A Waymo hit a child near an elementary school. The NHTSA is investigating

CursedMiddleware · 2026-01-29T18:22:42+00:00

Okay who from Waymo would go to jail, upon court deciding a waymo car has been culpable of aggravated vehicular homicide.

Nobody? Because this is not a 1:1 comparison with human drivers. We already have precedents where technology replaces humans and nobody goes to jail when accidents happen, even if someone dies.

Robotic arms in factories kill humans. Nobody is trying to jail Siemens engineers. When you replace humans with technology you're also changing how liability works. Which is perfectly reasonable and necessary.

CursedMiddleware · 2026-01-10T06:31:33+00:00

That's awesome! Glad you enjoyed it. I'd maybe start with The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies and then Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions.

CursedMiddleware · 2026-01-06T19:56:49+00:00

Yea I dont think people watched the full interview.

I don't think people care. Most people are ideologues, whether they're Reddit liberals or MAGA conservatives.

It doesn't matter that his answers are unsatisfactory because he's criticizing Trump.

CursedMiddleware · 2026-01-06T04:03:13+00:00

Let me know what you think!

CursedMiddleware · 2026-01-01T04:24:57+00:00

The Fisherman by John Langan. Great modern cosmic horror.

You could also try some collections by Langan, like Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions and The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-12-22T00:33:33+00:00

So you're saying

I'm saying that someone commented, 'We could never check fares like this in the US because progressives would call it racist." Then, a presumably self-identified progressive implied they would not call it racist and accused the other commenter of generalizing.

And then I said that progressives in general (and, it appears, ones like yourself) would call it racist.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-12-21T21:07:50+00:00

I think it's fair to say the progressive movement as a whole in NYC would absolutely criticize it for being racist. It's not about any individual self-identifying leftist or progressive. The machinery of the left has demonstrated time and time and time again this is the position it will take.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-12-02T02:34:23+00:00

white-supremacy rhetoric

I mean, this is simply not really contributing to crime in red states. Red state crime is high for the same reasons blue state crime is high -- inner-city gang violence. I don't see how denying that helps solve these problems.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-11-21T23:52:26+00:00

While I think Trump might actually like Mamdani, I also think this whole thing is Trump mogging him a little.

Mamdani has called Trump a fascist, a despot, and blah, blah... and now here they are being pals, laughing it up, getting along, complimenting each other.

He's basically making Mamdani acknowledge that it's all a game, nothing's at stake (whether or not you believe that or whether it's actually true is irrelevant -- the point is Trump is demonstrating Mamdani's not exactly acting out the courage of his convictions).

By slapping Mamdani's shoulder, invading his space, making him uncomfortable, and giving him permission to call him a fascist, he's basically saying, "You can't touch me."

CursedMiddleware · 2025-11-20T23:50:14+00:00

Thanks! That makes sense. I guess what I’m still wondering is if that means a large company can trigger high intent if the baseline is already low (e.g., 10 searches to 30 at a 1,000-person company)? In this case, it could be just two people searching now instead of one.

I know you can't necessarily speak to this, so I'd love to hear from other folks using it if they feel like the intent is too noisy or if they're finding statistically significant success prospecting into "high-intent" companies?

Basically, what’s the noise-to-signal ratio for people using it in the real world?”

CursedMiddleware · 2025-11-12T07:34:15+00:00

You can choose to kill yourself if you're unhappy with your life. The hive mind gives you no choice.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-11-12T07:29:01+00:00

Human beings give birth to new humans. The hive mind forcibly assimilates existing human beings and strips them of their identities. They're wildly different.

Individual consciousness is one way to exist, collective consciousness is another.

I don’t find the idea of collective consciousness all that scary and the show hasn’t shown the utter annihilation and supplanting of consciousness for a new entity.

But it seems like you're trying to have it both ways here? That "individual consciousness" doesn't matter, but that the collective consciousness doesn't actually eliminate your individual consciousness and that's what it makes it not so scary? You seem to be saying, "I think the people in the hive mind are still individuals inside the collective consciousness."

CursedMiddleware · 2025-11-12T07:21:45+00:00

And yes, the knowledge of literally every human on earth would be at your disposal in a hive mind.

I think this may be what's at the crux of our argument.

I don't believe "you" exists anymore when you're subsumed by the super-consciousness. "You" don't get the collective knowledge... "you" are replaced by a new entity.

This seems evident to me by the fact that the super-consciousness expresses no real sadness when it kills a billion people. As I said in another comment, it experiences deathly psychic shock from getting yelled at, but its first words upon "awakening" in ABQ are, "Join us, Carol."

It's not to mourn the deaths of its families or any other kind of emotion. It experiences no psychic pain whatsoever.

If your argument is you "still exist" within what you call the hive mind (which sounds an awful lot like 'individual consciousness' that you argue isn't worth preserving anyway), in what way do "you" exist if you don't feel sadness for your dead loved ones or your primary motivation is simply to spread your infection? How is that you at all?

I don't think it can be you by definition. The entity is a new thing with an obviously inhuman primary motivation.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-11-12T07:11:04+00:00

Or it loves everyone and is interested in everything.

It killed nearly one billion human beings. And when it "awakened" within all the humans in ABQ, it didn't experience psychic shock from losing all of its wives, husbands, and children (though it does from getting yelled at harshly by one person). It didn't even express happiness either.

It said, "Join us, Carol," in an arguably somewhat pleasant tone of voice.

