Lina Kahn is a national treasure and I await her return in the next administration.
No private person or company should have the power to eg hold the US space program hostage or use its communications networks to influence the outcome of a war!
Ted Cruz rewrote “No AI regs for states for 10 years” to get past the Senate Parliamentarian by selling signal space on broadband reserved for the military. “no regulation” clause will be in the OBBB AI MUST BE REGULATED NOW
Anyone who can't grasp the dangers of turning over vast swathes of communication to machines that have thus far achieved the intellectual curiosity of a bright sixth-grader isn't paying attention. I can spot AI-generated content within a couple of paragraphs. There's a sterile blandness, a banality to it that just doesn't resemble good writing, such as the professor churns out regularly. It's disjointed, as if a bunch of facts were sifted out of the internet and regurgitated in no particular logical scheme.
Organizing actual facts into logical arguments or explanations is a uniquely human intellectual skill that AI is just beginning to emulate. As the hype for an early Beatles tribute band went, not the real thing but an amazing simulation.
AI's abuse potential is already empirically obvious in academia and even legal briefing, with fictitious authorities cited to support what purports to be argument. In a chronic-distraction environment, that kind of cheating is dangerous. Do we want lazy intelligence officers phoning in what a bot gleaned? High courts relying on--or even citing themselves--false legal decisions? How about science?
So, now and for the foreseeable future, I vote for careful regulation over free rein for a technology that simultaneously holds great promise and great danger.
The medical profession is a caring profession. Why would we hand that over to an algorithm? It will only dehumanize what should be the human work of caring, making it more difficult for those who are providing care to do their jobs by becoming a measure for their work. Ask for an example if you want, I have one.
States will not be able to regulate AI for 10 years That provision WILL be in the OBBB. Do I have this right yet? Wish I could get an copy of this provision since Cruz rewrote it so I can see the actual language of it
and what do you suppose will happen after July 4, even if there are more millions out than on June 14? What is the 'plan'? Do you think that Trump and his clown show and his behind-the-scenes evil geniuses at Project 2025 will go away, either quietly or under protest? Why would they?
So, you believe writing letters and calling our Senators and Reps. is going to be more effective than massive protests? I have been doing those things, as have millions of other Americas; and yes, it is essential. However, so far, it has not stopped the MAGA Repbulicans in the Senate and House from ramming through everything that the orange sh*tstain, the tech bros and the Project 2025 ghouls are demanding. Massive protests are required, and I believe that a general strike and boycotts will also be needed in the near future. We will have to shut them down until they scream 'Uncle'. Losing their profits, which is what gives them their power over our legislators, and in turn us, is ALL they care about. We have to stop kidding ourselves. We must secure our elections and shore up and reform the process, or we will never have another free and fair election, again.
Short of armed resistance an economic boycott is the only protest that will get the attention of Republican elites. I think we’ve already waited too long. Trump will use ICE in an attempt to quash all dissent. Turning them on his opposition has been the plan all along. (A majority of Americans are his opponents. Giving ICE all that funding is a huge mistake. This is going to get very ugly.) I think he underestimates our resolve. I for one would gladly give my life for this cause. This is 1776 for me.
Three other factors that have pushed high tech to Republicans have been the rise of unionization at places like Amazon; labor enforcement (e.g., Uber and Lyft and other industries of the like); and employees pushing back, sometimes too publicly for their “overlords” in support of gov programs within those companies that lead to distinctly non-liberal outcomes (e.g., support of genocide, ethnic cleansing, or state sanctioned violence). The latter certainly enforces the liberal university bias they believe exists.
Pete Buttegieg was very competent at doing the job he was supposed to do. Anthony Blinken also. Lots of others.. for that matter, Gensler at the SEC - working to protect investors (and naive would-be investors) from new forms of scam, notably cryptocurrency.
Crypto now exists primarily to make the Trump Crime Family wealthy. Well, and all other mafiosi. Crypto is a ponzi scheme that exists primarily for criminal activity. Fleecing the gullible is just gravy.
But the Crypto industry is now buying off key Dem senators--like CA's Schiff--to get their new bill passed.
I remember that in 2020 someone wrote an article saying something like 'too bad Buttigieg was put on transportation, because he was doing pretty well and now everyone will start to hate him through no fault of his own', because of the decades of under investment, amongst other things. I don't remember if that author included the crappy American urbanism and the fact that half of the people still believe that just adding another lane will fix congestion, but I would have. This article you share basically says the same: everything sucks and B does what he can with what he's given.
You obviously didn’t read the article you referenced. Buttigieg got blamed for a lot of stuff that was due to decisions that predated his tenure, sometimes by decades, and for other things outside his control.
Wow. After January 6th you're still just out and proud. Trump's cabinet doesn't have one member who is qualified. He actually has one cabinet member who had part of his brain (per his own autobiography) that was eaten by a parasite because he eats road kill, yet you feel you have any authority left to post here about Biden's cabinet. It would be amazing if it wasn't so pathetic.
She should be arrested for unlawful intimidation. Impersonating a federal official? Using powers she did not have to solve problems she had no legal power to affect. Social media cannot legally be attacked with trust-busting tools and it is illegal to try.
That may be, but Congress could certainly reintroduce the "Fairness Doctrine", the repeal of which under Reagan, facilitated the expansion of and monopolization of media by the right wing.
Well, not shot perhaps, but I do think that when this shitshow is over (and it will be over) we should prosecute those members of Trump's grisly gang who shredded the Constitution, who are guilty of human rights violations, suspension of habeas corpus, etc., with a trial along the lines of Nuremberg.
I prefer they just rocket off to Mars or “outer space.” It would be so refreshing to not hear about them. Not taxing them has been the absolute stupidest thing imaginable and we have both sides of the “aisle” to thank for that idiocy and lunacy. We don’t need corrupt and feckless centrist Democrats running the show anymore. We need progressive Democratic Socialists to save our democracy. We needed Bernie Sanders ten years ago. I just know in my gut he would’ve dragged Trump in debate and easily won the presidency in 2016. We again have corrupt, feckless centrist Dems to thank for that epic failure.
The moderates will remain in denial forever. Bernie would have easily beat Trump in 2016, if the Democratic money hadn't bought the primary for Hillary. Bernie should have run as an Independent. Progressives should run as Independents today, the Republican Lite Democrats are simply worthless.
I tend to agree and not just because I’m a Vermonter who loves Bernie. The Chuck Schumer’s and the Nancy Pelosi‘s of Congress need to leave to make room for a new generation of Democrats who fight and have a clear concise message for the American people. Melanie Stansbury, AOC, Jasmine Crockett embody this new generation of Democrats.
In Pelosi's defense, she did give us Obamacare. I know, I know, it's not single payer, it's a compromise, but it's still better than nothing - which is what the GOP wants us to have.
Bernie had trouble appealing to Black voters in 2016 and 2020. Without their votes it would have been a matter of which party has the most White voters, and since the 1960s Republicans have had more. Automatically assuming Bernie would have won without looking at the underlying voter numbers is wishful thinking.
Sadly, I'm not at all convinced that's true, because I think the "moderates" would have hobbled Bernie in exactly the same way they accuse him of crippling Hillary. I was literally seeing emails from NPR-brained acquaintances talking about how if those crazy radicals Sanders and Trump were the nominees in 2016, we should totally all just go third party behind a REASONABLE choice like that nice Mr. Bloomberg!
Sadly I don't think any of them will be called to account. I base this on the response of the Obama to the financial crisis and that of the Biden administration to Trump.
On the general topic of technology I note that once again it is dawning on people that technology is not a panacea but rather needs to be used thoughtfully. In the '70s there was a similar awakening. E.L. Schumacher "Small is Beautiful " and the works of Lewis Munford especially.
I think Obama's response to 2008 would have been much better if the GOP hadn't been so successful in paring back fiscal stimulus.
I suspect he was convinced by the financial people that it was necessary to go easy on them because they could totally crash the whole monetary system worldwide.
It's true the monetary system has to be defended because money is nothing more than confidence that it works. However, the big boys should have faced some punishment. Big problem, nothing they did was illegal. Unethical has hell, but not illegal. The big money people make the laws.
Even FDR had trouble getting his agenda through after three years of the Great Depression and a supermajority in Congress. And he wasn’t the first president of his demographic, which may have contributed to Obama’s cautiousness.
Stephen, as a society, we are in love with silver bullets. They travel at the speed of, hit their targets squarely in the nose, and our beastly problem is gone. D-E-A-D. That's what Marvel Comic Book lure tells us. Super Heroes and Super Feats are brought by high tech. Gen AI is the next silver bullet. Beware! Caveat, Dude! Beware!
Everything Paul says here is true. I am retired from high tech in financial services. I know the naivety firsthand. I also know how the industry big players rope individuals, ultimately International corporations, into their products and services, and because they are 600 lb gorillas, they own the marketplace and crush competition or acquire them until competition is no more
I fear that while all this is true, the average citizen has no clue about market dynamics and service pricing. They are simply mad as hell, and they are not going to take it anymore - along comes MAGA and its cult leaders. High-tech billionaires want regulators off their backs, add big financiers, and we get Trump and his witless minions.
