OpenStars

It makes sense. He's actually been competent, which not many (certainly not I) quite expected, but the media hasn't reported a lot of his successes, which have been unusually deployed and quite complex to begin with. People don't understand it. Maybe they'll vote for him anyway, but it's not assured, somehow even with Trump on the other side again.

e.g.how he blocked the railway strike at Christmas to save "the economy" first and foremost at the workers expense, but then kept working afterwards to help get most if not all of their demands met (I'm not sure if they got any sick leave though). Right or wrong, in the past that would have been hailed as a "huge success", but instead we barely heard about it.

Likewise with Gaza he has tried to toe the line - we technically have obligations to fulfill there, but does genocide change that, and if so what is the process by which to do that, and is he engaging in that, or doesn't Israel have a veto anyway, so what else is he doing that we might want done?

We have depended upon our media so much, to tell us not just what happened but what it means and how to feel about it all. So with it being bought out now by billionaires... it is like our fourth branch of government has become as unreliable as Congress and the Supreme Court.

How ironic... people now need to learn a computer language in order to understand the computer? (instead of so that the computer can understand people)

Even getting 2+2=2 98% of the time is good enough for that. :-P

It would need datasets to be trained on, or the proprietary models.

Bc corruption, one presumes, getting the government to get involved with people's rights to choose. Yeah it's weird for me too:-P.

Total deregulation=anarchy, but not all regulations are good either. This is the kind of stuff that made people choose capitalism in the first place, to try to get away from it (not that it worked, obviously).

I mean, celestial means "the heavens" so... they pretty much are. Like even if they had a different mode of travel altogether that would allow bypassing traveling through space, they still would have come from the stars... or beyond this universe (or something even weirder like time).

As a wise person said once, "Not all older tech are necessarily worse.":-)

It's just that capitalism wants to sell you what they want you to buy, rather than what you truly want:-(. I mean, capitalism made this too, but I am saying that I think that is why people are constantly pushing for the newest and latest thing: b/c if you already have old thing, then they want you to buy new thing too, even if old thing was perfectly fine for what purpose you were using it for. :-|

OMG I LOVED Flatland! There is also Sphereland, but especially considering when it was written, Flatland was by far more innovative and creative. Sphereland was an homage btw, not written by the same author, and instead much later, slightly updating things to include Einsteinian physics.

Okay in that case, you might be interested to know: C.S. Lews - the author of Chronicles of Narnia, and well-known apologist for both christianity and atheism (hehe, he switched, then switched again:-P he left his childhood religion behind, became atheist, then became a different type of Christian) -has this trilogy starting with "Out of the Silent Planet". I highly recommend it for anyone who wants "imaginative scifi", in the spirt of Flatland. It is less known than his fantasy works, I suspect b/c the details did not hold up well in historical hindsight, e.g. all of those creatures on Mars and Venus that we never did end up finding... but it was nevertheless quite bold in its risk-taking in that regard, having been written prior to that - even though he knew reality was not going to end up anything like that, yet he made this fantasy work anyway:-D. Also I love the neat way he has of making you be skeptical enough to question EVERYTHING that you believe:-).

In that series he puts forth basically exactly what you are describing. These are beings within our universe, but are entities of energy whose only way to interact with our world is... well, imagine how you would interact with a bacterium: you'd have to make a puppet and say "this is me", but lol it really isn't. And yet, from a certain POV, it kinda is? Like the best way to talk to "you" is to walk over to the puppet and engage with it, which your set-up would likely be predicated upon, as in even if their entire universe is observable under a microscope slide, still that is where your camera is pointed and zoomed at.

I also thought it was neat how planets are these dirty little mud-balls, in the eyes of those who literally fly through space - to us they are our entire worlds, but to them they are navigation hazards!!:-P We are the bugs that splatter on their windshields? Or perhaps the mud-balls are dangerous even, like reefs to a boat. Another interesting point was that space is not as "dark" as those pictures from the moon would suggest, b/c of the light streaming outwards from the sun (this one I can never do justice to the explanation, and anyway it may have been just more fantastical world-building material). The first and second are wonderful depictions of what it might be like to travel to Mars and Venus, while the third is more abstract, being on Earth but they do wake up King Arthur, in order to fight against aliens acting as demonic spirts that possess the spirit of a beheaded psychic kept alive with like lasers or something, so... there is that:-).

So many scifi series - like Star Trek - do such a wonderful job of showing us these imaginative concepts. But still there is something to reading them rather in books (or listening via audiobooks I guess), and since these were never made into movies, that is pretty much the only way to experience them. Enjoy!:-)

That reminds me of this FASCINATING deep dive by Innuendo Studies on agency / protagony. Warning: while not technically NSFW... caution is still advised.

Hehe, I can just imagine that in my mind...wrrr.....:-P

Well, I imagine the write-once, re-write-never part also may limit its applicability too:-). Then again, for a purpose where the data doesn't need to be constantly changing, like storing a TV show or movie, possibly even music if someone wants to listen to albums rather than randomized songs, it could offer a lot of practical utility to many people.

as if I could give them the trans

Sorry but I did lolz at this - as if!:-P Part of the funny is that the Bible says "Judge not, lest you be judged", even though it also has a whole list of judgements for leaders, who were supposed to be held to a much higher standard. So to ignore the latter - letting leaders touch little children who would rather not - while also ignoring the former... they aren't even reading their own book.:-(

Though I guess you see that it is not just Christianity. In some parts of the world it is Muslim, in others it is Hindu, in still others it could be Buddhism, or whatever. One day there will even be fundamentalist atheists I believe, despite how it promotes skeptical thought and so that is fairly rare for now, human nature is just that lazy!

Anyway I am proud of you. Stand up for yourself! That is definitely not my situation but who the fuq cares, b/c you need to be (free to) be you. And that's the problem with Authoritarianism (here's a another link to a whole other series on that if you want - this Innuendo Studies should have nothing whatsoever to do with HBO, and therefore you probably have seen it already:-P): they lack empathy and allow - even perform - the judgement onto others (except their leaders, who they conveniently exempt from all proper consequences of their actions), never dreaming that one day it will wrap back around to themselves. "First they came for..." That process demeans us all, and yeah, one day it may be too late to reverse course. How ironic that you are showing compassion to them even while they spit at you (as Jesus would, hehe:-P). Stay strong, my sister in empathy!:-)

Speaking of, I hope you never catch up to us:-). Though as you say, the English speaking part is a bit closer to us in that regard, highly unfortunately:-(. Though, you still having a somewhat functional government does mean that you should be alright:-).