If you and I as humans understand it, is it actually the singularity?

Sometimes they do have good passages, which turn out to be plagiarized from much better novels by other people. Nora Roberts sued hell out of such an author some years ago, and donated the proceeds to some literary charity or other.

Agreed. Reading is much more fun than displaying your reading in order to impress people.

I'm slowly divesting parts of my huge used book collection because (a) my Kindle replaces so much of it and (b) after eye surgery I can't comfortably read regular sized paperbacks. I donate to several local Little Free Libraries in town as they need refilling.

E-ink is fantastic. I need a bigger type size in my old age, and it really helps.

I've seen this one before. A minor character in "The Diamond Age" (1996) by Neal Stephenson, got virused in his implant. He had pop up ads in Thai (which he did not understand) over half his visual field 24/7 until he committed suicide to get away from them.

A more realistic downside: this program which has given some vision to blind people. A very good thing as such, but IIRC at one point there was discussion about shutting it down. Which would put the blind patients back where they started. (I welcome correction, as my Google fu is not finding that detail today.)

Supplementary sails on a ship that also has engines = free fuel!

If the 'sticker' seems to be helping sales at all, and/or if it would cost anything to revert to the pre-sticker cover, you're probably out of luck.

Calibre also transfers the books to your Kindle for you if you plug the Kindle to your computer.

I also vote that you prioritize getting your eyes checked over "something comes up." In the last five years or so my middle-aged eyes have needed cataract surgery and one eye, terrifyingly suddenly, a detached retina repair.

(If part of your field of vision suddenly goes dark, do not hesitate and do not put it off -- see an eye doctor at once. And yes, this IS worth going to the ER if it's a weekend.)

I fully admit that I was oversimplifying. I don't think that detracts from my main points.

Yep. One of the main things we've learned over the last few decades of building bigger and bigger computers is that things that are hard for humans (Go and chess are good examples) can be very easy for computers.

The reverse is also true. Things that are trivially easy for humans (walking, hand eye coordination, understanding a sentence you've never heard before) are very hard for computers. Although some of that looks easier than it is because computer programmers subconsciously equate a computer with an adult human. Infancy and toddlerhood are a time of enormous, concentrated learning as the entry-level human practices skills like "making their arms work under control" and "new words 101."

Bob Von Neuman to the courtesy phone... Link

If humans were good enough at spaceflight to consider this project at ALL, we would have to be in a post-scarcity situation. Super new power sources plus easy access to solar system resources not on Earth.

Nothing like the round trip speed of even Age of Sail travel on Earth between different continents, no. But Earth and the colony, later colonies, could communicate at lightspeed and share data. If the colony system has enough resources, and the colony ships with a wide enough selection of human DNA, that's all that would be needed.

Mind you, I'd expect each system's human race to speciate. Maybe even on purpose.

I would say, as a longtime SF reader, that the purpose of the colony is an offsite backup of the human race and its culture in case anything happens to the Sun. And eventually both Earth and the colony can continue sending out new colonies ditto.

You also need to invent an artificial womb between steps 3 and 4.

For the overall plan, I too am skeptical. Murphy's Law goes double for spacecraft.

Native English speaker here, and I had an entire college course on Shakespeare. But I still prefer movie or tv performances of his plays, with the subtitles on. The plays were meant to be acted out, not read cold.

If you want to read his sonnets, which are fantastic, read them aloud.

Interestingly, this happened once and played out very differently. https://owlcation.com/humanities/Tongan-Teens-Marooned-on-a-Pacific-Island

Bray is definitely at the top of the field. I also like Grover Gardner and Susan Ericksen.

Considering the problems that AI currently has driving a car in two dimensions, I'm skeptical that flight AI is anywhere near as close as many people assume.

As noted in the science fiction of Lois Bujold, a clone of you would be your however-many-years-delayed identical twin. If you had a perfect clone and let it grow to adulthood, it would be its own person. Either transplanting your brain into it, or overwriting its memories with yours in some way, would murder the second person it had grown up to be.

Quest 2 owner and user. Some of the room scale apps where you move around vigorously "in" VR space are fantastic to use. Things like Beat Saber and Supernatural.
But the ones where your actual body sits or stands still while you "move" in VR are uncomfortable for me in two ways. One, massive motion sickness when the eyes and the inner ears have conflicting data. And two, being relatively still makes the headache and neck aches from a pound of electronics strapped to your face very obvious.

I have looked into those, especially the ones that sensibly include a place to put a battery at the back. Combines counter-weight and increased operating time. But I haven't decided yet if I like the content enough to invest more money in it.

I own a Quest 2, and I don't use it much simply because the front-heavy weight of the thing gets uncomfortable quickly. No matter how carefully I adjust the straps. For a 30 or 45 minute stint at Beat Saber, that isn't as noticeable because I'm moving around and putting out adrenaline. Just sitting still and doing something (Wander, Bigscreen, etc) gets physically unpleasant fast.

Insert your own 'Zuck as Mr. Data' joke here as an explanation of why Meta doesn't think this is a problem.

The Flynn Effect, as it's known, suggests very much the opposite.