How do we educate the electorate to these bold-faced truths? The Biden-Harris coalition failed miserably. Had they won the election, they would have been boxed in anyway. The Democrats have been losing the populist war for a long time.
We need new communication and voter education strategies now. Perhaps Substack and podcasts can help. It won't be WaPo for sure. QED.
Rich Libertarians live in a fantasy world where everything runs great without government intervention or taxes. Then, when a foreign government seizes one of their factories, suddenly they're big fans of the US Marine Corps.
Or if they need a massive bailout from the taxpayer like in 2008. Then they blame the government for 'fiscal irresponsibility' and demand austerity to pay for it. This is the 'free market'.
Bill Black once said of EMH/Ratex something like - "it's a model that assumes away market power and fraud, and therefore has about the predictive power you would expect"
In my experience, these libertarians and free market people are selective as to when libertarianism and the free market come into play.
For example, the libertarians that I have heard about want to do whatever it is that they want to do. But they often want to limit or control what other people can do.
The free-market people preach individual capitalism when they are making profits. But if they have losses, as happened so some in the 2008 recession, then it is time to "socialize" loses. If there is a profit, they keep all of it, if there is a loss the taxpayer picks it up.
Remember when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed just a few years ago? It's okay when government helps rich people:
> Bill Ackman, chief of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management and an advocate of self-regulation in the crypto industry who has resisted regulations at his investment fund, was among the earliest investors to sound an alarm on Thursday. He is a registered Democrat but has pushed back against what he describes as excessive government regulation and, in 2016, said he was “extremely bullish” about then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. He argued that the fallout of SVB’s collapse could “destroy a long-term driver of the economy” since many venture backed companies had their money parked at SVB. He also said the government should consider a bailout or guarantee all deposits, and that regulatory intervention would be important to avert a larger banking crisis.
> The about face by the tech and investment luminaries didn’t go unnoticed. In response to the urgent tweets by Sacks for regulators to come to the rescue, one user said, incredulously: “Excuse me, sir. Suddenly the government is the answer?!?”
Yes, of course, but bailouts only for THEM is what they want and demand. They are selfish, narcissistic plutocrats, who now are backing the kleptocrat, tRUmp, and likely intend to become kleptocrats, themselves, once they are able to get tRUmp ousted. They plan to do this by getting Vance installed to replace tRUmp. Vance is backed, funded and controlled by Peter Thiel. Need I say more?
At that point, we will all be within the 'panopticon', the TIA version of Palantir. Why else do you think Thiel & Musk's DOGE has stolen our most intimate, private, personal data in their illegal, unconstitutional raid on and stripping of our federal government? IMO, these people belong in prison. It is either them or us.
The recent New Yorker profile of Yarvin is illuminating. I was struck by how much of his behavior seems to be a performance of how Yarvin thinks a "deep thinker" behaves. He is a poseur, but also dangerous.
Yeah, so it looks like at this point in time, anyway, the Russians have won/are winning the Cold War, thanks to the now MAGA tech bros and their alliance with the CNP and Project 2025. However, this is NOT the end of history, unless we allow it to be.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
Oh, I love this! If anyone cares, there's a lot out there about Ayn Rand: her snobbery, cruelty, iron rule over her true believers, frequent deep depressions, self destructive chain smoking and heavy drinking, that anyone interested in her influence over some powerful libertarians really owe it o themselves to look it up. I think Milton Friedman was one of her disciples back in the day.
Exactly right. In a word, she was a sociopath, as are the tech bro libertarians that follow her bankrupt ideology of selfishness and cruelty. She was also a major hypocrite who collected government social benefits after demonizing them and anyone who accepted them, even though they earned them by paying into SS & Medicare their entire working lives.
Yes, and so was Allan Greenspan, our long time, too long-term Federal Reserve Chief. He used to go to her home for regular meetings of her devoted followers.
It’s worse than simplistic libertarian ideology. For a lot of these tech leaders this is about more than just money and power, it has become the pseudo-religion trans humanism which promises immortality when the “singularity” is arrived at and human minds can meld with computers:
“Silicon Valley’s Obsession With AI Looks a Lot Like Religion”
Musk isn’t the only delusional tech mogul. Bryan Johnson, the head of the “Don’t Die”movement not only uses his son for transfusions of blood products, he also uses him for comparison with his own erections and posts those comparisons on Twitter.
“ Don't Die Tech Mogul Bryan Johnson Is in an Actual Penis-Measuring Contest—With His Teenage Son
“Raise children to stand tall, be firm, and be upright,” the proud papa wrote.”
This techno religious ideology they follow is proof that we need more humanities in schools. These tech bro “thought leaders” have so little literature, history and philosophy in their heads that they have to make up their own stupid theories to justify their selfishness. As an atheist I don’t follow the Catholic teachings I grew up with, but at least in Catholicism it says love thy neighbor and help the poor, something you will never see in their tech manifestos. To quote Val Kilmer’s character from the movie Real Genius, you can’t have science without philosophy.
Catholicism does not seem to have done anything but exacerbate JD Vance’s inhumanity. What seems to be happening to the uber-wealthy is that their money and status has elevated their egos and erased their empathy.
That is not really accurate. Vance got involved with extremist far right Catholicism through his handler Peter Thiel who has had an Opus Dei priest as his spiritual adviser since college. Opus Dei is a far right cult geared to recruiting the powerful (William Barr, Louie Freeh, Antonin Scalia) . Those people opposed — hated — Francis and now Pope Leo. In contrast Pope John Paul II and his successor Pope Benedict were both far right reactionaries who tried to undo the advances of Vatican II. They were part of an extremist backlash against Vatican II bringing Catholicism into the modern world and back to the teachings of Jesus.
Pope Francis started cracking down on Opus Dei and it’s a good bet Leo will finish the job.Francis also manages to appoint 80% of the cardinals, replacing the reactionaries John Paul II and Benedict appointed.
Pope Leo chose his name because the last pope with that name, Leo XIII, was the pope who authored Rarum Novarum, the basis for Catholic social justice. Leo III wrote it in reaction to the dehumanizing conditions for workers during the Industrial Revolution. He called for humane working conditions, living wages, trade unions. Leo XIVis already addressing this issue regarding the challenges to human values posed by AI.
“ 19th-century Catholic teachings, 21st-century tech: How concerns about AI guided Pope Leo's choice of name”
Also the Jubilee Commission which was co-chaired by liberal economist Joseph Stiglitz, just issued their report calling for a sustainable, people-centered world economy:
“ New Vatican report calls for global economic reforms”
Don’t forget both Pope Francis and Pope Leo rebuked Vance for his unchristian claims about who the Church says we must love. When he converted no one bothered to tell him about Jesus’s teaching that you must love the stranger as you love yourself.
Although I am not longer a believer I was raised Catholic during the Vatican II era and have been appalled to watch the Church’s nasty right wing turn under John Paul and Benedict but fun watching Pope Francis slowly undo their damage. We need the voices of spiritual leaders and philosophers to counteract the dehumanizing claims of tech bros like Musk, Thiel and Bryan Johnson (the guy who claims he will live forever, gets transfusions from his son and compares the leant of his nocturnal erections with his son’s online!)
Social Media manipulation by big tech is malware to the human brain and heart. These same commercial algorithms that incentivize hyper consumption, are being used/sold to the political parties. It’s a powerful tool that tracks and profiles an individual’s psychological profile….how easy it is persuade a person? Then use geo tracking tools to locate them in the swing districts. Spend your ads in those districts. Curate the ads to individual psyc profiles. It’s the new way for the unpopular to win elections.
True, though JD only believes what Peter Theil tells him to. And all these tech billionaires want us to bow down and worship their greatness and their stupid Ai project. Never.
Thiel is an Opus Dei guy. Read Gareth Gore’s expose of that abusive but powerful far right Catholic cult. Pope Francis was disempowering them before he died.
When challenged on the lie that Haitians were eating pets, Vance the recent convert didn't seem to have any problem doubling down on Bearing False Witness against the vulnerable Haitian asylum-seeking community.
What is sad about her is that the Harry Potter series is an anti-fascist, anti-racist allegory. The values in that are entirely consistent with true Christianity — love of others, rejection of the abuse of power, etc. I think her freak out over trans people must be related to the sexual abuse she suffered.
How would you like to be his son and have your dad compare the length of your nighttime erections to his online? I hope they all hop on one of Elon’s rockets and emigrate to the hellscape of Mars where they will fry (assuming the rocket didn’t blow up at launch).
I think the only comforting thing is that these tech libertarians suffer from back pain, acid reflux and a miriad of other ailments (many much more serious) just like the rest of us. Then what does their money buy them?! Oh don't get me going with their messed-up spoiled adult children with all of their problems. I envy those who have what they need but not everything they want.
It’s not expanding; it’s in sharp decline. It was at its peak amongst Gen X techies (sadly, my own cohort), who came of age in the Reagan era, when Randian nonsense stalked the land.
It’s the retreat of libertarianism amongst younger techies that leads some of the Gen X old guard to blame universities (instead of, say, the fact that we’re aging out and our younger colleagues have a very different lived experience.)
I’ve only ever met three kinds of libertarians: 1. Those who live out in the woods somewhere and don’t want to participate in society, 2. Those who essentially think taxes are theft, and 3. Republicans too embarrassed to admit being Republican.
