Yup, being nice and polite to the people helping you is the single biggest way to get them to look the other way or have them bend the rules for you. The instant you start playing the asshole card, you usually get strict by-the-letter policy.

I mean, you don’t have to go full-blown fursuit and conventions if you don’t want to. Most furries never actually bother with fursuiting–speaking from personal experience, it’s hot as shit (especially outdoors or in summer), you can barely see or hear anything, and if you wear glasses they’re prone to getting knocked off your nose or fogging up so badly that you can’t see anything. Many fursonas exist exclusively in artwork or stories–either commissioned or self-drawn–and even that’s optional.

You don’t even have to actively participate in the community if you don’t want to. Many furries are passive members who just follow artists, lurk in streams or group chats, occasionally leave a comment on a submission, and generally exist in furry spaces. Literally the only requirement to be a furry is to say you’re a furry!

Honestly, don’t stress yourself out over it, and keep an open mind. It might not be your cup of tea, and that’s perfectly fine–there undoubtedly is a large sexual aspect to furry, and lots of folks (especially folks who are cisgender, heterosexual, have a less relaxed view about sexuality, etc.–not to say that you can’t be a straight male furry, but there are a LOT of gay/bi furries) may find it to be a dealbreaker. Ultimately, furry has its roots in the nerd and geek communities, back when being nerdy or geeky was something to be bullied over, and it still shows it today.

Furry is a community that has a disproportionate number of LGBT+ folks, neurodivergent folks (especially people on the ADHD/autism spectrum), and other marginalized groups. Among many things, this means it revels in being proudly and unabashedly weird, both as a celebration of itself and as a defense mechanism against becoming overwhelmed by the kinds of business interests that would love nothing more than to push out all the sexuality and weirdness to provide a safe space for advertisers to shovel their slop down our throats.

If that sounds like something you’d enjoy being a part of, then I’d suggest checking out some places like the furry_irl subreddit, looking up streamers under the furry tag on Twitch (Skaifox, WhiskeyDing0, etc.), maybe make an account on FurAffinity, and look up furmeets or conventions in your area you can attend. You might not like it, or you might find yourself joining the best community I’ve ever been part of.

Yeah, definitely. Furry encompasses basically anything that’s a non-human anthropomorphic creature. I’ve seen fursonas based on birds, sharks, dolphins, turtles, rhinos, dinos, frogs, hippos, orcas, dragons, reptiles, plant creatures… hell, there are alien species like sergals and avalis, anthro/machine hybrids like protogens, and even entirely robotic characters.

It’s just called furry because furred species are the most common, and the original community that splintered off from sci-fi conventions in the 70s and 80s and grew through fanzines pre-Internet largely used furred species for their characters. (“Fun” fact, the early community had a lot of skunk characters, which is why one of the first derogatory terms for furries was “skunkfucker.”)

Believe it or not this is exactly how most furries make their fursona

Yeah, suuuuure you weren’t.

Note that the proof also generalizes to any form of creating an AI by training it on a dataset, not just LLMs. But sure, we’ll absolutely develop an entirely new approach to cognitive science in a few years, we’re definitely not boiling the planet and funneling enough money to end world poverty several times over into a scientific dead end!

You literally were LMAO

Other than that, we will keep incrementally improving our technology and it’s only a matter of time untill we get there. May take 5 years, 50 or 500 but it seems pretty inevitable to me.

Literally a direct quote. In what world is this not talking about LLMs?

Did you read the article, or the actual research paper? They present a mathematical proof that any hypothetical method of training an AI that produces an algorithm that performs better than random chance could also be used to solve a known intractible problem, which is impossible with all known current methods. This means that any algorithm we can produce that works by training an AI would run in exponential time or worse.

The paper authors point out that this also has severe implications for current AI, too–since the current AI-by-learning method that underpins all LLMs is fundamentally NP-hard and can’t run in polynomial time, “the sample-and-time requirements grow non-polynomially (e.g. exponentially or worse) in n.” They present a thought experiment of an AI that handles a 15-minute conversation, assuming 60 words are spoken per minute (keep in mind the average is roughly 160). The resources this AI would require to process this would be 60*15 = 900. The authors then conclude:

“Now the AI needs to learn to respond appropriately to conversations of this size (and not just to short prompts). Since resource requirements for AI-by-Learning grow exponentially or worse, let us take a simple exponential function O(2n ) as our proxy of the order of magnitude of resources needed as a function of n. 2^900 ∼ 10^270 is already unimaginably larger than the number of atoms in the universe (∼10^81 ). Imagine us sampling this super-astronomical space of possible situations using so-called ‘Big Data’. Even if we grant that billions of trillions (10 21 ) of relevant data samples could be generated (or scraped) and stored, then this is still but a miniscule proportion of the order of magnitude of samples needed to solve the learning problem for even moderate size n.”

