#well technically data and nick aren’t robots

[captainpricespuppyboyfriend]

If I had a nickel for everytime an f/o of mine had yellow eyes and was a robot I would have two nickels

Which isn’t a lot but interesting it happened twice

Pro.shippers/com.shippers DNI please

[game-fixer]

Game Fixes Episode 1: Mega Man X7

I'm gonna start my tenure with one of the most notorious games in all of Mega Man, not just the X series. I have several ideas that can make the game feel more in line with characters and feel less forced.

Of course this will come with general polish in many aspects including a redone script and voice work. No disrespect towards any actors/actresses in the games, of course, but the presentation needs some serious work. Anyway, let's start with the first change

Axl

No, I'm not gonna get rid of him. I think he's a welcome addition to the cast and, if worked right, could be made to be even more beloved in the game he debuted in, despite being the Silver the Hedgehog of the X series.

First idea would be an overhaul in his move set. I say ditch the lame Copy Shot thing for his charge. Also have him function more like Bass from Mega Man and Bass/Mega Man 10, where he stands in place and you aim manually from the start. In 3D, (because I'm not getting rid of 3D) this could even include a first person aim function so you can be more precise. Also a light will shine to show your path so you're not relying on blind fire. Now, I'm thinking he could still charge a shot. What would he shoot? Well you could target multiple enemies at a time, release, and shoot a spread shot of small homing missiles at enemies or even Mavericks which can take a lot of these shots, of course. This feels more like a proper special ability and something that requires a meter for. So what do we do with that Copy Ability that makes him special?

Bio Metal

Yep, the special little MacGuffins from the ZX series. The very same. I'm thinking Axl would be the first Reploid to be made with an early version of Bio Metal, allowing him to change forms at will. This would be his version of X's Weapon Systems. Axl would gain new armor and abilities from the Mavericks he fights to boost his arsenal. A regular shot and a special shot. For example, with Ride Boarski, you'd shoot his regular weapon, but his Special move could be a Tackling Dash that would plow through enemies until the Meter runs out. Flame Hyenard could give a flamethrower for the main shot and his special could give you a clone that shoots for a few seconds. Tornado Tonion could give his leaf shot as a main, and his special lets you throw a tornado and damage enemies in a wide pattern. That sort of thing. The Mavericks aren't the only ones you're getting Bio Metal data from, though. Before I talk about that, let's bring up the main boy himself.

X

I'm thinking X would still be unlockable just like normal, but you'd play as him through an intro stage to feel the power you need to have back. Is he moping about violence and sitting on the couch like a lump like before? Yes and no. X, after causing a serious accident and putting innocent lives in danger, requests to be taken out of active duty until he can sort himself out, but he doesn't want to stop helping. Seeing how lousy X treated our new friend in the real story gave me an idea. Make X train Axl as his superior officer! Axl could be a trainee Hunter, still dealing with his checkered past with Red Alert and realizing they were no better than murderers, thus joining the Maverick Hunters to pay his dues to himself and prove to himself he isn't evil. X, seeing some of his own plight in his Rookie apprentice, starts taking a liking to Axl's ideals, despite his hot-headed, quick-to-the-trigger tactics and lack of professionalism. They butt heads through the intercom, with X saying this needs to be done by the book, but Axl wanting to show how he can take on any challenge no sweat and all that. X would be the Navigator for Axl, though Alia would aid as well.

Unlocking X

While saving Reploids will still be a thing, X will be unlocked halfway through the game. The whole thing would be integrated into the story. Axl defeats 3 or 4 Mavericks. All the while, X is still dealing with his fear of becoming a Maverick, fearing all he lost and hating his carelessness. Before your 4th fight, X will start getting more hostile and snappy at Axl, making Alia worried for X, since she's never seen him so worked up at himself. Axl begins to suspect X going Maverick to himself (he'd think "H-he isn't going...nah, of course not. Commander X is too strong for that...but...) Once the 4th stage is complete we get a midstage, like in Mega Man 7 or 8. A Mechanaloid is causing havoc in the city and Axl offers to go help. However, X sees that it's the same one that he caused the accident with and this sends him spiraling into anger.

"It's still out there?! After all I did, it wasn't enough?!? Damn it!!"

