probably wouldn't work well in a worthwhile story

Coulda just stopped there.

I mean, it's like a painter saying they're not good at picking colors, so they have a computer program that picks the right colors for each part, but they do the rest of the work.

Like yeah, you're still in there doing a lot of it, and at that level no one would even be able to tell just by reading it, but knowing about it definitely dampens any interest I'd have in reading it.

I think the adage that's been adopted for other AI use gets some work here - If you can't be bothered to spend the effort writing it, others won't be bothered to spend the effort reading it.

Like yeah it's not the end of the world, but names are part of the fiction. I'd have the same criticism if you were rolling dice on a random name table for similar reasons (except the table also chops down a tree every time you roll).

Yeah we go through an independent agent, so in theory they are shopping around for us on every renewal. I will ask them to look into that one though, so thanks for the tip.

Yeah seriously. I suppose I should have said it only went up by that much, as I assume it would have gone up way more otherwise (despite having no claims or additional coverage between those times).

Classes are definitely a good way to start - having somebody there to show you the stuff that doesn't make sense at first, and more importantly to correct your slight mistakes and emphasize the parts you should be focusing on.

I think classes are great for yoga in particular because after you've done 5 or 6 sessions, you'll have enough knowledge to just do it at home in your own, and make good use of those YouTube videos.

If you have an IRL friend that knows some stuff, they might be able to get you most of the way there. The stuff you need to learn is mostly pretty basic, just about breathing and grounding your feet and lengthening muscles and stuff like that.

As for videos, look for stuff with beginner, stretching, follow along, etc. You'll still get a lot of benefit doing some of that stuff even without guidance, but I'd say you'll get about 70% effectiveness at best without a good foundation.

As for the spiritual stuff, yeah there's plenty of that if you want it, but it's easy to avoid and rarely very pushy. Personally, the only part I take from that aspect, is that the end of a long session in 'corpse pose' (lol, basically just lying flat on your back) is a really fantastic time for some mindfulness meditation. The rest is w/e.

And the most cyberpunk part about them is that they started cool like that, hey mix any combo you want from this huge list, but now it's basically: yeah you can have plain coke, cherry coke, or vanilla coke. You can have plain root beer or vanilla root beer. Here's about 6 other drinks with 1 extra flavor option each.

It feels like the tech was too much work to keep clean (also true of all other soda fountains), so they canned any interesting interactions pretty quickly.

Feels like it should have a flashing neon sign hanging about it banging on about "over a million flavor combos!" but with the last part perpetually turned off and dropping sparks on you and into your cup during the process.

Yeah that's a vibe, for sure. Could make a fun short film, though I'd give it a slightly different ending.

Yup! I did one of these a year ago, against my better judgment because we really needed the discount.

Had to give the app unrestricted permissions, had to run it for 6 months straight, and it kept a running list of "incidents" ranging from crashes and hard stops all the way to slightly fast turns and even driving at more risky hours of the day.

Luckily, my agent is a family friend so he gave me the lowdown - this one lets you view the reports, and you can mark any negative incidents as "I was a passenger" and clean up your record as you go. So when the 6 month period finished, I had an absolutely impeccable score, basically the best you could possibly get.

You also don't get any discount at all until a year after the start of the program, so it was all in the understanding that eventually some day we'd get the discount. Also this company does some discount for length of service, so we would be getting that as a discount when renewal comes.

My insurance just renewed with the new discounts a month ago. After all that, here's the big savings:

No not control it, certainly not. I get the feeling they might think they could though, and mobilize towards that goal. I don't necessarily think they'd win, but I just think they're prepared to launch head-long into it and it'll make a huge mess for everyone no matter how it really goes.

And yeah as soon as anyone hits the red button, the entire calculus changes (and also likely the planetary ecosystem along with it).

Good effort posts should be written in a proper markdown editor and then moved over when they're ready, imo. But rip to your lost effort.

I mean good on em and all, but this does feel like it would disrupt commerce enough for the empire to make up an excuse to roll in. If they really haven't become fully equipped* yet, it seems like it would likely go pretty bad for everyone involved.

• meaning if Iran isn't actually nuclear-equipped by the time shit hits the fan, their leverage is so much weaker that some might see an initial excursion as testing the waters to really drop the hammer

Well, it's definitely ai generated so that makes sense. Can see that 6th finger poking out there, too.