To me, the hardest part seems to be - how do you keep your small web from being infected by AI slop? Currently the slop spammers aren’t focusing on these small web rings and web 1.0 communities. But if they did start to become popular, the AI slop would inevitably follow.

Perhaps such sites need to run on a 100% no-advertising model. Individual hobby sites or those supported by subscriptions and donations only. That would cut out most of the vast, vast majority of the slop. AI slop currently can’t produce content that people are actually willing to pay to subscribe to. If sloppers can’t bring in revenue via ad impressions, they won’t have any incentive to create slop AI 1.0 sites.

You mean…your knee?

To be fair, we could probably do a lot better if we purpose-built a machine to make gold. And Pb->Au isn’t even likely the most ideal path. That was only chosen to fulfill the ancient alchemy dreams.

Let’s also legalize hand grenades for defense against home invasion!

I wish for another wishing well.

Those were the evil Germans immigrating after the war. Not to be confused with the fine upstanding Ohio Hitlers.

Or up into your neighbor’s house. Then slowly steal your neighbor’s house, one board at a time, and add it to your own house!

I can confirm. I was there standing in the corner watching. But in a strictly nonsexual way.

The Adjuster remains at large.

I was going to find some extremely old racial epithet that starts with an N, so obscure it wouldn’t offend anyone anymore. But I decided I don’t want to Google “obscure ethnic slurs” today, so I decided to skip this comment.

I think we shouldn’t even have legal names anymore. Nor legal sex/gender. Why does the government even need to keep track of my name at all? Maybe we just have a number tied to our biometric data. Maybe our profile is just defined facial scans, iris scans, thumb scans, and, for ultimate proof, our DNA profile. The state has a profile number on you that ties you to your biometrics. That sounds scary, but the government already has a profile on you if you have any kind of state-issued ID. And states are already collecting biometric data on their citizens.

We could simply tie all state business to an ID number and biometric data profile. When doing a transaction with some other party, the same biometrics could be used to prove your ID. Buying beer at the store? You hand the cashier a card that has your photo and ID number on it. They can type that number in their computer, query a state database, and return your age. Opening a bank account? Prove your ID with ID card and at least two forms of biometric scan. Signing up for a mortgage? Prove your identity with a DNA test.

We don’t even need legal names. Or legal genders. Let’s just do everything with biometric data, photo IDs, and other methods devoid of all the cultural baggage. Let people call themselves whatever they want. Let others choose how to honor that choice.

You want to change your gender? Have at it, the state doesn’t care about your sex or gender at all. It doesn’t even keep track of it. Give your kid a stupid name? At any time, they can start telling their friends to call them by a different one And that new name will instantly have all the legal power as the one their parents gave them - none whatsoever. The state will no longer tell us what our names are. Our words and character will do that instead.

Well, in The Sims it more involved a swimming pool and a disappearing ladder.

Make your own rose water from locally obtained rose petals. All rose petals are eventually going to fall on the ground and decay. Any toxic compounds in the rose petals are going to end up released into the environment and washed into the watershed eventually. If you use them for bath soap, you’re just temporarily using them in the path they would already take if left to their own devices. If anything, you’re decreasing the contamination to the environment, as anything that goes down your shower drain will be filtered by the municipal water treatment plant before being released into the watershed.

Even a large volume of water can be toxic to humans. I learned this by playing The Sims.

It’s all just bots masturbating other bots over there.

When I woke up blind from surgery. Years ago I had FFS. Mine involved significant reshaping of the brow bone among other things. And like any surgery, beforehand the surgeon makes sure you’re aware of the potential risks and complications. The rate of complications is low, but the risk isn’t zero. If you’re doing substantial work on your face, that can result in nerve damage, loss of feeling, loss of facial motor control, etc. The vast majority of people turn out just fine, but the risks are not zero and are always on your mind. Oh, and I did this in Buenos Aires cause I was a broke-ass 24 year-old not so long out of college. So add that to the fear of potential complications. I wasn’t just getting major surgery. I was getting discount major surgery.

So I go in for surgery. Put the gown on, lay on the hospital cart, the whole nine yards. They give me the gas and I quickly go off to nowhere. Several hours later, I slowly regained consciousness, the surgery complete. And to my horror, I saw…nothing. Absolute darkness. Nothing at all. Pitch blackness. I command my eyes to open, but still nothing. Absolute inky blackness. I’m still hopped up on pain killers, but I’m quickly jolted to heightened awareness. I was aware of the risk of potential loss of feeling, but this? Blinded? Complete blindness in both eyes? I was in complete panic. Absolute terror.

Thankfully however this state did not last too long. A nurse realized what was wrong and helped me out. My eyes or ocular nerves hadn’t somehow been damaged. My eyes were swollen shut. They were able to rinse out my eyes and help me to open them a bit, and it was clear that I would see just fine.

Ultimately, I didn’t have any nerve damage and made a complete recovery. But that moment remains one of the most terrifying I have ever experienced. Alone in foreign country, thousands of miles from home, and I woke blind.

Harrowing. But as someone unfamiliar with anything involving with anything naval, why the Hell did they have you do that? In conditions like that, why wouldn’t you just cruise submerged and avoid the waves entirely? And why do they have people up there “on watch?” I can’t imagine you can actually watch for that many things in such insane conditions. To my ear, it seems like they risked three lives and caused countless thousands of dollars to naval equipment for no damn good reason.

You find yourself compulsively drawn to woodworking.

I usually don’t. I don’t take a bath if I’m completely covered in dirt. The actual concentration of dirt or skin in the bathwater has to be incredibly low. I take a bath to relax, not to get clean.

Why wouldn’t they be? I would assume that socks only go in the family sock basket after going through the washer/dryer.