Human psychology hasn’t changed during that time, so the same kinds of tricks or weakness that can drive a population into that mode of thinking still work today, if the details around them are adapted for some modern culture. If anything, it might be slightly easier, given those trying to achieve it have historical examples of what is and isn’t effective.

Anxiety and, due to a manufacturing bug or something, a second anxiety instead of something else.

Eh, in this specific case I don’t think china’s economic system has anything to do with it, I think it’s more just making fun of Trump’s ineptness at dealing with a rival power.

You’re reading what I said as literally the complete opposite to what I said. What I was saying was that the anti-car movement is generally fine with things like delivery vehicles (and emergency vehicles for that matter), because those things are a small percentage of the vehicles on the road. Hence “the point is not literally zero motorized road vehicles”.

The point is to make car use unnecessary for the average person, and create and promote safe and comfortable alternatives to driving. Saying “You should not have to drive to reach your place of employment, or the grocery store” is not even close to “get rid of fire trucks and ambulances”. Declaring them the same is little more than making a strawman.

Alls well until someone invites a kingsnake

ornithopters arent exactly new

The vast majority of cars on the road are not delivery vehicles, bringing them up is irrelevant. The point is not “literally zero motorized road vehicles should enter city limits”

It’s not really true that they have no ethics though, if it was, it’d be a simpler problem, because they’d presumably just care about reducing unpleasant consequences to themselves and as such a legal deterrent should be effective. The issue is that they have different ethics, which are misaligned with everyone else’s and so result in conflict when they stubbornly refuse to do something that everyone else perceives as a no-brainer. It isn’t like the church gets some material gain out of keeping confession secret.

To be fair, the issue isn’t so much the person admitting things being protected by being part of the church, but if a third party not associated with law enforcement can be compelled to say to said law enforcement about the things said to them. Honestly I think I get the arguments on both sides of this one, it’s not great to legally compel people to say things, especially when saying those things is directly in violation of their sense of ethics, and it’s also not great to just not do anything when made aware of something like child abuse. I think that a law like this is unlikely to help much though: if the church caves, then it seems unlikely that people would be willing to admit to these things anymore anyway, at least to priests, and if they don’t, these guys seem to believe that the consequences of following the law are worse than breaking it, and so it seems unlikely to do much more than occasionally send a priest to jail when it can be proven that they were told of something and didn’t report it.

If any are, I bet crows are among them.

I renamed my cat because of this guy. I don’t really like to change animals names from what it was at the shelter in case they’re used to it, and I have a cat named Mel, who I suspect was named for him because there was another nearby cat in the shelter he came from named “Gibson”.

So I’ve renamed him after Mel Brooks.

I dont see anyone that could. Even a weakened US is likely to have nukes, and a fair few of them, a hypothetical invader that is not Canada or Mexico (which would have to deal with having a smaller population and a much worse economy, or a much smaller population) has to deal with crossing an ocean and therefore building an extremely large naval capability. And finally, whoever it is would have to occupy a huge area with a population of over 300 million.

Id argue that to some extent, its foundational to capitalism, such that any effort to actually abolish it would almost necessarily require destroying or significantly curtailing capitalism to succeed anyway. Virtually every company based on selling information, such as software and media companies that are some of the biggest on the planet right now, would find such an effort an existential threat, and even companies not based on such things may have patents or designs that give them an edge and that they would expend a lot on avoiding giving competition free range to copy. If you’re able to overpower them on something so important to them, in so consequential a fashion, then their grip on economic and political power would have to already have been greatly reduced, and some other basis of such power to draw on for support would have to exist.

Some of that is down to the general culture of the furry fandom I think, it tends to be a fair bit more sex-positive and less inhibited society at large, and while porn is a thing fairly common to humans in general (obviously not every human engages with it and the degree varies with the person, but still, it isnt exactly rare), if you have one group of people who have far less of a taboo about talking about and sharing it than those outside that group, thats the thing that outsiders are going to notice about them, especially if the stuff they make in that category is visually distinct from adult content found elsewhere. Its not universal of course, there are definitely puritanical furries out there if you look for them and the fandom is big enough that I cant say with certainty that the people Ive encountered are entirely representative of it, but thats the notion I get.

To be honest, Ive come to get it over time, it can be nice to feel like you can just be open about every interest one has without having to think about which things are and arent suited to sharing with other people, but the natural consequence of choosing to reject a social norm is looking cringey or worse to those that still value it.

As far as where the subculture goes outside the fetishey stuff, theres a lot of digital art made that isnt sexualized, but beyond that Id point to some of the more “irl” stuff furries are known for, like conventions, fursuits, and other related crafts like that (ive seen people with things like custom made plushies or other physical art). While some do bring adult things into those, it isnt really the norm. More or less all the sorts of creative or social aspects that you might expect of a media-based fandom, like star trek fans or such, just without any one big IP franchise behind it and instead an emphasis on making your own stuff with an informal set of shared themes and tropes.

I wont try and point out specific events and craftspeople, since I am an extremely shy and anxious person irl and most of my interaction with other furries has been online spaces, mostly with my specific friend group that happens to be made up almost exclusively of them, but there are quite a few, especially in the US and EU. Anecdotally, that shyness is part of why I got into it in the first place, it somehow feels easier for me to make friends and generally interact socially, by creating a character that represents a more idealized version of myself that is more outgoing and less anxious, and pretending to be that character. Which is one of the things a fursona is, its partly an internet avatar and an outlet for creative expression, partly a subculture identity signifier to help find like minded people, and partly a sort of mask and social tool for self-reflection.

If I had a blog, Id represent myself using mine just like the person in the OP is, get used to presenting yourself that way long enough and doing so ends up just feeling natural to you.

Wait, wouldn’t it make sense for an anarchist to opposite intellectual property law on the grounds that the only way you could possibly enforce it beyond those in one’s immediate community would be with a larger state and associated law enforcement apparatus, which an anarchist would be expected to be against the existence of?

I’m not sure that has much to do with AI, and if anything, AI companies should somewhat like copyright since what they are ultimately selling is a form of software, which is harder to profit off without such law. They just want the concept to apply selectively so as not to impede them.

It’d only be a fetish to the people who only like furries for the porn they make and don’t have an interest in the rest of the subculture that it comes from, which probably isn’t the sort of person to use a fursona to represent themselves on a tech blog in the first place.

We don’t exactly force other people to use one, and it doesn’t hurt anyone for us to, so why should we care?

To be fair, making text hard to read somewhat defeats the entire purpose of text.

I mean, presumably it isn’t truly free so much as factored into the ticket price you already paid, right?