The point was SSCers reacting. Vance being an SSCer isn't notable as he's a Thiel creature. SSCers being confronted with the eyeshadowed mirror that is Vance is much more interesting because they spend a lot of time being nominally not exactly what Vance is.

fair share of doomsday rats have sneaked in trying to co-opt the movement

There's a group called "Pause AI" that is exactly this, EA funded (iirc) org trying to astroturf artists against AIart.

The all‐enveloping tactile environment is now widely available and fully convincing. Its resolution equals or exceeds that of human touch and can simulate (and stimulate) all of the facets of the tactile sense, including the sensing of pressure, temperature, textures, and moistness.

I'm picturing the VR dildo-suit from Upload.

Gravity and Juiceros

Gravity is what allows a cinder block to replace tour Jucero.

Thanks for reminding me about Jucero.

I've been disappointed to see Doctrow's reaction to the AI industry, to say the least. He's spent so much time relentlessly campaigning against intellectual property that he apparently cannot imagine anything worse than intellectual property winning anything ever. I don't think he's a big picture guy, I think the internet just really likes him because at the end of the day he was popular on slashdot and he tells people that piracy is awesome.

“Real” musicians turned their nose up at digital music when it first came out

You got any evidence for that? What do you even mean by "digital music?" That's not a category I think musicians recognize. You may he confusing digital with electric which was not exactly as you're describing it.

Also notable because I don’t think it’s very often that eugenics grievances breach the surface in such an obvious way in a public siskind post

This one comes to mind.. Like EY's recent endeavor it's written as a roleplay so as to be nigh-unreadable by anyone without extreme tolerance for not getting to the fucking point.

It almost reads as a threat... 'don't stop our gravy train, or we'll lash out and reveal what we know!'

[Request]: Use "Breeding humans like livestock" instead of "Eugenics" in most circumstances.

See also: Zuck and Snow Crash.

Look more carefully at what the cult leader is asking for. He was asking for money for his project before, now he's tearing his hair out in despair because we haven't spent enough money on his project, we'd better tell the aliens to give us another few months so we can spend more money on the cult project.

He has been very careful not to say that we should do anything bad to the aliens, just people who don't agree with him about how we should talk to the aliens.

You'd be surprised how big the Libertarian/UBI overlap is.

At the most basic level, there's a pretty core libertarian belief that the government can't or shouldn't make decisions and individuals can or should. In this framework, giving money away to individuals will lead to it being spent better than if it was used for actual welfare. So although Libertarians tend to be anti-welfare, sometimes they make an exception for UBI, because it's still a free market solution.

Some progressives like it to, of course. Means testing is a burden, and limiting what you can spend (for example) WIC on can feel a lot like haves trying to control the lives of the have-nots.

For TREACLES though, I think there's a more pathological element at play: they plan to put everyone out of work and need a way to avoid a torches and pitchforks scenario.