Someone send Roko a copy of James K. Morrow's novel "Towing Jehovah" which involves the enormous corpse of God being towed, by a (much smaller) oil tanker, from near the Equator north to a fijord for burial in a cave. (I lost interest toward the end).

It's not strictly relevant - I don't think the crew sets up on the corpse itself - but it'd be fun to watch where Roko's head goes.

"Step One: We kill God. Step Two: We harvest the cadaver, plastinate it, and build our city."

The middle picture looks very much like a young lesbian couple.

Not that there's anything wrong with lesbian couples of any age. It's just with this pair it's... odd.

I can't help it. I see a picture of them and it's like a puzzle I need to solve.

All you need to know about Gruber is in this claim of his about phone photography, in a critique of a NY Times tech journalist who deigned to acknowledge that readers could just use flash to get better low-light photos:

A mainstream technology columnist should be explaining to readers why they should not use flash, and how best to capture low-light photographs without it. “You could always just use flash” is technology malpractice.

In reality, a mainstream technology columnist's job isn't to encourage readers to cough up hundreds of dollars to buy the newest phone for the sake of something that might be of negligible importance to most of them.

Gruber clearly thinks his job is to always encourage readers to buy the latest Apple phone. At least when his job isn't to sniff his own farts.

Flash is also technology! Most photography and videography is done using artificial light! There aren't many people walking around with spy satellite lenses like fucking Kubrick to do natural light camera work.

Also I think he's a bit of a fancy watch douchebag.

Where are they going to find 500 people in India who are good at solving cold fusion and will do it for pennies.

They also mean "the wrong people are having too many children".

Also:

Poor black people with lots of kids, using government assistance: "Don't have kids you can't afford!"

Middle-class white people putting off having kids because they can't afford them: "Don't give us that excuse, start breeding!"

By the beer standard the most tech-bro-y place I've worked was Swiss Bank Corp / O'Connor in Chicago, a software focused trading shop. In 1994. NeXT machines and Symbolics LISP machines on the private trading floor kind of place, with refrigerators kept stocked with free sodas and beer. Beer was for after 5, except on St Patrick's day, when coolers of beer came out at about noon. Also, Nerf guns on the trading floor.

And yet, at least for the people I know best from there, they didn't turn out to be tech bros. Perhaps there's a generational aspect.

There's probably some blurring of what "AI doom" means for people. People might be left thinking that "there could be negative effects due to widespread job loss etc" without necessarily buying into the weird maximalist AI doom ideas or "torturing simulated you forever" nonsense.

And the weirdo cultists probably use that blurring to build support for their cause without revealing the weird shit they actually believe.

I'm not sure the "frontiers in" journals are all that reputable.

"widgets" must be a euphemism for "opioids"

The African slave trade of slavs? I think she means Arab. Or Arab/Muslim-osphere.

I wouldn't think sub-Saharan Africans ran a lot of ships up to the Baltic or the Black Sea to capture slavs for enslavement. Ottomans, yes. Barbary pirates, perhaps. Of course some of the most prominent of the Barbary pirates were actually raised Christian or Jewish in Europe, and joined the pirates as adults.

And I wouldn't be surprised at all if Europeans also captured slavs for sale to the Ottomans.

My general assumption is that ADHD is both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed but I'm generally chill about it and not a gatekeeper. But the recent shortages and delays have me a little more on edge about it.

The thing about AI designing and building robots is that making physical things is vastly more expensive than pooping out six-fingered portrait jpegs. All that trial-and-error learning would not come cheap. Even if the AI were controlling CNC machining centers.

There's no guarantee that the AI would have access to enough parts and materials to be able to be trained to a level of sufficient competence.