About point 2: I would argue that you could convince any judge that these characters are sufficiently distinct in the legal sense. IRL, people might still confuse them, but that’s not the point here. Just look at some of the competing car designs to get a feel for what is legally distinct enough these days. You can come up with a cartoon character, car or a sci-fi warrior that copies over 90% from something else, and you can still get away with it.

There should be a name for this kind of bias. Influencer bias, celebrity bias? Something else?

Most likely, you’ve just started noticing what the world has already been like for decades, if not centuries.

Taking care of yourself is of course important, but I think many people over do it in an unhealthy manner. It’s good to be clean and look nice, but you don’t have to make that the central theme of your life.

IMO, comfort and practicality are also important, but you don’t have to look like you’re still chilling at home watching a movie and munching popcorn. There are good compromises out three.

Is that a roller coaster up there?

Just switch the wallpaper to this and watch your roommate have a total meltdown.

And that follow up question too. GPT is just way too chatty.

Totally forgot about that. 🙈

You could ask about the most boring thing possible, and the answer is usually something like:

Great question! [Insert verbose flattery and an answer that goes into way too much detail] Isn’t it fascinating how long it takes for paint to dry on the wall? When was the last time you painted a wall? [Insert a random chatty question that derails the conversation from the original topic.]

When using ChatGPT, you should totally tweak the settings to make sure your GPT experience does not include any of this nonsense.

Once you’ve unlocked smuggling, you can start researching the next nodes in the tech tree: drug trafficking, human trafficking, international weapons trade etc. I’m pretty sure OP is heading for the Lord of War achievement.

Generally, I like that idea, but I can also see some ways it would fail.

People vote based on what they know, and there’s a limit to what people can know. In a small company, you can easily know everyone, but in a massive corporation, you simply run into some human limitations in this regard.

Some people have a highly visible job, like someone in IT tech support. If you have problems with your computer, and tech support is able to help you out, you’ll happily vote for that guy to get a raise.

However, the IT boss made the arrangements for a server upgrade, so your storage space didn’t come close to running out. Do you even know what goes on in the background? No. Would you vote for the IT boss to get a raise, since you have no idea how they’ve contributed to your wellbeing? Probably not.

Also, some people will find ways to make their minuscule efforts look much grander than they deserve to be seen as. If that works out, they’ll get lots of votes and pay rises even though their contributions are hardly worth mentioning, which actually sounds a lot like the situation we’re currently in.

The thing is, when everything is running smoothly, you don’t even know who fixed what. If things break, you may have some idea whose fault it is, but that’s not guaranteed either. We can’t just wait for things to break so that the guy who fixes it could become famous and popular. Ideally, people would avert disasters rather than put out fires, and that would a be a far more efficient way to run a company. This sort of voting system could result in horrible inefficiency and pressure to be seen and loved.

People could also cooperate. What if a manager promises a coffee machine that gives free coffee if he gets a raise? Maybe the workers could vote for that, but should they really? What if the workers pool their votes to give one of their own a raise? They could rotate who gets the raise, so that each of them gets a raise when it’s their turn. Oh, and that sort of cooperative voting system could be used as a bullying instrument. You could discriminate one of the workers just because they have the wrong skin color, wrong accent, wrong family name or whatever. I’m sure people would come up with all sorts of messed up ways to abuse this system.

But the big questions is: Would this be better than the current system? Maybe, but we would need to set up some rules first. Doing it wild-wild-west style would be a complete disaster. Then again, the current system has some serious problems too, so…

Depends on your criteria. As long as your calculations are simple, it doesn’t matter which tool you use.

For slightly more demanding calculations, Calc just can’t handle it like Excel does. Then again, using spreadsheets for demanding calculations is just asking for trouble.

That’s not as problem if Russia grants him asylum. Worked just fine for Bashar Al-Assad.

What? I didn’t know this was rare. This thing is brilliant. Why would it be uncommon.

If you’re talking about my messages, it’s because I swipe too fast and don’t check the message 9 times before posting. All sorts of weird nonsense slips through every day, some of which I edit later.

If you’re talking about how native English speakers spell, you’ll find all sorts of weird mistakes that seem to stem from the fact that English is pure chaos, and navigating this mess is about as easy as programming with a magnetized needle and a hard disk platter. The way I see it, mispronouncing every word in a consistent manner helps me remember how they are written. The trick is to use a consistent spelling system of another language to form an auditory memory of the spelling.

So in my mind, every word comes with three entries: what the word means, how it’s pronounced and how it’s written. Memorizing a combination of letters is hard, but memorizing a funny sound that you can later decrypt back to a sequence of letters is easier. That connection has to be 100% consistent, which is exactly what English can’t offer, but many other languages come pretty close.

If your first language happens to have a fairly consistent spelling system, you can totally use it to memorize how English words are spelled. Native English speakers are obviously completely screwed, and that’s why spelling bees are a thing and why this post exists.

It’s generally a good rule of thumb to respect the boundaries of anyone who is vastly stronger than you are.

Resisting violently counts as not letting you do it. Being generally agitated, and resisting mildly counts as letting.

Trump slapped a bunch of tariffs on pretty much everyone except Russia. He is begging for other countries to respond accordingly.

How to say you want the rest of the world to effectively launch a trade embargo against your country without explicitly saying so.

That’s a good point. The information would have to be factual and compressive, which is a tall order. You could still miss some details unintentionally, with would mess things up.

Stating your biases up front is a reasonable compromise, so let’s go with that. If you’re reading a Nazi blog, you know what their biases are, so you can take that information with the appropriate grain of salt. If you’re listening to a space lizard podcast, a few hefty spoons should do it.

And a cool holographic UI you operate with AR gloves?