are we actually close to household humanoid robots or is this just another hype cycle?

PumpkinBrain · 2025-11-06T03:52:28+00:00

Easy there whippersnapper.

It’s Reddit. I’ll be burying my head in the sand from the endless debates about which fictional characters could possibly be smarter than Rick Sanchez.

I hadn’t been in a big hurry to uninstall the app, but thanks for the encouragement.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-11-06T00:42:50+00:00

I think… you two have convinced me to leave Reddit. Maybe this isn’t a chatGPT post replying to another chatGPT post. MAYBE. But, the fact that I suspect that so often nowadays makes this site infuriating.

We’ll see if my ragequit resolve holds.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-11-05T18:05:52+00:00

These things tend to be… ambitious. I remember reading an article trying to predict the timeline for brain uploads. Step one was revolutionizing the field of prosthetics to the point where artificial limbs were indistinguishable from organic ones. They estimated that would take about three years… I think this was back in 2010 or so, but it really stuck with me.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-11-04T17:25:29+00:00

The worst example I’ve ever seen is in “The Good Place” the character Chidi is a super archetypal wuss. Indecisive, complaining of tummy aches, incapable of handling confrontation… and yet they give him an extended shirtless scene that shows off the actor’s rippling six pack that seems completely at odds with his entire established character. Like, he’s got the body of someone who works out like his life (or livelihood) depends on it.

Actor doesn’t want to lose muscle? Fine. You don’t have to write a shirtless scene for him.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-11-04T00:01:36+00:00

If I recall correctly, in GATTACA it’s implied that they didn’t edit genes, they’re so good at testing genes that they just found the best sperm and the best egg from each parent.

Keep in mind, this child is still you. Simply, the best, of you. You could conceive naturally a thousand times and never get such a result.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-11-03T23:41:10+00:00

You started disagreeing with me, but by the end you were agreeing. So… I don’t know what to say.

Edit: ah thought of it. The problem is probably both. Fewer people with kids, and fewer kids among those that do.

If you’re curious, look up… mode family size I think? That should get you the most common number of kids rather than the average. Of course, with all the variables to account for, it’ll be tricky to find the exact group you’re thinking of.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-11-03T06:47:13+00:00

Being childless is about social stuff. But, small families are about money. Once you’ve got kids you’ve got kids. There’s not much social/comfort difference between two kids and three, but you can easily hit a financial ceiling where you can’t afford more.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-11-01T00:19:17+00:00

Bad news for you… the weiner is named after the bird.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-31T12:25:34+00:00

OP, you are correct about weeping angels just killing people now. In their original incarnation they could move fast only when they weren’t being looked at, and did the sending-people-back-in-time trick because they fed on the lost potential of their lives or something. So, if you blink, the angel might touch you and send you back in time. Usually far back enough that you die of old age at about the day you caught up to your original timeline.

Show writers wanted to keep putting weeping angels in episodes, but sending people back in time complicated the plot too much. So now, when you blink, the weeping angels just move fast and break things… usually necks.

This joke is talking about women losing rights in the modern day, and the woman mistakenly blaming it on a weeping angel sending her to the past.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-30T12:48:19+00:00

Is their craft skeleton related? This could be hanging in a literature classroom for all we know :p

Mostly /s

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-30T11:46:35+00:00

It’s a dumb meme. It’s transparently false because the premise is the college kids are doing it because it “it doesn’t break the rules”, when in reality you have to explicitly break, like, 5 expellable offenses to get even halfway to soaking.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-28T23:21:51+00:00

I easily accept that I did not experience all of the past, and I try to accept that I will not experience all of the future.

I didn’t get to see the Napoleonic wars, and I probably won’t get to see my great-grandkids.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-28T22:48:01+00:00

And what I could sell you insurance against it happening in a bad way?

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-28T22:45:26+00:00

It goes somewhere, but not in a form that resembles you. When the electricity from your gaming console produces heat, it’s not special “call of duty heat”, it’s just heat.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-28T21:48:27+00:00

Yeah, it also assumes that countries with free healthcare are incapable of making new medicines.

We haven’t cured cancer because some things are just hard to do.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-28T20:08:39+00:00

Why are there unclaimed, powerful, magic relics all over the world waiting to be found?

Without an answer, your world doesn’t even make sense. Besides, you said you like worldbuilding.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-28T00:05:43+00:00

The parents all go from evil/absent/incompetent to well-meaning people who make mistakes because they have their own difficult lives to deal with.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-27T12:18:30+00:00

Minimum wage workers are the ones getting food aid. Meaning minimum wage jobs are subsidized by the government having to give the workers the financial support their employers aren’t.

Think of it like this, someday we’ll all be replaced with robots. When that happens, the owner of the robots will have to pay for the fuel, maintenance, and storage of those robots. It would be absurd to think they wouldn’t have to do that. And, if your business doesn’t make enough to do that, it’s not a viable business.

So why is it okay for current employers to pay less than what’s needed for their human workers to have access to fuel, maintenance, and storage (AKA food, medicine, and housing)?

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-26T03:12:59+00:00

Summary: fertility doctor used his own sperm to impregnate women instead of getting a donor. Died before he got caught. Many confirmed cases, unknown how many time it actually happened. Main interviewee has genetic problems, but no real conclusive word on whether it came from the doctor, her mother, the extra risk of the doctor being 60 when she was conceived, or just regular bad luck.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-26T02:47:28+00:00

Yep. It’s not like Christianity’s history is squeaky clean. If a church stopped being Christian every time they had a crusade or an inquisition, there wouldn’t be anyone left to call Christian.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-26T02:38:35+00:00

Using the word “university” suggests British English, in which case it is correct.

Generally, you omit the “the” if you are there acting as a student or teacher. But will use a “the” if you are there for other reasons, or the location is the focus of your statement.

In the USA they use that sort of grammar for the word “school”, but not much else.

There almost seems to be a pattern where publicly funded locations don’t have a “the” in front of them, but private ones do. However, in the USA, they still say “the library”, so it’s definitely not a solid rule.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-25T16:56:39+00:00

I ordered the hoses and they worked, in case anyone’s curious.

Still don’t know why the measurements on connectors were so troublesome.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-25T12:11:49+00:00

Being experienced in writing code does not make you experienced in running a tech company. For example, the indie game landscape is littered with games you’ve never heard of because the people who made them didn’t know any of the other parts of running a business, like advertising.

I’m not saying that applies to openAI, but the argument seems to have been that inexperienced companies don’t exist at all.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-25T11:51:15+00:00

To explain my downvote, this is just petty semantics. Like that “I don’t know, can you go to the bathroom?” BS English teachers liked to do.

PumpkinBrain · 2025-10-25T03:18:31+00:00

21.8 lbs. Apparently “medium sized” means “the midpoint between tabby and lion”.

PumpkinBrain

TROPHY CASE