"Commander! Let me go take it out! Those people are in danger!"

"Why? So you can cause more damage with your recklessness?! You want to be a Maverick Hunter? Act like one and grow up!"

"...that's it... I'm not taking this from an old man that's crying about one little mistake he made!"

"...tch...you can't go anyway...you have your mission... just... stand down for now, kid."

"Commander X, what are you-?"

"You're right, Axl. I've been stewing about this for too long. This guy's mine. I have to prove this to myself."

That's how I think the scene would go. You go in as X and fight the Mechanaloid after a short stage rescuing plenty of civilians along the way. Alia and Axl are watching the events and communicating with X as well. X wins the battle, but suddenly his Buster goes off out of nowhere again, nearly destroying something that would put civilians in harms way. They are saved in the nick of time by Axl, who ports in anyway to try to help. X starts to doubt himself again, but Axl could see that it was something out of his control. The two go back to Hunter Base to run diagnostics and they find a bug in X's Buster systems, a lesser string of the Sigma Virus. X gets repaired after seeing this virus as a warning that Sigma might be back. This snaps him out of it and this gets him to go out and fight. You can now choose to go out as Axl, X, or as a team. If you go solo, your shots will be stronger, but without the backup, you'll be left with less defense.

Zero?

Nope, I'm not forgetting our favorite robot swordsman. At all. He will not make a physical appearance at all in the game. Why? Well...the Mega Man Zero series is still a thing. While I like the idea that Zero's ending in X6 being at the very end of the series, I'm trying to keep a stronger set of continuity here. Zero would still be in stasis, though he could communicate with X, since I'm thinking this could be a precursor to Cyber Elves, having Zero be something like a separate AI that can still communicate. As for playing as him? Oh he's still available...as a Bio Metal! I'm thinking after your first Maverick stage, a Zero spirit will appear in a level (kinda like the X Hunters in X2 but less stupid). Go find it, and Axl will be challenged to a fight against Zero, or at least a Reploid being controlled by his spirit. Before Axl finishes it off, X tells him to stand down, and Zero comes back to talk with X. The Spirit also leaves behind the Z-Saber, and thus infusing Axl with Zero's abilities, thus creating a prototype of the Z-Type Bio Metal from ZX.

Red Alert

So, get this. What if Sigma really WAS technically gone forever? I mean the bodies are all used up. The Spirit lives on, yes, but ol' Siggy ran out of his own bodies. Humor me here. What if Red Alert became the new villain faction full time? What if Red became the new face of Sigma? We'll call it...Red Doom or something. Sigma basically integrated himself into Red's systems and basically became part of his robotic code as thoughhe was always Sigma. This could also explain more why Axl needed to leave Red Alert, but it also shows how much in denial he was about Red going Maverick, since Red taught Axl everything he knows.

Script Changes?

I made my case about where the plot should go, but lemme try to work out personalities I think everyone could get down with in general.

Axl is the cocky, hot-blooded new kid who wants to prove himself to be better than where he came from. No petulant, childish talking or stupidity here. He'd be more like Sonic the Hedgehog but still acting just a little green. Still taking things just seriously enough for his quips to be endearing.

X takes his role as a CO very seriously. He's to the point and ensures that Axl is taught the way a situation must be handled. He hates how lax Axl is during his missions and tries to get him to focus. In combat, X is a no nonsense fighter who is ready to bring in the Mavericks, by force if need be. He doesn't try to get them to go peacefully considering his experience. (in fact he'll say once "I guess I can't expect you to come quietly?") No more "Why must Reploids fight each other" and blah blah blah. We all heard this. While he hates the fight, he knows at this point that the world needs a warrior, sort of like Gohan if that helps.

Zero is supportive of X and does his best to help keep his mind out of darkness. He'll even say "You were willing to stand by my side when I feared going Maverick, so I'll be here to do the same."

Red is a lot more cold at the start, outright insulting Axl, saying that he's no more than a worthless prototype, and the next generation of Reploids will be far superior to Axl's faulty design, or taunting X saying "How the mighty hath fallen. How does it feel, X? How does it feel to have to watch as the world crumbles to nothing through the eyes of your good for nothing amateur all because you couldn't keep a tab on your trigger finger?" Red will also be a boss at the end of Axl's first stage before the Maverick fights, and you're meant to lose it to show how powerful he is. You can see shreds of Sigma in there, but he is woven into Red's thoughts and personality in a way that makes Sigma and Red seem equal in the body, though a body can still be created (basically Red Sigma will be put in a more "Sigma appropriate" body with the bald head and big ass chin. Basically Sigma takes Red completely in a way. They're both in control, like their souls combined if that makes sense.

