What would life be like if reincarnation was a proven thing and we could remember all our past lives?
TLDR; I'm vehemently agnostic.
I believe that if there is a "God" entity, that it is incomprehensible and not worth attempting to understand.
I also don't believe in an anthropocentric "God", in that "God" doesn't inherently value nor not value humans as somehow special nor damned. I also don't believe "God" cares nor doesn't care about humans or existence.
I also don't believe in inherent meaning, nor that there is some form of divine justice. Those are human lenses through which we interpret the world, and are unlikely to apply (at least in the same way as a human) to the supposed viewpoint of an eternal omniscient omnipotent entity that created the universe and will supposedly one day close the door on time and its own existence.
In short, I'm one bleak motherfucker and it doesn't matter if "God" exists or not. Either way, I don't get to survive death. What is eternal about me is inherently not a part of me. It is mortality, true mortality, mortality of the consciousness and the ego and the individual that defines the individual. When that dies, "God” or not, either way there is no individual to somehow surpass death.
There's too many solid reasons to be upset with, well, not AI per say, but the companies that implement, market, and control the AI ecosystem and conversation to go into in a single post. Sufficient to say I think AI is an existential threat to humanity mainly because of who's controlling it and who's not.
We have no regulation on AI, we have no respect for artists, writers, musicians, actors, and workers in general coming from these AI peddling companies, we only see more and more surveillance and control over multiple aspects of our lives being consolidated around these AI companies and even worse, we get nothing more in exchange except for the promise of increased productivity and quality, and that increase in productivity and quality is a lie. AI currently gives you the wrong answer or some half truth or some abomination of someone else's artwork really really fast...that is all it does, at least for the public sector currently.
For the private sector at best it alienates people as chatbots, and at worst is being utilized to infer data for surveillance of people. The tools of technology at large are being used to suppress and obfuscate speech by whoever uses it, and AI is one tool amongst many at the disposal of these tech giants.
AI is exacerbating a knowledge crisis that was already in full swing as both educators and students become less curious about subjects that don't inherently relate to making profits or consolidating power. And because knowledge is seen as solely a way to gather more resources/power and survive in an ever increasingly hostile socioeconomic climate, people will always reach for the lowest hanging fruit to get to that goal, rather than actually knowing how to solve a problem that hasn't been solved before or inherently understand a problem that has been solved before or just know something relatively useless because it's interesting to them.
There's too many good reasons AI is fucking shit up, and in all honesty what people in general tote about AI is definitely just a hype cycle that will not end well for the majority of us and at the very least, we should be upset and angry about it.
Here are further resources if you didn't get enough ranting.
I'm a Night Owl and have been from a very young age. I also wish Night Owls were more just considered a thing in this society rather than labeled lazy or deviant. But hey, if you don't conform to the Capitalist mold, you're apparently whatever people want to negatively label you as. Unless you're a Night Auditor, Night Security Guard, Fireman, or Soldier, then you're a (somewhat) acceptable part of the machine.
Anyways, here's a BBC article on why humans might have evolved to have different sleep schedules. It's an interesting read IMHO.
Heavy metal or heavy metals?
Truly curious. Like what?
God I fucking hope you're right. If both the military and police become fascist (even if in all but name), it won't just be the USA that is completely fucked.
Might I interest you in a podcast?
I thought that was just taking out the trash, a standard public service.
I do want mainstream adoption ... of the terminal. The terminal is not just a professional tool. In fact, whenever anything goes wrong with your computer silently, I can almost guarantee there's some helpful output that you'd see had you been invoking that program from the terminal. So what ends up happening? You go to a "professional" who looks at that output, search engines the output, and uses the online documentation to attempt a fix.
The analogy to the car is somewhat apt. I'd argue we'd all be better off if we knew how to at least do some basic mechanic work. This is the same thing. I'm not saying we all need to live in the terminal..I'm saying we all should know the very basics around it. Update our system, read and search error problems should they arise, and know when and where to reach out to others for help when we can't solve it. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest everybody learn a tool, especially when, again, that tool becomes ubiquitous amongst anyone who does any troubleshooting with computers on a regular basis (i.e. everyone who ever encountered an error ever).
I don't care about mainstream Linux adoption. I care about mainstream curiosity into how things we use everyday work and attaining a basic knowledge of it.
Many attempts have been made at graphical package updaters, and honestly they always end up just outputting an error message when something goes wrong. The reason it frustrates new users so much is that they aren't used to having to troubleshoot their own systems. If they don't wish to do so, that's fine, but then they should pay for support since that requires other people’s time, efforts, and skills to do so.
Arguing that everything should just work on Linux, a free OS, without having to troubleshoot things on your own (which, again, 99% of the time, involves the terminal regardless of what OS you're using), is simply a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. If you want to run Linux, and you refuse to pay for it, then complain that it should be more "user friendly", which is just another way of saying "I want tech support but don't want to pay for it", then it shows you probably shouldn't be using that OS, and maybe you don't understand even the basics of how a computer works?
If you're just not willing to do even the bare minimum to open up a terminal, attempt to run the program, read the output, and then research said output, then you should be on a platform that will provide the support you need should anything go wrong. In other words, you should be on Windows or MacOS.
If you all want the year of the Linux Desktop, and you all seem to be proclaiming it can't happen until it can operate without the use of the terminal, then you should pay a group of developers to develop it and provide support for it. Until then, you are the maintainer of your own computer, and you should probably just do the work and open the terminal up and do the bare minimum, or shutup and go back to Windows/MacOS.
