The simplest answer, real world LLMs and AI are real, and holodecks are fictional. Plenty of things are cool in fiction and not something we should actually build.

See the classic tweet about the Torment Nexus.

I don’t believe so.

If every product was made with the highest standards of materials and craft, then all of the products would be more expensive. A competitive free market is meant to allow a wider variety of consumers access to products that suit their individual needs, and price is a huge part of those needs.

I do think it’s unethical to charge too much for products that aren’t well made and that it’s a failing of capitalism that it’s not just allowed, but encouraged.

I can be a hobby dilettante, so there’s a lot I could list.

Technology and personal computers is probably the biggest one. I used to work in IT and as a hobby had a few computers at home running different flavors of linux for different purposes. I was a big technology enthusiast in general. These days I maintain a basic level of knowledge and awareness because I feel like I have to. I would happily give it all up if I could.

I also follow Magic the Gathering developments despite not buying cards in decades and it’s been about a year since I played Arena (the free online version of MTG). The rules and card interactions are still really interesting, but I just can’t be bothered to play. I’ve thought more than once about applying to be a judge for MTG tournaments.

I have read the original trilogy. They’re very different from Annihilation and it can be a little jarring. I really enjoyed them, and would easily recommend the whole series.

I feel like I need to reread the trilogy to try the fourth book.

Martian Time-Slip by Philip K Dick - PKD is always pretty weird, but I found this one especially so. Time travel experiments by unlikable characters that involves abusing schizophrenic and autistic children.

Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie - First of the Imperial Radch series. Told from the perspective of an intelligence that’s truly different than ours (even though it is ostensibly human). It made a lot of waves for having genderless characters, but that only scratches the surface of how strangely the narrator relates to the humans they’re dealing with.

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer - First of the Southern Reach series. A group of 4 unnamed individuals go to investigate a reality distorting phenomenon and reality gets heavily distorted. This one declares right up front that it’s going to get strange and does exactly that.

This probably isn’t what you’re talking about, but I miss the old Trackman Marble mice. I had a Trackman Marble FX that I used for years until I finally upgraded to USB.

Mostly a Steam controller. It works in almost every application or game.

I’ve also got a trackball for the few cases where the controller doesn’t work. I don’t use it very often because I don’t think there’s a comfortable way to use it on the couch without using a lapdesk or something.

Quentin Tarantino is a pretty good director. Not great, not terrible, just pretty good.

At first glance I would have said two, the handle and the donut hole. After reading and considering your answer, I’m pretty confident you’re right. The space between the tunnel formed by the donut hole and the mug itself forms an odd hole, but there it is.

Kudos, that’s a fun little puzzle.

How… How are you using the urinal that it’s getting a view of your bare ass?

About the same.

It depends a lot on the topic. For topics that are polarizing and those where I know I disagree with the popular sentiment, I’m more lenient with downvotes. But it’s always at least a yellow flag to have a lot of downvotes.

My fear with banning artists who have made bigoted comics is how that relates to older comics. For example I really enjoy those Jucika strips, but given their age I wouldn’t be that surprised if the original artist had some opinions that we wouldn’t tolerate today.

Regardless of my fear, I’m more concerned with having a space that’s welcoming to all people and I’m well aware of the “Nazi bar” problem. So I would come down on having a ban list of bigoted creators that aren’t welcome here.

Furthermore, a lot of nonprofits are financing at least part of their operations through grants. Those grants often require them to prove that they work was completed and done so in compliance with the grant terms. Photographs could be part of the evidence they collect to document how they used the funds.

Interesting that even in the chain of events depicted in the comments it’s started and ended by Republicans and the poster assigns all the blame to Democrats.