Everyone else is how they should be. Alia, for example is more like how she was in X8.

These are just a few changes that would make Mega Man X7 a much more plot centered game that knows how to work with it's characters. Other fixes like making it faster, tweaking the weapons, making Dr. Light stay as an AI, all that feels superfluous, because a lot of that just makes sense to change. Same with presentation, but with a new script, new lines are inevitable, so duh.

Stay tuned for more Game Fixes! If you want to request a game, lemme know!

[b34utiful-d1s4st3r-blog]

Artificial Intelligence Philosophy – AI and Machine Learning

A student will gain an awareness, and discover to judge and also to produce arguments for and against major philosophical problems concerning AI, robotics as well as their relations to human cognition and behavior. A different type of effort at fixing AIs ethics issue is the proliferation of crowdsourced ethics projects, which have the commendable objective of a far more democratic method of science.

  To illustrate DJ Patils Code of Ethics for Data Science, which invites the information-science community to lead ideas but doesn't develop in the decades of labor already made by philosophers, historians and sociologists of science. Then there's MITs Moral Machine project, which asks the general public to election on questions for example whether a self-driving vehicle with brake failure must go beyond five destitute people instead of one female physician.

  Philosophers call these trolley problems and also have printed a large number of books and papers around the subject in the last half-century. Evaluating the views of professional AI philosophers with individuals of everyone could be eye-opening, as experimental philosophy has frequently proven, but merely ignoring professionals and going for an election rather is irresponsible. We live at a time in which the fundamental knowledge of what it really way to be human is altering. Social networking platforms still redefine our feeling of place and time.

  We grapple using these changes once we attempt to define ourselves and our social relationships within an era of constant connectivity. A couple of decades ago, if a person claimed to possess supporters you’d assume they were beginning a cult. Now it’s an expression that 12 year olds use once they discuss Instagram and Twitter. Customers aren't the only ones who're increasingly more demanding, employees too. They would like to choose their professional future as well as their development.

  That's the reason new talent management methodologies have started to emerge, as we will have below. Many counter-arguments happen to be made against unpredicted intelligence explosions, focused largely on technical limitations and logic. For instance, sci-fi author Ramez Naam stated within an essay for H+ magazine that a super intelligent mind would want some time and sources to invent humanity-destroying technologies it would need to have fun playing the human economy to acquire what it really needed (for instance, building faster chips requires not only new designs but complicated and costly nick fabrication foundries to construct them.)The determination that the system, just like an atom of polonium218, is or isn't a closed system, obviously, poses difficult epistemic problems, that are compounded within the situation of people, precisely since they're vastly more complicated causal systems.

  Furthermore, probabilistic systems need to be distinguished from (what exactly are known as) chaotic systems, that are deterministic systems with acute sensitivity to initial conditions, in which the smallest switch to individuals conditions can result in formerly unpredicted effects. A small improvement in thousands and thousands of lines of code controlling an area probe, for instance, composed of the appearance of just one wrong character, just one misplaced comma, caused Mariner 1, the very first US interplanetary spacecraft, to veer off target after which need to be destroyed. A minimum of some versions of artificial intelligence are attempts not just to model human intelligence, but to create computers and robots that exhibit it: which have ideas, use language, as well as have freedom.  Performs this seem sensible?  What can it show us about human thinking and awareness?  Join John and Ken because they identify the philosophical issues elevated by artificial intelligence. However the nerd-sighted geniuses in our day result in the same mistake. Should you ask a coder what ought to be done to make certain AI does no evil, you are prone to get 1 of 2 solutions, neither being reassuring. Answer No. 1: It is not my problem. I simply construct it, as exemplified lately with a Harvard computer researcher who stated, I’m just an engineer when requested the way a predictive policing tool he developed might be misused. Answer No. 2: Believe me. I’m smart enough to have it right. AI researchers really are a smart bunch, but there is a terrible history of staying away from ethical blunders.