Hello, I am a libertarian. Governments are, as a rule, stupid and poorly informed about what people need, and therefore they should almost always do less, because the more they do, and the more specific their policies are, the more likely they are to fuck things up. They make it illegal to live like a poor person in the belief that this will make there be fewer poor people; instead it makes there be more of them, or in extreme cases kills them off. They set price caps and price floors and then are surprised that this means people can't get what they need - most egregiously water in the American West, where consumers are short on drinking water while alfalfa farms that wouldn't be profitable if they had to pay fair prices for their water burn water in the desert for a fixed fee.
And if you give the government lots of power, it will have that power when the worst person you can imagine gets control of it, and uses it to crush everyone they dislike and self-aggrandize and enrich themselves.
There was a time where this was a thought experiment - consider what would happen if the worst person got control and used every power you'd given his predecessors in the most tyrannical way possible. The government did evil things, but was defensible as broadly good. But as Ken White wrote in 2017, we live in the America at the end of all hypotheticals: this is not a thought experiment any longer. We gave the government power, someone without principles, restraint, or a sense for the long term took control, and now it's showing that all the libertarians, free speech absolutists, and skeptics of the imperial presidency were 100% right.
This is an outstanding summary, Paul. Thank you. One reason the techoligarchs don't like Europe is legislation like the GDPR and other regulations protecting consumers. But when the garden consumer like me feels like our personal data is being used in ways we don't know, it's not surprising that there is a huge loss of trust. As to crypto and AI, I'm more than skeptical of the first and extremely concerned about the second. And the pity is that all this tech has the potential to do great things - in medicine and learning, for example - as we hoped in the beginning. The disappointment and feeling of betrayal and abuse is behind a lot of suspicion and mistrust. That won't get better for big tech any time soon.
One other aspect of the general turn away from liking the tech companies is the fact that people are slowly, dimly becoming aware that these tech companies are harvesting and marketing every aspect of everyone's existence. Your phone is listening to you, relaying your conversations back to a server that then generates ad content based on what it heard you say. Your TV is watching you and doing the same thing. The computer I'm typing this on is sending every keystroke out into the world where it will be parsed, sold, and returned to me in the form of ads (or maybe federal agents in the not too distant future).
We don't want our data to be sold, and yet we're eager to pay for the devices that suck up and ship all our data. I know people who have an Alexa or similar device in every room of their house. We hate the invasion of our privacy, and yet do everything we can afford to wipe that privacy away.
Technology as a whole has been amazing beneficial to society. Think about fiber optic communication, biomedical technology, computers, GPS, lasers, radar, and the list goes on. However, to your point, one aspect of technology-social media, data mining, and targeted marketing, has been devastating to society. I actually don't see that Facebook benefits society at all. It's astounding that some technology leaders either don't recognize this, or are so greedy that they don't care that they are destroying society.
Derelict is listing all the intrusions that are possible; none of them are fictional. It doesn't mean that everyone is so wired in that all these connections are at play.
A lot can be avoided by limiting your exposure to these devices and systems. If you are supercareful you can even stay under the radar completely.
Just curious about which aspects you think are fictional. Your phone definitely listens to you and uses that information for ads. It looks at the people who are near you and uses that information too.
I wouldn’t be surprised if your tv is doing the same.
The keystroke part is hyperbole, but it’s not like every website you visit isn’t being monitored.
They're not progressives, futurists, innovators, or anything else like that. They're simple obscenely rich rent seekers, and they want to "conserve" the regulatory framework which allows them to extract those monopoly rents.
They're conservatives now. Galbraith had their number:
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
"Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and Republican congressmen". - Trump to Bill Barr
Trump and the oligarchs are trying to ram the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history through Congress.
In order to do that he needs his BBB signed into law.
In order to do that he needs to manufacture consent and one spectacular way to do that is to drive the stock market higher.
Today, Trump posts, "“Too Late” Jerome Powell, of the Fed, will be in Congress today in order to explain, among other things, why he is refusing to lower the Rate. Europe has had 10 cuts, we have had ZERO. No inflation, great economy - We should be at least two to three points lower. Would save the USA 800 Billion Dollars Per Year, plus. What a difference this would make. If things later change to the negative, increase the Rate. I hope Congress really works this very dumb, hardheaded person, over. We will be paying for his incompetence for many years to come. THE BOARD SHOULD ACTIVATE."
Luxuriate in this phrase remembering what he told Barr - "If things later change to the negative, increase the Rate." Once the bill becomes law, the Fed can go back to managing the economy properly.
I have a sneaking suspicion (and it is just that, I have NO inside info) once that bill becomes law the second part of the great wealth transfer takes place, the stock market will be liquidated by those oligarchs TAX FREE.
Since the first Iron Man comic book appeared in 1962, it's close to 100% doubtful that this could in any way be based on Elon Musk. Just correcting the record.
Paul, I think a key element of the enshittification process is the unrealistic growth expectations behind the techlords' companies' valuations. Their great wealth is based on a stock valuation that, in turn, is based on the expectation continued rapidly growing revenue and profits. As they try to meme-ify their valuations with ever more outlandish and over hyped growth gimmicks -- Musk is a master of this -- they are more and more reliant on shady growth areas like crypto or dangerous ones like AI. As they veer further into the dark side of tech in search of continued growth, they need Republicans, who have no ethical values, to protect them from the people.
It seems like the tech crowd has traded in their flip flops and hoodies for yachts, tax cuts, and bitcoin.
But then, the world of laboring over code has highly changed as well. It is now more often bucks over brains so there is also a sector who feel left behind and are ripe for the pull of nonsense and the allure of get rich quick gamble of bitcoin, as well as extremely outdated nonsense regarding masculinity that Trump is selling.
The truth is, that despite all of the justification, the real reason for the flip from left to right was the tax cuts and/or threat of increases and yes, as you point out regulations.
All the rest is just an excuse, an excuse that some may now believe after repeating it to others and themselves enough times.
Money can be for some like a drug, and as we all know (or should) drugs change the structure of the brain making the brain seek more of whatever one is addicted to and a lot of this involves justification.
However, it is not just drugs that can cause excess release of neurotransmitters, but a lot of things can give one that "high" feeling and cause structural changes. Think about that workout fanatic or almost any fanatic as an example, or maybe someone addicted to food. The old saying about a "dopamine rush" was real and it is also a brain changer. Often these folks are feeding a self imposed structural brain change and one knows your brain can talk you into justifying that next "fix."
Fortunately, I find money boring.
However, I love economics. Studying economics is like studying the brain itself or structure (which I also majored in).
As far as leaving the Dems, all one need do is look at the bait being used by the right-wing opinion section at the WSJ and they were spreading rumors that Harris was going to impose a tax on unrealized gains or what is known as a wealth tax.
Mark Cuban tried to dispel these myths but fear of losing what they held dear took hold.
They became like Gollum protecting their "precious" and slithered over to Trump.
The truth is that the Dems did nothing wrong except that they could not keep up with the massive onslaught of disinformation coming from the right.
If there is anything Dems can do better next time, it is to keep an ear to the ground so they can get ahead of the nonsense.
Also, never say you are going to simply give people money, even if it is for a down payment, that is red and purple state GOP red meat fodder right there. Lions and Tigers and what sounds like Socialism - Oh My!
You're on to something with the analogy of 'drugs,' I think. It might be enlightening to take that one step further, and add 'addiction' to your assessment. It's about thrills, and a goosing of an outsized sense of self. Addiction typically leads to a demand for more and more and more, and a flattening of any experiences other than the thrill. Basically a form of insanity.
Sadly, it is built into our biology and helps with learning and survival (like food), but too much of a rush over too long a time is a brain changer and yes what is also known as an addiction.
Gollum was addicted to his precious ring as an analogy. Although in the book it was a magical power, people could identify to things in real life that can be all consuming and controlling.
The thing that always struck me about Gollum is his gradual transformation from an ordinary, congenial and presumably jolly and sociable member of Hobbit society into a craven troglodyte with no eyes for anything but that 'Preciouss' ring. In the movie he looks something like Stephen Miller. Yikes.
Yeah. And if you eat too much and too many of the wrong things, you sicken and die. Addiction is fundamentally selfish and isolating, as well as toxic, in all its forms, involving as it does lying, cheating, stealing and an exclusive focus on personal satisfaction above all other concerns, up to and including survival.
The drug analogy works… but don’t forget fear. Those of us who have comparatively little find great meaning and connection (true wealth) in people and nature. We know inevitable death looms at all times. These tech bros ooze fear of poverty and death because they are empty vessels, seeking security in money and control. The harder they grasp, the further it slips, and the cycle continues. They are just men and bleed like the rest of us. It’s time we prove it.
Yes fear, and yes addiction, but I think we are all susceptible to various degrees, so one need not be an empty vessel simply too consumed with wealth, I think.
It was weird that Democrats saw tech execs coming to Capitol Hill in hoodies and flip flops and saw this as endearing rather than a sign that they are deeply unserious people.
