this is aimed at Gen Z, if you can buy a car outright or close to it, I would recommend still financing, but paying it off easily to build credit.

That is, if they approve you at all. Their requirements are higher, which is why you would get a better rate through them. If you can’t, you may need to go through a different company with a higher interest rate. Should that be the case, it’s best to consider getting a car (and the loan) significantly less in than what you’re approved for.

Yes, I do remember this RAM compression software. It was like magic. When my mom installed it on our Mac I didn’t believe her at first until I hopped on and used the computer.

We knew this was coming, but I wonder at what point it will be practical. Yes, image generation is a fascinating approach. We can see super realistic scenes generated by A.I.—with no traditional 3-D rendering necessary. It just generates what it thinks it’s supposed to. What your human eye should see.

I do think this is likely the near-future of basically anything artificial. But…

Compare to a team of developers who design a game, its characters, its story, and its environment. The money, time, and effort. Compare that to what it would cost to develop a game with A.I., the overall processing power and cost.

At this very moment in time, of course, whatever comes out of it will be crappy and weird. It would be more expensive overall. However, we can’t really expect it would stay that way.

A.I. will absolutely be the future of gaming and virtual reality. There is no stopping it or beating it that I can see. I don’t yet know how to feel about that.

Eukaryotes likely evolved during The Great Oxidation Event which saw oxygen levels rise to levels that were toxic to the Cyanobacteria (which use photosynthesis). We evolved to save them!

Is it not just a new way of distinguishing them from the round (circle) ones?

I used to be Christian. Reading it again later as an adult, my overall takeaway of the stories was that there was this guy with divine knowledge walking around constantly being disappointed with the state of humanity and a hair up his ass about it. I suppose it wouldn’t be any different today, were the same entity to come back, for some fucking reason.

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

-Bill Gates

Yeah, it all still depends on how close you are to the fiber, whether pushed over twisted-pair or coax. In some areas, for digital over twisted-pair, it may even still depend on how close you are to a central office. It varies wildly across the country.

I support people who work from home all over the country. People in the boonies are using mobile data and satellite. Those who aren’t suffer terrible DSL connections.

I have coax, and 2 gigabit is an option for me because the fiber Xfinity uses runs right along my neighborhood.

Trump is just a useful idiot to these fascists

I’m not sure you know what integrity is, as it looks like you missed the point. I’m not saying Harris has a permanent halo affixed over her head, however, the utter lack of integrity in the other candidate is blatant and extreme. That’s not unimportant, and it’s a frightening indicator for those that actually are citizens of this country. People actually identify with that guy, and I believe this is why. They are lacking in integrity and therefore are unable to identify others who are or are not lacking in it. To them, people with actual integrity are frauds or merely pretending to have integrity. Because nobody would really be like that, right?

The truth is that’s there’s a sharp dichotomy in American society between those that value integrity and those that do not. It can be seen if you interact with the general public or if you simply have children that you’re trying to raise. Why this is is a very complicated subject, and goes back further than I think we Americans are willing to admit.

Me on Lemmy today:

There’s been this idea circulating among Christians that Trump is actually chosen by God to help protect his people. This is because there are instances in the Bible of “outsiders” being chosen by God to protect the Jews in the Old Testament. They just see it as another one of those instances. Now, we’re dealing with faith. They can overlook his gaffes, his very un-Christian behaviors, bad perspective on reality, all of the issues. Because they know he’s not one of them. They don’t care. They have faith that he will protect them and deliver the United States to Christian rule despite his seemingly sinful ways.

It was quite a bit more complicated than that, of course. That was just the first catalyst that sent me down a new road.

In this recent case, yes. I never made a statement one way or the other on that in my comment, though. Being the type of person he is, he has the choice of being either serious or unserious with his endorsements. Putin does the same thing when he makes some sort of open statement regarding who he would prefer to win the election.

David Duke is responsible for my phase where I grew out of a simplistic view of politics and economics and started looking into things a little deeper. Hear me out: Back in the day, I went through a Libertarian phase. I supported Ron Paul. I was young and stupid, what can I say? Anyway, I read some news article that claimed that David Duke donated to his campaign. I was like, “Hmmm, what’s this all about?” And so began my realization that things are never as simple as we want them to be. So, thanks for being a racist dick, David Duke. Without your donation to Ron Paul raising my suspicions, it may have been at least a few more months before I picked up on the rotten smell. I might have actually put that stupid bumper sticker on and everything (shudder).

Oh, yes. We both go to regular therapy specializing in trauma. We highly recommend it, as well. We’ve worked through a lot of stuff. I just didn’t think bringing up the ducklings in the future would be a worthwhile subject to work through, at least for now while we work on other stuff. She can keep that and whatever the hell she saw in that accident locked safely away.

My girlfriend was driving and accidentally ran over a mother duck and its little ducklings trailing behind, much like this illustration. I was in the passenger seat and told her to pull over. I knew this wouldn’t affect her well, and she wouldn’t be able to drive after that. It was heavy traffic and she kept driving for a bit before we could get to the side of the road. She was losing her shit and crying. We swapped seats and kept driving. It was silent for a while, and she eventually stopped crying. I’ve vowed since then to never bring it up again, as I basically witnessed what was her brain entirely blocking it out. By the time we got home, it was like it never happened and we never talked about it again. She’s had a lot of past trauma, at least one incident involving a horrible car accident that she witnessed. She loves all the cute little animals, I don’t think there’s any reason to revisit it. It would break her heart all over again. It was just an accident, after all. They came from between some planted flowers on the median, and she simply didn’t have any time or room on the road to do anything about it.

The reason I know she’s able to block things out like that is because of how she tells her story of that car accident. She stopped after witnessing a terrible crash to see if the occupants were ok. She tells me she found a man on the ground and approached to see if he was ok, but, the man didn’t have a face. I asked in morbid fascination, “OMG, like, his face got ripped off or something?” “No,” she replied, “he just didn’t have a face. There wasn’t anything there at all. Like it was just blank.”

I used to live in a peaceful, quiet suburb. Eventually, a Panera appeared, as one does. At the end of each day, the Panera had a load of bread that was uneaten and un-purchased. The employees decided that the right thing to do was to give away the uneaten and un-purchased bread at the end of each day. I got some of it. Others did as well. It would be a waste otherwise! It would go into the dumpster, if nobody were to eat this delicious bread!

Those who were the most needy eventually got word of this free delicious bread. It began attracting ruffians. Travelers. Hobos, you know—homeless people. They traveled from the deeper parts of the city to seek this golden mana.

The locals didn’t approve of these dirty people migrating to our alcove and congregating about the back of the Panera every day. For some mere loaves of bread! It was depressing, and more importantly, it could affect our property values! What if they linger about and people think our city was one that not only catered to the lower people, but harbored them? And so, it was dealt with. The police helped to put a stop to it, bless their souls. We thank them for their service.

Now, the citizens of this peaceful city no longer have to view the sad visages of those who never learned how to play the game of our society. The excess bread may rot locked away in that dumpster, but it is the price we must pay for the cleanliness and uninterrupted peace we enjoy.

BIG /s. I typed this out so somebody may see how fucked-up this line of thinking is.