Maybe the same as with drugs in sports: Self-experimentation can be an expedient shortcut, and scientists are often very competitive people. If results obtained through self-experimentation are rewarded, many scientists would be tempted to do it. Contrary to doping in sport, however, in science you need to at least do something different each time for it to be publication-worthy. That institutes a big skill floor and considerable risk, so I think a self-experimentation epidemic is unlikely. Generally I still think self-experimentation is good, precisely because it’s such a shortcut.

I’m sure it’s possible, but it’s not going to come for free nor will it be immediate

Exactly. Let’s hope we get to have another bad US election rather than this being the last one.

Doesn’t all authority already lie with the USA? If we’re going to be real, I mean. I’m sure France thinks otherwise but let’s be real: NATO was always the “Uncle Sam will protect Europe from Russia”-treaty.

Not a lot. The British weapons are reliant on US maintenance. Won’t be credible for long if the US doesn’t support them.

I hope we’ll be able to do this again. There are worse alternatives.

South Korea gets nukes in 3, 2, 1…

Nobody wants to be on the naughty-list of a person this powerful. Even if he loses, the Republican party and all its office-holding members will still to some degree answer to him. He’s not someone you want to pick a fight with unless you are willing to sacrifice something.

Maybe paid per word

I don’t think so. I don’t think Trump has any allegiances to anyone but himself. He’ll only go along with what Putin wants so long as it serves Trump. That’s awful, of course, but he’s not a puppet.

I don’t understand why people write like this. They’ve made their point in the first 3 paragraphs, and then it just goes on and on.

It’s a cool game. No worries. I do get what the article says, though. The game does not adequately represent how awful the space marines are, even though it does show you that the empire sucks.

That’s illegal, unfortunately. Only qccredited investors can invest into private companies. There should be a lower limit on that rule, say $100 or something, so naive investors could invest play sums in potentially shady stuff. But there isn’t, so you can’t.

Harrier Dubois, is that you?

I think it theoretically can’t be done. The protocol allows anyone to query for posts, and it has to work that way unless you want to move ActivityPub federation to an invite-only system. On most servers I think browsing while being logged out is sufficient, just like on pre-Musk Twitter.

Mastodon also doesn’t let you prevent people from reading your posts.

Mounting solar panels on roofs - like all roof work - is dangerous.

Sure, Vlad.

Unfortunately not. For me the main problem is discoverability. There’s no recommendation algorithm except for boosts. I’m not suggesting Mastodon integrate some kind of machine learning or other advanced stuff, but number of likes from followed accounts and a threshold would be nice for a start. As it is, Mastodon is just bad for entertainment purposes. Maybe it works for other purposes, but for entertainment I’d rather have the algorithm-fuelled quote-tweet dunking on Twitter.

You okay, dude? It was an expensive wipe, but what’s the harm? I mean, it’s better than wiping with your socks…