uralsolo

I love my Krait! I had a bigger ship for a while but something about the medium-class just feels right in E:D. I did a lot of low-temperature diamond mining back in the day, but I loved how I could load out for bounty hunting or cargo runs or whatever else I felt like doing.

I think social structures can be thought of in terms of consciousness, and whether or not they are a "higher" level of human consciousness is mostly a question of your definition of what that means.

From our perspective we are all making individual decisions, but that's similar to how a given cell is just managing its own individual chemical reactions. What initially made humanity unique in the animal kingdom was how complex our social animal is able to be - human clans were more complex than other mammals' packs in the same way that a vertebrate is more complex than an invertebrate. Our social animal is the one that reached the tipping point of adding technology into the mix, which allowed us to add phenomenally more complexity that what evolution on its own is able to create.

In the modern day, in the western world, people principally think of themselves as individual subjects, and as Marxists we recognize that this is one of the most critical self-defense mechanisms of liberalism, since it prevents class consciousness (and allows false consciousness to form). This is akin to how our cells are programmed by dna not to become cancerous - and when this mechanism fails and a cancer/revolutionary group forms the white blood cells/police usually stamp it out to protect the organism/capitalist society.

The big difference between society and an organism when viewed through this lense is that when an organism dies its cells all die too, but when society "dies" all the people who were part of it will naturally form a new one atop the corpse of the old. Imagine if when you died your cells all hit a reset button and your corpse formed into a new person - that might disqualify society from being thought of as a consciousness, or perhaps it's evidence that "consciousness" is independent of life and death.

Maybe astroturfing, but most likely just people trying to be morally superior to one another.

Me but with Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

I carried a lighter for a while. It worked fine when I put it in my pocket, but the first time I whipped it out for someone it didn't work at all. They say that that happens to lots of guys but I haven't carried a lighter since that day.

You don't. It's probably got grounds or something settled into the bottom and the cup is shaped like that on purpose to prevent you from drinking them.

I've explained this calculus to so many people - the mental hoops they'll come up with to justify not using a chinese product (even though the "american" product is probably made in the same factory) are wild.

I mean they could, but they won't.

I can't pin it down to just one, but holy shit school shootings and the way we've responded to them completely broke whatever part of me thought that our society was still capable of doing things. They keep upping the ante with how horrifying they are too - the high water mark currently is Uvalde, and I think that the next one that shocks the nation will involve the cops (or a "good guy with a gun") gunning down multiple kids or parents while trying to "help" and our collective response will still be to do nothing.

Defining moment of a generation, in the way that 9/11 was for the one before it. I don't even think we'll really understand the impact for another couple decades - and just like with other major events the ruling class will learn the wrong lesson entirely from it, probably something like "we should never lock down for any disease ever".

Damn you're right that was awesome.

Me at home: I'll have some hot wings as a meal.

Me at restaurants: I'll have some hot wings as an appetizer, and a burger for the meal.