Sauron…somehow returned!

Remember, you are mortal.

It’s a Fargate. It makes things go far! We are not getting sued!

The key difference between all previous civilizational collapses and the one we potentially face is that most people in the past were farmers. Even in the grandest empires like Rome, less than 10% of the population actually lived in cities. Most people lived in the countryside working the land. The city of Rome lost something like 95% of its population. But those people didn’t just crawl in a hole and die. They abandoned the city and joined the vast majority of the population that was living in the countryside. Many in the countryside actually saw their quality of life improve substantially. Many who had been slaves found the old legal system enforcing their slavery no longer existed. Rome collapsing just meant the end of the grand cities; political and economic systems could fragment, and people would just live more locally.

But today? Less than 5% of the population actually works on a farm. The vast majority of the population lives in cities. If the political and economic system collapses, the countryside can’t just absorb all those extra people. Hell, the farms can’t even operate without the equipment, fuels, and chemicals produced by the larger economic system.

Historically, when civilizations collapsed, the common folk just left the cities, abandoned the corrupt elites to their madness, and returned to small villages and rural life. But now there is simply nowhere for people to retreat to.

These devices exist as aftermarket ad-ons and are frequently added by used car dealerships.

You might find some inspiration in this desk I built.

You mean in how magnificent they are?

AAPPOMBUANYNTKTUWTHSITA

Really? I never would have thought Captain Planet would take up that much space on a hard drive. Are you storing fucking Captain Planet as a 4k video? It was a cartoon from the early 90s. I think 480p would be more than enough! Sure there were 114 episodes, but they weren’t that long. How much space can the complete Captain Planet really take up?

I mean, this is still pretty Luigi. A man striking out an evil corporation violently. I wouldn’t put the NFL’s crimes at the same level as UHC’s. But they still churn through and destroy people like the shooter. It’s ultimately the same form of anti-corporate vigilantism.

What you’re describing is Clarktech, technology sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic. We don’t know remotely how to create an AI artist that can actually create original works of art with their own perspective, critique, and soul. A system like any we know how to design has to create art from what is essentially the averaging of the work of many artists. Everything they make is a work by committee. Any individual perspective is washed out in the generating process.

We simply don’t have any idea how to create an AI that would exhibit the kind of individual perspective of a human artist. Until we at least have some plausible pathway for that, we might as well be arguing about what happens if it turns out magic is real.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/26/blackstone-group-accused-global-housing-crisis-un

https://pestakeholder.org/reports/helter-shelter-how-blackstone-contributes-to-and-profits-from-californias-broken-housing-system/

https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/almost-a-crime-report-finds-blackstone-hiked-rent-nearly-double-market-rate/

https://prospect.org/education/2023-02-28-university-california-blackstone-housing/

https://www.archpaper.com/2025/01/blackstone-cushman-wakefield-landlords-justice-department/

While I don’t support mass shootings in general, if someone is so far off the deep end that they’re going to throw their life away in an act of random violence, I at least hope they choose targets like Blackstone instead of a random elementary school. At least they’re smiting someone who deserves it, for once. The country would be a lot better off if we had several hundred corporate shootings and zero school shootings each year. No shooting period would be better. But if you’re going to go on a rampage, at least go after evil people first.

Frankly, the answer should be for every site to just cut the UK off entirely. Let them have their own little North Korean style micronet. Maybe when the people of the UK can’t visit anything but a bunch of miserable English websites, they will get off their asses and elect competent leaders. If not, well maybe they’re just not the sort of people we should allow access to the global communications network. Let the barbarians stew in their own barbarism.

Spend two seconds thinking through the logistics of that before you spout such nonsense.

It’s worse than us simply becoming poorer. It’s that these places - sprawling low density suburbs - where never financially sustainable to begin with. They never brought in enough tax revenue to remotely cover the expense of maintaining all their infrastructure. There’s just too few people per square mile to pay for it all at the property tax rates people can afford. We’ve only kept things going this long through a few mechanisms:

1. Letting older suburban infrastructure decay to well past its replacement state.

2. Relying on growth to prop things up. (Build new neighborhoods and require developers to repave streets and replace/upgrade utility infrastructure in an area.)

3. Relying on ever higher levels of debt.

It isn’t financially sustainable. It was never financially sustainable. As long as a town can keep growing, they can keep the Ponzi scheme going for a time. But eventually you hit a wall on that and the whole house of cards collapses.

Oh, so you’re just a bigot. Figured.

What am I making up? This woman almost certainly has athletic advantages far greater than the vast majority of the trans athletes people get so apoplectic about.

Stop making shit up to fit your narrative. It detracta (sic) from the actual issue.

Unfortunately for your genes, attitudes like these will mean they don’t have much chance of spreading.

But it’s paramount that we ban the 5’5" trans girl who has testosterone lower than cis girls from playing volleyball because…reasons.

This is the true killer feature of prestidigitation. Lets you instantly clean a soiled object.