Pretty sure Maui’s handled worse, should be good. Deer works well low and slow? I have almost no experience with it, woulda figured that’d work badly with how lean it is.

The biggest difference is that …

But that’s an enormous difference, and it seems like it may push us to a place of crisis before it gets better. None of the tactics are new, they’re not even new to the modern era. But the reach is new, and it has enabled the creation of a large and broadly distributed group, that is thoroughly detached from and increasingly hostile toward mainstream society. With every indication that they are getting more entrenched, not less.

Aside from how spread out they can be, a group like that’s not new either, and basic intuition and history both point to this being a dangerous situation brewing. We really gotta figure out how to reach one another again.

1. CAH is paying more than Musk
2. CAH is using Musk’s own corrupt plan (which started this), to fund some of THIS, and intending to sue him if he doesn’t hold up his end of the deal.

For someone who seems to really want more left leaning stuff in our politics…you just seem to have dug your heels in on this one, without knowing very much about it. Every answered question or corrected assumption produces yet another, smaller complaint. This thing they’re doing is good. Even if it’s flawed, so what. It’s good. So few things are.

I’m out, cheers.

Specifically the language seemed intended to troll such that Republicans miss the satire (not hard), get angry about the fucked up campaign finance situation, and then we can all say “yeah this has to change”. I understand skepticism about achieving that, but it’s a coherent goal and strategy, and I’m very enthusiastic that we’re getting actual real pushback from somewhere. I’m not gonna tear it down in any way, I think it’s fantastic and I want to see more clever, patriotic efforts to drag into public view the ugliness we’ve allowed to take root.

It’s satire, and it’s borderline genius. The actual campaign text would probably change your opinion, it is very deliberately telling people to tweet about how it should be illegal. They give you exact text to post about how it should be illegal. It’s the opposite of normalizing. Ostracizing? Idk

ETA: one of the many other things I like about it is they explain very succinctly how it works. Form a SuperPAC, buy the data from a data broker, act barely (but strictly) within the law. It really feels like one of the few serious pushes back I’ve seen, it’s way more positive than you’re thinking.

They aren’t, they’re calling attention to it and directly saying “this should be illegal!”. It’s not subtle, it’s a pitch to point out that this should not be allowed.

However the website with the info (https://apologize.lol) now links to their other thing and I wonder if they are working through some legal concerns, lol.

Inflation is explicitly not:

a general terms for the costs of goods and services

It’s a general term for the change in the costs of goods and services. It’s not a merely technical distinction and I think it explains the difference between your take and mine above.

Otherwise I mostly agree. I do think the president has a bit more indirect influence on inflation in particular than you’re allowing, but otherwise I think we’re basically on the same page anyway.

It feels to me like inflation has improved now, but inflation (and accompanying gouging by companies due to having a nice clean alibi) was high for a while, we never saw wages really adjust enough to offset that much, and then things stopped getting more expensive.

So, cool, it’s not getting worse at the moment. It got bad enough to fuck us and didn’t really improve after that, but sure we can be glad we’re not still sliding down hill. Yay.

To be clear, not one lick of that point of view is based on evidence, just my personal experience and the general observations I’ve made both in terms of reporting and in reality. I’d update my point of view if presented convincing evidence, but this sure seems to be the situation to me.

ETA: You did say “current” and “right now” and my comment turned out longer than yours lol, so maybe this is me barking up the wrong tree anyway

TikTok is the worst example we’ve seen come up

…so far :)

And the crazy part is I know of teens who say “I wish I could use my phone less”, and these aren’t even particularly self-reflective kids. I have to assume many feel this way. Literal textbook addiction, crafted on purpose, and half of the parents are so far up shit’s creek with the addiction too that they don’t even think to get involved.

You seem like a caring person, so perhaps this will help guide decision-making. When you make major decisions that deeply impact another person, or even just get real far in evaluating options and imagining outcomes, asking strangers, etc…when you do these things without communicating with the other person at all, the end result is you protecting yourself, not them. Even if it feels like you’re carefully considering their interests.