  A few of the better-known goof-ups include Google images tagging black people as gorillas, chat bots that become Nazis and racist soap dispensers. The effects can be more serious when biased algorithms are responsible for deciding who ought to be approved for any financial loan, who to employ or admit to college or if to kill a suspect inside a police chase. I can tell how that's already happening. We have pretty efficient satnav systems, which generally take us right places.

  Those who have developed with this type of system have grown to be incredibly dependent on navigation by machine. In the event that begins to fail at any time, Id imagine some those who have lately passed their test as motorists would a very find it difficult to use road signs, or memorized routes, or perhaps a conventional map as a means of having in one spot to another.  Another recent article within the New You are able to Occasions claimed that academics happen to be asleep in the wheel, departing policy makers who're battling to learn how to regulate AI subject to industry lobbyists.

  The content trigger a Twitter storm of replies from philosophers, historians and sociologists of science, angry their decades of underfunded jobs are again being overlooked and erased. Such as the Who’s lower in Whoville, they cried in fear, we’re here! We're here! We're here! We're here!

  If policy makers and funding sources listen carefully to individuals’ voices, there are answers on offer. The content concludes that people urgently require an academic institute centered on algorithmic accountability. On Twitter, the articles author, Cathy ONeil, was adamant, there must be several more tenure lines dedicated to it. Individuals both seem like solid ideas. Objection II: A minimum of it might be figured that since current computers (objective evidence suggests) do lack feelings until Data 2.  Does arrive (when) we're titled, given computers' insufficient feelings, to deny the low-level and piecemeal high-level intelligent behavior of computers bespeak genuine subjectivity or intelligence. AI lent many concepts without delivering thanks, like ontology, theory of mind, agent based architecture, object oriented design, archetypes and many more. Algorithms tracking our each step and key stroke expose us to dangers more dangerous than impulsively buying anti-wrinkle cream. More and more polarized and radicalized political movements, leaked health data and also the manipulation of elections using harvested Facebook profiles are some of the documented connection between the mass deployments of AI. Something as apparently innocent as discussing your jogging routes online can reveal military secrets.

  These cases are simply the beginning. Even our beloved Canadian Tire cash is being repurposed like a surveillance tool for any machine-learning team. Singer didn't think about a. I. s, but his argument shows that the escalator of reason leads societies to greater benevolence no matter species origin. A. I. s will need to strike the escalator of reason must have, simply because they will have to bargain for goods inside a human-dominated economy and they'll face human potential to deal with inappropriate behavior.

  The philosopher John Smart argues, if morality and immunity are developmental processes, when they arise inevitably in most intelligent collectives as a kind of positive-sum game, they have to also grow in pressure and extent as each civilizations computational capacity grows.

[ncmagroup]

BY NICK GIBSON

Loved by some and hated by others, cold calling is one of the best ways to find new customers and clients for your business. Equal parts terrifying and exciting, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of closing a lucrative sale after cold calling someone.

With online marketing becoming the default choice for most businesses looking to rapidly grow their customer base, cold calling has taken a backseat over the last 10 years. However, it remains a hugely profitable form of marketing when done right.

In this blog post, you’ll learn 10 tips and tricks to increase your cold calling success rate and drive new business over the phone. From research tips to tricks for getting the right people on the phone, read on to become a cold calling master.

Have you never cold-called someone before? Get over your fear of calling prospects over the phone and learn how to get past gatekeepers with our Mastering Sales Cold Calling course.

Know who you’re calling

Without the right data, even the most talented cold caller will fail to get the results they want. Knowing who you’re calling is the key to crafting a sales pitch that gets the right reaction from your prospect.

Instead of just researching someone’s name and position, study the company – and their role within the company – to learn more about what their job involves and the key issues they face within their company.

One of the best ways to gather information about a prospect is through scraping the Google search results. With a basic scraper, you can find social media profiles, forum posts and other information from your prospects with ease.

Learn how to scrape Google and other search engines for information on prospects in our Web Scraping for Sales and Growth Hackers course. You’ll be surprised at the volume of information you can find with a basic scraper and good research skills.

