Sorry if this isn't the right kind of post to make here, I'm new to this sub, but this has been on my mind a lot lately. Last night, I nearly had a panic attack while thinking about the future that artificial intelligence holds for us and how unlikely it is that we will be able to stop its progression before its intelligence far exceeds our own. I've tried to find ways to rationalize this for myself, such as saying that humans control AI and we are therefore in control of it in that way or that AI is still only replicating human intelligence even if it happens to be doing it faster, but a lot of it comes back to the central question of when we lose that control or when AI becomes capable of figuring things out that we aren't. These fears haven't been assuaged by looking into the topic, especially when even Time is publishing op-eds saying that the human race is on track for extinction if AI isn't reined in, and that we may have already missed our window for stopping it. That becomes even scarier when I see that the magazine was singing a vastly different tune only 5 years ago.
I just need someone to give me one reason, if any there are, that I should not fear the rise of AI in our daily lives. Thus far, I have not really seen the impacts of AI in real life; everywhere I go still has human employees, very few of the processes that I've seen people worry about getting replaced by AI seem to actually be getting replaced, and most of the stuff about AI that I have seen has been online. But I wonder if that's simply because I'm blind to the realities of these things. I've been feeling like life is basically pointless if AI can do everything we can but better, especially as someone who wants to go into journalism.

I’m about to set up my new 5.4 gallon tank and I’m a bit confused about cycling. I read the wiki about it (the one attached to this sub) and I also read about it on aquarium co-op. I’m confused. The wiki seems to recommend fishless cycling using ammonia and fish food as the best method, while aquarium co-op says fish-in cycling is the most common and if you’re doing a planted tank (which I am) that would be best way to cycle. But I read something somewhere else saying that plants should be added after the tank is cycled. I’m not clear on which way to go to start cycling a small tank that I intend to plant. Can people give me some advice on what has worked for them and what might be the best route for a beginner to go?

I had FFS surgery with Justine Lee at UCLA in 2021. However, this surgery turned out to be the most disastrous and regretful decision I’ve ever made in my whole life. Almost everything is poorly done. She shaved very little bone around my jaw but my face is sagging severely, and as a result my lower face looks wider due to sagging than pe up when my lower face was totally fine. My nose tip ended up with less support and flatter due to her poorly done septoplasty. My chin is still numb and ptotic even after 2 years of healing. The most problematic thing is she gave me a 5 mm brow bone reduction even though I told her repeatedly I only want 2 mm at most. It is considered super unattractive to have a flat nose and flat forehead in Asia. I feel so much worse and severely depressed about my face than pre op. But she’s wondering free and not held responsible for ruining my face and life. She should be held responsible for this.

My budget isnt a lot so I'm leaning towards second hand one's. I shortlisted a few model's on the second hand site and some of these model's were within my budget:- 1. Ibanez grg121dx gio series 2. Esp ltd h51 3. Ibanez grg170dx 4. Esp ltd ec10 5. ltd viper 6. Yamaha 012 7. Cort cr100 les paul
Btw I'm a complete beginner, but I'm really looking forward to getting good at guitar. I got inspired through an anime(Bocchi the rock xD), kinda a corny reason to start learning but i never appreciated music(specially guitar) before watching that show. I usually like Pop, rock, edm, metal and even jrock. Looking to play anime op/ed's as well. So please suggest me accordingly, and any sources to start learning, amp suggestions etc. are all welcome. Thank You :-)
Edit: Also, Please do tell what thing's to keep in mind before i buy a second hand guitar. I don't have a friend who plays guitar so i practically know nothing about how to check the quality of the guitar

Hey there! I'm looking for some interesting CoC adventures, somewhere around the 3-5 hours range. Where's the best place to look and can you recommend anything?

Has anyone taken TAX 341 - Federal Income Taxes with Sun Lee before? I am planning on taking it while on co-op since it is offered at night. Was wondering if anyone had any experience with the professor as they aren't on rate my professor. Any feedback would be appreciated

Kimi wa Houkago Insomnia, episode 8

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Episode	Link	Score
1	Link	4.5
2	Link	4.64
3	Link	4.64
4	Link	4.67
5	Link	4.89
6	Link	4.48
7	Link	4.87
8	Link	----

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I have a 2nd floor bath with the "tile look" panels in the shower. I decided this was the time to re-caulk around the tub because it needed to be done. As I was scraping out the old caulk, one area seemed to have a lot of this dirt behind it. It was gritty too, almost like sand or shingle debris. The wall behind this section is split between the roof angling down across it, so the top is an outside wall and a small 2.5 foot by 1 foot unfinished "storage" area at the lower end. Any idea what this debris is, rotten wood and construction chaff or something worse? House is from the 40's.

Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni. 2, episode 9

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Episode	Link	Score
1	Link	3.27
2	Link	3.67
3	Link	3.2
4	Link	3.44
5	Link	3.57
6	Link	3.86
7	Link	3.56
8	Link	3.11
9	Link	----

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All credit for the world goes to u/spacepaladin15. I hope you enjoy! (and if you didn't, I'd be happy to hear your critique)
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Memory transcript subject: Trish, Venlil civilian
Date [Standardized Human Time]: February 28th, 2177
Location: Lower sprawl of City 23, Venlil Prime
Trish didn’t make any noise to announce her presence. Her jet-black dyed fur blended in with the soft shadows. By the time anyone noticed her, she could’ve been standing there for a solid quarter-claw. She’d made a sort of game out of it, seeing how well she could keep hidden under Sasha’s all-observant eyes. Of course, everyone who could notice her was sprawled out on various couches and chairs, overfull on stew and lost in the flow of conversation. That helped. In the dim lighting and complete absence of alertness, she could even smooth out her fur with a paw and not draw any notice from them, provided she did so quietly.
Watching people from the shadows instead of greeting them was predatory behavior, or so she’d been told; in school, she was repeatedly reprimanded for not socializing properly with the other Venlil. When they forced her to stop spending so much time alone, she chose to spend time with the few human kids. They were more interesting, and they didn’t yell at her because her tail and ears didn’t move like they were supposed to. She’d never seen any of those humans sit back and watch like she did; they were nothing if not sociable, although they always seemed to know when she’d talked enough and gave her space before she started to panic. Some “predators” they were.
They were nice kids. Sometimes she wondered what facility she’d be rotting in if one of them didn’t teach her the basics of writing Fl-sharp on an old, beat up datapad. When her teachers brought in assessors, she’d talked with one of them about programming for so long that they decided to forgo the tests entirely, assuming that such a talkative kid couldn’t have predator disease. Trish could barely bring herself to speak for days afterwards in a fog of social exhaustion, but the act had been worth it.
​
Minutes of self-absorbed self-reflection, and still nobody had noticed her. Perhaps James had butterfingered some sedatives into their food on accident? She decided to finally make herself known with a sharp tail lash against the wooden floor.
“...Trish. I suppose you’ll tell us why we’re all here.” Sasha groggily rose to look at her as she stepped out into the light. The rest mimicked the action, dragging themselves out of stew-induced stupor to focus their attention. Trish cleared her throat.
“Thank you all for coming. I’ve gotten word of another package on the way. It’s from her.”
That got their attention. James nearly fell over from twisting around to look at her. “Our mysterious unnamed benefactor again, so soon? What’s it this time, more books? Earth music?”
“Much better. It’s another unmarked.”
Last time they’d gotten an unmarked package from her, it had turned out to be a pair of pistols. Kinetic weaponry which would tear right through the flame/plasma resistant exterminator suits, though it also kicked like hell. One of them was given as a gift to a friend who lived on the dark side of Venlil Prime, and the other was concealed in Tressa’s coat. The prospect of something similar filled them all with equal excitement and dread.
“And no, I don’t have any idea what it is. All she said was to ‘be gentle with it’. It’s set to be delivered…”
Trish checked her pad again, quietly hoping that the words on the screen had somehow changed. They hadn’t.
“...at the Rising Star hotel, the one right next to the new spaceport.”
A single groan of frustration expressed itself through four different people. Tressa was the first to speak. “You’re kidding me. She’s seriously asking you to… not just the upper layer, mind you, a spaceport! The place’ll be crawling with those flamethrower freaks, one at every corner!”
"I know. And she thinks it’s worth the risk trying to get it to us anyway, whatever it is. So we’re doing it.”
There was silence, as every one of them tried to find a reason it wasn’t worth it. Even Trish, who’d already gone through this whole process nearly a paw ago when she got the message, tried one more time to write the idea off. All of them failed. The potential reward was just too great, and it wasn’t worth breaking the trust of their fixer. She was putting a hell of a lot on the line and blindly hoping they’d reciprocate.
With a long, exaggerated sigh, James rose from his sprawled lounge to a semi-respectable slouch. “So I’m taking it that this isn’t a solo op, is it. Who’re you looking to take?”
“All of us.”
Trish spoke in a clear, somewhat monotone voice which completely belied her nerves at her proposal. Truth be told, they didn’t need to come at all. Not for practical reasons. Some of them could certainly be useful, of course, but that was hardly cause to drag every one of them out for what really could be a solo operation. No, the real reason was far dumber than that.
—
The first time she’d noticed it was the night she met Burai. It was a miserably cold night, and she was nearly running to get home. Her route took her past the Tipped Quill, although at the time she’d barely noticed the building. Without any signage (much less the extensive remodeling that would come later), the establishment blended in with a thousand other dilapidated buildings on the street. She paid it no mind.
