I was home schooled from childhood through highschool. I got a GED before I joined the military, then used the GI bill to go to university and took placement tests for everything, which put me at the same level as everyone else except for trigonometry, which I had to take a remedial class in.

Yeah, the US grade system up to highschool. I haven’t done those grades at all.

Never have I ever gone to school in grades K-12.

1. Escape temporarily with a group
2. Find scrolls of modify memory
3. Remove memories from all but one escapee
4. Rest of the group returns home with no memory of escape or the person left behind
5. Escapee on the outside learns the spell modify memory and/or finds more scrolls
6. Returns to orchestrate resistance
7. The resistance operates in cells which have no memory of being part of the resistance
8. “Handlers” are rotated frequently and are responsible for providing memories and stockpiled weapons
9. Cell members are given memories, perform missions, and then return home with no memory
10. Cells that are compromised are abandoned immediately and their members are never activated again.
11. Handlers are personally recruited and serve for short periods of time before being wiped by the next handler.

Seems like a pain, but possible. It would make a good story.

Now we’ve reached the point where you have a faction of the internet believing Vance actually had sectional relations…

Lol

“Yes I’m weird, and I should be. Jesus didn’t tell us to be of the world, he only told us to be in the world. We don’t conform to that world, and we never will. Don’t hide your light under that bushel, but stand against the darkness that threatens to creep in. Stand against the devil and his minions. Stand against transexuals, leftists, and the woke mob. Stand against the abortionists, the evolutionists, and the false god of science. And when you do, every brother and sister here will stand with you. And all God’s people say-” [crowd] ‘Amen!’.

A preview of things to come. Please excuse me while I go rinse my brain out.

Fair

Assuming that creatives can be replaced by AI (meaning there isn’t some soft cap on how good it can get for technical reasons) then creatives will be replaced with AI. The only difference striking makes is whether it happens in 5-10 years or 10-20.

You pasted the last paragraph twice.

I’m probably going to get some hate for this one, but Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse. The story wasn’t as tight as the first movie, they introduced too many new characters to keep up with, and it ended with a setup for the next movie.

I sent you a DM. I’d like to set up a meeting if you’re willing.

Yeah, it took me a bit to wrap my head around it. It’s worth it to avoid subtle, weird, and hard to diagnose bugs later on.

As a Rust programmer, I approve this message. Tumbling through a turbine repeatedly would be less stressful than working on a large python/js codebase.

Basically everything

Yeah, I was about ready to end it as well. Thanks for the interesting conversation.

Your point, as I understand it, is that lots of policies both past and present are cruel to or unfairly impact women and minorities, and this suggests that the cruelty is the intended outcome, rather than whatever the stated goals were of any individual policy.

Is that what you’re saying?

I’m not disputing that minorities and women have been the target of discrimination, but the question is whether the phrase “the cruelty is the point” is accurate. There are obviously times when it is, as in some of the cases you’ve described, but most of the time when I see someone saying “the cruelty is the point”, they’re referring to conservative policies on things like immigration or abortion, which have goals aside from cruelty.

I think that the phrase is often used to demonize conservatives. If the cruelty is the point, then everyone who supports the policy is knowingly cruel and malicious.

I’ll concede on the lynchings and Jim Crow. If the goal is to torture and kill someone then cruelty is obviously the point.

Regarding the rest, and specifically abortion, I think you could still say that it’s not accurate to claim that the cruelty is the point. No (or few) anti-abortion people are anti-abortion specifically to hurt women. They’re trying to stop abortions from happening. Mostly because they think it’s murder, but partially because they think that the risk of pregnancy will stop people from having sex.

If there were a way to stop abortions from happening that (somehow) didn’t place constraints on what women could or couldn’t do with their bodies, and it didn’t conflict with any other beliefs of the anti-abortion people (like sex ed does with Christian morality), they would probably be for it.

The phrase “the cruelty is the point”, to me, implies that the cruelty is the goal. If the people advocating for cruelty would take a non-cruel option that accomplishes the same goal, then the goal wasn’t cruelty.

Can you give me some examples of things where “cruelty is the point”?

Very cool story! Thanks!