U.S. Politics

altcunningham said:
Theres the schadenfreude part that says to enjoy what you're reaping .
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I feel like I've gotten to the point where even the schadenfreude isn't doing it for me anymore. At this point I'm just largely keeping my head down and trying to only open the pain box (any news feed) once a day. Even that's probably too much. I've been tanking through so much personal stress outside of the politics stuff that the volume on everything else just seems muted (which I know is one of many signs of depression).
 
JakeEkiss said:
I feel like I've gotten to the point where even the schadenfreude isn't doing it for me anymore. At this point I'm just largely keeping my head down and trying to only open the pain box (any news feed) once a day. Even that's probably too much. I've been tanking through so much personal stress outside of the politics stuff that the volume on everything else just seems muted (which I know is one of many signs of depression).
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I hear you on all of that. Going through my own long dark night the past few weeks.
 
Very much in the taking care of myself and my circle, and only working on things that I can control stage.

Your whole talk about what you bring to everything with non-violence and everything, a lot of my activist friends are calling on me just to make art and be the artist because people need the distraction. But I'm hoping I can become a masked vigilante at some point.
 
altcunningham said:
But I'm hoping I can become a masked vigilante at some point.
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The only part of aging that I've liked is I have a little grey patch/streak in my hair that is *exactly* the kind of bullshit a 90's era mutant would have and let me tell you if I discover I've got secret mind powers there's gonna be some people in a million pieces the very next day. I will blast them into little glowy bits.
 
docsilence said:
If Amazon lays off 30,000 people BEFORE the holidays, that's not "AI efficiencies," that's a fucking recession alarm bell, yeah? I cannot wrap my brain around why these fucking oligarchs are so determined to rule over a barren wasteland of a world. They're crashing the economy out of spite. Or stupidity.
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Well first look at Russia. The oligarchs there know where their bread is buttered (and their safety). So they stay in line. Something similar is happening in the US.

Second they are actually beholden to the shareholders to try and maintain, and increase, share value. That leads to short term thinking and actions (sounds like politics right?). It is all about how are we doing now and next quarter. Who cares about a year from now, or how your (former) employees are doing. That is the governments problem. (Actually it is their problem to, but....)

Third the US versions of oligarchs are lording over infinitely larger companies than most other countries. With an international reach few people have in this world (even superpower leaders). So they can pull this kind of bullshit and it is just part of doing business while spreading the pain over a wider area. The scary part is that 30,000 is only 2% of Amazon's workforce. That is a huge number of employees they can hold hostage over different jurisdictions. Hell they closed all operations in Quebec after they successfully unionized because they knew they wouldn't get punished by the public, and they could shift operations to compensate. They are currently opening their third warehouse in Ottawa (across the river from Quebec). That doesn't even consider all the social media/IT companies with offices around the world and no "physical" products to sell. They have huge reach and as such the CEOs wield a lot of influence.

Finally it is just ego. They all think they are the smartest person in the room and that their success was because of them and not in spite of them. So they don't consider that they could ever make mistakes or that things could turn on a dime. That is for other people, not them. They are the exception, not the rule of companies that come and go over the decades.
 
canprime said:
Finally it is just ego. They all think they are the smartest person in the room and that their success was because of them and not in spite of them. So they don't consider that they could ever make mistakes or that things could turn on a dime. That is for other people, not them. They are the exception, not the rule of companies that come and go over the decades.
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The most stark example of this sort of thinking is in the court filings for the Titan sub. That guy was so high on his own supply it was absurd. I really do think that a certain amount of wealth is basically brain damage. Your interaction with reality becomes so warped that you not only don't care about what's true anymore, you couldn't figure it out with a gun to your head.
 
I have a good friend who is loaded thanks to inheritance. They invest to keep it growing and don't work at all. (Could even put them in our Adults Who Can't Function thread.). But they do charity and help people out with their money and are a great human being. Thankfully they have empathy and are doing their part right now.

That said, they live in a bubble. Take out every meal every day. Groceries delivered. Uber XL anywhere. All of our hobbies are just Value Menu impulse buys to them. And it shows when you express any stressors or hardship with money. "Just throw money at it, here have some to throw." Just every decision that we weigh even if it's just getting lunch and how that might impact whatever your plans are for the week, it's a non-issue to them and you can absolutely see it change how they approach life when they have an infinite resource.