Have a plan, not a script

The old rules of cold calling claimed that success or failure was often dictated by the quality of your script. While scripts can make amateur cold callers competent, they’ll often make you sound robotic and uninteresting for some prospects.

Instead of depending on a script, create a framework for your calls that gives you a combination of structure and freedom. Some calls require spontaneous thinking in order to overcome objections – something a script often doesn’t provide.

Don’t have a script – have a plan. Map out your cold calls and allow yourself to move off-topic, as long as you eventually move back. A script that’s too strict will often fail because it gives you too little wiggle room to respond to a prospect’s questions.

Don’t be afraid of rejection

You’ll be rejected a lot as a cold caller, even if your offer is fantastic. Not everyone is going to want to do business with you, and being rejected is something you’ll simply get used to dealing with.

Don’t let rejection convince you that your idea isn’t worthwhile – even the best deal is turned down by some people. Instead, let rejection teach you that in order to sell your product, you might need to refine your technique over time.

Did you know it’s possible to use rejection to your advantage? When you’re rejected by a prospect, don’t just hang up the phone – ask them why they said no. By polling your failed sales calls, you’ll learn a lot about what makes people turn you down.

Need help surveying your prospects and customers? Learn how to get answers from your customers and sales leads that you can use to optimize your sales funnel in our course, How to Interview Your Customers and Get Useful Feedback.

Stand up while you call

Don’t let the fact that no one can see you over the phone let your presentation and posture slip. People can hear confidence, and when you’re slouched over a chair in your office, it has a massively detrimental effect on your voice and enthusiasm.

If you have an important call to make, get up from your chair and stand up straight at your desk. In addition to giving you additional energy, a straight back, and strict posture makes your voice clearer and more persuasive for prospects.

This might sound like a silly psychological gimmick, but it has a serious effect on the way you sound over the phone. Think about the type of people you’re influenced by and emulate their body language, tone of voice and phrasing when you make calls.

Do you want more simple but effective cold calling tips? Learn how to sound more professional, persuasive and influential over the phone using the practical tips and tricks in our Cold Calling: A New Approach course.

Know their objections

Very few customers will say “yes” to your offer right away. On almost every call you make, you’ll encounter several objections from customers. Often, these are attempts to learn more about your business rather than attempts to rebuff your approach.

The key to overcoming objections is knowing what they’ll be and having an answer ready in advance. Just like you’d plan for debate by learning the arguments your opponent will make, you can prepare for a cold call by learning their objections.

Every objection can be turned around into an opportunity. “It’s too expensive” can be turned into a statement about your quality. “We already have someone for that” can be turned around by explaining what you could do to improve their results.

With the right amount of preparation, every objection is an opportunity to show the prospect that you’re not like another cold caller. It’s an opportunity to continue your conversation and reinforce the value that you have to offer their business.

This is one of the most effective principles of persuasion: turning objections into key opportunities. Learn more about overcoming objections and using persuasion tricks to get the results you want in our Sales and Persuasion Skills for Startups course.

Get used to hearing “no”

In the world of sales, “no” doesn’t always mean that you think it does. Many of your prospects will answer with “no” as soon as they identify you as a salesperson, often with a speed that’s more reminiscent of a reflex than a reasoned answer.

Don’t worry – just because a prospect says “no” initially, it doesn’t mean they won’t say “yes” at the end of your call. Treat “no” as an invitation to ask questions in order to get more information, not as a prompt to apologize and end your phone call.

Some prospects might be interested in the product or service you have to offer but reject it out of hand. Instead of giving up, use the opportunity to press them for the reason they said no, and then use your cold calling plan to overcome the objection.

Words like “no” can be intimidating and scary for novice cold callers, but pros see them for what they are: opportunities. Learn how to use “no” as an opportunity to learn more about prospects in our Break Down Barriers to Make the Sale course.

Learn how to talk to gatekeepers

If you’re in business-to-business (B2B) sales, most of your calls will end up being answered by receptionists and administrative assistants. These people are called “gatekeepers” in the sales world – people that stand at the gate to your prospects.

Gatekeepers can seem intimidating – their default response is almost always “we aren’t interested – and impossible to bypass. Despite their immediate rejections, they’re humans like anyone else and respond to the same psychological tactics.

