BREAKING: The U.S. military is now reportedly using high-energy laser weapons in the Strait of Hormuz to shoot down drones and incoming cruise missiles - with some systems operated using modified Xbox-style controllers. The New York Post reports the directed-energy systems are being deployed against Iranian threats at a fraction of the cost of conventional interceptor missiles. The controller technology itself is not new: U.S. laser systems have previously been demonstrated with gamepad-style controls designed to make them easier for soldiers to learn and operate. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally tested one of the systems during a June demonstration at White Sands Missile Range, where directed-energy weapons were used against aerial targets. The lasers are invisible to the naked eye and disable targets by concentrating energy on a small area until critical components overheat or fail. The confirmed deployment highlights the growing link between space and missile defense: U.S. satellites increasingly provide the warning and tracking data that helps terrestrial systems identify and engage incoming threats.

Tbh, why would a guy use a straw!?

Yeah an alien species that gets completely wrecked by the R's in strawberry.

I think one reason I don't believe claims that it's reasonably likely that AI "ends humanity" is that it must be 100x more likely at least that it kills, like, 1000 people first, and in that case there there would presumably be a major realignment.

Is it any shock to anyone that Derek Guy looks like a total freak when he’s snapchatting minors?

You want to know why I'm so angry about violent repeat offenders? This photo right here… this is why. I grew up in a country where childhood felt FREE. Not perfect, but FREE. We hopped on our bikes after breakfast and didn't come home until the streetlights flicked on. No phones. Just a bunch of kids pedaling through the neighborhood... cutting through yards, racing down hills, stopping at a friend's house because you saw their bike was in the grass out front and knew they were home so you knocked on the door and got hit with a water-balloon. That's the start of a life-long friendship. We went to public pools with a diving board and a high dive (they tore those down) We played soccer in the front yard with whoever happened to be outside... sometimes they were kids you knew from school, but often times they were kids you only knew because you saw them every summer riding past your house. It was normal for my parents to assume their kids would ALWAYS come home in one piece and my parents NEVER knew where we were growing up. That's the America I knew, and the one I grew up in. My kids are not growing up in that America. I don't get to just be the parent yelling, "Be home by dinner!" I have to be the parent running risk calculations in my head. Because all of us parents know the public spaces aren't safe anymore. There's no headline for "OH LOOK AT THAT! Another neighborhood kept their kids indoors today and gave them iPads!" But go ahead and talk to ANY parent you know… it’s happening. We all know it's happening. It's the slow, quiet theft of my kids' childhood... and your kids childhood. A childhood we ALL once had and one they will never know. It wrecks me just thinking about it... I hate it for them. So when I talk about repeat offenders... when I post the screenshots of their 50+ arrests every single day… Please understand something… It's because I want my kids, and your kids, to have what we had. I want the biggest concern at a park to be a skinned knee. Not a st*bbing. I want streets where the sound of bicycles and laughter is louder than that of sirens. This is why I won't shut up about it. I'm not asking for a perfect world. I'm asking for the radical idea that childhood should be safe enough to look like this picture again. And honestly, I just don’t think it’s all that radical of an ask…

Has anyone created a religion with a gambling element? I feel like that would be popular, given the popularity of both religion and gambling.

There's this haunting tale by Arthur C. Clarke where a Tibetan temple hires some computer engineers to set up a supercomputer to print out all the names of God. They believe that stating God's nine billion names is the entire purpose of the universe. And they've been working on it for millennia. But they reckon a supercomputer would be much faster performing this sacred duty. The story ends with the two engineers coming down the mountain and laughing about the silliness of it all. Then they notice that "overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out." I really love that story because it shows the hubris of technology and how we might unleash forces far more powerful than we understand through it.

Japanese are joining Americans in ridiculing Europeans for a lack of civilized amenities.