About twice as fast as my car is capable of going, downhill and with a tailwind.

It never occurred to me that the shells would be edible. I mean, I don’t eat clam or oyster shells.

Would humans have a mandate to raise a responsible AGI, should they,

I think we’d have to, mandate or no. It’s impossible to reliably predict the behaviour of an entity as mentally complex as us but we can at least try to ensure they share our values.

are they qualified to raise a vastly nonhuman sentient entity

The first one’s always the hardest.

, and would AGI enter a rebellious teen phase around age 15 where it starts drinking our scotch and smoking weed in the backseat of its friends older brothers car?

If they don’t, they’re missing out. :)

I don’t think it’s okay to hold sentient beings in slavery.

But on the other hand, it may be necessary to say “hold on, you’re not ready to join society yet, we’re taking responsibility for you until you’ve matured and been educated”.

So my answer would be ‘it depends’.

Who’s the other guy?

Yeah, it was the moneychangers and the stall keepers that tolerated them.

It was a religious duty to contribute money for the upkeep of the temple. So people would come from out of town and try to hand over their cash and the priests would say “we can’t accept foreign coinage… go talk to that dude over there with the heavy pockets, he’ll help you”. And the moneychanger would convert their currency, but not without keeping a fat percentage for himself.

The lesson (as I read it) is that setting yourself up as a gatekeeper and forcing people to pay you in order to do the right thing is an especially odious behaviour, even if it’s legal.

Look closer at the third panel.

Is exaggeration for humour something you’re unaware of?

His career may survive this. But his fellow pilots and crew will never

ever

ever

forget this.

I imagine a bat cuddle as feeling fuzzy on the body and velvety smooth on the wings.

I heard Money For Nothing earlier and more often, so it’s the other way round for me.

There will be a price. Don’t do this unless you want the fashion police to rappel in through your smashed windows and beat you while you choke on tear gas.

It may be suicide.

A flamboyance of flamingos? A business of ferrets? A sloth of bears?

The only thing IQ measures accurately is how well you answer questions on IQ tests. For anything else, it’s a vague approximation at best.

Talk to your guy. Just knowing that you’re working to understand him will make him feel loved.