I was gonna say, it was a neat concept, but he didn’t really spend the time to make it convincing or explain the mechanism for how life would evolve to be like that. It’s like he just had this idea that life could be more modular, but didn’t bother fleshing it out past that. I actually enjoyed Shroud a lot more, I feel like he put more work into making it plausible. Can recommend if you missed it.

For non fiction I’m reading The Concept of Mind by Gilbert Ryle, and can highly recommend. Short, thought provocative, and engaging. For fiction, Children of Strife is great, latest instalment in Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time series which I really enjoyed overall.

Given the history of what the US military personnel has done in places like Iraq, a chance to shoot women and children is literally why they sign up. What they’re really worried about is that somebody might actually fight back like they do in Iran.

that’s basically how we got modern day America after USSR dissolved

Chimps will gang up and murder tyrannical leaders, we could learn so much from them. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2119677-chimps-beat-up-murder-and-then-cannibalise-their-former-tyrant/

Oh yeah good point, being airborne is a big factor for sure. And yeah, if covid is anything to go buy, we’re just gonna let Ebola rip.

My understanding is that it’s just too good at killing people. The virus needs to have a long incubation period where the person is infectious, but doesn’t show symptoms to really get going.

Nothing wholesome I would wager.

Completely agree, and the fact that this is the narrative that’s being peddled means that most people have no idea what’s really coming.

can’t blame you

It’s really frustrating to watch how people keep talking about how you just have to vote harder, when we can see a concrete example of how workers actually take power in Bolivia.

Yup, and that’s probably going to happen in the coming months, after that there’s no way to stabilize the prices.

O7

Exactly, it’s a self reinforcing process with more countries fleeing the currency as confidence collapses. And having a global reserve underpins the US fiscal policy, if the demand for the dollar drops dramatically then it’s almost certainly will lead to a domestic economic crash.

I think some are used to suppress price domestically as well.

do go on

• https://www.newsweek.com/most-china-call-their-nation-democracy-most-us-say-america-isnt-1711176
• https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2021/0218/Vilified-abroad-popular-at-home-China-s-Communist-Party-at-100
• https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-26/which-nations-are-democracies-some-citizens-might-disagree
• https://web.archive.org/web/20230511041927/https://6389062.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6389062/Canva images/Democracy Perception Index 2023.pdf
• https://www.tbsnews.net/world/china-more-democratic-america-say-people-98686
• https://web.archive.org/web/20201229132410/https://en.news-front.info/2020/06/27/studies-have-shown-that-china-is-more-democratic-than-the-united-states-russia-is-nearby-and-ukraine-is-at-the-bottom/

lmao plausible

same one

If the US gets pushed out of West Asia, I think we’ll see peace and stability in the region emerge very quickly.

If scientists didn’t come to burgerland from the rest of the world then you’d all still be banging rocks together.