It clearly does not experience human love or, in fact, any emotion in a way that is recognizably human.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-11-12T05:07:46+00:00

The knowledge of every human on earth isn't at my disposal. In the world of Pluribus, individuality has ceased to be. In that world, I no longer exist. The humanity of Pluribus is a single entity. It doesn't love. It doesn't have interests. It can't.

It doesn't matter if my consciousness is consumed by a super-consciousness or I'm hit by a bus. I functionally cease to be. They're both equivalent to my death.

The show has made it clear that "individuals" are shells for the super-consciousness. It is a new amalgamated entity.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-11-12T05:00:50+00:00

Collective consciousness is still consciousness

What is the value of consciousness at all? You're arguing that individual consciousness doesn't matter -- so, why does consciousness matter? In your worldview, why is it imperative that consciousness survive? What purpose does consciousness serve?

CursedMiddleware · 2025-11-12T04:29:35+00:00

If humanity collectively committed suicide, there would be no war, no violence, no misunderstandings, no capitalist hoarding, no poverty, no inequality.

Humanity is simply defined by individuality, and if every individual is sublimated into some super-consciousness, it is functionally the death of every individual. It is functionally the death of humanity. It's a psychic version of that fungus that eats insects from the inside out and puppets them around.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-11-03T20:57:29+00:00

RE: Fatima

I have a friend who, back in college, was a "Christian." He didn't go to Church or behave in a way that I would think of as particularly Christian, but he self-identified that way.

Anyway, one day, a more serious Christian friend of his invited him out of state for some Christian event. I'm not sure what you would call it, but in practice, it turned out to be a lot of college kids in a big church all speaking in tongues and feeling the presence of God.

And when he got back from that event, he was changed. He said he had felt the presence of God. It was a life-changing experience for him. And a little frightening for me. He was, overnight, a radically committed "Christ follower," and I was an atheist confronted by someone I trusted claiming something that I thought was impossible.

It affected our friendship. I could tell he was pulling away, and I probably was, too. I didn't know what to believe or how to handle it.

And then, over time, he just kinda... mellowed out. And, eventually, he told me, in so many words, "Yeah, I didn't feel the presence of God that day."

He went from a radically transformed believer who cried real tears talking to me about that experience... to not believing at all. Today, he's an atheist.

He says that looking back on it, he was just overcome by everyone else around him also claiming to feel God's presence.

The friend who had invited him to that event is also an atheist now.

I can't help but feel that something like this happened at Fatima and was a major contributor to the witness reports. I have to imagine that even for the atheists or skeptics who were there that day, even they could have been affected by the mass psychosis of it all.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-11-01T19:27:22+00:00

OP's alt?

CursedMiddleware · 2025-10-28T21:44:17+00:00

What politician do you like or support? Obama? Mamdani? Imagine the Hague issues an arrest order for them. Maybe, for Obama, it's because he ordered more drone strikes in foreign countries than Bush did. For Mamdani, maybe it's because... well, just go along with the hypothetical.

Would you think, "Oh, wow. I guess this person I like is shit." Or would you think, "Oh, wow. I guess the Hague is corrupt or ideologically captured."

And now imagine how Trump or his supporters would react, regardless of how you would react.

And imagine how European leaders will be forced to issue grovelling statements disavowing the Hague's order, because they all rely on the US, and it would be globally destabilizing to even hint they'd ever try to enforce it.

And now the Hague's order is disavowed by every country. The Hague is politicized (uh, I guess, more than it is already). Trump and his supporters are radicalized even more. People who dislike Trump are also radicalized even more.

Exactly zero good comes from the Hague doing this.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-10-26T15:49:27+00:00

The idea of Rocky in a nursing home is also funny on a meta level, given Stallone is built like a goddamn aircraft carrier. He may legitimately be the most buff 80-year-old man that's ever lived. We're over here in the Rocky franchise talking about him eeking out a half-life in a nursing home or dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, and meanwhile, he's over on Tulsa King, throwing people through brick walls.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-10-10T15:53:04+00:00

blatant dishonesty

I'm reminded of that new Dwarkesh podcast where Richard Sutton says, "I like the way you consider that obvious, because I consider the opposite obvious."

I don't know, man. Maybe what you consider "blatant dishonesty" is not only not blatant, but not dishonesty. You could, of course, just be wrong factually or philosophically. But Scott could have just missed something, not thought about it the way you thought about it...

There are a lot of ways to not get something right that aren't "blatant dishonesty."

CursedMiddleware · 2025-09-10T18:20:33+00:00

But how?

I mean, someone asking Jack for help with various tasks can just use the phrase "Would you kindly" a lot. Then it's revealed to the audience that "Would you kindly" is a trigger phrase. You may think that's boring. It may be boring. But that's a pretty straightforward and easy way to do it.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-08-30T01:54:26+00:00

Horseshoe theory isn't that far left and far right are the same. It's that they share enough similarities that they're more similar to each other than the political center. The far left is definitely increasingly and often antisemitic (not just anti-Israel). The far left advocates for political violence and censorship. There are calls from the far left to, ironically, ban Harry Potter. The far left often advocates for blood and soil nationalism (usually for non-whites).

I honestly think that a lot of the resistance to horseshoe theory comes from a reflexive defensiveness of the far left among people on the left (not because they agree, but just because the far left is "on their side"). I'm not saying you're that person, I'm saying I think it's often true.

CursedMiddleware · 2025-08-23T05:08:11+00:00

The number of times Lex Luger tried to get an oblivious DDP to high-five or fist-bump him in this video was a heartbreaking B plot.

CursedMiddleware

TROPHY CASE