Edit: wording/grammar.
Because the use of the terminal is as intuitive as using a Word Processor. Learning to use the terminal is as important as learning how to type. Without this knowledge, I'd argue you're not using your computer, you're spectating. Which is fine if you're paying for support, but with Linux you are doing no such thing unless you use Redhat.
As soon as computers hit the general public, there should have been a mass effort to teach people that the terminal is the main interface through which everything happens on a computer, just like there were a ton of men suddenly learning to type in the early 70s when computing suddenly became important to everyday work. Prior to that typing was considered the sole domain of female secretaries. But this never happened for use of the terminal for better or worse.
Ultimately I get that people don't have time to learn everything, but, again, the terminal is as ubiquitous as the Word Processor and ten thousand times more powerful. The fact it is not a staple in the arsenal of anyone who has ever sat in front of a Computer screen is a sad state of affairs.
The argument I'm making is that we have multiple generations of people where the majority of them simply don't speak the language of computers while the majority of them have to use them everyday. It's no wonder they all get so frustrated. If only someone had taught them how to use it in the first place rather than gave them a bandaid solution that hides the majority of what's happening behind the scenes.
While frustrating to learn at first, that is all learning, it is always hard to learn something new. Picking up a Word Processor is hard, learning to use Graphics Manipulation Program is hard, etc. But people rarely argue you shouldn't learn to use those tools, even though the terminal is just as essential to modern computer use as those tools. Again, we have multiple generations who generally lack the knowledge on how to use something as essential as the Word Processor, and that is a damn shame.
I've gone back and forth on this topic over the years, but I've finally just come to the conclusion that the year of the Linux Desktop just...shouldn't come, and I hate when I see this argument that people shouldn't have to learn to use the terminal.
The terminal is about as difficult to learn as a Word Processor or a Spreadsheet Application.
Sure, it can get complicated sometimes, but most of the time you just become familiar with your daily habits in it and when something weird comes up that's what a search engine is for.
A lot of the time when I hear "Computer users shouldn't have to learn how to use the terminal," what I hear is "Computer users shouldn't have to learn how to use the Computer."
f you want to play basketball but don't want to pick up a ball or learn how to dribble, then you don't want to play basketball. Maybe you just like to watch basketball?
But using a computer is not a spectator sport, you're typing and clicking and touching, etc. You're interacting with the computer, and thusly you have to speak it's language, at least a little, to get stuff done.
Additionally, most Linux Distros these days have made things incredibly user friendly, just not as braindead easy as Windows or MacOS.
Beginner friendly distros (Ubuntu, Mint) generally require you to open up a terminal to update your system and install/uninstall new software, and that's usually all you have to do. That is a couple commands to remember and one password.
If most people can't manage that then, yeah, I'm sorry, Linux will never be for you, and distros shouldn't inherently have to create an autoupdate fix all errors back end for you just for the sake of getting every idiot under the sun using Linux.
You don't want to learn how to use the terminal? Then you don't want to use Linux. You just hate Windows, and hating Windows does not mean you love Linux.
Saucy rant over.
This thread led me down a bit of a rabbit hole, so I suppose I'll post some of my meager findings.
Of course, the Wikipedia Article On The Guillotine includes a brief history documenting the evolution of it's invention, but is sparse on the technical specifications, which online searches also turned up a bit sparse.
I did eventually land on this technical schematic PDF of the Guillotine from archive.org.
Somewhat amusing to find, you can also pay for the blueprints to creating a historically accurate replica guillotine here.
As a morbid aside, the Wikipedia article details under the Controversy Section the dispute as to whether a decapitated head remained alive shortly after the beheading and the eye witness account of someone witnessing the staring of a decapitated man's eyes after calling out his name multiple times. The description is deliciously macabre.
Don't think this really answered your question OP, but nevertheless, this was intriguing for me to look into, so thanks for sparking my curiosity with your post!
EDIT: Fixing various small typos.
This, a literal giant pile of shit sitting in the oval office surrounded by other piles of shit sitting in the various other seats of power would still be doing a MUCH better job than the current administration. Heck, literal feces in the White House would probably be more popular with the general public. At least everyone can relate to having to poop.
Go. Go make your Fantasy Fascist Utopia somewhere else. I hear Musk wands to colonize Mars. Go there. Now.
Very sweet. Thank you!!
Really good stuff. Obviously do what you can and it's great you're open sourcing the project. That's always a good thing imho. I just made the suggestion to get it up on FDroid as a lot of people who love open source and are on Android prefer to get their apps there.
If you're able, please do so. But even if you don't, please know you open sourcing this, it's appreciated. Thank you.
Yeah I use Seal when NewPipe is having issues, and there are graphical front ends for yt-dlp for desktop, I'm just not familiar with most of them.
Thanks for mentioning that. Hopefully someone finds it helpful.
Yeah, but for some people that's too much.
Lol, I've done this exact thought experiment. Heck I practically brainstormed a version of Eternals in my head once, but instead of being Gods posing as humans, they were mortal Reincarnated Individuals who knew everyone/everything was reincarnated, but what gave them advantages in this world was that they remembered their past lives, and could use that accumulated knowledge for good and for ill.
Its a cool little concept that somebody will turn into a TV series/Movie/Video Game at some point I'm sure.