That would be hilarious. Please let him accomplish that and nothing else.

In 1998 Marcellus Williams was convicted of murder. During the appeals processes it was found that he was not a match for any of the copious forensic evidence at the crime scene. He was convicted entirely on the testimony of two people with long records of lying to authorities and who stood to gain leniency in prosecutions for unrelated matters in exchange for their testimony. The prosecutor and the victims family spoke out against the push to execute him, in light of the exculpatory evidence.

It was ultimately determined that being innocent wasn’t a good enough reason not to execute, and he was killed in September of last year. 22 years in prison and then executed despite no evidence he committed the crime and strong evidence that he didn’t.

If being provably innocent isn’t enough to stop an execution, then what possibly could be?

I remember reading a report earlier this year which said that most people who used AI at work found that they didn’t have much use for it and it didn’t make them more productive. So that tracks.

Makes sense that tech CEOs are still pushing it as the miracle tech which will make humans obsolete, though.

Is it actually wiping jobs?

Are people undergoing mental health crises known for always making good, rational decisions?

I use Perplexity for most of my searches. Not because of ads (I have robust adblocking to the point that I’m genuinely gobsmacked whenever I’m in a situation where I can’t browse any other way, like on someone else’s machine), but because of third-party SEO and first-party paid-for search results. Perplexity is far from flawless, but unlike google, Bing, etc. and the engines which rely on them (DuckDuckGo is Bing, for example), it’s actually designed to return you the answer to your question.

We can discuss the exact meaning of “ads” and whether the paid-for search results count. I’d say they’re similar but with subtle differences. And it’s not what’s being suggested for ChatGPT here, although for over a year now I’ve been suggesting that the AI-equivalent of SEO & paid-for search results is where we’re headed.

No i didn’t

The odds are against you, for sure. It can happen, so it’s not impossible. But the odds are against you.

To increase those odds as much as possible, take one bit of advice over all others - married isn’t something you are, marriage is something you do. You’re not saying “I’m going to be with you for our entire lives” to your fiancee, you’re saying “I am going to spend my entire life working hard to make sure that we don’t grow apart or grow complacent or take each other for granted, and I fully trust that you’re promising the same thing”.

The only way for a long-term relationship to work is if both people dedicate effort to making it work. You’re looking at a life full of compromises. You’re looking at a life of times when one or the other of you is going to get sick, or will fall apart mentally, or will get addicted to drugs, or…any number of other things which can tear people apart. Are you really, fully prepared to deal with those things?

You say you want a family. What if you’re infertile? What if she needs an emergeny hysterectome? What if you find out that you have the genes for Huntington’s and you’re probably going to condemn any children you have to a slow, painful, undignified death? Will you adopt? Have you thought about it? Have you discussed it? Are you 100% sure this is the person who you want to go through those things with? Are you sure you’re the person they would want to go through those things with? Or are you just kind of thinking it’ll probably work out somehow?

Marriage is hard. It’s work. It’s not a thing you do on a day, it’s a thing you do every single day until one of you is dead.

A lot of older people are dismissive of young love. I’m not one of those people. I remember being your age and in love. I remember how deep and all-consuming it is. You will probably never love anybody as deeply again, not with the same burning passion. Not in the same way.

But love and marriage are two very different things. And I think it’s that difference that older people mean when they say things like “you don’t know what love is”. You do. Perhaps in a way they’ve forgotten. But what they mean is the mundane days. The big moments. The effort and work it takes to truly build an “us”. That’s what you don’t yet have enough experience to fully appreciate.

I wish you well. But before you get married to someone, you should try to have an appreciation of what it is that you’ll really be promising.

The advice given above to live together for a year first is good advice. That won’t give you an idea about everything, but it can give you more insight to the little things which can be more important than you think. You might think it’s cute that time she used your toothbrush without asking, or that she leaves her knickers strewn around the house. You might not feel that way in a year when she keeps doing it day after day. And you’d be surprised how significant those little things can become over time. How much are you prepared to work at it? How much is she?

Just try to be sure, going in, that you really have thought this through (because it sounds like you haven’t). And communicate. The only way you’ve got even a slight chance is if both of you communicate openly and honestly and vulnerably with each other - and not just about the big stuff.

I hate that I like his suit

They’re generally treated as different animals, but toads are actually a subset of frogs. All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads.

Here’s the thing - the protections are good. If the Justice Department weren’t compromised and the President wasn’t one of the people in the files, they would be exactly the protections which make sense. You don’t want child porn released. You don’t want the names of the victims released. You don’t want information released if it will harm the chances of prosecuting a paedophile. You don’t want information released if it will make citizens significantly less safe.

If we could trust the President and the Justice Department, these rules would be exactly what we want.

There are genuinely and unironically men out there who don’t wash their own arses because touching a man’s arse is gay.

Where’s that cartoon about financial news stories making much more sense if you replace the words “the economy” with “rich people’s boat money”?

I’m burnt out on it at this point. In the whole bullet haven gameplay loop.

I’ve got something like 200 hours in Vampire Survivors, and it cost me less than a fiver

I’ve got perhaps an unusual one - 99% of the time I play games with the music turned off. I just find it much more immersive and I enjoy, for example, not knowing that combat is about to start because the music’s just changed.

There are plenty of games where you can’t turn the music off. I’m not a fan of that, but I get it. The devs want you to play their game in a certain way, and turning the music off isn’t part of that. No complaints.

But then there are games which allow you to turn the music off, but all the rest of the sound has been made under the assumption that the music will be playing. The music often covers up a litany of jankiness like background sound effects not looping well. And sometimes the atmosphere sounds (say the drone of an engine in a spaceship) are also controlled by the music slider.

So, if you’re going to give the option to turn the music off, make sure that the game still sounds good without the music.

For me, it’s cutscenes in general. I know there are people who do care in general, but for me a game where I care about the plot is very rare. And the examples I can think of (Outer Wilds, or Ico, for two examples) either have no cutscenes or very few brief ones, and tell the story in a different, more immersive way.

For me, a general rule is - if the game forces moments on me when I can put the controller down and wander into a different room, then that’s not what I’m interested in. I want to actually play the game.

The shocking thing here is not that there are MAGA accounts from outside the US, but that twitter introduced a feature which would expose that

One woman famously sent the BBC a dry cleaning bill because her husband had literally shat himself

Similar to the Strangelove example - although not about history - know what medical professionals consistently say is the TV show which not only had the most accurate medicine, but also best depicts the social paradigm of working in the medical sector? Scrubs.