There are adult porn models who have popularity based on how youthful their appearance is. Small, even almost flat chests, for example. Which is to say that AI knows how to draw those bodies proportionately. Take those models, add in pictures of children in swimsuits, and AI has all the information to infer what a nude child looks like.

And that’s before opening up the extremely gray area of perfectly legal photos which nonetheless depict nude children.

The reality is if you try to scrape all available images from the internet you will unavoidably ingest CSAM, but even if you could perfectly filter that out, AI would be able to easily create such depictions.

That would mean less money to go around to track down the real monsters abusing children because everything spent to track down victims that don’t exist is wasted.

This is the number one compelling argument for me. Largely, I feel passionately about having uncensored models for a variety of reasons not salient to the thread, but I draw a line when it protects abusers. That boundary trumps other considerations for me.

If freed, there is every reason to believe he would have planned and executed further attacks, and probably that he would today. Which means all of those additional lost lives are the cost to free him. That’s not a cost that’s in our interest to pay. It’s certainly not a cost I’d be willing to pay.

Asymmetrical warfare is something that isn’t fully handled by a legal system and not a purely military issue. This is a not a case of easy answers and clear morality. If the families of those alternative timeline victims could blame you for their loss, would the right choice be so clear to you? It wouldn’t to me.

I agree with everything you’ve said. I think I would draw a clear distinction between “not legally established” and “innocent.” To be clear, nothing justifies 20 years of torture, no matter what he did, but it seems to me this guy is innocent the same way Trump is innocent of violently raping children.

Keeping him behind bars might well have prevented him from planning additional attacks or even being elevated to political prominence. But torture is beyond the pale.

It would probably behave like AI in fiction because it’s a fiction machine and since AI stories tend to go a certain way, thus so would ChatGPT go.

My observation is that most people just want to be respected and treated like human. Very few people are going to be offended that you don’t know what you haven’t been told. The ones who are are pretty much assholes if you need a box for them.

I’ve hung out with a lot of trans folks who were just happy to live as themselves in a space and with people where they weren’t under threat or treated like freaks. They wanted to talk about the same nerdy things as anyone else I enjoy hanging out with, they just want to do it as the correct gender.

That said they are people, first. They have good days and bad days. Days where someone said something that primed them to react as if you intend harm or offense to them. Days where they are just fed up with all the cis fuckers.

Just do your best and that has to be enough for everyone.

I think this is asking for clear categorization of what sends clearly to be a spectrum of humanity. I’m married. I won’t fuck anyone else. So from your point of view am I gay or straight? Ace? How my spouse identifies is none of your business. What they have in their pants only I and Schrödinger know. Whether we even fuck at all is unknowable to you. Does that make a difference to you?

Suddenly you can’t define me without knowing things about other people. So is your definition about me or them? Like, to what end are you trying to put folks in boxes?

I kinda get it. When I was younger these sorts of questions fascinated me as well. But I’m older now and I’ve been friends with straight folks and gay and trans, watched an old friend transition. I don’t care any more. They are doing the thing that makes them happy. I don’t need to understand it. I don’t even really need to know what it is.

Wow! The full MAGA trifecta!

You can’t say some deity isn’t trying, they just keep missing with that wand of smite.

He lives close to it. That’s all. My wife wants to take a cruise. I told her I will drive 1000 miles before I fly into Trump Airport.

Fuck Trump. Fuck Florida. Fuck Florida voters. I’ll be honest sometimes I root for global warming to drown that useless fucking swamp under the waves.

/pardon my fucking French

When I was younger, I avoided much of the “chore” stuff, and I have been reaping what I’ve sown ever since. I would have told my younger self, among other things, to think ahead, and to not put off hard work for tomorrow (advice I can still barely live by).

I don’t know anyone with a different story. I had plenty of people giving me advice I didn’t take just to learn they were right — I doubt I’d have listened to future-me either, but we all want to go back in time and wring our little necks for creating so much harder a road for present us :)

Keep playing, mate!

We’re the same age, lived very different lives. I don’t think either of our lives has been better lived. Would definitely be good times to compare notes. Based on geography we’ll probably never get that chance but it’s interesting to me how we shared the same sort of conceptual space growing up and took our different paths. It’s interesting the things that drive our path through life aren’t what we think they are.

I was not raised by my biological mom. I never talked to her until I was 18. I met her and my siblings still years later, and my youngest brother was probably 15-20 years younger, but damn he reminded me so much of myself.

