time to start boiling everything again.

How it feels to me is that the goal is for the world to become so intrusive/demanding/stressful that the only way to exist in it sanely would be to build an interactive buffer between the person and the greater world, and they want to sell these brown nosing AI agents as that buffer.

I detest the ethics, economic, and environmental costs of these platforms, but the part of me that is casting around wildly for some sort of life preserver wonders if somehow these horrible contraptions of inevitable doom might just provide some short term relief.

I'd be more pissed if I had retirement savings. But joking aside, that was a truly heinous move to pull in those FOMO investment managers, which has surely boned over many people without their knowledge. I do know people who have retirement savings or pensions, and it might make me feel sad when I see them wandering the streets and digging through trash for food in their old age.

Remember that you are also collecting the responsibility of 10 and the pay of 1.

Pedestrians have the right of way. Most of the other hills are survivable.

You just need to understand how to talk to them:

We bring the foreigners in, give them a first class AMERICAN education and then send them back into the world. They now are effectively a double-agent, preferring to deal with Americans in business, promote American superiority in the world by telling everyone what a badass they are for getting into Harvard, and have been indoctrinated on American values which they then seed into whatever population they are returning to. This is one of America's effective long term methods of world domination in action and it would be stupid to halt it.

And then make up some fake examples of it paying off big time.

This might just be my insomnia talking, but I thought a reasonable idea might be to call and reduce the available credit by however much is comfortable. For me, it would be fairly reasonable to reduce it by 50%. I assume they use some kind of magicians handshake to value their company based on how much potential credit is out there... Maybe it'd do nothing though. Anyone know?

If someone sells you a knife that routinely fires bullets, then the company may have some complicity as with any misrepresented product.

Begin Rant:

I have found that any 'weird feeling' I have that effectively causes more useless and unnecessary things to be purchased is almost certainly been ingrained in our culture by some ancient and effective advertisement campaign. Giving cash is tacky, giving gift cards shows you care more; They should be able to guess what I want for a gift; Wedding Registers; Anniversary Gift Tiers (year of Paper?); Etc.

I don't even bother checking anymore when I encounter something like that - I just try to recognize it when some POS has mind fucked me by having previously brainwashed one of my ancestors and try to restore sane thought.

Any unease and obligation can be replaced with the certainty that Cash is always welcome and useful, at least for now. That said, if you have some true knowledge, or genuine interesting and an attainable plan then by all means act decisively.

:End Rant

When I see people out exercising I often get the urge to yell that they are doing a good job or looking great if I see them working hard. But I never do.

I read a book that convinced me that anything I thought I 'should' do was completely optional. I did the 'had to's as I'd always done, and if a 'should' came up I did it if I felt like it and was able to not worry about it if I didn't. It was a pretty nice week. Therapist laughed at it when I told them, and that was the end of that.

In my opinion that is not a problem specific to only millenials.

For just $1 billion down payment, I will build it in 2 years for half of that. I pinky promise.

My terrible idea is that the world move to an 8 day week. Everyone works (at most) 4 days on, 4 days off. School is 4 on, 4 off. Two alternating shifts. Its always the weekend for half of everyone and everything is always open. I guarantee a roomful of smart people will be able to tear this idea to shreds. We could invent cool new names for all the days of the week though.

I don't know, but I started realizing that nearly all of the holiday traditions I'd ever participated in originated by way of some well received piece of advertising. It's all a mess. It's all people lying to each other for power, influence, and resources back to the very beginning. The internet certainly allows for messages to travel and build to critical mass faster, but humanity and this behavior originated together, only the tools change.

I predict she will add the 'vote for referendum to stay in canada' to the 'vote for referendum to leave canada' number and say 'we must have a referendum, I guess. Aw shucks', just as she did to excuse this stupid referendum. And as long as albertans are arguing over this b.s., we aren't focused on some other rotten thing the administration is doing. Notwithstanding clause, etc. etc.

Ok, but when they do the movie can we get Matt Damon to reprise his character from the Green Zone who transferred to the navy in disgust after the events of that movie, and he gets to say lines like "I'm so sick of this shit", looking straight at the camera, while boarding fishing boats looking for drugs from 'sure thing' intel?

I didn't watch the end of that one, but I assume he lived to the end??

For me, the part of my views on the 'AI boom' that makes me seem irrational is the ethically dubious development of certain strains,coupled with that I absolutely lack the mental capacity to sort through all the noise and determine what parts are ok and what parts or not. Due to the marketing push, everything AI has melded into one giant glob of stuff that I am required, by the weakness of my flesh, to take or leave as whole.

A more nuanced approach is better if the resources are available to pursue it. I do not think it is fair to expect such an approach from any given individual.

However it pans out, the big money's endgame is consolidation of wealth, making everyone below them noticeably poorer, and everyone else involved believes they can ride the wave.

Data centers that became worth running before the pop will have a change of ownership continue to run. Anything else will be gutted and parted out or dumped in a bin depending on the quality and skill of the vulture. It will be done with the least amount of empathy imaginable.

Someone more eloquent and knowledgeable then me made an argument about how the 'no taxes on tips' was going to be step one and then 'no limits' on tips would be step two which would lead to some unholy abomination of tax evasion for the already insanely rich. I don't remember where I saw that, though.