Again — Dems got confused by the fact that a lot of them are gay nerds into think they were their friends, but unlike Hollywood which really was just in it for the social liberalism, Big Tech thought that they could con Democrats into eschewed their usual dislike of rich people. I greatly prefer the Very Serious Rich people who got rich in manufacturing than the deeply unserious Rich people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Even Bill Gates has much more in common with the former than the latter.
As someone who grew up in CA, I did not see the hoodie and flops as “unserious” it was a status symbol that instead of being “too sexy for their shirts” they were implying they were too smart for suits and shoes and had better things to do.
They did not try to fool anyone, in my view, that was, and is, simply the culture to a large degree except now that they have wealth they want to keep it and might be consumed by that
They were not so smart that they did not succumb to the power of the ring.
Is that Silicon Valley or is it the religious right?
You may have more insight on this than I do, but any group who sees itself as a minority when it comes to getting what they want politically may be somewhat more motivated by a dictator who promises to give them what they want, things that they can not get through a regular democratic process.
Trump cobbled together almost every fringe group from Kennedy vaccine followers, to Gabbard followers, to racists, and conspiracy nuts to the religious anti-science folks and on and on.
They all think he will give them what they can’t get though a majority vote which is required in a democracy. These useful idiots will wear out their usefulness once an autocracy is secured and they will be discarded, just like Mike Pence and all the rest. Trump literally preys at the temple of money, based on a Frontline episode, The Choice 2016, where they go and prey for riches, etc.
Mark Andressen in his own words, the New York Times interview from earlier this year. These Silicon Valley Libertarian billionaires have conspired to become the king makers. It’s a lot like 1990’s Russia. Where the oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky and others brought both Yeltsin and then Putin to power, and power consolidated, and elections are more ceremonial than real.
Remember Fiona Hill? What happened in 1990’s Russia, is happening to the US. “Russia is the ghost of America’s future.”
I've been on internet since 2005 and my personal experience is this.
Google search has gone to s***
Amazon has gone to s***
Twitter/X has gone to even worse s*** and intelligent people have to flee from platform.
I've never used facebook personally but the word i get from others is that it's also gone to s***
People don't know what internet was 2 decades ago. Like google was this exciting search engine that generated magical searches into the abyss of internet. Google was great until around late 2000s. Now it's all about business and marketing and commercial crap. It doesn't have any magic.
Amazon, in my country was great at first. But after it established its outreach. All the wonderful discounts and benefits were gone. Once people developed the habit of ordering from Amazon, the prices didn't matter much and consumers continued to order even when discounts were not that great and product service become mediocre.
What can be said about Twitter/X? A platform that started to get ruined around 2015 and became a disaster after Musk's takeover.
The people who have been around internet since 2-3 decades know the decline of tech industry. The new generation see the current internet and thinks that's all to it. Internet used to be a better and saner place.
My advice to people is to keep your children away from toxic platforms of tech bros.
Having been around so long, you of course remember the early "web crawlers" that provided search capabilities before Google existed. I even have a fond memory of when my college-age daughter wanted to look up a Socratic dialogue, and looked it up and found a note I had posted somewhere concerning that same classic controversial (i.e. bullshit) dialogue. But to get to the point: you forgot to tell us why a dissent from updated monopolistic practices marks a person as technologically inept. Any profound disquisitions for us on this?
Of course I've used ad blockers for years. Brave has an effective one, better than what I was using before; and of course Duckduckgo even blocks YouTube ads. But apparently you haven't noticed that Google results involving anything commercial are now masses of ads that make finding actual information a pain in the ass, when even possible. I mean, like technical data, often hard or impossible to find; or obscure companies without enough cash to bribe Google.
YMMV, but it's hard to see how, since you seem to be a seasoned techie.
That subcommand, as I read it, zaps the use of Amazon, making it give purer and therefor better results. And it certainly has not worked worth shit in my several tests. Please correct me it I'm wrong.
As to proving this to journalists, be serious. I have better things to do than try to persuade some journalist, especially as I don't know any exceptionally good ones personally. Not to mention that if you haven't noticed the effect when your experience with Google (judging from what one can guess of your chronology) goes back to the beginning of its existence (remember Alta Vista? Or whatever you used then?) it would be really stupid to waste time on such an effort.
This has echoes of Germany in 1933. Fascism is a corporatist economic model because fascists love concentration of power. Its the whole point of fascism. This attracts corporations who also crave a concentration of power. And the corporate oligarchs think Dear Leader is a drooling jack ass they can control. What they always discover is Dear Leader is a vicious drooling jack ass they cannot control.
Back in the early 70s when I started out in the industry as a young woman I was unusual, but not unwelcome and not entirely without examples of older women (mostly COBOL programmers) to look up to. In fact, in the early days, women were commonly found in the mainframe rooms--not just as glorified typists for men who disdained that 'secretarial' work, but key players in growing the code. I could geek out. I was odd, it was lonely but everyone was a bit odd and lonely back then.
Over time, that changed, largely due to misogynists like Thiel conducting literal campaigns to steadily denigrate and dismiss women's contributions, implying our female brains were just not cut out for the work. Much of the disdain for DEI had its beginnings in Silicon Valley as they tried to freeze women out so had to attack the women that did succeed. It was carefully orchestrated.
It was depleting to watch the slow downgrading of opportunities for women in the IT Industry. I was lucky, slipped in just before things went south and had enough experience under my belt and reputation to weather the worst misogynists. But it was humiliating to even have to deal with these mediocre men trying to slam dunk my career because they couldn't bear to have a competent woman defying their narrative. And I noticed I got very little help from the 'good' men to fight these good fights. Women like me were on our own.
That bro boy culture is what is destroying American Democracy and America as a whole. I would argue the lack of women on the programmers' teams today led directly to Social Media that ignored child porn, treated stalking of women as a 'boys will be boys' moment, and celebrated clicks over common sense and community. Things like gamergate were no accident.
Lack of women and especially minority women in the technological areas led to public service in government and health care being taken for granted,, because it is less worthy "wimmen's work". Not that there aren't perfectly awful women running interference, covering for the worst men. Traitors are everywhere.
But those aren't the women that get the real work done out there. Those aren't the awesome women that made it despite the challenges, and make it all worth it.
That picture of Zuckerberg staring down at Sanchez's boobs really struck me too. The Perfect Pairing (pun intended) with this topic.
"Kinder, kuche, keypunch" as I remarked sometime earlier in the century to a well-founded complaint about the relegation of women to menial jobs in the 1980s-90s. Fortunately, the women in that forum understood my intent.
When my Dad ran a computer store, I attended some training on new software. One guy showed up with his secretary to take the class. She did all the typing while he sat next to her with him arms folded. I think she learned a whole lot more in that class than that man did, and probably ran all the systems for him. Probably while he pretended to run the place. When will men ever learn to get out of the way and let good women lead?
What's interesting about tech investment and the various modern forms of finance is that they involve a great deal of investment in unproductive sectors and/or opaque sectors of the economy. Much of the tech investment has gone to ridiculous apps or pipe drams like self-driving cars. Tech "innovations" as different as Spotify and Uber are about making us renter rather than owners of even the simplest forms of capital. Private equity has made housing more unaffordable and turned many cash generating businesses, esp. in retail and the restaurant sector into zombie businesses that do as little as possible yet make money for investors as they shrink.
Look at how much money they’re throwing at artificial “intelligence” right now, and how much they’re likely paying influential writers like Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias that the apps you use to shitpost AI slop are going to take your job in two years.
I'd have something to say here, but I've forgotten what Uber even was. Old age does that to one. Too many stupid old things to allow remembering them all.
The Waymos in DC have live drivers. The Musk taxis in Austin are staffed by people in passenger seats who can intervene. Both of these are guided by remote humans. I know enough about the computational underpinnings of AI to know that "learning" probably never enable these vehicles to avert all possible driving hazards and the most optimistic projections for these vehicles would be low speed urban transportation. i.e., kindof like taking the bus. So, yeah, this is a pipedream and considering all the other potential uses of AI technology a waste of money.
Well I, personally, would like to see the robotaxis get sued out of business or at least to the point they can't operate. You, on the other hand, see human labor as a bad thing.
Lina Kahn is a national treasure and I await her return in the next administration.
No private person or company should have the power to eg hold the US space program hostage or use its communications networks to influence the outcome of a war!
Ted Cruz rewrote “No AI regs for states for 10 years” to get past the Senate Parliamentarian by selling signal space on broadband reserved for the military. “no regulation” clause will be in the OBBB AI MUST BE REGULATED NOW
The Parliamentarian rejected a whole bunch of "clever" clauses the GOP tried to sneak in.
He did it by making "upholding the moratorium a condition for receiving billions in federal broadband expansion funds". What a prick.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/22/senate-parliamentarian-greenlights-state-ai-law-freeze-in-gop-megabill-00416499
You said regulated but you meant banned.
Anyone who can't grasp the dangers of turning over vast swathes of communication to machines that have thus far achieved the intellectual curiosity of a bright sixth-grader isn't paying attention. I can spot AI-generated content within a couple of paragraphs. There's a sterile blandness, a banality to it that just doesn't resemble good writing, such as the professor churns out regularly. It's disjointed, as if a bunch of facts were sifted out of the internet and regurgitated in no particular logical scheme.