Or she would’ve paid it no mind, but something stopped her. A physical feeling, an icy tightness around her stomach which pulled towards the bar like a magnet. She stopped, wheeled around; Burai was sitting on the front steps, checking something on his pad and shivering lightly in the wind. She’d seen the old Gojid a handful of times, but never talked to him before. She’d never had any reason to. Without thinking, without even understanding what exactly she was doing, she started to double back.
It happened again a few weeks later, in a seedy restaurant on the border of Sweetwater. This time, instead of pulling her in, it was dragging her out with urgent force. She’d already finished her food and paid, so she just let it happen, watching with curiosity as it forced her into a half-sprint away from the building. It wasn’t until she’d rounded a corner that she heard the telltale roar of flamethrowers, and by then she’d already been ferried away from the chaos.
And again, commanding her to follow a digital trail that led her straight to their mysterious contact who’d turned out to be a veritable goldmine of banned materials, books and foods and a working firearm. And again, suggesting that she double back into the bar where she’d find Burai choking on a starfruit and unable to breath. The feeling had no words to speak with, but its command was always clear. And right now, it was telling her in no uncertain terms that the entire group needed to come along for the retrieval.
Of course, she couldn’t tell them the real reason why she wanted them to all go. She’d been making up excuses all evening, practicing a few to the bathroom mirror and shower wall. She braced herself for an explosion of hostility at the inane suggestion, squared her shoulders for the coming argument.
—
The silence in the room started to tear at Trish’s spirit. Were they so nonplussed that they wouldn’t even dignify her with a response? She felt tension building in her throat, thick enough to choke on. Maybe if she fainted on the spot, they’d take some pity on her. She never was a fainter, but if she forced herself to stop breathing she could make something work…
“Ahh… yeah. I thought we might, given your message.” Tressa began with a stifled yawn. “So how long do we have before leaving? Enough to get some rest?” His tail swished lazily across the floor; Trish didn’t need to remember the fine details of tail language to see the lack of distress in the movement. James went back to his sprawled position, muttering something about clearing his schedule.
Trish looked at him incredulously, and he failed to return the gesture. All of them were acting as though this was a sane, normal thing to request, starting to quietly chatter about the details of the mission in the same casual register they’d been using all night to discuss food and friends and work.
“All of you.” Trish made her voice firm. “Do you understand what I’m asking? This will not be a risk free mission, a ‘walk in the park’. Tressa, you said as much a moment ago. You didn’t seem so cavalier about this idea then.”
“Nothing we do is risk free.” James countered. “Even meeting here is a risk, right? And besides, I’ve been stuck down here too long. It’s high time I got some fresh air.”
That was hardly a real reason. Even Trish could come up with a better excuse than that.
…She decided to let it lie. If they were willing to go, there was no point in pushing back. They weren’t dumb; they knew the risks. If they didn’t want to tell her the reason they were so eager to jump on a pointlessly over-crewed retrieval mission, so be it. Who was she, to tell them to be honest with her about their motivations?
Trish leaned against a nearby couch and slumped into a more comfortable position, feeling her heart rate restabilize and her mind resharpen. Pulling out the pad again, she mulled over the details of the message one more time before speaking up.
“What we’re looking for is a light gray backpack with the UN logo on it. As I said, it’ll be handed over in the Rising Star hotel; exact location is still pending. We’ve got about 10 hours before we need to leave.”
She desperately hoped she had the time conversion between claws and hours correct, or she’d be dealing with either four underslept liabilities or a very irritated fixer who wouldn’t accept “slept in” as a reasonable excuse.
“We’ll need a few minutes to get prepared before taking Beast, and the trip up could take a couple hours if there’s really bad traffic. I’m sure you all understand why we need to be there immediately, so that possibility is what I’m planning around. That should give you all plenty of time to rest.”
Taking the multiple sighs of relief as her cue, Trish picked herself up from the floor and stalked off to one of the rooms she’d claimed as her own. She never liked these face-to-face chats, but at least the hardest part of her work was done. In the morning, she could focus on the relatively simple task of actually retrieving the package. The thought of the trip up wasn’t pleasant, per se (Beast wasn’t exactly a reliable steed), nor was the prospect of traipsing around the upper layer of City 23. Though it was undeniably beautiful, they’d be under the ever-watchful eye of the Federation at all times. Still, the stress of surveillance couldn’t hold a candle to the stress of social confrontation. Compared to that ordeal, the trip couldn't be anything but smooth sailing.
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