One change of clothes for a 2-week trip… now that’s a man’s man!

I know right? Who cares about basketball?

“I’m a workaholic, and anybody who isn’t needs a good horse-whippin’ to knock some sense into 'em!”

“Somebody disagreed with me! Conservatives are a persecuted class just like Christians and black people and those other races!”

True - remember Windows phones? Me neither.

If you debloat Win10 and 11 your system will run better. Debloaters are aggressive to differing degrees (I recommend Chris Titus), but a lot of things are turned on by default that shouldn’t be - like the Xbox service when you don’t have an Xbox - using resources for no reason.

True, even user-friendly Linux distros have their pain points. The real difference between Linux and corporate OS products is that you don’t periodically need a new version because of a product churn schedule.

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That would be nothing new. After Bonespurs pretty much disemboweled the Republican Party we really had an opportunity to get a solid progressive wave going. The trick is people have to show up.

I use mine entirely differently. Now that we’re into November it’s been quiet.

Menstrual cycles are so last millennium, I was told there would be menstrual hovercraft by now.

The conversation wouldn’t end there. The state would retort to the effect that, “Oh yes we did,” and the central theme of the discussion would quickly shift away from proper use of the term “secede” and whether a jaywalker analogy works to what everybody is actually going to do about it.

The outcome of a war 160 years ago has utterly no relation to how a decision to secede would play out today. I use the word “process” in place of “whatever sequence of actions” might occur if states were to assert their intent to separate from the country. “Secession” might not even be an appropriate term - a resolution could be introduced, through all the correct and proper channels, for the United States to dissolve in an organized fashion, as the Soviet Union did in 1991. There’s really no point saying any political proposal “can’t” happen.

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It’s not like the DON’T WALK sign at the crosswalk. If a state presented Congress with a demand to secede they would have to address it. Simply telling the state it was illegal wouldn’t be enough. The state could take whatever next step they want, the federal government would have to respond, and whatever was going to happen would happen. There’s no point speculating about the results, but if a state got to the point of actually starting this sequence rolling, it wouldn’t just stop with “sorry no you can’t it’s illegal.”

Secession is a very complex subject. Besides the issues you mentioned there are tons of consequences of using force. The Civil War was over 160 years ago and we still have lingering grudges. How would our wealthy feel about the impacts of another one on their investments? Or on US bond values and the value of the dollar itself? I feel like analyzing the possibilities is far beyond my Econ 101 knowledge, but it seems like resolving a secession issue with negotiation would be vastly preferable to all parties involved than any armed conflict. I think it would come down to how the most influential people thought any outcome would affect them.

“Can’t?” States are not supposed to secede. People aren’t supposed to commit crimes either, but they do. Some even get away with it.

I’ve thought for a long time that the US will end up as a collection of smaller countries. Not looking forward to the transition period.

Also there’s no opting out if you didn’t fucking vote. You can’t be complicit in opting out.

Marcus is right, incremental improvements in AIs like ChatGPT will not lead to AGI and were never on that course to begin with. What LLMs do is fundamentally not “intelligence”, they just imitate human response based on existing human-generated content. This can produce usable results, but not because the LLM has any understanding of the question. Since the current AI surge is based almost entirely on LLMs, the delusion that the industry will soon achieve AGI is doomed to fall apart - but not until a lot of smart speculators have gotten in and out and made a pile of money.