A society that is victim to violence is not functioning, or at the very least is dysfunctional

Well then it only stands to reason that it would be Constitutionally sound for a someone to assassinate the president, the VP, and so forth down the line of succession until an ally of the assassin inherits the presidency, at which point the assassin receives a full pardon. For legal reasons, I’m not advocating for this, but it would be the logical conclusion to draw from Trump’s approach.

Sure, but aren’t competitive cycling and swimming judged based on speed? People generally don’t have to bike or swim at those high speeds except in rare cases of emergency. Diving is usually based on flourish and performance? I can see people wanting to minimize pain when diving for leisure, but the backflips and twirls aren’t essential and most people would hurt themselves trying those.

I can see lifeguarding as an exception. Lifeguards don’t have to show off when diving in to rescue somebody from drowning, but their quick swimming is essential for these emergencies. For lifeguards, becoming a fast swimmer is training for their job, not training for competition. There are other abilities found in sports that may help other emergency services, but I don’t see much of a career pipeline of pro athlete -> emergency services for related skills.

I might be coming at this from an overly utilitarian standpoint. There can be leisure and fun in swimming, cycling, punching a bag, catching a ball, etc., but the criteria for competition are beyond what would serve a purpose beyond that bubble of leisure except for the rare emergency cases in which superhuman ability would save somebody’s life or something. And even for these emergency cases, there isn’t much of an apparent push to divert the pros’ skills to serve society beyond entertainment.

Shooting didn’t cross my mind until you mentioned it. Yusuf Dikeç, the Turkish shooter known for his casual appearance at the Olympics, probably got his competitive edge by way of his military background. But shooting is like UFC and other melee sports: would a functioning society have a need for these violent skills beyond entertainment, or instead does a functioning society require people who are physically skilled enough to defend said society by way of sheer human force?

All sports are just “Who is the best at these arbitrary objectives which generally would have no other use in a functioning society?”

My alma mater had a café named Foo Bar in a computer science building

Ai Weiwei, minus the Weiwei

The Fairly Oddparents

Faith-Based Shows

Dude loves his magic sky parents

Many AI chatbots or chat assists are by default programmed to be saccharine to the point of disingenuousness. Don’t adjust your values to categorically match what they are programmed to praise or condemn. They appear on the surface as people-pleasers but are actually intended to please their distributor’s investors. Additionally and most critically, don’t fall into the trap of thinking of the machines as people.

With the AI tangent aside, with human interactions I definitely do feel the disparity between coddling and general treatment in society. If you’ve ever seen people interact with young kids or people with disabilities, especially mental disabilities, people often express overvaluing of their actions and creations to boost their confidence. While it may be a great achievement for that individual’s standards and capabilities and they do deserve praise for that much, lauding a simple piece of macaroni art as being better than the Mona Lisa, for example, is probably not genuine and can in fact undermine the creator’s confidence if they are aware enough to sense that lack of genuineness. However, for some people maybe they’d rather have that piece of macaroni art over the Mona Lisa because it is made by someone they love and care about and they highly value tokens of that person. Sometimes it can feel as if there is a conspiracy against someone if they notice a mismatch between the level of praise they receive and their presence and level of success in society elsewhere, and I too have experienced that sensation.

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Thank you!

The design process isn’t a simple story but I’d say about 4-6 months off and on? I had the original idea as a pencil sketch in May of last year but held off on a lot of the digital design work until the Deadpool & Wolverine movie released in late July; I ended up changing the type of handgun to better fit this film. I worked on the digital files off and on until late October when I hit financial hardship and held off on ordering parts until early December. After parts arrived in mid-February, I ran into a few issues during assembly that were all cleaned up by early March. Financial hardship returned and it’s tedious to make finalized instructions so I’m only now getting these posted.

The build probably takes several hours. The frame in particular seems uniform but requires close attention while building. Since I had to make changes to both the design and assembly process while building (including figuring out how to avoid it falling over and shattering repeatedly!), my build experience isn’t typical. It also helps if you sort your pieces first.

The 80’s will to be 50 years from now, too

I thought this was fiberglass insulation at first

Need a reporter to get in Trump or his press secretary’s face and call this action “woke DEI” and start chanting “They will not replace us”

This doesn’t seem all that innovative to me.

It seems like the process for generation is:

1. Parse the input command and generate it as a 3D object (not yet in Lego form). There is already software that can do this.
2. Translate the 3D object into Lego form using strictly basic bricks. This technology has been around for a while. This video doesn’t show this process directly but it is used in jobs such as these.
3. Conduct a stability check. This is something that Lego specific software such as Stud.io already does.

I suppose it is the first case in which I’ve seen all of these steps come together?

There are also a couple of flaws that I see right away:

• The publication emphasizes how either a human or a robot arm can build the program’s output. However, they overlook the need for subassemblies in some assemblies. The render of the “high-backed chair” example cannot be built from the bottom up as shown in the article because there would be pieces floating in midair until another layer is added; you’d have to either build subassemblies or invert portions of the build, both of which the robot arms seem incapable of doing.
• You don’t seem able to set the scale of the build? You might want a build that is specifically 1:20 scale or 10 bricks long or 5 inches tall, for example.
• [EDIT: Because Lego bricks are not dimensioned as cubic units, the orientation of the bricks relative to the assembled model may impact how well the model “reads” as what it’s supposed to be. As in, having the topside of the individual bricks oriented 90° from the topside of the assembly (i.e., SNOT) may produce better looking results than if they were aligned. The program doesn’t seem to account for this.]
• The application of painted decoration forces that level of detail to remain digital, or for whomever is artistically disinclined enough to have a machine make a rudimentary Lego build for them to somehow be artistically inclined enough to paint that level of detail.
• Omitting the painted decorations, the program doesn’t seem to consider what parts actually exist in which colors; this is also something that Stud.io can do. Similarly, it would be helpful to curate the parts used based on their cost to acquire.
• The use of only basic bricks is very limiting. This isn’t a major critique since those types of builds do have their uses.

Lastly, it seems like this is just another case of using ”AI” to supplant where humans can find fun and expression in this world, instead of reducing labor. I say this since the program seems targeted toward small scale commercial use, in contrast to the large industrial usage in the video I linked to above.

If there is something about this program that I missed or misunderstood, please clarify for me.

[EDIT: I found a paper with more information. I’ll have to read through it later.]

Yeah, with the asterisk in the title and the discussion about it, I would think that this was the marketing plan from the start. The movie’s performance may have affected when exactly they decided to pull the trigger on the rebrand though.

So if the implication is that Trump has to be a Nazi because Russia has blackmail on him, then that really undermines how half of the country is just choosing to be Nazis without any blackmail involved. Maybe they’re all just bad people by choice and not by compulsion?

Because that worked so well with Palpatine’s return

OP is a native of Albany, NY, where everybody refers to hamburgers as steamed hams, even when it comes to their patented family recipes. This is for when OP must meet with other people who are not familiar with the regional dialect, even those from Utica, and are preparing for an unforgettable luncheon.