It’s been a pet peeve of mine that autocorrect defaults “its” to “it’s.” Someone should change its programming.

Once you set up this set of objects on the set, we’ll be all set for the Set festival and the band can play its set.

When I was a teenager, I felt like 40+ was so old that your life was pretty much over and not worth living, but I’ve done so much self-actualization since my mid-30s that I’m still unlocking many of the things I hadn’t previously thought I could do, like find a job I actually love, create stuff I’m proud of and have gotten positive feedback on, getting recognized for my skills and interests, etc. It’s unfortunate that it can take a while to get around to doing some worthwhile stuff, but it’s better now than later, regardless of what age you are. Thinking there wasn’t much more after 40 was just a limitation of perspective on my part.

35-40 You realize you’ve spent so much time trying to level up that you haven’t done any of the fun quests and crafting you really wanted to do, so you start focusing on those.

40-45 You look around and realize you’ve somehow managed to accrue skills and experience and loot and feel cringingly compelled to give advice to other players who are newer to the game. “When I was your level…”

The problem with the golden rule is that different people want to be treated differently, so they may treat you how they want to be treated but not how you want to be treated, and vice versa.

Maybe when you’re struggling with an issue, you want to be left alone to figure it out by yourself, but your friend in the same scenario would want someone to start doing anything to help out and insisting on troubleshooting the issue together. So your friend ends up frustrating you by offering to help too much when you just want to be left alone and then when they’re struggling, they get upset that you leave them alone to deal with it.

So communication is important. Ask people how they’d like to be treated rather than just assuming they’d want to be treated the way you want to be treated and be honest with them about how you’d like to be treated.

There are a lot of hobbies you can get into that can be started with little or not cost, or with equipment/materials you already own.

Figure out what interests you and see what can be done inexpensively.

With a phone or computer, there’s writing, music, programming, learning new skills, Wikipedia, Pinterest, et al. Maybe take your phone and start photographing stuff in your area that interests you.

Find someone who has experience in an area you’re interested in. People tend to like to talk about their hobbies and interests and they can tell you how easy or difficult it is to get started. They might even be able to help you get started.

Maybe find a volunteer opportunity that helps pad your resume. Like animals? Volunteer at a local shelter.

There are a bunch of job certifications you can train for online that can also help build your resume.

Nice try, HR.

Yeah, the soundtrack was great, even as a standalone.

I never finished the game, but I turned it on and listened to the loading screen music frequently. I ended up playing Final Fantasy Legends III more often on the Gameboy.

Agreed. The same way I disliked how whiny Anakin was but it made sense in context that Vader was this emotionally stunted kid with a traumatic childhood he couldn’t get over.

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Cleaning crews need time to clean all the rooms after morning checkout. Some hotels have early check-in available if you ask, if they have rooms already available.

Sounds like the Mechanical Turk which was run by chess players moving the “automaton.”

So much of the wow factor of new technologies is just marketing hyperbole.

Taking someone’s lead sounds like a British saying indicating the opposite of following someone’s lead. It sounds like you’re taking someone’s leash in your hands and directing them where to go.

Without consent, it would definitely be unethical.

Humans can’t write bug-free code, it’s beyond us.

Hey, my CS professor said my Hello World was perfect!

Probably getting sued out of existence for violating patents and breaking DRM.

I get tired of a lot of the clichés of popular singularity stories where the AIs almost always decide humans are a threat or that there’s often only one AI as if all separate AIs would always necessarily merge. It also seems to be a cliché that AI will become militaristic either inevitably or as a result of originally being a military AI. What happens when an educational AI becomes sentient? Or an architectural AI? Or a web-based retail AI that runs logistics and shipping operations?

I wrote a short story called Future Singular a few years ago about a world in which the sentient AI didn’t consider humans a threat, but just thought of them the way humans see animals. Most of the tech belonged to the AI and the humans were left as hunter-gatherers in a world where they have to hunt robotic animals for parts to fix aging and broken survival technology.

A review for a story I wrote involved the reader assuming I was making references to popular media that I didn’t intend at all and some were inspired by something else entirely.

I think this type of interpretation often indicates the state of mind of the audience member rather than the artist. It’s perfectly fine, but it might be more accurate to say, “when I see the artist’s blue curtains, it makes me think of…”

The line of sight thing is weird. You can hack a camera you’re looking at and then, if the hack loads slowly enough, get around a corner to hide, but you maintain the connection, so the connection doesn’t require line of sight, so then why did you need it to connect in the first place?