Organizing actual facts into logical arguments or explanations is a uniquely human intellectual skill that AI is just beginning to emulate. As the hype for an early Beatles tribute band went, not the real thing but an amazing simulation.
AI's abuse potential is already empirically obvious in academia and even legal briefing, with fictitious authorities cited to support what purports to be argument. In a chronic-distraction environment, that kind of cheating is dangerous. Do we want lazy intelligence officers phoning in what a bot gleaned? High courts relying on--or even citing themselves--false legal decisions? How about science?
So, now and for the foreseeable future, I vote for careful regulation over free rein for a technology that simultaneously holds great promise and great danger.
In what way is it not desirable?
The medical profession is a caring profession. Why would we hand that over to an algorithm? It will only dehumanize what should be the human work of caring, making it more difficult for those who are providing care to do their jobs by becoming a measure for their work. Ask for an example if you want, I have one.
So basically “this is desirable because China is doing it”
States will not be able to regulate AI for 10 years That provision WILL be in the OBBB. Do I have this right yet? Wish I could get an copy of this provision since Cruz rewrote it so I can see the actual language of it
This isn't a copy of the provision, but close enough:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/22/senate-parliamentarian-greenlights-state-ai-law-freeze-in-gop-megabill-00416499
@everybody I would call your senators your reps and your governors about this I did Without oversight, this tech will roll over us like a tsunami wave
That’s exactly what the goal of this bill is.
I would advise your time will be better spent in protests for July 4th.
I know that is my plan.
Yes! We must continue to Rise! Resist! ✊✊✊
I'll be out there on the Fourth of July.
and what do you suppose will happen after July 4, even if there are more millions out than on June 14? What is the 'plan'? Do you think that Trump and his clown show and his behind-the-scenes evil geniuses at Project 2025 will go away, either quietly or under protest? Why would they?
So, you believe writing letters and calling our Senators and Reps. is going to be more effective than massive protests? I have been doing those things, as have millions of other Americas; and yes, it is essential. However, so far, it has not stopped the MAGA Repbulicans in the Senate and House from ramming through everything that the orange sh*tstain, the tech bros and the Project 2025 ghouls are demanding. Massive protests are required, and I believe that a general strike and boycotts will also be needed in the near future. We will have to shut them down until they scream 'Uncle'. Losing their profits, which is what gives them their power over our legislators, and in turn us, is ALL they care about. We have to stop kidding ourselves. We must secure our elections and shore up and reform the process, or we will never have another free and fair election, again.
Short of armed resistance an economic boycott is the only protest that will get the attention of Republican elites. I think we’ve already waited too long. Trump will use ICE in an attempt to quash all dissent. Turning them on his opposition has been the plan all along. (A majority of Americans are his opponents. Giving ICE all that funding is a huge mistake. This is going to get very ugly.) I think he underestimates our resolve. I for one would gladly give my life for this cause. This is 1776 for me.
Three other factors that have pushed high tech to Republicans have been the rise of unionization at places like Amazon; labor enforcement (e.g., Uber and Lyft and other industries of the like); and employees pushing back, sometimes too publicly for their “overlords” in support of gov programs within those companies that lead to distinctly non-liberal outcomes (e.g., support of genocide, ethnic cleansing, or state sanctioned violence). The latter certainly enforces the liberal university bias they believe exists.
As a MAGA person, I agree. She was the only Biden Admin cabinet-level appointee that did the job based on the charter of the position.
Pete Buttegieg was very competent at doing the job he was supposed to do. Anthony Blinken also. Lots of others.. for that matter, Gensler at the SEC - working to protect investors (and naive would-be investors) from new forms of scam, notably cryptocurrency.
Crypto now exists primarily to make the Trump Crime Family wealthy. Well, and all other mafiosi. Crypto is a ponzi scheme that exists primarily for criminal activity. Fleecing the gullible is just gravy.
But the Crypto industry is now buying off key Dem senators--like CA's Schiff--to get their new bill passed.
Unlike Hunter's "art", anyone can buy crypto.
Yeah, now anyone can invest in organized crime.
Pete Buttegieg? Is this satire? https://www.axios.com/2023/01/12/buttigieg-faa-transportation-crises
Blinken I would give a B- given his boss. Buttegieg an F.
I remember that in 2020 someone wrote an article saying something like 'too bad Buttigieg was put on transportation, because he was doing pretty well and now everyone will start to hate him through no fault of his own', because of the decades of under investment, amongst other things. I don't remember if that author included the crappy American urbanism and the fact that half of the people still believe that just adding another lane will fix congestion, but I would have. This article you share basically says the same: everything sucks and B does what he can with what he's given.
You obviously didn’t read the article you referenced. Buttigieg got blamed for a lot of stuff that was due to decisions that predated his tenure, sometimes by decades, and for other things outside his control.
Wow. After January 6th you're still just out and proud. Trump's cabinet doesn't have one member who is qualified. He actually has one cabinet member who had part of his brain (per his own autobiography) that was eaten by a parasite because he eats road kill, yet you feel you have any authority left to post here about Biden's cabinet. It would be amazing if it wasn't so pathetic.
LOL. He said "Jan-6" and talks about brains when he elected a geriatric cabbage as President!
Good point. Trump most certainly is a geriatric cabbage. Btw talking to yourself in 2nd person is a sign of senility. That explains a lot.
I think you meant third person, "He said"...
Whoever was running the show actually did do a pretty good job, even if in terms of public opinion Biden turned out to be the next Jimmy Carter...
I will check Wired Magazine for something
She should be arrested for unlawful intimidation. Impersonating a federal official? Using powers she did not have to solve problems she had no legal power to affect. Social media cannot legally be attacked with trust-busting tools and it is illegal to try.
That may be, but Congress could certainly reintroduce the "Fairness Doctrine", the repeal of which under Reagan, facilitated the expansion of and monopolization of media by the right wing.
Agree completely.
Well, not shot perhaps, but I do think that when this shitshow is over (and it will be over) we should prosecute those members of Trump's grisly gang who shredded the Constitution, who are guilty of human rights violations, suspension of habeas corpus, etc., with a trial along the lines of Nuremberg.
SPAM bot. Totally unrelated commercial. Reported
Me too. And I reported it from its profile page as well.
I prefer they just rocket off to Mars or “outer space.” It would be so refreshing to not hear about them. Not taxing them has been the absolute stupidest thing imaginable and we have both sides of the “aisle” to thank for that idiocy and lunacy. We don’t need corrupt and feckless centrist Democrats running the show anymore. We need progressive Democratic Socialists to save our democracy. We needed Bernie Sanders ten years ago. I just know in my gut he would’ve dragged Trump in debate and easily won the presidency in 2016. We again have corrupt, feckless centrist Dems to thank for that epic failure.
The moderates will remain in denial forever. Bernie would have easily beat Trump in 2016, if the Democratic money hadn't bought the primary for Hillary. Bernie should have run as an Independent. Progressives should run as Independents today, the Republican Lite Democrats are simply worthless.
I tend to agree and not just because I’m a Vermonter who loves Bernie. The Chuck Schumer’s and the Nancy Pelosi‘s of Congress need to leave to make room for a new generation of Democrats who fight and have a clear concise message for the American people. Melanie Stansbury, AOC, Jasmine Crockett embody this new generation of Democrats.
In Pelosi's defense, she did give us Obamacare. I know, I know, it's not single payer, it's a compromise, but it's still better than nothing - which is what the GOP wants us to have.
Bernie had trouble appealing to Black voters in 2016 and 2020. Without their votes it would have been a matter of which party has the most White voters, and since the 1960s Republicans have had more. Automatically assuming Bernie would have won without looking at the underlying voter numbers is wishful thinking.
Sadly, I'm not at all convinced that's true, because I think the "moderates" would have hobbled Bernie in exactly the same way they accuse him of crippling Hillary. I was literally seeing emails from NPR-brained acquaintances talking about how if those crazy radicals Sanders and Trump were the nominees in 2016, we should totally all just go third party behind a REASONABLE choice like that nice Mr. Bloomberg!
Conveniently for you, will never know who if Bernie had run
What we do know for a fact is that Hillary and the so-called moderates lost! And then they lost again in 2024.
Sadly I don't think any of them will be called to account. I base this on the response of the Obama to the financial crisis and that of the Biden administration to Trump.
On the general topic of technology I note that once again it is dawning on people that technology is not a panacea but rather needs to be used thoughtfully. In the '70s there was a similar awakening. E.L. Schumacher "Small is Beautiful " and the works of Lewis Munford especially.
I think Obama's response to 2008 would have been much better if the GOP hadn't been so successful in paring back fiscal stimulus.
I suspect he was convinced by the financial people that it was necessary to go easy on them because they could totally crash the whole monetary system worldwide.
It's true the monetary system has to be defended because money is nothing more than confidence that it works. However, the big boys should have faced some punishment. Big problem, nothing they did was illegal. Unethical has hell, but not illegal. The big money people make the laws.
Even FDR had trouble getting his agenda through after three years of the Great Depression and a supermajority in Congress. And he wasn’t the first president of his demographic, which may have contributed to Obama’s cautiousness.