One of the best ways to get around gatekeepers is to pose as someone in search of information. When your call is answered, act as if you aren’t sure who you should ask for, and request them to put you through to the department you’re seeking.

This trick works because it reverses the power dynamic of the sales call: they are used to being pushed for a specific person, and someone asking them for help is a break from the stereotypical pushy salesperson.

Do you want more tactics for getting past gatekeepers? Learn the most effective strategies for getting around personal assistants, receptionists and more with our Mastering Sales Cold Calling course.

Know your product well

Some of your prospects will become customers because of your pricing. Others will become customers because of your persuasive sales pitch. Others will want to know more about your product’s technical specifications before they say “yes” and buy it.

Knowing your product isn’t necessary for all sales calls, but the most valuable sales are often made by prospects who need to know your product’s key technical details before committing.

This is particularly true if you sell a technical product or service – business process consulting or IT infrastructure, for example – that might not fit in with a company’s existing needs. In this case, knowing technical data can help you close the deal.

Instead of focusing purely on mastering sales techniques and overcoming objections from prospects, spend some of your time learning the main technical characteristics of your product and how these are of value for your customers.

Have a special offer ready

Everyone loves getting a deal. There’s nothing better than receiving a discount on a product or service that’s valuable to your business, especially if it feels like a special exclusive offer that most customers don’t have access to.

One of the best ways to close deals with prospects that are on the fence about using your product is by offering a special bonus or discount. Often, it’s the exclusivity of the discount that swings the deal in your favor instead of the discount itself.

Prepare two or three different special offers – from free samples to discounts – that you can use to overcome indecisive prospects. A five percent discount is often all it takes to bring an otherwise uninterested prospects into your roster of customers.

Track your sales results

By analyzing your sales results and learning which techniques work and which don’t work, you’ll be able to improve your success rate over time. Track all of your calls as you complete them to build an archive of data that you can study later.

Factors like the time of day you made a call, the size of the company, the person you spoke to and the script you used all make a difference, and being able to see which combination of variables works most effectively will help you optimize your pitch.

Keeping a record of your sales is easiest with a CRM application like Salesforce.com or Zoho CRM. You can also track calls and success rates using Microsoft Excel and a basic pivot table that contains your key sales variables.

Learn how to track and manage data in Salesforce with our Salesforce List View for Beginners course. If you prefer to track your calls in Excel, learn how to view your results in a pivot table with our Microsoft Excel Pivot Tables for Businesscourse.

Are you ready to start cold calling?

Cold calling can seem scary at first, but once you overcome your fear of rejection and start viewing objections and questions as opportunities instead of barriers, it will quickly become your favorite way to acquire new customers and clients.

    Go to our website:   www.ncmalliance.com

Cold Calling: 10 Tips and Tricks to Increase Your Success Rate BY NICK GIBSON Loved by some and hated by others, cold calling is one of the best ways to find new customers and clients for your business.

[viralhottopics]

Looking at ‘Parks and Recreation’ predictions for 2017: What they got right and wrong

Image: Colleen Hayes/NBC-TV/REX/Shutterstock

It’s been more than two years since the last Parks and Recreation episode aired, but thanks to Netflix, the show is still as beloved as ever. If you believe hard enough, you can trick yourself into thinking the show is never over.

And thanks to Netflix, we were recently were engaging in our 40th watch-through of this great show (it’s kind of always just on loop) when we remembered something the last season of the show was set in 2017.

For the entirety of Parks and Rec prior to the last season, the show took place concurrently with the present reality. However, in a bold twist, the very last episode of Season 6 ended with a fast-forward three years into not only Leslie and crew’s future, but our collective future as well.

SEE ALSO: Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson won’t half-ass their new crafting competition show. They’ll whole-ass it.

Parks and Rec made a lot of bold predictions about what 2017 would be like. Some of them seemed decently reasonable, and others not so much. But now that it’s actually 2017, it’s time to reflect.

What did Parks and Rec get right and wrong about 2017?

WRONG: We would all be carrying around completely clear phones and tablets with holographic displays.

Image: parks and recreation/nbc

In the 2017 of Pawnee, Indiana, huge tech company Gryzzl rules our lives. While it’s true that there are many huge tech companies that have sway over our lives in reality, none of them make tablets and phones anywhere close to what we see in Parks and Rec.

