You could run profitable businesses, yes, but would they be profitable enough?

Six orders of magnitude, not a factor of six. The first is how many powers of ten, the second is a direct multiplier.

Dehumanizing people is the first step in treating them like animals, and then extermination them - genocide. Don’t go down that path. It always ends the same way.

This quote from Chris Rock hasn’t aged too well, but the overall sentiment is correct.

I’m sorry, I misread your statement. I think we’re on the same page.

Yeah, the good news is no one has ever suffered permanent damage from verbal abuse, so no problems, right?

And why is physical violence no-tolerance (except when it isn’t) but verbal violence is a-okay?

I’m not saying physical violence is okay, and I never have. In fact, I generally go the other direction, saying that physical violence should be a last resort for solving problems, and that those who use it clearly don’t have better tools to solve their problems. And know which groups is known for not having a lot of experience solving problems? Kids. That’s why we have adults supervising them. And training those kids that verbal violence is okay, and a great way to harass your peers, is, to put it bluntly, pretty fucking stupid. And some of those kids learn that a suspension isn’t that big a deal to some of the kids they bully, which is a hell of a lot better lesson than the adults around them were teaching them.

Most of my immediate family are on Android and use Signal. I’m happier this way.

What exactly is the threshold you’re waiting for on this escape plan?

Both distillation and reverse osmosis should get rid of microplastics. Reverse osmosis should get rid of mercury in any form, while it would depend on other chemical properties (evaporation rate, temperature source water is heated to, etc.) on whether distillation would remove chemicals like mercury.

Some further reading.

If you compare the total mining efforts of the entirety of human civilization, it will about to a small enough fraction of the moon that it would do less to destabilize the orbit of the moon than energy loss due to tidal forces.

Most of these costs are in terms of energy, one of the most plentiful things in space. Also, if we do things right (a huge if, I know), the bigger idea is to bootstrap it by sending enough tools to make the tools you need to extract and refine resources. This doesn’t require a von Neumann machine since we can control them, either directly or remotely. Also, if we are going to extract resources in space, a lot of infrastructure will need to be built first, which is cheaper if we use resources that are already in space. And as the saying goes, the surface of the moon is halfway to anywhere in the solar system.

Don’t you hate how you will relive those minor mess-ups that barely matter for years after? Most people probably don’t care if they can even remember it.

I’m absolutely not going to buy a mapping robot vacuum unless it keeps that info local, or on a server I can host. I have one right now with cloud controls, but it’s only for the schedule.

I think truck nuts are tacky and stupid, but if you want them, I don’t see why my opinion should matter. Now, if they were big enough that they were dragging down the street and making sparks, maybe they should be banned. I’d find that funnier than the normal style, too.

I’ve never been diagnosed with tinnitus, but I’ve been living with it for decades. I mostly have a low-level, staticky whine, but sometimes I’ll have attacks that are high-pitched, loud, and painful. I will also rarely have bouts where my hearing is muffled and definitely feels like someone is behind you blocking ambient sounds. The in front of you part is probably blocked out by our eyes showing nothing there.

It’s what helps Dianetics stay in the Bestsellers lists.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to implying here. Is there some industrial espionage happening, where you think Iran is going to lose some secret to the other nuclear powers? Or do you think the international watchdog isn’t going to report on the facilities and activities they’re mandated to monitor?

I can appreciate what you’re saying, but it’s kind of like action adventure films. They mix the genres because the audience they’re targeting wants that. So, if women are interested in romance, they can expand the fantasy readership by putting that in there. I’ve read some that aren’t bad and some that are pretty tiring, but Allen Dean Foster wove a romance element into the Flinx series now and then, and it was a key part of the Spellsinger series. So not really just a women-only thing, and likely for the same reasons - expanding the market for the books.

In basketball, you must always have two limbs touching the ground when you have the ball, unless you are standing, shooting, or jumping. Why? I don’t like basketball and think it would be funny as he’ll.

I prefer to think of merging it into the gestalt.