I kinda have to disagree. I know they dis make things up as they went along, but I think they did it pretty well. The writing and acting are pretty good — though you’re right it would’ve benefited from being cohesively written.

The problem I have is the ending. I hate it, but unlike Game of Thrones I don’t hate it in a way I can never watch it again despite the amazing highs.

The drama and situations they put the characters through in BSG are mostly intense and well done. Some of the things feel a bit random without foreshadowing, but life can be that way. Anyway I think the series is well worth watching I just… I wanted the last few episodes to be something very different from what the show runners had in mind.

I don’t know about that watch order for Bab5. The first season was uneven but I feel like it’s a critical introduction to key characters and themes. I wouldn’t recommend anyone leap right in to the Garibaldi and Delenn situations for example. Back in the day there were lists passed around about key episodes to watch vs what could be skipped — and they were highly contested because mostly even the worst episodes had at least a scene that you’d later be rewarded for watching.

Anyway I think the better order is something like a select 1/3-2/3 of season 1, seasons 2-4, and the last episode of season 5 (which for reasons was originally shot as the ending of season 4).

Season 5 is only for if you loved S2-S4 and need more even if it’s not as good. It isn’t bad, it just feels weird with the main arc of the show resolved.

I really enjoyed Babylon 5. Especially seasons 2-4. The interplay between the characters, especially Londo and G’kar was excellent. The stories were epic and political, it would be relevant today I think. It was so quotable and parts really moved you.

The effects were dated even then, and the transfer to widescreen after the digital models were lost was an absolute travesty. Instead of widescreen making the show better, they cropped the 4:3 for every effects shot, making them all blurry and poorly composed.

Even so, the story and characters are epic and timeless.

Making windows worse, AI, and forced CPU upgrades in this economy? There really is something for everyone to hate here.

VC Lawyers insist. Not worth it for the company to fight for something (not going to arbitration) that no one will notice or care about if it doesn’t change. Or maybe they didn’t care.

I’m just saying capitalism ruins everything because investors only care about maximizing profit and minimizing risk, this forces bullshit like this onto everyone downstream. One solution is not to use the product. Better solution is to change the law to make mandatory arbitration illegal. Best solution is to throw billionaires into the ocean and stir the solution until the solid is fully dissolved.

I think based on the second part of your post you know this, but I’ll elaborate based on the first part:

I would think it goes slightly further. Let’s posit:
server-A: poster / does not support DV
server-B: Bob, Jim, Joe / supports DV
server-C: Sue, Ann, Kat / supports DV

Server-A is the system of record for post P.

Bob, Jim and Sue all downvote the post.
Joe, Ann and Kat all upvote the post.
All servers federate.

Poster sees: 3UP
Anyone on server-B sees: 2DN, 3UP
Anyone on server-C sees: 1DN, 3UP

I believe this is how it works. The upvotes federate across all instances and are seen by everyone. The downvotes do NOT federate to the home instance, and so they do not federate out to other instances. The downvote total you see for a post only includes voters on your own instance.

I have not studied the code or architecture so I could be wrong, but I think this is accurate.

Greenland, I hope you’re ready for 24 hours of Heck!

Yeah, someone could do the difficult work of putting all of my MagicShel accounts together into a single aggregate person, for whom a fair bit of demographic data would be available if you combed each account. That being said, none of it is PII and connecting me to my actual identity would likely require cooperation of a couple key sites. I think if you compromised (or subpoenaed) a minimum of 3 separate services you could put it together based on who made donations in my name.

Point being, no random internet asshole is going to be calling my phone or knocking on my door, and I’m not interesting enough to be worth the effort for any rational actor.

I don’t use non-pseudononymous social media.

Wait until 60 days and we recall them for 24 hours just to turn around and… redeploy in the same place.

Launches

That word is doing a lot of work if we’re already think about consequences.

I create new accounts from time to time and purge the old ones. That affords me the ability to share myself and experiences without accumulating too much identifying information in one account. So I’d recommend it at some point but where that point is is up to you.

An invitation to kill myself. That is, if nothing else, in perfect keeping with the morality that vexes me about Abrahamic theology.

Firstly, I don’t hate God. I’d have to believe in one to hate him and, without hesitation or qualification, I do not. I do take issue with the way these faiths weaponize fear in self-serving ways — by first amplifying our natural anxiety of death and then selling comfort.

No, I have no intention of killing myself and losing this precious, but finite commodity of time. I have maybe 80 years in which to experience as much of life as I am able, and when it is spent, I will still be racing against that clock to do more.

That is the key. We end. Faith often — specifically including Abrahamic faiths — tries to sell people on the idea that we don’t have to. It’s wrong to convince them to chase eternity when what they really need is to find peace with the necessity of ending.