There was also that study about Monopoly. Even in a fictional scenario, once you have property and control the money, something switches in people.
 
altcunningham said:
I have a good friend who is loaded thanks to inheritance. They invest to keep it growing and don't work at all. (Could even put them in our Adults Who Can't Function thread.). But they do charity and help people out with their money and are a great human being. Thankfully they have empathy and are doing their part right now.
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And I bet by loaded we're still talking 7-8 figures. Hell, even 100mil, compared to these folks, is poor.
 
abcnews.go.com

Border Patrol agents under fire for allegedly disrupting children's Halloween parade in Chicago

The U.S. Border Patrol is coming under criticism from Chicago residents who claim federal agents disrupted a children's Halloween parade over the weekend.
abcnews.go.com abcnews.go.com

abc7chicago.com

State rep., comptroller candidate's ICE disclosures draw threats from DOJ

State Rep. Margaret Croke has drawn ire online for an email sharing details about ICE vehicles.
abc7chicago.com abc7chicago.com

www.nbcchicago.com

Could ICE have 'lost' 3,000 immigrant arrestees in Chicago?

At least 3,000 jailed immigrants have vanished from federal records, according to human rights attorneys and organizations.
www.nbcchicago.com www.nbcchicago.com
 
altcunningham said:
I have a good friend who is loaded thanks to inheritance. They invest to keep it growing and don't work at all. (Could even put them in our Adults Who Can't Function thread.). But they do charity and help people out with their money and are a great human being. Thankfully they have empathy and are doing their part right now.

That said, they live in a bubble. Take out every meal every day. Groceries delivered. Uber XL anywhere. All of our hobbies are just Value Menu impulse buys to them. And it shows when you express any stressors or hardship with money. "Just throw money at it, here have some to throw." Just every decision that we weigh even if it's just getting lunch and how that might impact whatever your plans are for the week, it's a non-issue to them and you can absolutely see it change how they approach life when they have an infinite resource.

There was also that study about Monopoly. Even in a fictional scenario, once you have property and control the money, something switches in people.
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This is why I stopped talking to a neighbor who has always TRIED To be friends with us. Like he actively pursues his liberals next door to hang out. But he's an "I got mine" NIMBY type and when we were talking about the free speech issue a few weeks back he basically said "well I've got mine and I'll be fine in a year" I was like well fuck off then. Enjoy your life and leave me the fuck alone. Dude has three rental properties, retired at 50, a motorcycle, an 80k pickup truck and a BMW, a pool and two beautiful kids. That's not RICH rich, but it's rich enough to make him an asshole to keep ahead of people he thinks less of.

JakeEkiss said:
From what I've seen we'd already be in a recession if it weren't for something like 1/3 of our economy being a daily increasing bet on AI which has no path to getting a ROI. We'll be fortunate if all we have is a recession when that bubble pops.
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Oh yeah, we're headed for a second Great Depression. Wild to me, having worked with analyzing the effectiveness of AI, that this toddler's toy of technology is going to tank the fucking economy because all the people with money have their heads so far up each others' asses they're huffing unborn farts.
 
docsilence said:
Oh yeah, we're headed for a second Great Depression. Wild to me, having worked with analyzing the effectiveness of AI, that this toddler's toy of technology is going to tank the fucking economy because all the people with money have their heads so far up each others' asses they're huffing unborn farts.
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For reasons too silly to go into I'm on the AI steering committee at the library where I work and it is SUCH a lousy tool and it's wild to me that everyone keeps talking in breathless tones about how it's 'going to change everything'. The BEST apps people have shown as part of our steering initiative are basically "google, but you talk to it and sometimes it lies" and "it summarizes papers I don't really want to read, but I still need to sort of read because I can't trust the summary actually". Like, there is NO killer app to this thing. It's bananas. A multi-trillion dollar solution in search of a problem.
 
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JakeEkiss said:
For reasons too silly to go into I'm on the AI steering committee at the library where I work and it is SUCH a lousy tool and it's wild to me that everyone keeps talking in breathless tones about how it's 'going to change everything'. The BEST apps people have shown as part of our steering initiative are basically "google, but you talk to it and sometimes it lies" and "it summarizes papers I don't really want to read, but I still need to sort of read because I can't trust the summary actually". Like, there is NO killer app to this thing. It's bananas. A multi-trillion dollar solution in search of a problem.
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That's exactly it. The two most soul-crushing things I heard said during my research time (I'm supposed to give like a TED talk for authors about AI in January and I can't plan for it because Everything Gets Worse on a daily basis) was one security expert saying he wouldn't put ANYTHING he values into it, but he used it to write love letters to his wife and it was pretty good at that. And a CEO I wish Godzilla-sized hemorrhoids on saying the best use he had for it was writing bedtime stories for his kids. It truly is a solution in search of a problem and they've built our entire economy on it doing things it can't fucking do.

(I'm especially angry though, I'm included in all those fucking lawsuits about IP theft against Anthropic etc., but I'm only biased because I UNDERSTAND HOW IT WORKS. Once you understand how it works you realize it really doesn't.
)
 
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