Spyke

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"They need us. We don't need them:" The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate

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This is a bit of a learning experience though.

The big tech companies advocated during 2020 that they were not biased and should not be held responsible for policing the Internet.

Since then, FB swapped to Meta to cover up the documents showing FB is intentionally causing psychological damage our children because it gives them more clicks/view time.

OpenAI scraped the Internet, legally and illegally to power ChatGPT.

Twitter, a social media company known for free speech, was bought by Musk, a former Trump associate. Trump was reinstated during this period and dissent was banned.

Google decided to push web DRM to force us to use their software or else we can't access the Internet.

Sounds like they very much want to police the Internet. We just aren't putting the pieces together in a collective way.

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Some people are so greedy.

Literally had a conversation with my manager about traveling to Chicago. Weed is legal there and he felt it important to remind me that the company has random drug tests. I told him we operate in Denver and sell THC gummies. He told me HR recently told him that we have a 0 tolerance policy that they're looking to ramp up.

We also have trouble hiring because people fail the drug tests..

news

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Hospital Price Gaps Show Just How Broken the US Health-Care Market Is

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Speaking from the pharmacy perspective.

Banks wove their way into drug transactions as a middleman called Pharmacy benefits managers. They stand between insurance and pharmacies to prevent collision, but instead, what we see is insurance companies pay a lot for drugs, while pharmacies see very little for that drug. Over 50% is being taken by the PBM because they're "preventing" collision. Don't even get me started on the vertically integrated pharmacies like CVS and United who abuse their position to force consumers to use their pharmacies instead of competitors or use "technological advancements" to keep their prices lower than their competitors.

NYC is currently trying to pass legislation to fix this, but that's only at the state level.

Wall Street needs to get the fuck out of healthcare and healthcare needs to stay the fuck out of Wall Street. Once a healthcare org talks about share holders, we're no longer talking about patients.

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Every generation has some product/ingredient that they didn’t know was dangerous at the time: tobacco, lead, asbestos, etc. What is that item for this generation?

Marketing. We put a person on the moon because we were scared of the space race, and then we spent the next 50 years figuring out how to make rich people richer by manipulating human behavior and gamifying everything so you buy into the buy more stuff you don't need and click more stuff you don't care about. We've gotten so good at it, we only need a 10 second short to advertise stuff to you.

This affects everything we do down to its core and will likely be the cause of astronomical ADHD rates in the future.

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Car dealers say they can’t sell EVs, tell Biden to slow their rollout

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Just bought an EV from a local dealer. Went in on Saturday because they had a 2 month used listing on their website for about 10k under MSRP. They told me, oh no that sold, but please check out the new cars. I entertained them and told them they'd need to bring down the price 10k to get me to sign because it's simply out of my price range. They also mentioned these things (ioniq 6) are selling extremely quickly and they only have a few on the lot.

They insisted and played games for a week, with offers OVER msrp, so I let them waste their time. They pushed me to come in, so as I was about to sign, I told them, actually, no. I need an offer 10k under MSRP or I'm leaving. At this point that was a 15k cut. They've now wasted a week of negotiation and suddenly found the used one I originally requested, but it was at their off-site lot.

We drove over there, and it was a large 5 story parking deckcompletely filled to the top. They even had cars parked in front of cars. They tried one last game and made me wait for 3 hours to get it out.

All that is to say, let the fuckers bleed. If they can't afford Christmas, maybe they need to learn what the fuck capitalism really means. If they can't afford new years, it's time to make a new resolution and if they can't afford spring break, it's time to find a new job.

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When people say that apps are stealing your data, what exactly does that mean?

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And if this sounds dystopian to you.

I anecdotally got into a CEO data conference, where leaders were discussing strategy and tactics. Biggest topic of the day was, why can't I track how many times someone sees my physical store/billboard/sign and makes a decision. Geofencing + your cellphone GPS isn't accurate enough for these guys, they want to know how long you stared at the store, what made you move in, what demographics you belong to, and how can they maximize your likelihood to purchase more stuff.

Why does this matter? People are more likely to buy more stuff in a store wandering around than on a market place where they just swap tabs to get the same thing from somewhere else.

If I can make my store front like temu to get you in and keep you there, then it's likely you'll be interested in buying more stuff you didn't know you wanted.

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*Permanently Deleted*

Misdirection of values. We tell children there's a path, go to school, get a job, find a spouse, get married, get a house and have kids, but life isn't that simple. As life introduces chaos into the path, people fall off and some have a hard time getting back on. We've spent so much time on developing social media and marketing platforms that idolize those that make it through the path that no one looks out for those that fall off, making them feel isolated and unheard. Niche social media and mass marketing for weapons has made it easy for lone wolves to seek revenge on the system that let them down.

I think we can generally say the above is true across all political spectrums. The below might be rejected, but it's my view.

The right has made increasingly extreme statements to pull in these vulnerable people in order to make them feel heard, but it's just for show and votes. We've seen how politicians like Trump are really just using them for his own gains and as the NRA funnels more money into the "system", it really takes huge government action to curb this cycle.