I never thought that much of my bio-mom after meeting her. But that little version of me grew up, got into drugs, got in trouble with the law, and is already dead. And it would’ve been so easy for him to just not do that. Or maybe had I grown up in that life, it would’ve seemed impossible to escape that path. I wonder what the inflection point was from that curious, kind, thoughtful kid to what he became. I wonder if there was ever a chance to help him escape it or if the seeds of his self-destruction were already planted.

I guess that’s why other paths from where I started fascinate me so much. Hope things go as well as they can in the health front. Good travels, friend!

It can for some people. I promise you I don’t feel empty or meaningless without any belief in the supernatural.

Spirituality is just a lens for looking at the world. A kind of grubby, smudgy lens, but the point is, like art it can unlock some wisdom inside us without words, and when we try to put it into words or find “truth” in it we must always fail, but generosity, helping one another out, appreciating what we have, accepting what we lack, those are valuable lessons that are easier to understand through spirituality than deriving them from first principles.

We are all connected and lifting my neighbor lifts me even if on the surface he has more and I have less. Spreading kindness is worth doing and makes you a better person and the world a better place, even if you don’t see any rewards. Spirituality is just a way to communicate that feeling — and largely fear of nonexistence — a way to share truths that are hard to explain. Also in the form of religion, it appeals to those who seek authority for how they chose to live.

So if people use spirituality to communicate those truths and understand how to live a meaningful life, great. Those who use it to justify hatred have learned the wrong fucking lessons because they focus on finding (creating) truth in the words, not on the truths about how to be good people.

Or you can do it all without spirituality. It’s harder, but doesn’t come packaged up with misleading reasoning.

Things don’t automatically get better in life. You have to work to improve them. You can be grateful for the things in your life and still pursue the things that fulfill you. But if you’re just going through the motions without having something you’re working toward, you’re never going to stop going through the motions.

Living takes money, as you say, but the things worth doing don’t always have a cost. When I was young I could have a great day counting trees and swimming in lakes. I could wander the neighborhood. I could ride a bike — not to anywhere, just ride it. You can draw, paint, play guitar, sing, write, read. Christ, I have money and I look around and just see I’ve pissed it away on stupid consumer bullshit that doesn’t make me happy at all, and takes more effort ultimately that the old cheap ways. I have a stupid $1500 robot vacuum that constantly gets jammed up or needs new rollers or censors or to be emptied, to be filled… fuck it’d be easier to just use a broom and mop.

Even if I do make friends what do u do with friends? You just joke around with them or get a cup of tea.

Is that so bad? I miss having friends. I love my wife and kids and my extending family but I miss just fucking around with friends most weekends.

How can I get anything anyway that is outside my own comprehension.

It’s a bunch of bullshit, but some folks thrive on having something like religion to focus their life around. Just don’t go thinking it makes you or anyone special to be religious. But when it is focused on moving forward and being selfless, it can offer people a path to bettering themselves. Like, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s terrible and do not recommend religion, but some folks find it fulfilling is all.

When I try to think of my reason for living

If someone told you your reason for being alive, what would you do with that? Resent it because it’s not what you would choose? Embrace the path you never had a say in? Would you consider yourself a failure if you didn’t achieve it? Would you consider yourself worthy and righteous if you did?

You get to choose what your calling is. You get to define success. You get to change your mind. No one is going to tell you why you are here (well they might in religion, but they are wrong). You steer your life in the direction of things you think are important.

wish I was good at music and could make a song out of my feelings

Wishing will never make you good at anything. On the other hand, no one can stop you from worrying a song, a poem, a verse that holds meaning for you.

rich charismatic kids get all

Always has been so. So what? You aren’t them and you’ll find gifts you’ve been given that they never were.

If none of it makes sense now, someday it will. But that doesn’t mean wait. It means get out there and keep doing with a goal in mind. Big or small. It’s best to start small. And see what you can do.

Anyhow, good luck.

I’ve seen it. My understanding is that due to catastrophic loss of blood pressure, he was instantly unconscious. But maybe that’s just a nice lie.

I’m glad he’s dead, and the world is a brighter place for his lack. I only wish he’d been conscious a while to feel the doom weighing upon him.

That’s the level of vitriol I would love to have read. Right-wingers got off easy.

Oh no — today is Monday already? Shit.

I feel very fortunate to be in software development. I genuinely enjoy my job. Not the jobby parts of it, but the actually problem solving and puzzle solving and trying to make something the best I can within the box I’m given to play in.

I don’t know if I could handle another job, though one summer I loaded boxes on a truck and while it was physically demanding, I daydreamed about computers while I was doing it and left mentally refreshed even after ten hour days and had the energy to work on my passions. But that doesn’t pay like software does.

It can be the difference between a water heater lasting 7 years and lasting 30.