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Remembered only as Jack
  • My theory was that they had kept him tucked away somewhere in Vorlon space all that time - I forget if they said he worked over others, but if so then he could have been kept either in stasis or merely with no work to be done in-between, which might be heaven for some but for his personality type seemed like hell.

    But either way, like you said about Lyta, he was an absolute tool - their absolute tool.

  • Remembered only as Jack
  • Yeah and he could also have been a clone, so both rather than either-or:-). I don't think they'd hesitate to lie to him, or conversely to tell the truth about his abduction, so if he has memories that they allowed him to keep I presume they would be real - the Vorlons just couldn't care less otherwise so why not? (Occam's Razor)

    You bring up a very interesting point about Kosh: yes the Vorlons were assholes, but he (it? they?) was not - and oddly enough, it wasn't that he "wasn't a (real) Vorlon", but rather like he was a true one and all the others were the fakes?

    I don't quite have the words but like, he was what he was because he knew about the ancient task that they had set out for themselves hundreds of thousands or even millions of years hence, and decided to actually do it rather than as the others all seemed to, do the exact opposite of "guide" the younger races (to self-discovery).

    John Sheridan was ofc the same type, as too was G'Kar: both men ready for war, while in the service of peace (a different purpose than the Vorlons... or is it?).

    We see this all over now: people showing up on January 6 at the USA capital to "defend" democracy by... overthrowing it? And religion that somehow becomes warped into diddling kids, yet side by side with others in the "exact same" religion who take care of widows and orphans and do so much good in the world. The cheaters are never going to be honest about who they are, preferring instead to hide out within the existing substance living as parasites rather than do the work of making their own structures, borrowing its reputation and forms of earned authority - e.g. President Clark did not declare himself an emperor but retained the title of a democratic "President", despite the literal coup that gave him that position.

    Kosh, John, and G'Kar were those who refused to blindly follow their culture to "just do the thing", and instead questioned everything according to the logical principles of self-consistency: "is what I'm doing right according to the goal that I want to eventually reach?", and by doing such they not only served their peoples (hehe, but not necessarily the ones in charge at the time) but also lead them, as in they went out ahead and did that next right thing, thus setting an example for others to follow, if they wanted.

    So I said that I lacked the words but a stab at it could be: Kosh was who he was not despite being a Vorlon, but rather because of it. However, if true, that has massive implications for the nature of Truth, i.e. it must not be defined by a majority-rules consensus (even for something like a race of people or a democracy) and rather some other standard that if not purely external then at least is not entirely internally defined, in the sense that it is a combination of whatever was internal but also subject to the (external?) constraints imposed by the need to remain logically consistent.

    As in, there was a "correct" way to be, and Kosh chose it in defiance of his people, which we as consumers of the media recognize and respect.

    That show is so deep. Or perhaps it is better to say that I feel deeper as a result of thinking about the material presented in the show.:-)

  • *The Measure of a Man and a Man*
  • Okay that's definitely not the one I was thinking of. However, he reportedly wrote a story a year for Issac Asimov's periodicals for almost two decades, plus his many actual books, so it is no surprise that some of his themes were re-used, yet hard to find the name of:-).

    I thought the one I am thinking of was neat b/c the dinos were gate-keeping offering their transportation technology to humanity, thinking that surely no warm-blooded mammal could possibly keep their emotions in check to do what must needs be done, unlike the cold heart & keen mind of a reptile.

    In other works like his collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke "Altered Carbon", Pohl used the concept of that "stack" to limit the spread of one human mind that would otherwise just be spread out amongst the stars with as many copies as bodies could be found to hold them. But in other anthologies there were other limitations preventing that (and presumably some others still that I haven't read where those limitations were removed?:-P).

  • *The Measure of a Man and a Man*
  • Is that the one with the "dinos"? I recall a short story about teleportation in that manner, and something happened, but it was the confirmation that got delayed. So the original person was up walking around, waiting to be sent again, drinking tea, etc... when the equation had to be balanced. Stories like that really make you think, not just bam-pow-punch-kick... in space.

  • Guess how my day started
  • Can confirm - am poop knife.

