Ooor they’ll turn their kids into “pugs” that are ultra-cute and good at passing certain tests but otherwise useless and unhealthy.

I’d definitely prefer we didn’t go down that path, but do consider the endpoint might be more The Time Traveler than Gattaca, because rich people are also dumb.

Europe had practical seafaring since antiquity. European naval technology during the discovery of the Americas was on par with other Eastern Hemisphere naval powers.

No and no. In antiquity they followed the coasts most of the time, and followed really safe routes across mostly-closed seas the rest of the time. Trireme construction was good enough to take rough weather, while it existed, but for one thing they had trouble with navigation.

Chinese boats of the early modern era were leaky and unseaworthy by comparison, if sometimes extremely large for show, and their sails didn’t tack nearly as well.

The Vikings did manage seafaring, but they had a very specific design that was pushed pretty much to it’s limits. You can’t make a clinker-built longship any bigger or better really, and eventually economic conditions meant they stopped bothering with the big expeditions. Later on some of those same techniques made their way into the caravel.

The Polynesians managed it much earlier, and did spread around, but they were otherwise in the literal stone age. It is still pretty curious they didn’t leave more impact on the Americas.

I’ll come right out and say the West isn’t necessarily ahead on what a good relationship is. Outside of maybe traditional rural areas our extended families are fucked. Some of the people we idolise are openly toxic. The few ideas there are about what makes a good partner are far too abstract, and emphasise short-term attributes over lasting compatibility despite that being a stated goal.

Lasting compatibility is the main problem I see here, too, although I’m hardly old enough to confidently comment. A 17 year old’s life and worldview are going to change in a million ways over the next decade. Even relationships with other 17 year olds tend not to last, but then there’s a mutuality to the growing up and going separate ways.

Given that she’s gold digging or something similar and he probably knows, I’m not sure if that’s even immoral. Just a bad idea and going to fall apart in a messy way.

Maybe it seems icky, and in the West proper everyone would agree with you, but in your own culture the other poster was right, your dad has already overlooked your own taboo preferences.

Edit: Hopefully that helps. I’m not trying to shame you here, it’s a complicated situation.

Yep. The huge advancements in technology brought about by colonialism and capitalism in Europe compelled their naval supremacy

I think you’ve got that backwards. After Rome, it was pretty much a cold, marginal peninsula off of Asia full of starving peasants, until they invented practical seafaring. The wealth that made them a player in the first place came from their ability to travel to the New World and exploit the technological and societal gap present there, and to bypass the silk road.

It’s worth noting India and China were wealthier than both until pretty far into the modern period. Maybe Japan too, I’m not sure.

Edit: And maybe SE Asia, they had their own maritime empires and interacted with Australians before the Europeans, which is neat.

The former.

Other people did similar things everywhere, the Europeans just managed to be the top player right when the industrial revolution made it easier. There’s even cases of native groups getting a hold of European technology and using it to genocide other native groups.

People on the “left” turn it into an ethnicity thing, because humans have always liked to do that. It’s ironic.

How seriously are you taking the whole Greenland thing? The attempted annexation of Canada has completely turned the political discourse and national mood on it’s head here, but he doesn’t see us as a legitimate military target, while Greenland apparently is.

Like others, I’ll skip over social media, because it’s a bit ill defined in English. Maybe it’s different when you restrict it to a national language.

The news and social media here show the US imploding under Trump regime.

Kind of the same, although in Canada we’re so close to them a lot of the nuance comes through in the news, as well.

So, the local media tend to portray the US as a pristine and perfect society.

That part couldn’t be more different. We legitimately have been doing better on a lot of social measures for decades, but don’t really have a distinct culture, other major trading partners, and are just a lot smaller. All that adds up to a weird, resentful inferiority complex that colours everything, even when we’ve been close and interdependent.

As far as I can tell, even Western Europe falls into the trap of romanticising America pretty often. Hollywood has been no joke.

