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star trek explores these strange seemingly inconsequential extremes because it wants you to consider the possibility that your concept of ethics doesnt and could never possibly account for every scenario. It wants you to consider the ethical ramifications of just wiping out the little nanites taking over your ships computer even though eventually this will kill you all becuase

-What if they’re alive?

-What if they’re sentient?

-What if they don’t realize they’re hurting us?

-What if what hurts us is what they need to live?

-What if we can communicate with them?

Star Trek takes the situation of, “these computer bugs are eating our ship and in an hour we’ll all be dead and we COULD just wipe them out utterly but…what if they’re like us?” because the ramifications effect what risks we ourselves are willing to take in the name of pacifism and understanding. it says that even the smallest most immenently dangerous creature deserves as much of a chance to live peacefully as we can possibly give it through understanding.

without examining ourselves this way, through these made up seemingly inane situations, we will never be able to understand ourselves and what we’re truly capable of, what levels of understanding can be achieved. without the ability to place ourselves in a difficult situation and reach beyond our first instinct of fight or flight and self-preservation, we will never be evolve as a global community

preserving creekfiend’s tags because GOLD

#star trek does this because its the space talmud actually

this is unequivocally true. the rabbi at my childhood temple made it a point to bring a Star Trek scenario into every single d'var, and there was always something relevant!

Vinyl records are circular because it's an efficient use of space: the grooves that encode the music are laid out in a spiral on the disc, so that the needle only has to move as far as the disc's radius to read the entire thing. Before this clever idea was thought of, the grooves were instead laid out in a straight line, and every LP was a narrow rectangle more than a thousand feet long. To flip an album to side b at least two people were needed, one at each end, coordinating via shouted instructions.

I don't love that every time a famous artist turns out to be a fucking disgusting piece of trash loser evil shitstain that everyone always scrambles to say WELL THEIR ART WAS ALWAYS MID AND BAD ANYWAY. like dude just reckon with the fact you can't judge someone's moral fiber based on the art they make or the clothes they wear or the way they speak or fucking anything anything at all

doing my part to break this trend: i genuinely really liked lostprophets' music before it came out that the lead singer was a child predator, and i also still enjoy some kevin spacey acting roles like 'the negotiator' and 'outbreak'.

cognitive dissonance and discomfort intolerance are hard to cope with, believe me i know, but holding opposing viewpoints (e.g. "this person has caused harm to some people" and "this person has brought joy to other people") and finding nuance in the space between is an important skill to practice.

"This song slaps, but now that I know it's made by such a horrible person it gives me the ick and I don't want to hear it any more" is a perfectly legitimate stance. "This art is good but I don't want to partake in it because that will ultimately support artists who are using that money and support to make the world worse" is also a legitimate stance. "I liked this, but the author being so gross means I can't enjoy it any more and also the fandom has become a political nucleus for bigots so I'm excising it from my life" is another perfectly legitimate stance. You can choose to disengage with art for whatever reason you want, personal or political, it just. Doesn't mean that the quality of the art was always bad As Us Good People Knew (or should have known) because Good People make Good Art and Bad People make Bad Art.

colorshow glassworks

This is the best idea in the history of film.

my armenian father getting angry at a squirrel

my dad is famous

“You bastard, what are you doing over there?”

*camera zooms in*

“You are STEALING my nuts. Hey. Hey!”

*becoming more strident*

“Are you listening to me?!”

*taps on wall, causing squirrel to startle*

“You. Are. A. Little. Thief.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

- Vincent van Gogh

OK we see you cunty wizard

I had a tattoo client ask if I ever used AI to design tattoos for me. Man I spent the better part of a decade doing shitty bit work as a graphic designer and now that I have the space to do whatever I want, I'm gonna let the computer generate random garbage for me? What next should I have a computer that eats my dinner and fucks my wife?

I feel like people get so hung up on the results of a thing that they don't appreciate that the process of making it is, actually, enjoyable.

It's like if you have a friend who likes to bake, asking if they'd like to just buy cupcakes from the store instead of making them. The end result of the cupcake is secondary to the joy you get from having made cupcakes.

Art isn't a slog or a chore or something I want to avoid. Art is fun. It's rewarding. It feels good to do it. You may as well be asking me if I want the AI to watch television for me, it doesn't make any sense, I'm not participating and would gain nothing from it.

"Am I getting Ocean's-11ed on my own show??"

Watch the full animated short on Dropout.tv!

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Growing.

There was a time Scott "Dilbert Guy" Adams was seen as a "smart" public figure & somehow this was the same time he was publishing books where he talked about his belief in the Law of Attraction, advanced alternate theories of gravity, and created a inedible Dilbert-themed vegan burrito that contained every important vitamin & mineral since that makes it The Most Healthy Food & incomprehensibly branded it "the blue jeans of food" (since "everyone likes" & "almost everyone wears" blue jeans, just like how everyone would like & eat a Dilbert-themed undifferentiated lump of minerals that would destroy your guts if you so much as smelled it)

RIP to the Dilbert guy, creator of the Dilberito, who spent his last days begging Donald Trump to let him try a fake treatment and declaring his intent to convert to Christianity at the last minute bc of Pascal's Wager

This is how I learned Scott Adams died lmao