Stephen, as a society, we are in love with silver bullets. They travel at the speed of, hit their targets squarely in the nose, and our beastly problem is gone. D-E-A-D. That's what Marvel Comic Book lure tells us. Super Heroes and Super Feats are brought by high tech. Gen AI is the next silver bullet. Beware! Caveat, Dude! Beware!
Everything Paul says here is true. I am retired from high tech in financial services. I know the naivety firsthand. I also know how the industry big players rope individuals, ultimately International corporations, into their products and services, and because they are 600 lb gorillas, they own the marketplace and crush competition or acquire them until competition is no more
I fear that while all this is true, the average citizen has no clue about market dynamics and service pricing. They are simply mad as hell, and they are not going to take it anymore - along comes MAGA and its cult leaders. High-tech billionaires want regulators off their backs, add big financiers, and we get Trump and his witless minions.
How do we educate the electorate to these bold-faced truths? The Biden-Harris coalition failed miserably. Had they won the election, they would have been boxed in anyway. The Democrats have been losing the populist war for a long time.
We need new communication and voter education strategies now. Perhaps Substack and podcasts can help. It won't be WaPo for sure. QED.
Thanks for your post. 👍
Thanks, Thomas, there are lots of us that feel exactly the same way.
Perhaps more attention should be paid to the expansion of Libertarian and quasi-Libertarian ideologies in the tech sector.
Rich Libertarians live in a fantasy world where everything runs great without government intervention or taxes. Then, when a foreign government seizes one of their factories, suddenly they're big fans of the US Marine Corps.
Or if they need a massive bailout from the taxpayer like in 2008. Then they blame the government for 'fiscal irresponsibility' and demand austerity to pay for it. This is the 'free market'.
Those sissy boys can't handle the real free market.
Yes, the require a monopoly in order to be "successful". What a sick joke!
Exactly. They feel they are superior but then run like cowards from real competition.
Libertarians demand others behave.
Bill Black once said of EMH/Ratex something like - "it's a model that assumes away market power and fraud, and therefore has about the predictive power you would expect"
In my experience, these libertarians and free market people are selective as to when libertarianism and the free market come into play.
For example, the libertarians that I have heard about want to do whatever it is that they want to do. But they often want to limit or control what other people can do.
The free-market people preach individual capitalism when they are making profits. But if they have losses, as happened so some in the 2008 recession, then it is time to "socialize" loses. If there is a profit, they keep all of it, if there is a loss the taxpayer picks it up.
The old "heads I win; tails you lose" routine.
Amen! Libertarians are all about "freedom" unless it is about black freedom, freedom for women, freedom for gays, etc.
Remember when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed just a few years ago? It's okay when government helps rich people:
> Bill Ackman, chief of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management and an advocate of self-regulation in the crypto industry who has resisted regulations at his investment fund, was among the earliest investors to sound an alarm on Thursday. He is a registered Democrat but has pushed back against what he describes as excessive government regulation and, in 2016, said he was “extremely bullish” about then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. He argued that the fallout of SVB’s collapse could “destroy a long-term driver of the economy” since many venture backed companies had their money parked at SVB. He also said the government should consider a bailout or guarantee all deposits, and that regulatory intervention would be important to avert a larger banking crisis.
> The about face by the tech and investment luminaries didn’t go unnoticed. In response to the urgent tweets by Sacks for regulators to come to the rescue, one user said, incredulously: “Excuse me, sir. Suddenly the government is the answer?!?”
https://fortune.com/2023/03/13/tech-libertarianssilicon-valley-bank-collapse-federal-intervention/
Yes, of course, but bailouts only for THEM is what they want and demand. They are selfish, narcissistic plutocrats, who now are backing the kleptocrat, tRUmp, and likely intend to become kleptocrats, themselves, once they are able to get tRUmp ousted. They plan to do this by getting Vance installed to replace tRUmp. Vance is backed, funded and controlled by Peter Thiel. Need I say more?
At that point, we will all be within the 'panopticon', the TIA version of Palantir. Why else do you think Thiel & Musk's DOGE has stolen our most intimate, private, personal data in their illegal, unconstitutional raid on and stripping of our federal government? IMO, these people belong in prison. It is either them or us.
Exactly.
Ayn Rand, anyone?
Curtis Yarvin. Yucky.
The recent New Yorker profile of Yarvin is illuminating. I was struck by how much of his behavior seems to be a performance of how Yarvin thinks a "deep thinker" behaves. He is a poseur, but also dangerous.
Blue barf emoji.
Another good discussion of this character and his influence on Trump is a post by Justin Ling: <https://www.bugeyedandshameless.com/p/the-neo-reactionary-regime>.
No lie. In fact, hard to believe how yucky!
Yarvin is our version of Russia’s Alexander Duggin ( Russian ultra nationalist / neo fascists Putin political advisor)
Supreme yuck.
Ever seen a pic of him with his leather jacket, crotch high jeans and outsized belt buckle? OMG.
Was that his advertisement for causing acute vaginal dryness? ( no, I haven’t!)
Lordy
So on target
Yeah, so it looks like at this point in time, anyway, the Russians have won/are winning the Cold War, thanks to the now MAGA tech bros and their alliance with the CNP and Project 2025. However, this is NOT the end of history, unless we allow it to be.
A great quote on libertarians, sort of:
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
I'm not sure of the original source.
Oh, I love this! If anyone cares, there's a lot out there about Ayn Rand: her snobbery, cruelty, iron rule over her true believers, frequent deep depressions, self destructive chain smoking and heavy drinking, that anyone interested in her influence over some powerful libertarians really owe it o themselves to look it up. I think Milton Friedman was one of her disciples back in the day.
Exactly right. In a word, she was a sociopath, as are the tech bro libertarians that follow her bankrupt ideology of selfishness and cruelty. She was also a major hypocrite who collected government social benefits after demonizing them and anyone who accepted them, even though they earned them by paying into SS & Medicare their entire working lives.
Yes, and so was Allan Greenspan, our long time, too long-term Federal Reserve Chief. He used to go to her home for regular meetings of her devoted followers.
I have that quote attributed to a John Rogers (not that that narrows it down).
Ah ... But Palantir is Tolkein's.
Who accepted government benefits
Ayn Rand was amazing!
Not only did she give birth to herself, but she built the home she was born in!
It’s worse than simplistic libertarian ideology. For a lot of these tech leaders this is about more than just money and power, it has become the pseudo-religion trans humanism which promises immortality when the “singularity” is arrived at and human minds can meld with computers:
“Silicon Valley’s Obsession With AI Looks a Lot Like Religion”
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/silicon-valleys-obsession-with-ai-looks-a-lot-like-religion/
Musk isn’t the only delusional tech mogul. Bryan Johnson, the head of the “Don’t Die”movement not only uses his son for transfusions of blood products, he also uses him for comparison with his own erections and posts those comparisons on Twitter.
“ Don't Die Tech Mogul Bryan Johnson Is in an Actual Penis-Measuring Contest—With His Teenage Son
“Raise children to stand tall, be firm, and be upright,” the proud papa wrote.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/dont-die-tech-mogul-bryan-johnson-penis-measuring-contest-son?srsltid=AfmBOooVszY1mdEVZRAqV5hfHOmbMn_QIBi7tOJDtGS9RP-8TaaM7FoN
This techno religious ideology they follow is proof that we need more humanities in schools. These tech bro “thought leaders” have so little literature, history and philosophy in their heads that they have to make up their own stupid theories to justify their selfishness. As an atheist I don’t follow the Catholic teachings I grew up with, but at least in Catholicism it says love thy neighbor and help the poor, something you will never see in their tech manifestos. To quote Val Kilmer’s character from the movie Real Genius, you can’t have science without philosophy.
Catholicism does not seem to have done anything but exacerbate JD Vance’s inhumanity. What seems to be happening to the uber-wealthy is that their money and status has elevated their egos and erased their empathy.
That is not really accurate. Vance got involved with extremist far right Catholicism through his handler Peter Thiel who has had an Opus Dei priest as his spiritual adviser since college. Opus Dei is a far right cult geared to recruiting the powerful (William Barr, Louie Freeh, Antonin Scalia) . Those people opposed — hated — Francis and now Pope Leo. In contrast Pope John Paul II and his successor Pope Benedict were both far right reactionaries who tried to undo the advances of Vatican II. They were part of an extremist backlash against Vatican II bringing Catholicism into the modern world and back to the teachings of Jesus.
Pope Francis started cracking down on Opus Dei and it’s a good bet Leo will finish the job.Francis also manages to appoint 80% of the cardinals, replacing the reactionaries John Paul II and Benedict appointed.
Pope Leo chose his name because the last pope with that name, Leo XIII, was the pope who authored Rarum Novarum, the basis for Catholic social justice. Leo III wrote it in reaction to the dehumanizing conditions for workers during the Industrial Revolution. He called for humane working conditions, living wages, trade unions. Leo XIVis already addressing this issue regarding the challenges to human values posed by AI.