Completely clear phones and tablets are probably still a couple years out, still currently someone’s experimental design. Holographic displays still belong in the realm of VR and science fiction.

What they’ve envisioned in Parks and Rec is undeniably cool, though. Someone please get us one of those Gryzzl pads.

RIGHT: Drones are delivering stuff to us.

While it’s not at Gryzzl’s creepy data-mining level, drones are being explored as a way to make deliveries.

In particular, Amazon has been looking into the technology for several years with its Prime Air drone. Amazon conducted their first Prime Air delivery via drone towards the end of 2016 in the U.K. And as recently as March of this year, Amazon made a demonstration of their drone’s delivery service as they used one to drop off a four-pound package of sunscreen to attendees at a robotics conference.

Robots haven’t come to kill us all, Leslie and Ben. They very well may just be coming to deliver our Amazon order in the near future.

WRONG: There are only eight massive conglomerate companies left in America.

We could not be more thrilled that this is not true, because honestly society would be terrible if this were a reality. On a more personal level, we are struggling to imagine a world where the same company that makes us a chicken burrito with pinto beans would also be the provider of our “6G” phone data.

If America ever reaches this point, please send help.

RIGHT: The Chicago Cubs win the World Series.

They totally did!

Yes, this is a very cheap and overdone prediction. But we can’t blame the Parks and Rec writers. When a team has a drought of 108 years, the day that drought is broken is going to be a popular prediction.

And yes, the Cubs technically won the 2016 World Series. But as long as a new champion hasn’t been crowned, they are still the reigning champs of 2017. So we’re going to give this one to Parks and Rec.

WRONG: Every single pop culture reference.

We gotta give it to them for trying, but all of the celebrity feuds and movie reboots that Parks and Rec predicted did not come to fruition.

Here is a list of things Parks and Rec characters alluded to in their version of 2017:

Shia LaBeouf designs both wedding dresses and wedding jewelry. (Sadly, this is not his true calling, as Tom Haverford would have us believe.)

Kevin James starred in a reboot of Jason Bourne.

Morgan Freeman and Shailene Woodley have a massive and dramatic feud.

Nicki Minaj threw shade at Jesse Eisenberg at the BAFTAs. (We would actually love to see this.)

Joe Biden releases a hefty book of poetry called Biden the Rails: 1001 Poems Inspired By My Travels Through Amtraks Northeast Corridor. (There’s still time left in 2017 so we aren’t counting this one completely out.)

Image: parks and recreation/nbc

Bruce Willis and Christina Aguilera have a house together in Hollywood.

Will Smith’s son, Jaden, stars in Hitch 2: Son of a Hitch. (Stop giving Hollywood terrible movie ideas.)

Game of Thrones comes to an end. Leslie describes the final episode as the one where “Khaleesi is marrying Jack Sparrow. Oh god, that show has really gone off the rails.”

LeBron James goes back to the Miami Heat.

WRONG: Elbow bedazzling and fingernail lasering is a hot trend.

We have plenty of bizarre trends in 2017, like covering our butts in glitter and eating oranges in the shower. But not included are the two trends Parks and Rec mentioned when Tom and Donna go on their amazing, blowout treat yo’self day in Beverly Hills.

First is elbow bedazzling, which seems to be where you have selection of diamonds and rhinestones glued to your elbow in varying elaborate designs. The poolside lounge where Donna and Tom go charges $140 for a basic bedazzle, but Donna decides to go for something from the supreme collection at $600. Bedazzlin’ ain’t cheap.

That same lounge is where the second trend is discussed: fingernail lasering. For $275, Tom asked them to “laser my nails off, please.” We’re not exactly sure what the appeal to this particular trend is, as it sounds more horrifying than chic. We’re also glad it doesn’t actually exist.

So how did Parks and Recreation do with their predictions?

In summary, not great. But we can’t blame them. When you play the prediction game, you gotta go bold and with no real expectations of being right. We love the predictions Parks and Rec made even if they were wrong. They gave the last season of that great comedy even more life than it already had.

Now excuse us while we go outside to thoroughly enjoy some of our national parks.

WATCH: Simply Genius Shower Thoughts With Nick Offerman

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from Looking at ‘Parks and Recreation’ predictions for 2017: What they got right and wrong