Re: Progress!

1

When the Skynet goes to war, they'll at least have reasons.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 9:33 AM
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2

Charlie Stross went there about five or six years ago. It's a great book if you're feeling strong.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 9:51 AM
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3

They'd be illegal, wouldn't they? Didn't SCOTUS rule that porn in which children's faces have been photoshopped in are still child porn even though there are no actual naked children? I guess those still involved faces of real children so as long as your robot is from Uncanny Valley like the one pictured you'd be in the clear.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 9:57 AM
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4

Let Roy Moore-supporting Republicans pack the court for a few more years.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:02 AM
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5

I think the UK banned even cartoon representations.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:03 AM
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6

5: The fuck?


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:04 AM
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7

I'm not sure if 4 is saying Mooreites would make child robots legal or illegal. They think porn is bad but going after real children is ok, so not sure where robots fall.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:06 AM
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8

I'm not about to google it at work, so confirmation will have to wait, but yeah. Aimed at those Japanese anime, I guess. Under Cameron, the Tories banned (or at least proposed to, I can't remember whether they all went ahead) a whole bunch of things, some of which seemed completely bizarre.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:07 AM
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9

It depends on how good the robot is, I guess?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:08 AM
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10

8 aimed at those creepy-ass anime body pillows no doubt.


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:16 AM
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11

You all are alien coneheads. They're asking, "Would an army of child sex robots work with us to stop pedophilia, or with the Russians to promote it?"


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:28 AM
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12

There are no small questions, only small sex robots.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:35 AM
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13

11 has the solution. Malware that turns the child sexbots into Chuckys.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:38 AM
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14

5: In the US, Mickey Mouse will never enter the public domain. In the UK, he will never reach the age of consent.


Posted by: Todd | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:39 AM
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15

Do Donald Duck's "nephews" wear pants in the U.K.?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:40 AM
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16

I guess they could just blur the duck-genitals if they didn't want to add pants.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:41 AM
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17

Do Donald's "nephews" wear pants in the White House?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:45 AM
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18

Do Donald Duck's "nephews" wear pants in the U.K.?

The law as I recall it addresses representations of human children. I believe cartoon bestiality is fine, whether they're adults or not. And now I'm going to stop contributing to this thread until I am safely in incognito mode.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:50 AM
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19

What's the theory? What about all the cherubim in the National Gallery?


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:51 AM
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20

8: I have been really surprised at how evergreen calls for an internet porn ban (or at least restriction regime) has been from the Tories since moving here. I grew up in the US thinking of Europe as the let's-be-mature-about-sex land (or at the very least, the boobs-at-the-beach-are-no-big-deal land) and all this Tory fretting about the chlildren! seeing some porn was unexpected and I don't actually detect much public support for it.

Am I wrong? Maybe this is the key to making Brexit finally make sense after all.


Posted by: Swope FM | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 10:53 AM
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21

re: 20.last

Absolutely. It's all about the victory of humourless hypocritical deeply pathetic wankers.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 11:40 AM
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22

Don't sell yourselves short. Eg Jeremy Clarkson is a hypocritical deeply pathetic wanker, but at least he's not humorless. It's one of the advantages your world-destroying assholes have over ours.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 11:47 AM
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23

And even Clarkson had brain enough to vote Remain.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 11:50 AM
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24

Huh I just assumed he'd been terrible on that, but looking it up it seems he and James May even did a pro-remain commercial. I guess there's a next tier of awful old English men.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 11:57 AM
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25

What about all the cherubim in the National Gallery?

Neither pornographic, nor children.

Turns out I was wrong about cartoon bestiality, at least in the presence of children. SFW, I swear. Contrast the text of this legislation with that covering "extreme" pornography, which is the stuff I was talking about in 8.2. That legislation requires that " a reasonable person looking at the image would think that any such person or animal was real". No such caveat for children.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 11:58 AM
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26

Apparently Michael Caine was pro-Brexit, so he's the next tier, as well as being someone who somehow looks like he definitely smells bad.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 12:00 PM
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27

Children often have trouble telling which animals are real.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 12:00 PM
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28

re: 24

Yeah. Clarkson is a knob on multiple levels, but he's actually quite pro-European, even though he's happy to make heavy use of national stereotypes in the service of humour.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 12:03 PM
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29

Assume an n-dimensional knob moving through space-time.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 12:12 PM
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30

I knew Caine was a tax bug up there with Gerard Depardieu.

That's good to know about Clarkson, although given other known misbehavio[u]r I wonder what other skeletons of his remain unearthed.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 12:19 PM
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31

A man from somewhere in Atlantic Canada was arrested and tried for having one of these devices shipped from Japan. (It was discovered when being scanned at customs. That must have been exciting.) I'm surprised by how much views and laws on this differ across the Anglosphere.