“ 19th-century Catholic teachings, 21st-century tech: How concerns about AI guided Pope Leo's choice of name”
https://www.ncronline.org/culture/19th-century-catholic-teachings-21st-century-tech-how-concerns-about-ai-guided-pope-leos
Also the Jubilee Commission which was co-chaired by liberal economist Joseph Stiglitz, just issued their report calling for a sustainable, people-centered world economy:
“ New Vatican report calls for global economic reforms”
https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-voices/new-vatican-report-calls-global-economic-reforms
Don’t forget both Pope Francis and Pope Leo rebuked Vance for his unchristian claims about who the Church says we must love. When he converted no one bothered to tell him about Jesus’s teaching that you must love the stranger as you love yourself.
Although I am not longer a believer I was raised Catholic during the Vatican II era and have been appalled to watch the Church’s nasty right wing turn under John Paul and Benedict but fun watching Pope Francis slowly undo their damage. We need the voices of spiritual leaders and philosophers to counteract the dehumanizing claims of tech bros like Musk, Thiel and Bryan Johnson (the guy who claims he will live forever, gets transfusions from his son and compares the leant of his nocturnal erections with his son’s online!)
Social Media manipulation by big tech is malware to the human brain and heart. These same commercial algorithms that incentivize hyper consumption, are being used/sold to the political parties. It’s a powerful tool that tracks and profiles an individual’s psychological profile….how easy it is persuade a person? Then use geo tracking tools to locate them in the swing districts. Spend your ads in those districts. Curate the ads to individual psyc profiles. It’s the new way for the unpopular to win elections.
True, though JD only believes what Peter Theil tells him to. And all these tech billionaires want us to bow down and worship their greatness and their stupid Ai project. Never.
Thiel is an Opus Dei guy. Read Gareth Gore’s expose of that abusive but powerful far right Catholic cult. Pope Francis was disempowering them before he died.
Book ordered.
When challenged on the lie that Haitians were eating pets, Vance the recent convert didn't seem to have any problem doubling down on Bearing False Witness against the vulnerable Haitian asylum-seeking community.
He kicks down.
See also, J. K. Rowling.
What is sad about her is that the Harry Potter series is an anti-fascist, anti-racist allegory. The values in that are entirely consistent with true Christianity — love of others, rejection of the abuse of power, etc. I think her freak out over trans people must be related to the sexual abuse she suffered.
People raised Catholic say we should help the poor.
People who have recently converted *to* Catholicism seem to prefer it for its most conservative, patriarchal aspects.
They read “The Sovereign Individual” by James Dale Davidson
People like Bryan Johnson make me welcome death. Who wants to live longer if you’re stuck on the same planet with such a grotesque narcissist?
How would you like to be his son and have your dad compare the length of your nighttime erections to his online? I hope they all hop on one of Elon’s rockets and emigrate to the hellscape of Mars where they will fry (assuming the rocket didn’t blow up at launch).
I think the only comforting thing is that these tech libertarians suffer from back pain, acid reflux and a miriad of other ailments (many much more serious) just like the rest of us. Then what does their money buy them?! Oh don't get me going with their messed-up spoiled adult children with all of their problems. I envy those who have what they need but not everything they want.
Holy cow, are you serious
OMG, how sickening! What a psychopath!
Libertarianism is just good old fashioned greed with a guru (Ayn Rand).
Ayn Rand (whom I can't stand) didn't like libertarians. She called them "hippies of the right."
True, but all the latterday libertarians quote her books like gospel because she justifies their greed in print.
Daddy, when I grow up I want to be a Libertarian.
Sorry, son, you can't do both.
Privatize profits…socialize risk…
It’s not expanding; it’s in sharp decline. It was at its peak amongst Gen X techies (sadly, my own cohort), who came of age in the Reagan era, when Randian nonsense stalked the land.
It’s the retreat of libertarianism amongst younger techies that leads some of the Gen X old guard to blame universities (instead of, say, the fact that we’re aging out and our younger colleagues have a very different lived experience.)
Expansion? We've been here since 1998. The success of tech since the dotcom boom owes everything to libertarianism as an organizing ideology.
Our future: The Tech Reich.
Buffoonistas…
I see you are fully detached from the realities of modern life.
I’ve only ever met three kinds of libertarians: 1. Those who live out in the woods somewhere and don’t want to participate in society, 2. Those who essentially think taxes are theft, and 3. Republicans too embarrassed to admit being Republican.
Hello, I am a libertarian. Governments are, as a rule, stupid and poorly informed about what people need, and therefore they should almost always do less, because the more they do, and the more specific their policies are, the more likely they are to fuck things up. They make it illegal to live like a poor person in the belief that this will make there be fewer poor people; instead it makes there be more of them, or in extreme cases kills them off. They set price caps and price floors and then are surprised that this means people can't get what they need - most egregiously water in the American West, where consumers are short on drinking water while alfalfa farms that wouldn't be profitable if they had to pay fair prices for their water burn water in the desert for a fixed fee.
And if you give the government lots of power, it will have that power when the worst person you can imagine gets control of it, and uses it to crush everyone they dislike and self-aggrandize and enrich themselves.
There was a time where this was a thought experiment - consider what would happen if the worst person got control and used every power you'd given his predecessors in the most tyrannical way possible. The government did evil things, but was defensible as broadly good. But as Ken White wrote in 2017, we live in the America at the end of all hypotheticals: this is not a thought experiment any longer. We gave the government power, someone without principles, restraint, or a sense for the long term took control, and now it's showing that all the libertarians, free speech absolutists, and skeptics of the imperial presidency were 100% right.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220328050447/https://www.popehat.com/2017/08/14/america-at-the-end-of-all-hypotheticals/
This is an outstanding summary, Paul. Thank you. One reason the techoligarchs don't like Europe is legislation like the GDPR and other regulations protecting consumers. But when the garden consumer like me feels like our personal data is being used in ways we don't know, it's not surprising that there is a huge loss of trust. As to crypto and AI, I'm more than skeptical of the first and extremely concerned about the second. And the pity is that all this tech has the potential to do great things - in medicine and learning, for example - as we hoped in the beginning. The disappointment and feeling of betrayal and abuse is behind a lot of suspicion and mistrust. That won't get better for big tech any time soon.
Fruit of a poisonous tree?
LOL. Indeed. Or at least a fruit that needs peeling and stewing first.
Well-said!
One other aspect of the general turn away from liking the tech companies is the fact that people are slowly, dimly becoming aware that these tech companies are harvesting and marketing every aspect of everyone's existence. Your phone is listening to you, relaying your conversations back to a server that then generates ad content based on what it heard you say. Your TV is watching you and doing the same thing. The computer I'm typing this on is sending every keystroke out into the world where it will be parsed, sold, and returned to me in the form of ads (or maybe federal agents in the not too distant future).
We don't want our data to be sold, and yet we're eager to pay for the devices that suck up and ship all our data. I know people who have an Alexa or similar device in every room of their house. We hate the invasion of our privacy, and yet do everything we can afford to wipe that privacy away.
Technology as a whole has been amazing beneficial to society. Think about fiber optic communication, biomedical technology, computers, GPS, lasers, radar, and the list goes on. However, to your point, one aspect of technology-social media, data mining, and targeted marketing, has been devastating to society. I actually don't see that Facebook benefits society at all. It's astounding that some technology leaders either don't recognize this, or are so greedy that they don't care that they are destroying society.
Facebook is full of scams these days that Zuck doesn’t want to rein in because he earns money from them.
Big price for that. My data has been dumped in the dark web twice, by ATT and FB. The fun is ongoing. And will be for all of us.
Derelict is listing all the intrusions that are possible; none of them are fictional. It doesn't mean that everyone is so wired in that all these connections are at play.
A lot can be avoided by limiting your exposure to these devices and systems. If you are supercareful you can even stay under the radar completely.
Palantirs are watching, Alexas are listening, The sky is falling...Oh My!
Just curious about which aspects you think are fictional. Your phone definitely listens to you and uses that information for ads. It looks at the people who are near you and uses that information too.
I wouldn’t be surprised if your tv is doing the same.
The keystroke part is hyperbole, but it’s not like every website you visit isn’t being monitored.
The ads are beyond horrible, music is still available, if you pay Amazon or apple
Well, I'm 72 and avoiding an iPhone as well. I admit it's a challenge at times.
They're not progressives, futurists, innovators, or anything else like that. They're simple obscenely rich rent seekers, and they want to "conserve" the regulatory framework which allows them to extract those monopoly rents.
They're conservatives now. Galbraith had their number:
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
Love that Galbraith quote. A zinger…
Are you ok if I restack your comment?
Yep.
"Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and Republican congressmen". - Trump to Bill Barr
Trump and the oligarchs are trying to ram the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history through Congress.
In order to do that he needs his BBB signed into law.
In order to do that he needs to manufacture consent and one spectacular way to do that is to drive the stock market higher.
Today, Trump posts, "“Too Late” Jerome Powell, of the Fed, will be in Congress today in order to explain, among other things, why he is refusing to lower the Rate. Europe has had 10 cuts, we have had ZERO. No inflation, great economy - We should be at least two to three points lower. Would save the USA 800 Billion Dollars Per Year, plus. What a difference this would make. If things later change to the negative, increase the Rate. I hope Congress really works this very dumb, hardheaded person, over. We will be paying for his incompetence for many years to come. THE BOARD SHOULD ACTIVATE."
Luxuriate in this phrase remembering what he told Barr - "If things later change to the negative, increase the Rate." Once the bill becomes law, the Fed can go back to managing the economy properly.
