25 Comments
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Telenil's avatar

This sounds like a topic for Paula Fox. I'm sure someone with her talents will be eager to explore the subject in depth.

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Jeff Maurer's avatar

Because she's our tech reporter? Good point.

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Jay Moore's avatar

I’m thinking The Matrix, but the connection is at the crotch rather than the head.

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South Dakota Flag Pole's avatar

Centaur Porky-Pigging it. Disgusting

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Lucidamente's avatar

“Smartphones made it possible to photograph your junk without having an awkward exchange with the one hour photo person at Walgreens.”

Jeff, is there something you want to tell us?

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Edward Scizorhands's avatar

Now I want to know what's the latest birth year for understanding what "one hour photo" means. 1990? 1995?

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Noah Pardo-Friedman's avatar

I worked at Ritz Camera and One Hour Photo in my younger days. I saw some… very personal pictures.

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Edward Scizorhands's avatar

I heard that the photobooths would keep copies of the best things they saw. Did that happen at your workplace?

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Noah Pardo-Friedman's avatar

I’m ashamed to admit that yes, that definitely happened at least at my location.

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Lucidamente's avatar

Hadn’t these folks heard of polaroids?

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Worley's avatar

This gives me a horrible flashback: A young woman, lining up a selfie shot in a big mirror, with the care of Ansel Adams, holding the phone in one hand. Meanwhile, the other hand was doing various nasties with various orifices, and she was wound up like a pretzel to get the angle to work. I was awed at the diligence involved but have always wondered why she was bothering.

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WJ Hayes's avatar

"The internet did for porn what the printing press did for the bible."

Well, some of the earliest items published via the printing press was porn. Pretty much every form of mass communication developed is quickly adapted by the purveyors of porn (with the possible exception of radio). It is still argued VHS won out over Betamax because of the porn industry.

And yeah, I can see there is a type of synergy between wind farms and certain types of porn. So, why not.?

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Rationalista's avatar

“smite green energy projects that someone else is paying for”

Yeah, that someone was the taxpayer- have you seen how crazy fat the PTC and ITC credits were for solar and wind? Somehow these “inexpensive” windmills never seem to get built without tax credits and everywhere they get installed electricity prices rise.

Cancelling them after they were already permitted is shitty and illiberal, but taking away their “golden shower” tax strategy is totally fair. Live by the subsidy, die by the subsidy…

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Worley's avatar

They used to be, but people who are in a place to know say that now that the technology has matured, solar and wind are cheaper than coal without subsidies.

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Rationalista's avatar

I think they are not so much in a place to know, but more in a place that requires subsidies to get paid. They always use “levelized cost of energy” as a metric, but that assumes coal and wind are the same- they aren’t. One is dispatchable and one is not- they don’t provide the same value to the system. An infinite wind farm on a calm day provides zero value.

If they are cheap, why does killing subsidies make all investments stop? Look at the UK and German markets for wind if you don’t want the orange man taint- same issues over there.

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Mike Kidwell's avatar

You're not wrong at all - the moment you explain to guys that porn is involved, we really will move mountains (or in this case, leave mountains alone for once and harness the power of a star).

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Eric73's avatar

Trump is so solipsistic that he has no vision for anything which he won't live to see and potentially take credit for. His campaign slogan might as well have been "Trump 2020: If I'm Going to Die Soon, You're All Coming With Me".

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JP's avatar

In the middle of this very goofball article about AI porn is a footnote that shows genuine concern with getting the numbers right on deaths by coal pollution

Jeff Maurer is truly a renaissance man's renaissance man

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Chris's avatar

"The internet did for porn what the printing press did for the bible." great stuff Jeff

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Zivan Vasquez's avatar

Go all the way and add one of those shakey hand-powered flashlights to the next generation of Vibrating Fleshlights. The future is now!

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Sandy's avatar

Staying firmly ahead of the content ChatGPT is capable of generating.

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JorgeGeorge's avatar

Wow.

Sex sells.

Shocking.

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Cernunnos's avatar

Honestly coal-powered AI centaur porn is exactly the kind of steampunk future I expect from the current brain trust.

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Worley's avatar

> "Porn is one of the few kinds of content where people will put up with lousy content and still pay something to get access." -- Jupiter Research analyst Joe Laszlo

Also, it's spelled "nexus".

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M. Trosino's avatar

Thanks, Jeff, for what will likely be a day-long orgasm of laughter that even a double dose of Blue Chew couldn't enhance after the glow of the refractory period wears off and it's time for round two once a few of those choice, hard-to-unsee images fade.

As comedy porn goes, you can spank and wank with the best of 'em.

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