  • The lemmy.ml Problem
  • Not just the mods but the admins are using the deceptive database manipulation practices. i.e. this is not a fixable problem by merely appealing one layer up from a mod of a community - the only layer above admins is defederation from the Fediverse overall, which is what OP is advocating.

    It is a pain yes, but also it only takes 2 clicks to migrate your settings from one instance to another - go to Settings and under "Import/Export Settings" click the big Export button, then in the new click Import. With a similar iconic avatar and name, people likely won't even notice the difference. Your old comments/posts/points won't transfer though. Bonus: you can keep both, so while e.g. one instance is upgrading you still have another with which to read/reply/etc.

    People on lemmy.ml are going to notice a noticeably reduced functionality over the next several months regardless, as many, Many, MANY users start blocking the instance on a personal/user level even if not an instance-wide block. Imagine every single comment you write receives 10x fewer replies back, or votes, just you shouting into the void, and the only people responding back... are the fascists, and those more neutral to fascism.

    So OP is bringing up the problem, which is the first step towards healing. :-)

  • Little bobby 👦
  • Thanks!:-)

  • Little bobby 👦
  • Are you implying that the credit is here? If so, where? I am not seeing it.

  • Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem
  • You are talking about user-level blocking, whereas iirc defederation is an instance-level blocking that also stops user comments too, as well as votes.

  • Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem
  • The “election” is perpetual. People will vote with their participation.

    As it should always be.

  • Report Exposes Christian Nationalist “Threats” to Democracy in the US
  • Why is "Threats" in double-quotes? The fact that they are "threats" is not in question - these are not "alleged threats"?

    I see that it comes from the article, but that only pushes back my question as to why the article does that. It also puts "hard right" and "all-out" (and "holy war" and "race war" and "dangerous" and "evil" and "demonic" etc.) in quotes too, which should not be, but those at least are all more discretionary, whereas putting "threats" in quotes like that calls into question their validity.

  • Biden rules out pardon for son Hunter
  • He can love his son and also democracy and justice too - i.e. allow his son to go to what will surely be like a resort vacation spa that they will call "prison" (not bc he's special, just bc he's rich).

  • "Thought-Terminating Cliches"
  • Yeah, I take them as conclusions, summaries, wrap-ups, basically like "Goodbye" or "Well, I'll be seeing you", "It was nice talking to you", "Welp, time to get back to work", maybe something more personal like "I'll see you in an hour at lunch".

    The decision may have already been made to stop / pause for now, but the former (OP) statements themselves do not cause that anymore than the ones I mentioned here.

    short circuit cognitive dissonance…

    Omg I'm literally dying here - except you know what, I'm actually not? I'm saying that it seems overly dramatic language to me. Like someone who heard those words somewhere and thought they sounded cool, without knowing what they even mean...:-P 😎

    Though tbf they probably could be used for that purpose sometimes too, yet that doesn't mean that is what they are "meant for"?

    Maybe I'm just too old to get it.

  • Seems fishy
  • Seems fishy

    Not anymore...

  • Don't Let Your Thoughts Wander
  • There are so many things pointing towards ditching QWERTY - WFH jobs, mobile devices, portable keyboards, even virtual projected keyboards rather than physical ones.

    On the other hand, laptops are a bottleneck - even if nobody else uses your personal one but you, they still have to make one with a nonstandard layout (will e.g. Apple ever do that?) - and just bc newer, younger people learning how to use computers for the first time could choose a different layout, doesn't mean that many will (I mean at the mainstream level).

  • I fall now
  • His words earlier that day:

    Oh, ah, ah, ah, ah Oh, ah, ah, ah, ah oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

  • Cruciferae
  • Beauty != Taste

  • NEW YORK, Feb 7 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Social media platform Reddit, which helps its users “dive into anything,” may finally plunge into the public markets. The 19-year-old company made over $800 million in sales last year, at least 20% more than in 2022, according to Bloomberg. But a dearth of profit this late into its existence portends the lack of a real business model, suggesting it’s still not ready for public company life.

    > https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/investors-will-say-ok-boomer-aging-reddit-2024-02-07/

    Original link: https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/investors-will-say-ok-boomer-aging-reddit-2024-02-07/

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