Absolutely amazing. They're not even pretending anymore.
gerikson
joined 2 years ago
“‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’ - wait, now I’m really hungry”
Enjoy this Rat pitch for a "pastor" who shall spread the gospel of Bayes to the unwashed masses:
I follow it on RSS, it's sometime's funny but not required reading.
I don't think you can blame the comic's author for people on HN and elsewhere passing around references to specific comics to make their points.
As to the specific one mentioned here, I don't remember reading it before.
edit to add sometimes it's obvious the entire joke is in the alt-text, like so: https://xkcd.com/3143/
I should know the answer to this because I re-read all the Culture novels last year, but I do think there's some genetic engineering in the Culture. There's the famous sex glands, of course (but maybe the neural net handles part of that too?) and then there's the asocial dude on the remote asteroid in Excession, who I believe was seen as a genetic throwback from the general population.
But it's beside the point, Banks probably included genetic engineering to make sure no-one got horrible diseases and could live to 500 years, not to breed a separate race of elites. And for that he can never be forgiven by these idiots.
Edit both HN and LW comments mention John C Wright, who I have never read and vaguely remembered being a Sad Puppy. He has some dreck where everything is libertarian. Banks was a socialist, but he was foremost a novelist. Faced with the need to create a future society, he naturally designed one with no disease, no material wants, and lots and lots of sex. Who wouldn't? Conservative yanks, that's who.
"Enjoy" this Rat fundamentally misunderstanding Banks:
https://www.boristhebrave.com/2025/09/14/the-culture-novels-as-a-dystopia/
JFC the comments on LW are even worse..
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uGZBBzuxf7CX33QeC/the-culture-novels-as-a-dystopia#comments
While the Culture is, on pretty much any axis, strictly superior to modern civilization, what personally appalls me is their sheer deathism.
If memory serves, the average human lives for around 500 years before opting for euthanasia, mostly citing some kind of ennui. What the hell? 500 years is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
"Why didn't Iain take my neuroses into account??"
Marvelous! This makes more sense of the culture than the books do.
"please sir may I pleasure you sexually"
LOL ofc I spoke too soon, the "messages" were apparently random arrows
Reports are shell cases with messages have been found. My money is still on it being a false flag.
JFC if he dies he's the new Horst Wessel
Techdirt: AI Slop Startup To Flood The Internet With Thousands Of AI Slop Podcasts, Calls Critics Of AI Slop ‘Luddites’
They say "Luddites" as if it's a bad thing...