The truth is that the strength of a democracy has little relation to the birth rate. If you live in the US, for example, you only live in a democracy if your income is in the top 10%. This has actually been studied. The opinions of the poorest 90% of the population have absolutely zero bearing on what government policy is implemented.

The US and China actually have similar levels of democracy. China forms all its policies from the CCP, an organization of about 100 million people. The share of the population in China that has any impact on policy is actually quite similar to the share that does the same in the US.

In the US, we just call our social credit scores credit scores.

This would actually work, though of course you would never get more energy out of it than it took to set it all up. But conservation of energy doesn’t actually apply when expanding space time is involved. The universe doesn’t actually conserve energy in all cases. Or hell, in most cases.

These people are all damned to Hell.

We have one. A small one that came with this little countertop ceramic honey pot we found at a pottery shop. We actually tried using it, but the ants got to the literal honey pot very quickly.

The sex part they’re a bit young for, but perhaps the Chinese Communist Party talking points have some merit. :D

It’s also the death of even the pretense of the American dream. Think about it. All pricing goes algorithmic, for all goods and services. Every company figures out the absolute maximum you can pay and charges accordingly.

What does this do in aggregate? It means that every raise you will ever get during your career is now immediately consumed by rising prices. This produces an economy where there is literally no point at all to advancing your career, gaining new skills, or bettering yourself. Why go to college or trade school, if the extra money you earn is just going to be consumed by companies charging your more for the same products? Why should anyone do anything but simply find the most tolerable minimum wage job they can, and simply work it until they die of old age? If all pricing is algorithmic, anything you do to improve your personal financial situation will be immediately hoovered up by the big conglomerates.

I really wonder about what people thought of that then. Did people really think it was a medical thing, or was this just a socialy respectable way for a man who couldn’t get his wife off to pass the task on to someone who could perform the task with an air of medical respectability?

Or Hell, maybe it was a 19th century kink or swinger thing. People have always been freaky. At times in history they just had to hide it better.

When these get deployed, they’ll finally implement eyeball tracking into the ads. Some smart TVs have in built cameras, and this could easily be one the norm. The companies so far have been too afraid to use it, but the tech has existed for years at this point. Technically, there’s nothing stopping YouTube from just requiring users to have an iris tracking camera enabled. And this would defeat a smart glasses AI ad filter. I suppose you could maybe have a screen on the front that projected fake eyeballs towards the camera, but maybe they could then defeat that.

Or, more likely, they’ll just lobby Congress to ban ad blockers and and blocking devices.

What’s worse is this even makes attending the game in person miserable. I know many very passionate college football fans who show up hours before the game to hang out with friends, and then more times then not end up leaving the game itself early. Why? Because the game itself is a drag. If a game is televised, they add extra breaks to the game to accommodate ads. The game gets stretched out from something of reasonable length to some absurd 3-4 hour long slog. People then only stick around if the winner remains unclear. If the games were a more reasonable 2 hour length, with more engaging and constant action, then most folks would stay to the end.

Most malls ban unaccompanied minors. And most places where kids used to hang out similarly discourage their presence. The death of third places is a well-documented phenomenon, one that goes back decades before anyone dreamed of social media. And while kids have been forming their own communities since the dawn of time, kids haven’t been raised in suburban hellscapes since the dawn of time. If you can’t drive. If there’s no way to your neighorhood except a giant highway that’s impossible to bike on, how in the hell are kids supposed to meet up with each other in person? Digital technologies are really the only way kids have to socialize nowadays. We’ve taken everything else from them.

These laws are written deliberately broad to enable mass censorship. They don’t just ban sexual material, but use vague statements like “objectionable material.” Actual real-world news is being censored and kept from the eyes of teenagers. Pretty much anything on the Gaza war is considered objectionable material and inappropriate for children to learn about.

Nah. It’s not an age issue. It’s a social media issue. This stuff is bad for everyone. If you want to protect kids from the dangers of social media, start regulating how social media works for everyone. Why is it ok to start poisoning someone’s mind the minute they turn 18?

Yes. The societal level solution is the parents of the society choosing to do their jobs.

And the suicide rate of queer and other marginalized kids will skyrocket. What’s a few thousand dead kids in the name of protecting the children, right?

No you ass. What do you want, for the parents to hover over their kids 24/7? There’s is no realistic way even the most well-intentioned parent could ever keep their kids off this stuff.

My parents had a two hour per day limit on using the computer. The one exception was if we were using it to do homework.

You’re just not very imaginative.

Where are children supposed to meet and socialize? We already took away all their in-person spaces.

Exactly. The whole point of a ghost gun is that it’s untraceable. You made it yourself; they can’t track it so some purchase record. The way you use a ghost gun is you make it, use it, and then just leave it at the crime scene. You make sure you never touch the thing with bare hands, so there are no prints on it. If you made one ghost gun, you can make another. They’re easily replaceable. No need to keep it with you after the crime.

It’s important to keep in mind that Luigi is exactly the type of person that the police would try to pin this on. It’s so easy to see how it could happen. The NYPD had a high profile murder of a wealthy CEO to deal with. The NYPD leaders had politicians and corporate leaders breathing down their necks, demanding this case be solved immediately. And at the same time, the suspect seemingly made a perfectly planned getaway and had disappeared. This kind of thing has happened countless times in history. Have a high profile case that simply must be solved? Find some undesirable to pin it on. Ideally this is someone who is already dead, maybe someone who recently killed themselves. You don’t have to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt if you blame the crime on a corpse. But if a suitable dead person isn’t available, then a living person can do in a pinch.

If you want to pin a crime on someone, you find someone who resembles the suspect and also isn’t someone with a lot of social respect or clout. Homeless people are classic targets. And Luigi was a queer kid, out of contact with his family for months, living in a youth hostel. He is the exact type of person the NYPD would choose if they were looking for someone to pin this on. I’m sure they would try to pin it on a black person if they could, but the person they chose had to at least have some visual resemblance to the person on the security footage.

The walking stick was an afternoon project. Just carve, sand, and stain. The staff was a lot harder, specifically the tines that wind around the crystal. I made the staff off and on for several months. I built the tines up by cutting out thin strips of wood. Then I glued them together, laminating the tines up one layer at a time. Once they’re built up, I carved them into a smooth shape and filled in cracks in the epoxy. The amethyst is affixed into the socket I carved with epoxy as well.

I could have made the staff faster if I was really pushing it out. But just the time to glue it up would still require about 2 week to make.