I've downhill skied since 1966 and I love it. Just bought new equipment. I found some great deals from evo and replaced everything for about $1100. Unfortunately, my ski partner fell last season and busted her leg; still recovering.
Skiing is enjoyable if you can avoid the cold, other humans and trees, going too fast and losing control, and possibly dying, dehydration (as with any exercise), etc.
Alas, unless you primarily ski backcountry off-piste using your own transportation, you cannot avoid paying increasingly ridiculous amounts of money to ski areas for the use of their lifts (and sometimes their emergency services). Unless you bring your own food and drink, you will need more money, unless you only ski for a couple of hours between meals.
Of course, you can x-country ski for a lot less money. And it's better aerobic exercise. I like both kinds of skiing, but I currently don't have any x-country equipment.
<tiny violins>
He was whisked away to the UK practically overnight. Our neighbors and their children have been in detention for over 5 months. Money talks, regardless of what scummy pocket it comes from.
Rick Beato's. If you are not a musician now, you will be one soon. Entertaining, informative, and packed with actual human content.
Dr. Chris Edward's. Guy repairs retro computers mostly for free. Brilliant work, and quite funny. Has a lot of Amiga videos. His wife's name is Mona. ;-)
Speaking of music, check out The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, a Vancouver band that's been together since the early '90s. Most of their stuff is based on H.P. Lovecraft stories. They rock hard. Fun lyrics.
8 million years is a drop on the geological time scale, but on a species scale that’s an eternity. We went from Neanderthals and Denisovans to sapiens in a fraction of that time.
To be clear, sapiens didn’t descend from neanderthals or Denisovans, our species lived alongside those and interbred with them. The common ancestor of sapiens and neanderthals was probably around 500,000 years, probably heidelbergensis. So half a million years is “short” but also still Homo, and something you would almost definitely identify closer to human than ape.
Shared social structures and behaviors can last through much longer periods of time than 8 million years. For example take bees and ants sharing a common ancestor in the 100 of millions of years age.
Animals have inner lives as well. They have their own thoughts and feelings. And sometimes those feelings are anger and their thought is to kick the shit out of those assholes over there.
Fuck man, my cats occasionally scrap with each other. I know it's not anything they've learned from the people in my house because we don't go full Wrestlemania on each other.
I'm tired of working in tech but fortunately (or not) it's my hobby so even if I retired I would still be doing all the techy things at home on my 17 'puters (loose count). Plus being the IT Guy for several extended families. I'm live. I'm nationwide. But, I do plan to do more art, music, gardening, etc.
Years ago, before Web 3.0, my Mom decided she wanted a computer to do email and genealogy. I bought her one. In one of her first sessions she held the mouse about 8 inches above the mousepad and asked why nothing was happening (shades of Star Trek). When I was showing the family some pictures featuring water on my laptop she said, "It looks so real!", and kept poking the screen with her finger, which produced those colorful (diffraction?) patterns, exclaiming, "It's like water!". I kept saying, "Mom, stop", until my older brother said, "Mom, I think he wants you to stop poking the screen like that."
Even basic computer use is hard for older folks. I can't imaging what they are going through now. I get frustrated every day with the crap we have to deal with, and I'm an IT Guy. Don't even talk to me about AI.
I wouldn't be surprised if Yudkowsky would agree that the initial creation of "Information Technology" was an almost direct stepping stone (in evolutionary terms) on the path to AI, which in turn (he argues and I agree) will lead us towards superintelligence. I suppose that Kurzweil might take this even further, arguing that the path was set as soon as an early hominin picked up a stick and intentionally drew an arrow towards berry bushes in the ground.
When I was six my parents got me a 26" Schwinn single-speed bike. It was as tall as I was. I rode it until college, doing things that were heretofore unknown to science. IT WAS GREAT.
Skiing is enjoyable if you can avoid the cold, other humans and trees, going too fast and losing control, and possibly dying, dehydration (as with any exercise), etc.
Alas, unless you primarily ski backcountry off-piste using your own transportation, you cannot avoid paying increasingly ridiculous amounts of money to ski areas for the use of their lifts (and sometimes their emergency services). Unless you bring your own food and drink, you will need more money, unless you only ski for a couple of hours between meals.
Of course, you can x-country ski for a lot less money. And it's better aerobic exercise. I like both kinds of skiing, but I currently don't have any x-country equipment.
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