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Cake day: April 13th, 2024

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  • I am skipping steps because this topic demands thought, research, and exploration, but ultimately the conclusion is, in my view, inevitable.

    We are already building advanced simulators. Video games grow in realism and complexity. With realtime generative AI, these games will become increasingly indistinguishable to a mind. There are already countless humans simultaneously building the thing.

    And actually, the lack of evidence of extra-terrestrial life is support of the idea. Once a civilization grows large enough, they may simply build Dyson sphere scale computation devices, Matrioshka brains. Made efficient, they would emit little to no EM radiation and appear as dark gravitational anomalies. With that device, what reason would beings have to endanger themselves in the universe?

    But I agree, the hard evidence isn’t there. So I propose human society band together and build interstellar ships to search for the evidence.








  • I traveled to every state in the US save Alaska, multiple times. I lived in the forests and public lands, sometimes going days or weeks without seeing civilization.

    America, the land, is a beautiful and majestic place. It is full of magic and incredible, ancient power.

    America, the people occupying the land, is a lie. Most of it is dusty, decrepit, and feels awful. The cities are the epicenter of this horrible feeling.

    Some parts of some cities feels pretty good. Large dog parks, for instance, are almost universally good feeling. From New Mexico to Oregon, to Florida and to Pennsylvania, the Dog Parks were where I went to grab some good vibes in larger places. But besides that, I always had a timer before the cities got too awful feeling before I had to retreat back into the public lands.

    My recommendation to you is this: connect with those lands. They were there before you and will remain after. They are a gift nearly no American properly taps in to, and it shows. That is where the spirit lives. You have an incredible treasure all around you, connect with it, it is waiting for you. The good times have just begun if you learn to connect with it.

    Don’t give in to the manufactured fear. The world is much bigger than this, and the universe is so much larger than it, it becomes a joke. You are part of that larger universe.




  • “tHaNkS nOn-VoTeRs”

    proceeds to support a party that skipped the primaries, has been anointing unlikable candidates for over 10 years with zero input

    “ITs ThE nOn VoTeRs!!”

    Maybe your shit party should hold actual primaries where people can select their candidate? Maybe, when in power, they should actually make meaningful change that helps people? Maybe they should actually appoint supreme court judges when given the chance?

    Somehow when they aren’t in power, they are spinelessly fighting “if only we were in power we could fix all of this” then when they’re in power, they are somehow even more powerless “the Republicans keep blocking us”.

    You got to be a real piece of work to think putting your trust in that party will fix anything. They are controlled opposition and the democracy has been lost for a long time.

    Non-voters already know this.

    Instead of attacking them, how about you hold your party accountable? They stole a primary from Bernie Sanders twice, and went ahead and eliminated primaries this last time. What will it take for you to look in the mirror and reflect instead of blaming everything around you?


  • That is just the tip of the iceberg with the moderation framework I have in mind.

    Anyone can become a moderator by publishing their block / hide list.

    The more people that subscribe to a moderator or a moderator team, the more “votes” they get to become the default moderator profile for a topic (whatever that is on the given platform, subreddit for reddit etc).

    By being subscribed to a moderation team (or multiple), when you block or hide, it gets sent to the report queues of who you’re subscribed to. They can then review the content and make a determination to block or hide it for all their subscribers.

    Someone who is blocked or hidden is notified that their content has been blocked or hidden when it is by a large enough mod team. They can then file an appeal. The appeal is akin to a trial, and it is distributed among all the more active people that block or hide content in line with the moderation collective.

    An appeal goes through multiple rounds of analysis by randomly selected users who participate in review. It is provided with the user context and all relevant data to make a decision. People reviewing the appeal can make decision comments and the user can read their feedback.

    All of this moderation has a “karma” associated with it. When people make decisions in line with the general populace, they get more justice karma. That creates a ranking.

    Those rankings can be used to make a tiered justice system, that select the best representative sample of how a topic wishes to have justice applied. The higher ranking moderators get selected for higher tiered decisions. If a lower level appeal decision is appealed again, it gets added to their queue, and they can choose to take the appeal or not.

    All decisions are public for the benefit of users and accountability of moderators.

    When a user doesn’t like a moderator’s decision they can unblock or unhide content, and that counts as a vote against them. This is where it gets interesting, because this forms a graph of desired content, with branching decision logic. You can follow that train of thought to some very fascinating results. Everyone will have a personally curated content tree.

    Some will have a “cute” internet, filled with adorable content. Some will have a “violent” internet, filled with war videos and martial arts. Some will have a “cozy” internet, filled with non-triggering safe content. And we will be able to share our curations and preferences so others can benefit.

    There is much more but the system would make moderation not just more equitable, but more scalable, transparent, and appreciated. We’d be able to measure moderators and respect them while honoring the freedom of individuals. Everyone would win.

    I see a future where we respect the individual voices of everyone, and make space for all to learn and grow. Where we are able to decide what we want to see and share without constant anxiety. Where everything is so fluid and decentralized that no one can be captured by money or influence, and when they are, we have the tools to swiftly branch with minimal impact. Passively democratic online mechanisms.


  • That’s correct. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. We have to increase our mastery of it instead.

    The core relationship is rather simple and needs to be redefined. Remote compute does not assign numbers to any of us, we provide them with identities we create.

    All data allowances are revokable. Systems need to be engineered to make the flow of data transparent and easy to manage.

    No one can censor us to other people without the consent of the viewer. This means moderation needs to be redefined. We subscribe to moderation, and it is curated towards what we individually want to see. No one makes the choice for us on what we can and cannot see.

    This among much more in the same thread of thinking is needed. Power back to the people, entrenched by mastery.

    When you think like this more and more the pattern becomes clearer, and you know what technology to look for. The nice thing is, all of this is possible right now at our current tech level. That can bring a lot of hope.


