I’m actually quite curious if mega-herbivores would help reduce fire risk on a warming planet. If can be done with mechanical thinning or controlled burns but I don’t see how we get the money and manpower to do this over the massive forested areas of western North America.

But if there was an animal that ate and/or destroyed smaller trees and brush while leaving larger ones, they could reduce fuel loads for free. We know elephants do this in Africa so perhaps mastodons and mammoths did the same thing in the ancient American ecosystem.

I think this is somewhat speculative but there’s only one way to find out…

Unfortunately I think despite the hype from some startups de-extinction is an incredibly hard problem that will not be solved any time soon.

Ok. I can see how it’s at least theoretically possible but considering this is just a post about a classic car it doesn’t seem too problematic in this instance. It’s not much different than just seeing a car on the road. I don’t think anyone is hacking into ALPR systems to track down owners of random cars they see whether in person or online.

Well only if you’re a cop or something right?

Why not? Because they’re dangerous? Obviously there is some uncertainty with extinct animals but I don’t think they’d be any more dangerous than elephants which still exist today.

So sad these beasties went extinct… 10,000 years sounds like a long time but geologically speaking we only just missed them.

Can you find someone’s identity from their plates or something?

The intercept does good work. Surprised no one has mentioned them yet.

Voters think that though. Waking them up from the illusion may help.

Plus, honestly, most people drink their own kool aid so I wouldn’t be surprised if our leaders did believe this despite all evidence. The desire to think of yourself as a good person can overpower most evidence.

Yeah I realize it would require irrigation but that’s very doable with modern technology.

We could fundraise an electric truck to bring the water or something.

I think it’s quite a bit more complicated than this. The concept of disposing of something always existed, but for most of human history that meant just leaving waste where it fell or at most tossing it at the edge of the village.

It’s only once larger settlements appeared that a need to concentrate waste in one location to avoid despoiling the entire area became necessary. This was greatly compounded with the invention of manufactured materials that don’t biodegrade like glass and plastic. There was no other solution to this than to concentrate and bury waste so it didn’t end up everywhere.

Someone should replant it. Surely we have the technology.

News articles: Millennials are ruining circumcision!

Live by the truck, die by the truck.

Oh well that should be fine then.

USA

Sure, if you trust them. Not sure how objective they are in Wales but a lot of our courts here are pretty corrupt. Plus it’s just going to be very hard to prove because you can always claim you genuinely believed what you said.

In theory I love the idea of holding people who lie to the public accountable but I’m just not sure how well it will work in practice. I guess we’ll find out.

But who determines what’s a lie?

I’m not pretending anything. All art does consist of ideas. Some also consists of a physical aspect and that physical aspect can be stolen. The intellectual, or idea part cannot be.

You’re the one who tried to move the goalposts to physical media with your museum analogy. So I modified that to make it as close to this situation as possible but still contain the same concepts–making a copy, and then, yes, using it however I wish after the fact. I didn’t spell that out because I thought the point was obvious but sure we can go there too.

I can take my photographs of paintings and put them into AI training data if I want to. The museum is not going to hunt me down for this because again, it obviously harms no one.

But let me make my own analogy here. If I broke into PizzaCake’s house and stole a physical print of this comic, are you asserting that’s the same as me downloading a copy of it here? Let’s say I use them the same way after the fact, for AI or whatever harmless use you find most offensive.

The entire AI industry stands on top of the IP house of cards you are defending far more fundamentally than any need to access data for free. If they were forced to follow copyright law, sure, their training data might get a bit worse, it might cost them a bit more but fundamentally they would continue to do the same things. In contrast, if they didn’t have a monopoly on the product of that training, there would be no profit model for them whatsoever. And you are defending that foundation here, no matter what you may think.

OP chose the title with the subtext in mind.

I can’t believe we’re debating this. The subtext is so obvious. I can’t tell if you people have the reading ability of a literal child or if you simply refuse to acknowledge it because you don’t want to or what?

But what exactly am I telling on here? I think sexual assault is bad and IP laws are bad. That’s no secret.