Looking forward to: everything

Scared of: everything

I'm an optimist with a lot of anxiety :/

Have you ever heard the phrase "You can't reason someone out of an opinion that they didn't reason themselves into"? If they're objectively not fat, than what they're really saying is they feel like they're fat, not they they think that they're fat. That can be for a whole host of reasons, but arguing facts with them won't help. Far better to have discussions with them about why they feel that way and why they're focused on it. Ultimately it's an issue they have to resolve themselves and not something you can convince them of.

Such changes are called germ-line mutations because they occur in a cell used in reproduction (germ cell), giving the change a chance to become more numerous over time. If the mutation has a deleterious affect on the phenotype of the offspring, the mutation is referred to as a genetic disorder. Alternately, if the mutation has a positive affect on the fitness of the offspring, it is called an adaptation. [Nature]

I'm assuming you mean "mutation that gets passed down". Whether a mutation is a disorder or an adaptation takes generations to determine, so we may not know the identity of the individual. Furthermore, what was once a disorder may become adaptive in a different environment and vice versa. In general, I suppose if it was adaptive, they might be called "ancestor" :)

More broadly, and outside of germ-line mutations (meaning it's not passed down to offspring), everyone has cells with mutations. The person doesn't have the mutation per se, but a cell or cluster of cells do, so identifying them by that mutation doesn't make a lot of sense. If it's bad, your body either kills it or it kills you (e.g. cancer). If it's good, it likely doesn't change anything significantly.

What the hell is this horseshit… from the AP?! That's a Sunday magazine puff piece. It's made him "grateful" and "appreciative"? No, it's made him even more reckless and reactionary than he was in his first term.

Totally get that! Probably explains why I played as much Cyberpunk 2077 as I did! Books-wise, haven't been reading much cyberpunk lately other than some re-reads like Snow Crash and Diamond Age - mostly been escaping into Pratchett's Discworld. Comfort food as it were.

Yeah, figured that might be the case but thought I'd mention it just in case. Not sure what "new" cyberpunk is out there - especially since 2020… unless you count non-fiction :)

You didn't mention him, so maybe okay that his stuff is older, but check out Bruce Sterling

Why do you think Mastodon is exempt from those rules? The law applies to all sites/services with a significant UK audience - some of the Mastodon .uk instances will definitely be subject to this, and because of how badly the law is written, it can apply to many more.

People can have their hardon for hating Bluesky, but they're literally just trying to avoid being fined by the UK govt here - this wasn't their idea.

The UK government is forcing them and all other web services to do the same. UK-hosted Mastodon servers may coast under the radar for awhile, but they'll come for them eventually.

Rather than getting mad at Bluesky for implementing government-mandated age verification, how about actually getting mad at the UK government?

Yeah, I get pushing for Mastodon over Bluesky, but Bluesky is being forced to do this by the UK government for UK citizens so this is just exaggerated rage bait.

Headlines like this really need to put the emphasis on the cause, e.g. "UK Government Forces Bluesky to Roll Out Age Verification"

You do know they're rounding up and incarcerating/deporting legal immigrants and talking about denaturalizing citizens, right? They left that argument behind about only going after "illegals" after the inauguration. Now we've got Stephen Miller basically recreating internment camps and Laura Loomer talking about feeding 65 million Hispanics to alligators.