No matter your intentions, if you’re not communicating with them and letting them participate in big decisions that affect you both, you are not acting in their best interests. There are many times (like abuse) when that is 100% the right approach, but you need to be very clear eyed about that choice to remove the other person’s agency. The way you’re going about this protects you at their expense, and in this situation it sounds kind of cruel, rather than justified. I’m not judging you harshly, your intentions seem good, but you need to understand that this is not a loving way to treat an adult.

One of our political parties discovered they can reliably achieve short term goals by politicizing facts and science. The success of this strategy points out that it’s available to anyone who wants to use it, which over time has meant that group of voters just got continually flooded with nonsense, until we got here.

There’s (almost) no one pushing back from that side - the strategy is too successful, the margins of victory for the party are too small, and most politicians in general want what’s best for them and would put the long term health of the group they’re representing as a distant priority, if at all.

Doesn’t even really require coordination/cooperation. With enough people willing to employ this strategy for enough time, by now the distrust of science and official communications is extremely entrenched.

If you’re looking for the “why” we’re susceptible to it, it’s the same old story - people angry at how things are going can often be manipulated into blaming people and things other than the true causes, with obvious advantages / incentives for those doing the manipulation.

Heard anything about Mullvad’s browser? You seem knowledgeable about the topic. I use their VPN already, still using Firefox for my browser though. I’m further behind the curve than you are, lol.

What are you using for your browser now?

Thanks for sharing this, hope ya continue 🤙

I think we’re on the same page :)

I’m mostly describing an idea where the contracts approach takes care of the necessary iteration to get a given tech policy sorted, and then legislation comes in to require it.

My country can’t even get some basic stuff done, though, so realistically I may as well be writing fan-fic, lol

I’m gonna make what I consider to be an important distinction here, but I also want to say I mostly agree with you and I’m bummed by the downvotes.

I think we can lump the middle manager into two broad “types”. And you seem to be exclusively describing one of the two types - the one that’s, frankly, smart and “aware” enough to realize that middle management is trash, rank and file is trash, and they know precisely why they are aiming to get above everyone. It ain’t cuz they want to help, of course, and they never intend to. Fuck those people every possible way, because not only do they understand that the purpose of middle management is to be the buffer between the owners and the laborers, they also have decided - with full awareness! - fuck the laborers, I want to be good with the owners.

But there’s another, sadder kind of middle manager, and I think maybe your hostility is unkind and unfair to this type. This middle manager still has the wool pulled over their eyes, they really think if they work hard and do well, they’ll be rewarded! And hey, isn’t the fact that they’ve been promoted (!) to leadership a clear indicator that they’re doing things right? Just gotta keep at it, the really important people keep telling me this is what they like to see, I’ll finally be able to get all these bills paid / improve my life! I’m on the way up, finally.

And then that person says “YEESH managing this store is really hard, I’ve gotta get better at this. My leadership doesn’t seem to think this should be a struggle…”

Etc., etc., for 10, 20 years as the wool gradually falls from their eyes. Not everyone is able to see things as clearly as you are. Most middle managers, I think, are basically suckers. Naive and exploited. The rest, tho, are basically monsters without enough power to be monsters. No argument there, and fuck those people.

Lol yeah, that’s true!

Man, that’s awesome. Automating it would be a lot of work but would really sell it.

Oof, well, point taken and sorry for your loss lol. I hear where you’re coming from. And I’m sure we’d get a worst of both worlds situation here in the US where we spent a ton of time and money developing whatever standards and definitions, and then we make it an optional guideline like you’re saying and it never goes anywhere.

Dunno. The fundamental problem is tech is always able to move faster and smarter than legislation.

That’s fair, and government work can feel kind of like its own parallel business ecosystem in some ways. Sort of like how most of us think of the shops and businesses that are visible to us but not the massive B2B ecosystem just under the surface.

But I think the hope is that gov can standardize and define a certain net positive thing, and use its contracts to start requiring that thing, slowly making it more widespread and therefore common. Ideally the kinks get ironed out over time, and eventually it’s in a state where you can make the leap and start to require it be in place for any application / service above a certain user count.

Bit pie in the sky, but we should be at least trying to find ways to use govt to improve our situation. Things at policy level that don’t require chronically status quo politicians to vote in our best interests.