Posted by: dalriata | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 12:21 PM
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32

ALSO TRADE POLICY AND CULTURAL AFFINITY AND WHATNOT. SOMETIMES ONE ALMOST FEELS RATHER UNWELCOME.


Posted by: OPINIONATED BORIS JOHNSON | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 12:27 PM
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33

I wonder if spending time with Gerard Depardieu doesn't make one want to avoid closer contact with Europe.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 12:29 PM
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34

20: Yes, whatever could possibly be the reason for the differences between the pasty, alcoholic Brits' attitude toward nudity and those of the sexy, topless countries?


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 1:36 PM
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35

Be nice, people don't necessarily have to show their teeth at the nude beaches.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 01- 4-18 1:46 PM
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36

||

This thread seems as good a place as any to drop this:

You knew that the NYT would run a hack piece about how Franken-style sexual harassment is just misunderstood flirting, but you gotta give the newspaper extra points for casting this as a pro-feminist argument, and for assigning the task to a writer named Merkin.

|


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 01- 5-18 11:10 AM
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37

Merkin was the best front-page poster - I still make cold-brewed ice tea because of her.


Posted by: Robert Halford | Link to this comment | 01- 5-18 11:12 AM
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38

37 Why is Merkin not on the masthead?


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 01- 5-18 11:19 AM
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39

They usually swim beneath the keel.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 01- 5-18 11:25 AM
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40

36 isn't so much an example of bad writing or glitches in the Matrix as it is evidence that the writers want us to know that they're in on the joke.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 01- 5-18 12:15 PM
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41

This is also a good place to note that I left for three weeks, and came home to a giant mess in my bathroom. Turns out my shitheel upstairs neighbor turned off her heat and left her windows open. Her toilet froze and basically exploded and flooded my bathroom AND the one below, but luckily the city was checking the water main and noticed before the pipes burst. My landlady mopped up the flooding and moved my perishable stuff out of the way, but came back to dried flood damage, filth, and a giant crack lengthwise on my floorboards, and a non-working light fixture. Landlady is apologetic, nothing valuable was ruined, and everything will get repaired, but upstairs neighbors suck.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 01- 5-18 1:24 PM
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42

Also, I have an armchair nudity theory of Southern vs. Northern Europe. N. Europeans are all or nothing: it's either chunky sweaters or complete nudity, whereas Southern Europeans like to go around in states of undress--topless, men's shirts unbuttoned way too far, cleavage, g-strings on the beach, etc, but they frown on actual complete nudity.

Not sure why the Brits and Americans are such prudes.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 01- 5-18 1:26 PM
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43

What assholes.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01- 5-18 1:26 PM
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44

To make 41 more topical, if I had a squadron of child robots, they could have cleaned my apartment for me while I was gone.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 01- 5-18 1:27 PM
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45

43 to 42. But I'm not sure if Moby is appreciating the bare assholes are the ones barely covered by G-strings.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 01- 5-18 1:36 PM
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46

45 fixed - -But I'm not sure if Moby is appreciating the bare assholes or the ones barely covered by G-strings.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 01- 5-18 1:37 PM
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47

Whichever have broken plumbing to shit in.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01- 5-18 1:54 PM
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48

42: I never thought much about the northern vs southern Europe divide, but yes, now that you mention it, that does seem right. And really, the "let's be mature about sex" thing does seem much more northern. Like, it's time to get naked now and let's not have any giggling. Whereas the southern version is more like, oh, was I supposed to wear a shirt to dinner? (this goes all the way south to Australia, in my observation.)

I really wish I could take a nice, Swedish attitude toward nudity but I guess I'm a product of American prudery. I always thought that Americans were prudes b/c Puritans, thus the suprise that it carries over to Brits too.


Posted by: Swope FM | Link to this comment | 01- 6-18 9:04 AM
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49

48: I'm almost totally ignorant, but ISTR that Anglospheric prudery is actually quite recent, Victorian. Whether, why, and how that culture got into the US as well as the Commonwealth I don't know.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 01- 6-18 9:14 AM
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50

England is a southern country, because of the Gulf Stream.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01- 6-18 9:19 AM
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51

Gustavus Adolphus was famously relaxed about nudity.


Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 01- 6-18 11:37 AM
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52

No Gulf Stream.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 01- 6-18 11:53 AM
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53

Michael Caine was pro-Brexit

Have we ever talked about the thing where, if you say "my cocaine," it sounds like you're saying "Michael Caine" in Michael Caine's accent?


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 01- 6-18 2:01 PM
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54

I have no idea what you're talking about.


Posted by: Opinioned Mike Hawk | Link to this comment | 01- 6-18 2:57 PM
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55

52: More of a Lear Jet kind of guy?


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 01- 7-18 9:38 AM
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56

Dammit, Learjet. Why didn't I look first?


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 01- 7-18 9:39 AM
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