@corbin

How would that even happen with a Trumpist DOJ?

@sailor_sega_saturn

Maybe it's one of those cliches like “bus plunge”

@froztbyte @angrystego

To be fair they all too often have less agency about getting pregnant than they should, and getting pregnant is something women may fear or dread depending on the circumstances such as “was it rape” “is he abusive” “that’d really fuck up my career that is finally getting going” and “am I in Texas or Florida or Georgia or…”

Also, accidents happen, probably even with birth control defense in depth.

@V0ldek @angrystego

That doesn’t really apply to a guy you only know as Dewar number 27, does it? Raising a child with that person isn’t in the cards except by very unlikely coincidence.

@V0ldek @sue_me_please

IVF isn’t required if fertility concerns or frozen eggs aren’t involved, they can give you the home game.

@gerikson

Now if it was Brian Johnson from AC/DC, I bet it'd be awesome.

@YourNetworkIsHaunted

“Wait… oh my God you weren’t already doing that???”

I'm not at all surprised given it wasn't exactly started in the present form by people with money to hire consultants who would know to do those things.

For the first mumble years there probably wasn't much involvement by kids at all so it would never have occurred to them. Or there were some kids but not the forums or other potential settings for adult misconduct.

@V0ldek

Yeah I'm not dismissing that. It's a big ass shark in a tank.

Or the guy who made a cast of his own head using his own frozen blood, that's kept in a special refrigerated display case.

@corbin

I just mean "weird" in terms of “valued far higher than the average person might expect” but I'm not implying that that value isn't merited. I'm not one to dismiss a Rothko.

@dgerard

I had a bit making an exception for the value of "fine art" because that can get weird, like “unmade bed with a bunch of trash around it” or a signed urinal.

But I seem to have left that part on the cutting room floor.

If a piece of purely prompt-generated AI art hits a price like a shark in formaldehyde I strongly suspect it'll be some kind of inorganic AI industry insider self-dealing to hype up the AI art market, similar to the big Beeple NFT sale.

@Crampon

AI artists are just the new version of "fractal artists" who for the most part just pick a color palette and run a Mandelbrot generator until they find an appealing image.

It's not nothing but it's not going to get you very far.

@YungOnions

What do you mean value?

Emotional value? No. Many parents value their small child's drawings.

Market value? Mostly yes. Especially in commercial art like art commissioned for book covers. Untalented artists aren't going to be very successful.

@SpaceNoodle

It gets led to them. By a human.

@o7___o7

There's a hospital in France where a horse visits the patients. In the hospital. There was a thing in The Guardian about it a few years back.

@froztbyte

Sounds like someone under a lot of pressure to raise revenue and not having much success.

@sc_griffith

It's kind of like all the people who are aware of what's likely needed to prevent climate change disaster, but are also aware that they don't have the power to make it happen and that the forces of inertia and corruption are powerful enough to block or roll back anything remotely significant.

@sc_griffith

The novels may be trying to say something, but how it plays out still needs to make sense in the world of the novel and be coherent with the characters as depicted.

Vimes is basically a stereotypical jaded and cynical old-timer who has ideas about how things could be better, but has seen enough to know that the powerful would never allow it.

Incremental improvements are made but larger changes are difficult except sometimes in places that are even worse than Ankh-Morpork.

@sc_griffith

In Night Watch:
“Vimes/Keel tells Ned Coates not to put his trust in revolutions "They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes" This is a common theme in Pratchett regarding authority figures”

That said Vimes does participate in a revolution of sorts in that book, as “John Keel”, in the past.

@sc_griffith

I think Pratchett understood that, despite people romanticizing revolution, revolutions often end up opening the door to something as bad or worse. Especially in a place like Discworld.

@dgerard

Was the stumbling point when they explained to the county the part about the perpetually tortured child?