That’s why LLMs are a dead end.

Yeah, do NOT watch end of Evangelion if you’re in a bad mental headspace. The original series ending might be better for you despite the “ran out of money and cobbled together a clip show” values, since it at least has a relatively upbeat tone. EoE starts with “all the main characters are comatose or going through a mental breakdown” and it gets worse from there.

They’re both extremely excellent. The original series is a fair bit darker and more depressing, and End of Evangelion is definitely a lot more WTF than anything that happens in the rebuild movies (which isn’t a bad thing necessarily). The rebuild movies,meanwhile, have much higher production values, and the fights are generally much better–most of the gifs of Ramiel you see are from the rebuild. The characters are also a lot more mentally stable–they’re all still depressed and dealing with heavy shit, but it’s “I’m taking my meds” depression instead of “untreated spiral” depression.

Watch up to the last episode, then watch End of Evangelion for the canon ending. And/or watch the rebuild movies for a condensed retelling that goes in its own direction.

What, asking experts who have studied a topic and has forgotten more about systems of governance and effective anti corruption efforts than I’ll ever know is somehow bad now? The fuck?

Yeah, it’s a fantasy, and an extremely off-the-cuff, low-detail, wouldn’t-it-be-nice-if list. In reality, I’d probably either shut up and change absolutely nothing while I figure out the power structures, or I’d just work out a payoff to quietly step down and leave without a fuss.

assign everyone a government mandated fursona

Freak the fuck out.

Pull back from Ukraine, Crimea, and Georgia, and negotiate an immediate ceasefire.

Call as many political scientists and scholars as possible and get their advice on how the fuck I can design a reformed system of democratic governance that is robust enough to withstand the inevitable attempts to undermine and corrupt it.

Find the multitude of stashed billions from the various oligarchs and seize it, use the money to invest in overhauling Russian society–improving infrastructure and education, improving the standard of living, etc.

The fuck is wrong with you? Why do you give a shit about what people enjoy? That’s pretty weird, bro

The Phoenix Wright trilogy–the first three original GBA games/DS re-releases. They set up and develop so many arcs that pay off both within each game and across the entire trilogy. I would even go so far as to say that Phoenix Wright 3 is one of the best visual novel games of all time.

Nope. Been there, done that, turned a relatively amicable breakup into a “you’re a piece of shit and don’t ever speak to me again” situation, ruining another friendship in the process. It’s a horrible, horrible idea.

Well, aside from the obvious “make myself my fursona” bit…

I’d get rid of my ADHD, or at the very least get rid of its interaction with food and exercise. It’s been such a burden, to the point where it’s singlehandedly prevented me from taking up new hobbies (because I know I won’t stick to them and can’t afford to waste the money), kept me from focusing on new certs (because I suck at self-directed study), and it’s the single biggest reason why I’m overweight. I fucking hate it. ADHD superpowers, my ass. This is a fucking debilitating disease, and even with medicine it still sucks.

Yeah, I won’t deny the quality has gone down, too. Marvel’s biggest mistake was thinking they could keep the gravy train rolling past endgame. They SHOULD have let it rest and given the creatives some time to cook and plan a new arc, but instead they pushed forward before they were ready and are paying dearly for it.

It’s the same damn mistake they made with the star wars sequel trilogy–if they had sat on it for a year or two, hashed out a coherent overarching plot, and let it cook, we would’ve gotten something better than “Somehow, Palpatine returned.” Hell, if they needed something immediately, they could have brought in Timothy Zahn to adapt the Thrawn books. Instead they went off half-cocked and gave us a barely-coherent retread of the original trilogy.

Nah, there’s definitely an element of fatigue. I used to watch superhero movies pretty religiously, even renting movies I missed before watching the new avengers flick. I even went to see Infinity War day one, and it was such a shock that I remember sitting in the car in silence on the way home (though I did cue up Snow in Summer from the NieR soundtrack… IYKYK). After Endgame, though… It was like a switch flipped. I had just watched this big, amazing payoff film that celebrated nearly a decade of cinema, had highs and lows, I watched actors and characters I had followed for years giving their goodbyes… It was a big, emotional moment, and the feeling I had afterwards was like the end of Thanksgiving dinner where you’ve finished your slice of pie and are enjoying the warm and fuzzy feelings. In other words, I was full.

So when Marvel kept producing more movies at the same pace as before, it was like the end of Thanksgiving dinner, except now the host is starting to bring out another pie and putting a slice in front of me, and now I’m side-eyeing it and trying to find a polite excuse to say no and go the fuck home.