Some religions.

At-will employment too.

“You’re nothing special - easily replaceable. I’m doing you a favour by letting you have this job.”

Basically anywhere where a power imbalance is an intended feature, not a necessary evil.

Dynamic typing issue?

1 + 2 = 12

12 + 3 = 15

Ellen - before she was a talk-show host, Ellen DeGeneres played the main character in an Emmy award-winning sitcom. The show had LGBT characters, with Ellen herself (both the character and actress) coming out later in the show’s run.

I’m surprised I’ve not seen Will & Grace mentioned (I’m sure it must be here, but I didn’t notice it). That show famously featured many LGBT characters, including a lesbian couple who were Will and Grace’s main rivals.

Less specifically for lesbian characters, but featuring a gay couple as main characters, you’ve also got The New Normal, a fantastic show about a gay couple that was cancelled after one season, and, of course Modern Family.

I wouldn’t say that this programme was good, but Brookside famously featured the first pre-watershed lesbian kiss on British TV (the watershed is the point, 9pm, where it’s assumed that children will no longer be watching TV). This was in 1994, when we still had backwards Conservative Party laws about it being illegal to “promote public discussion” of homosexuality. For context, it’s worth noting that even two years later, when Carol and Susan got married in Friends they didn’t kiss.

I’ve no problem with giving credit where credit’s due. A smile is a smile.

I’d much rather this type of advertising than the traditional exploitation of insecurities or false promises.

In the second semester they turn students Muslim, or at the very least some kind of Spanish.

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I’m sorry it came to this, but this is clearly the behaviour of a deviant. Expect a visit from officers who will escort you to an undisclosed location for reprogramming.

What’s your opinion on lengthening the word “no”?

I’m against it in all circumstances. Nothing ruins a dramatic moment in a comic than a character shouting “nooo!” - in my head it always rhymes with “moo”.

Thanks for replying to this. This is everything I would have said, except in a far less exasperated way than I would have said it!

I’m going to draw a line under it now though. I honestly don’t have energy to explain why a street-preacher who was active for a only a few years does not have the same quality of historical evidence as Cleopatra.

They’re either stupid or a troll. A quick look through their profile shows a lot of posts in Danish, so I don’t think they’re stupid. Scandinavia, however, is famously home to trolls of all shapes and sizes.

Well, I’m certainly glad that I wrote out all that, for you just to reply to the first paragraph!

Anyway, you’re wrong. Literally minimum effort required to dig these out, but I’ll do it for you anyway.

Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus

Annals by Tacitus

Antiquities has two mentions, along with a rather grim description of what Nero was doing to Christians. Annals has one mention.

And I think you’re fundamentaly mistaken about what the Bible is. It’s just a collection of works. The Old Testament is pretty much the same stuff as the Jewish Tanakh, and predates Jesus fairly significantly. The New Testament is composed of works created after Jesus’s death. This includes several letters by a guy named Paul.

“OK, and…”, I hear you say.

He was absolutely a contemporary of the historical Jesus, carried out missionary work after his conversion.

I’ll grant that there are no first-hand accounts - even Paul’s accounts were second-hand from people who actually knew Jesus. But it doesn’t mean anything - there are few first-hand accounts of anybody from before the early middle ages, let alone a commoner born 2000 years ago.

Sorry - you’re wrong in this.

There are non-Biblical contemporary accounts of a historical Jesus of Nazareth, the travelling preacher who was crucified under Pontius Pilate. It’s generally accepted that he was a real person.

As for the magical side things attributed to him - the immaculate conception, the miracles etc - well, that is a matter of faith.

To use another historical figure, look at William Wallace. There is contemporary evidence that he was a real person, but we don’t have much at all. Most of what we have is works created long after he died - legends and stories that have fashioned him into the person we think of. He was a real person, but Braveheart isn’t a true story.

If you want another example of how distorted things can get over time - just look at the current “American” version of Jesus.

The Biblical Jesus was a Jew who said people should look after the poor, love our neighbours, respect cultural differences, and that nothing God has made is unclean. He said pursuit of money is the root of all evil and, angered by the commercialisation of the temple, flipped over the tables of the money-changers.

The American Jesus is a white Christian who hates foreigners and their ways, hates gay people and hates atheists. Conversely, he loves billionaires, mega-churches and capitalism.

Historical Jesus is probably real, but that doesn’t mean the Bible is an accurate account.

Those are some serious Rob Liefeld gnashers there.

Is that Lindisfarne?!

I used to read this when it just started, back on AOL dial-up. Wow - I’m both super happy that it’s still going, and a little sad that it hasn’t become bigger. It was a really nicely fleshed-out world.

According to the many reports on this, most guests flew to airstrip on the neighbouring island of St Thomas and were shuttled across by helicopter.

It’s not out of the question that this is what he means, in the same way that “flying to Tokyo” usually means “flying to Narita and riding the shuttle into Tokyo”.

I was about to say this! I’ve seen more foxes around the centre of Manchester and Sheffield than I have around the farms where I live.

I think you might have missed the intended message!

Marge wants to censor Itchy and Scratchy. She builds up enough support to successfully do so.

Her followers then want to censor Michelangelo’s David, which has come to Springfield on a tour. She disagrees, saying it’s a masterpiece and goes on TV to urge people to go to see it.

On the show Marge is then asked how can she be in favour of freedom for one form of artistic expression (David) but not another (Itchy and Scratchy). She concedes that she can’t, and that censoring Itchy and Scratchy was wrong, despite hating the show.

The nudity issue was shown as an extreme position - it was so extreme as to make Marge realise that she was wrong to campaign to censor Itchy and Scratchy.

Petition

Bad thing please

Government responded

Yes

I’m saying trying to dismiss all AI usage with the energy usage argument is disingenuous if you don’t have a similar issue with social media.

The truth is that you’ve read someone else saying it and latched onto to it.

As for “what AI output isn’t slop?”, come on - literally anything can be bad, generated by AI or not. I personally use AI for spotting bugs in code - it’s good. I also use AI to generate complex XSLT and regexes - it’s very good at that.

Is it 100% correct all of the time? Of course not, but it gets it right on the first try far more often than a person would, in a fraction of the time.

I built a tool that generates MCQs from a given text for revision - it’s extremely useful.

I use it for translations when I want to read something a different language. Is it perfect, again no, but it’s better than I am, and it allows me to understand the text.

Also, AI is in everything already - your camera app, the Google suite, even your car if you have TSR.

AI itself isn’t the problem - it’s the people who create slop that are.

But not all AI output is slop, that’s the point.

It does use a huge amount of energy, often for little reward, but so does social media. Facebook uses a staggering amount of energy. For what? Opt-in propaganda and ads. TikTok uses a truly enormous amount. Again, for what? 30 second videos of dances and the stupidest people of earth sharing their “life-hacks”.

The slop issue isn’t AI, it’s humans.

Surely a it’s pasty. A pastry pasty.