We don’t need to understand cognition, nor for it to work the same as machine learning models, to say it’s essentially a statistical model

It’s enough to say that cognition is a black box process that takes sensory inputs to grow and learn, producing outputs like muscle commands.

This, and cultural diffusion is a normal part of human society. It has been for countless thousands of years.

I understand why cultural appropriation can be problematic but the fact remains that the usual mode of cultural diffusion has been, “that’s really cool. I wanna have that too”

It’s not a zero sum game because there isn’t some finite limit. By wearing a kimono or whatever you aren’t taking someone else’s right to wear one away from them.

N1 had 30 engines on the first stage

It was partially staged. The main benefit of staging is dropping dry mass during the burn, and the Atlas I dropped engines

Full power 45-70 is extremely punishing to shoot out of a lever action rifle much less a derringer

Not washing cars results in long term damage to the car. If you have a 200k mile shitbox with peeling clear coat, sure, you don’t need to wash it because it probably won’t matter.

If you have something nice with good paint, washing is an important maintenance item

Ehh if you are on a reputable tracker that has scene releases it’s generally downloading a torrent, copying a crack into the game directory or running some crack software, and play. It’s not in the least bit difficult.

Realistically most people don’t care about things like automatic updates enough to justify spending money on it.

Many games are trivially easy to pirate and this has been the case for decades. It’s literally as easy as downloading it from Place B.

People still buy the games.

The Panama Canal, obviously

I don’t think that’s the case at all. Not everything has been successful, and in many cases efforts got watered down so they could pass congress. However, Obama and Biden have pushed for some pretty serious left wing talking points. Some examples off the top of my head:

-Medical reform

-Student loan forgiveness

-Renewable energy initiatives

-Marijuana rescheduling

-Repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the military

-Immigration clemency with DACA

Compare that with Bill Clinton, whose strategy explicitly was to place himself midway between liberals and conservatives