  • I brought up the top percentile to further illustrate how broken the mindset and mechanics of online dating are.

    I hear you. All the things you said are possible by taking a hike. That’s why I suggested taking it. We all come from nature, and we are all connected to it. It is an easy hobby to have. You pick a beautiful place, and you walk in it. It is important to do it alone or with friends you have no romantic interest in. It has countless mental health and physical fitness benefits, so it serves functional purposes in addition.

    I don’t know how to explain this without sounding crazy. The Earth is alive and conscious. The Earth is most definitely a “she” and she is a higher order intelligence than us. She is the first mother on this planet. None of this matters because the logic holds whether or not you believe me.

    Nature is capable of replacing the longing for human companionship. It is full and it is complete. It provides the thing that feels like it’s missing in every relationship I’ve had. When you connect with her, you connect with something much larger than any one person can bring.

    But what’s more, she is connected to everyone. In other words…Earth is the ultimate matchmaker. It is a strange contradiction. You spend time with nature, and that time becomes a pure pursuit where you eventually do it because you love the Earth. Then, and I absolutely promise this with certainty, the Earth will connect you with people that you’ve been looking for.

    Among those connections is a special person you will want to meet.



  • That’s an interesting take.

    Let’s confine the statement to the bounds of a materialist’s reality for a moment and see how it holds up.

    A child somewhere in the world just had their arms blown off withnessing their mother and father evaporating before their eyes. In the mind of this child, is it in: a) normal Earth life b) heavenly Earth life c) hellish Earth life

    A woman somewhere just discovered their partner has been cheating on them with just about everything that moves, and they have HIV. She has always been loyal for all the many years they’ve been together. In the mind of this woman, is she in: a) normal Earth life b) heavenly Earth life c) hellish Earth life

    A soldier somewhere just fired on a little kid they mistook for an enemy. They go to sleep that night haunted by what they’ve done, finally realizing they are the bad guys and everything they are is a lie. They’ve done unspeakable horrors to so many innocent people, and it is all rising to awareness. Is this solder’s mind in: a) normal Earth life b) heavenly Earth life c) hellish Earth life

    Heaven and hell are manifested here in Earth within the hearts of all beings.


  • Buddhism has a more Christian example of Christ-like behavior concerning a “living being Satan”. That is to say, if “living being Jesus” was real, he would be a Bodhisattva, perhaps akin to Kṣitigarbha.

    In the story, Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha vowed:

    “Until the hells are empty, I will not become a Buddha.

    Only when all sentient beings are saved will I attain enlightenment.”

    It is a vow to never abandon any being regardless of their state.

    I like that idea. Boundless love and compassion doesn’t stop at the bounds of some hell. It is boundless. It has boundless time, so it will spend an eternity reaching out to even cyclic hells.


  • Here is some friendly advice from someone who online dated since the beginning (and I mean starting using online personal ads with eloquent long-form stories on Craigslist of all places, which would look like AI with more personality wrote it given how long): don’t do it.

    You are aware of the basics with the toxic pattern of online dating. The other elements are more insidious. But all of that aside, the biggest problem is nobody really says who they are and nobody really understands what they want.

    The only real option is to live in a way that makes you happy, with no expectation of anyone joining you. In the course of ACTION, you may meet someone taking the same action, and that is a bond that cannot easily be forged online.

    If you want a real connection, live in a real way. Do the things you dreamed of but never dared. Take risks living the way YOU want, not the way you’ve been taught. The closer you come to living how you truly want, the closer you will come to Someone living the same way. You can never meet them as long as you live someone else’s life.

    When you give so much thought and attention to dating, you will find others giving so much thought and attention to dating. That is a consuming identity. Consider what it means.

    • emotional states tied to someone else
    • mind always on feeling good based on finding the right person
    • calibrated to “the search”
    • believes in a companionship as the saving grace, the thing missing
    • my person isn’t making me feel good, so I need to find a person that does, good thing I can passively browse online, no harm in that…

    …and so on. Online dating as it is now is an addiction and a disease. You might be able to have (bad) sex on it, and you might be able to learn more about yourself and random people you’d never otherwise cross paths with, but for the most part, it is nearly impossible to meet an ideal match.

    The top 10% of men “get” the top 50% of women online. The top 50% of women all compete over (and mostly share) the top 10%, thinking they deserve more. The curve is exponential so the numbers at the 1% are insane. And what does “top” even mean?

    People look enviously at the “top”. But they shouldn’t. Sure, they’re banging “hot people” all the time along with spreading their hot diseases, but that is where the depth of connection ends. Many of them evolve into SNAGs (spiritual new age guys) for this reason. They are trapped in a cycle of being on top, never exploring other options because they are receiving everything society has deemed as the purpose of it. Yet inside, they rot away, more alone than anyone. There was a person in them once. A child with dreams. Now there is a dark empty void that keeps growing.

    Anyway, this hellish online landscape doesn’t have to be this way. If the systems were designed right and culture evolved, it could be extremely possible and downright prudent to find healthy connections. It would operate passively and automatically and we would organically encounter amazing matches. But right now, online dating is captured by greedy corporate interests and is a toxic wasteland to keep you addicted and longing, desperate, and hungry.

    This is true for man or woman. Men are turned into ravenous & desperate worms that gyrate at the slightest possibility. Women are turned into tyrant queens believing they are laced in gold with infinite options, yet all the options are diseased maggots living as a shadow of their being. Both create a desperately alone populace longing for something more, and they don’t even know what that “more” is.

    It’s the real you dude. Go take a hike, hug a tree, focus on hobbies, and stop chasing broken dreams. Real people aren’t drawn to longing. They’re drawn to living.