FOSTA-SESTA

Not American, no worries. We ultimately went with the Scandinavian model here so it’s not even illegal to sell.

you’d have to learn the lingo and figure out where your audience is

That could be tough. I’d probably try some of the dudes that have already hit on me first.

$40 isn’t too much and maybe I could play up the inexperienced actually straight fetish thing.

If they could pick up the desperation (and you’re desperate because of the exploding family thing), they’d probably pressure you into not making them wear a condom.

Not a deal breaker, TBH. Worst case I get AIDS and have to take pills for it for the rest of my life. My next best option in such a short period is an armed robbery I’ll definitely get caught for. Maybe burglary if I can find someone who keeps cash.

Gay dudes are really into me, even. I’m like a classic bear.

Time to get into sex work.

I don’t have anything I could sell that quickly, even.

No. Although “turning evil” isn’t what happens to those guys, exactly.

Dictators, in the sense of one man rule, don’t actually exist. What an autocracy does have is a first among equals in a system where everyone is “looking over their shoulder”. Even if someone who genuinely wants to make life great for the people takes power, there’s severe limits to how they can do that.

Gorbachev is a great example of this. He was an idealistic person, and thought it would be good if the USSR switched to real democracy. Pretty immediately there were multiple coups until he was out of power, because anybody remotely high up the hierarchy had too many skeletons in their closet to allow that.

In the end, a dictator only gets to choose what kind of nightmarish dictatorship they want.

Methinks you were either looking at a century BC by accident, or specifically the 7th century. Although it’s China stuff, not SE Asia necessarily.

Enjoyer of political violence falls victim to political violence. Oh no! /s

If these guys were themselves pacifists who prided themselves on giving every idea a fair hearing, I guess I would have a problem with any assassinations. As it is, there’s just one side trying to unilaterally manifest a certain level of civility. One that unfortunately doesn’t seem to exist.

Edit: I believe this complies with rule 6. Lack of concern about violence isn’t the same thing as advocacy.

If AI ends up running companies better than people

Okay, important context there. The current AI bubble will burst sooner or later. So, this is hypothetical future AGI.

Yes, if the process of human labour becoming redundant continues uninterrupted, it’s highly likely, although since CEOs make their money from the intangible asset of having connections more than the actual work they’ll be one of the last to go.

But, it won’t continue uninterrupted. We’re talking about rapidly transitioning to an entirely different kind of economy, and we should expect it will be similarly destabilising as it was to hunter gatherer societies that suddenly encountered industrial technology.

If humans are still in control, and you still have an entire top 10% of the population with significant equity holdings, there’s not going to be much strategy to the initial stages. Front line workers will get laid off catastrophically, basically, and no new work will be forthcoming. The next step will be a political reaction. If some kind of make-work program is what comes out of it, human managers will still find a place in it. If it’s basic income, probably not. (And if there’s not some kind of restriction on the top end of wealth, as well, you’re at risk of creating a new ruling elite with an incentive to kill everyone else off, but that’s actually a digression from the question)

When it comes to the longer term, I find inspiration in a blog post I read recently. Capital holdings will eventually become meaningless compared to rights to natural factors. If military logic works at all the same way, and there’s ever any kind of war, land will once again be supreme among them. There weren’t really CEOs in feudalism, and even if we manage not to regress to autocracy there probably won’t be a place for them.

They’ve really carved out a niche as being just outside the level of militancy that’s politically correct. Punk is back, I guess.

Yeah, I was thinking, depending on the kind of hotpot that’s not an out-of-order ingredient. Clearly, even in China that’s a weird and challenging local delicacy, though, so these teenagers got uber-fined.

Or you’d have an accent in your writing as well as speech, which isn’t bad necessarily.

The bigger hurdle is it’s just a very big change when all we really care about is the system being somewhat predictable and conveying meaning, not exact pronunciation.

That sounds right, although you do still see ye olde writing as late as the 1700s. It was both random and gradual.