Mortality is what gives life scope and meaning. It is the race against oblivion from which all human accomplishment must derive. It represents the passing of outdated views and ushering in a generation free from the biases that no longer serve them.

My children are my eternal existence. The ripples of my passing on the lives of those around me — creating further ripples which reach further into the future — are my eternal existence. But my consciousness, my soul if that’s what you want to call it, it will end, and that makes my time here precious.

In 10,000 years all I have accomplished, all I have wanted, all I have loved, all I have dreaded — all of it would be as nothing. And then I have more tens of thousands of years. Millions of years. Billions. Trillions. What meaning would this brief speck of time have against all eternity? I treasure my existence all the more for being so brief.

God has no carrot to tempt me with. I reject that eternal life is any sort of gift, in fact it would be a curse.

Now let me address gratitude. I have a pretty good life. And I am thankful for the people and good fortune that make it so. But if I didn’t exist, I would know no deprivation or loss. An unasked gift carries no obligation, so I am not indebted for an existence I did not choose.

And so God, stripped of eternal reward and the obligation of birth, is a deity who tolerates evil that would be unimaginable were it not so commonplace. A being complicit in such evil is not worthy of love or worship, but would deserve only contempt — if he existed.

There is nothing good about any version of the Abrahamic god. Everything about him is vain and cruel and unworthy of love or devotion. People get so caught up in the idea of not dying that they don’t even realize eternal life is hell, not any kind of reward. If God existed I would spit in his face and take comfort in being smote from existence.

Most likely I represent the other end of the spectrum because I doubt many see it quite the way I do. Anyway, it’s all good. What happens will happen regardless of what any of us believe. It doesn’t need me to speak it aloud to be true.

Disagree, depending on how you define higher being. If it’s just an ineffable force, that’s just a metaphor for random big bang bullshit. Sure maybe antimatter-matter reactions are the face of god, whatever.

But if you imply there is some sort of intelligence making choices? No that requires not just tremendous faith but magical thinking. It requires not just inventing a deity for which no evidence exists, but means which all experience tells us aren’t real.

It’s like if you believe Uri Gellar can bend spoons with his mind, you’re not just believing in that but you’re also believing in a force that would allow him to do so, and a brain section or something that enables tapping into that force, and that it’s impossible to detect or manipulate that force in any other way.

Magical thinking is exponential, because the more questions you ask, the more magic is required to explain it. Or, vastly more likely, none of it is true.

Pennsylvania I could give you, but Ohio and Michigan? I guess it depends on what Midwest means to you, but as a cultural identity I would strongly disagree. But hey, that’s why we’re in the thread, right?

Any animal with the ability to dominate the globe as we do would do the same. So why single us out? We are part of nature. Even if we died off, intelligence would evolve again and then what? We make way for cockroach people to make the planet unlivable for all other species?

This degree of nihilism doesn’t impress me. I mean it’s not even an ethos!

Why, land sakes! What has your jimmies rustled?

The environmental cost is not enormous because I’m not using it on a massive scale. I kill more of the environment playing PlayStation than I do using AI. I also don’t use AI to get exposure to art, I use it to critique my writing from a different perspective. I’m a good enough writer to know what feedback to accept and what not to, same as when I use it for programming: I’m an expert with 30 years of experience and I can evaluate the quality of the code, however sometimes it points out things I’ve missed because I’m also human and can make mistakes.

I’m a better writer than 95% of the planet, which isn’t good enough to be a professional, but is more than sufficient for social media. However I do appreciate an outside perspective and believe me I am well able to recognize bullshit feedback that doesn’t align with my style or intent. I also rarely use it for that in any event because I rarely look at what I’ve written and have a sense I’m missing something — but it does happen.

It is comforting, in a dystopian way, to see that the world continues to operate as expected. Remember when Bill Gates started being cool and sending people Xboxes on Reddit ands everyone was like this guy is pretty cool for a mega-rich and those of us who have been around were like yeah this is really weird and I don’t trust it.

Then it turns out the guy was a sex pest and a friend of Epstein and we were all like… okay yeah this all makes sense again.

Similar thing.

Let me clarify my point. Those are all abstract things that require Congress or the Supreme Court to step in and draw lines. We’ve had in god we trust as the national motto for decades. There is a gray area there that can be argued and low-engagement voters just see it as noise.

But everyone can count to three. Everyone knows you get two terms and no more. Everyone knows you have to win an election to be President. It is unequivocal. Inarguable. So I think it carries weight in a way that those other violations of the constitution have not.

I never meant to create ambiguity around his illegal actions, just draw attention to how this act would be distinct from the rest.