I have a sneaking suspicion (and it is just that, I have NO inside info) once that bill becomes law the second part of the great wealth transfer takes place, the stock market will be liquidated by those oligarchs TAX FREE.
Trump about MAGA
"You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you
You'll get the chance to put the knife in"
A great version w animation
https://youtu.be/d-Qm6P-rW20?si=Mk1sqbPlqxG7or79
I wonder what Zuckerberg is looking at in the photo accompanying this excellent article?
Ha ha. To observe his fundamental childishness is to say it all.
Perhaps they could duplicate the Presidents act, and you'd have your acronym.
Since the first Iron Man comic book appeared in 1962, it's close to 100% doubtful that this could in any way be based on Elon Musk. Just correcting the record.
Actually, I'd say it's the other way round. Musk sees Robert Downey Jr's character and says "That's me!"
My thoughts exactly
I always thought that Iron Man was based on a lot of people, including Howard Hughes. But Elon Musk? Not one of them.
Tony Stark is a socially aware, sophisticated, sexy character. How in the hell do you connect that to Elon Musk?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man Yes, Lee based it on Howard Hughes. I was a big Marvel comics fan when in college.
Paul, I think a key element of the enshittification process is the unrealistic growth expectations behind the techlords' companies' valuations. Their great wealth is based on a stock valuation that, in turn, is based on the expectation continued rapidly growing revenue and profits. As they try to meme-ify their valuations with ever more outlandish and over hyped growth gimmicks -- Musk is a master of this -- they are more and more reliant on shady growth areas like crypto or dangerous ones like AI. As they veer further into the dark side of tech in search of continued growth, they need Republicans, who have no ethical values, to protect them from the people.
It seems like the tech crowd has traded in their flip flops and hoodies for yachts, tax cuts, and bitcoin.
But then, the world of laboring over code has highly changed as well. It is now more often bucks over brains so there is also a sector who feel left behind and are ripe for the pull of nonsense and the allure of get rich quick gamble of bitcoin, as well as extremely outdated nonsense regarding masculinity that Trump is selling.
The truth is, that despite all of the justification, the real reason for the flip from left to right was the tax cuts and/or threat of increases and yes, as you point out regulations.
All the rest is just an excuse, an excuse that some may now believe after repeating it to others and themselves enough times.
Money can be for some like a drug, and as we all know (or should) drugs change the structure of the brain making the brain seek more of whatever one is addicted to and a lot of this involves justification.
However, it is not just drugs that can cause excess release of neurotransmitters, but a lot of things can give one that "high" feeling and cause structural changes. Think about that workout fanatic or almost any fanatic as an example, or maybe someone addicted to food. The old saying about a "dopamine rush" was real and it is also a brain changer. Often these folks are feeding a self imposed structural brain change and one knows your brain can talk you into justifying that next "fix."
Fortunately, I find money boring.
However, I love economics. Studying economics is like studying the brain itself or structure (which I also majored in).
As far as leaving the Dems, all one need do is look at the bait being used by the right-wing opinion section at the WSJ and they were spreading rumors that Harris was going to impose a tax on unrealized gains or what is known as a wealth tax.
Mark Cuban tried to dispel these myths but fear of losing what they held dear took hold.
They became like Gollum protecting their "precious" and slithered over to Trump.
The truth is that the Dems did nothing wrong except that they could not keep up with the massive onslaught of disinformation coming from the right.
If there is anything Dems can do better next time, it is to keep an ear to the ground so they can get ahead of the nonsense.
Also, never say you are going to simply give people money, even if it is for a down payment, that is red and purple state GOP red meat fodder right there. Lions and Tigers and what sounds like Socialism - Oh My!
I agree. Lower taxes is the GOP's appeal with the Tech Bros. Silicon Valley technology may be new. But greed is older than money.
Well put.
You're on to something with the analogy of 'drugs,' I think. It might be enlightening to take that one step further, and add 'addiction' to your assessment. It's about thrills, and a goosing of an outsized sense of self. Addiction typically leads to a demand for more and more and more, and a flattening of any experiences other than the thrill. Basically a form of insanity.
far too many Americans have a fatal case of Fox poisoning.
Sadly, it is built into our biology and helps with learning and survival (like food), but too much of a rush over too long a time is a brain changer and yes what is also known as an addiction.
Gollum was addicted to his precious ring as an analogy. Although in the book it was a magical power, people could identify to things in real life that can be all consuming and controlling.
The thing that always struck me about Gollum is his gradual transformation from an ordinary, congenial and presumably jolly and sociable member of Hobbit society into a craven troglodyte with no eyes for anything but that 'Preciouss' ring. In the movie he looks something like Stephen Miller. Yikes.
Yeah. And if you eat too much and too many of the wrong things, you sicken and die. Addiction is fundamentally selfish and isolating, as well as toxic, in all its forms, involving as it does lying, cheating, stealing and an exclusive focus on personal satisfaction above all other concerns, up to and including survival.
Lean jerky?
The drug analogy works… but don’t forget fear. Those of us who have comparatively little find great meaning and connection (true wealth) in people and nature. We know inevitable death looms at all times. These tech bros ooze fear of poverty and death because they are empty vessels, seeking security in money and control. The harder they grasp, the further it slips, and the cycle continues. They are just men and bleed like the rest of us. It’s time we prove it.
Yes fear, and yes addiction, but I think we are all susceptible to various degrees, so one need not be an empty vessel simply too consumed with wealth, I think.
Quite a few Democratic senators were wrong to support the GENIUS Act.
I would like Krugman to get more into the weeds about that whole thing. Maybe he and Nathan can discuss?
That seems weedy enough to spark the interest of Nathan Tankus maybe?
It seems the ins and outs of that leg might be over my head.
It was weird that Democrats saw tech execs coming to Capitol Hill in hoodies and flip flops and saw this as endearing rather than a sign that they are deeply unserious people.
Again — Dems got confused by the fact that a lot of them are gay nerds into think they were their friends, but unlike Hollywood which really was just in it for the social liberalism, Big Tech thought that they could con Democrats into eschewed their usual dislike of rich people. I greatly prefer the Very Serious Rich people who got rich in manufacturing than the deeply unserious Rich people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Even Bill Gates has much more in common with the former than the latter.
As someone who grew up in CA, I did not see the hoodie and flops as “unserious” it was a status symbol that instead of being “too sexy for their shirts” they were implying they were too smart for suits and shoes and had better things to do.
They did not try to fool anyone, in my view, that was, and is, simply the culture to a large degree except now that they have wealth they want to keep it and might be consumed by that
They were not so smart that they did not succumb to the power of the ring.
Is that Silicon Valley or is it the religious right?
You may have more insight on this than I do, but any group who sees itself as a minority when it comes to getting what they want politically may be somewhat more motivated by a dictator who promises to give them what they want, things that they can not get through a regular democratic process.
Trump cobbled together almost every fringe group from Kennedy vaccine followers, to Gabbard followers, to racists, and conspiracy nuts to the religious anti-science folks and on and on.
They all think he will give them what they can’t get though a majority vote which is required in a democracy. These useful idiots will wear out their usefulness once an autocracy is secured and they will be discarded, just like Mike Pence and all the rest. Trump literally preys at the temple of money, based on a Frontline episode, The Choice 2016, where they go and prey for riches, etc.
Mark Andressen in his own words, the New York Times interview from earlier this year. These Silicon Valley Libertarian billionaires have conspired to become the king makers. It’s a lot like 1990’s Russia. Where the oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky and others brought both Yeltsin and then Putin to power, and power consolidated, and elections are more ceremonial than real.
Remember Fiona Hill? What happened in 1990’s Russia, is happening to the US. “Russia is the ghost of America’s future.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/opinion/marc-andreessen-trump-silicon-valley.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Two words. White men.
I've been on internet since 2005 and my personal experience is this.
Google search has gone to s***
Amazon has gone to s***
Twitter/X has gone to even worse s*** and intelligent people have to flee from platform.
I've never used facebook personally but the word i get from others is that it's also gone to s***
People don't know what internet was 2 decades ago. Like google was this exciting search engine that generated magical searches into the abyss of internet. Google was great until around late 2000s. Now it's all about business and marketing and commercial crap. It doesn't have any magic.
Amazon, in my country was great at first. But after it established its outreach. All the wonderful discounts and benefits were gone. Once people developed the habit of ordering from Amazon, the prices didn't matter much and consumers continued to order even when discounts were not that great and product service become mediocre.
What can be said about Twitter/X? A platform that started to get ruined around 2015 and became a disaster after Musk's takeover.
The people who have been around internet since 2-3 decades know the decline of tech industry. The new generation see the current internet and thinks that's all to it. Internet used to be a better and saner place.
My advice to people is to keep your children away from toxic platforms of tech bros.
Having been around so long, you of course remember the early "web crawlers" that provided search capabilities before Google existed. I even have a fond memory of when my college-age daughter wanted to look up a Socratic dialogue, and looked it up and found a note I had posted somewhere concerning that same classic controversial (i.e. bullshit) dialogue. But to get to the point: you forgot to tell us why a dissent from updated monopolistic practices marks a person as technologically inept. Any profound disquisitions for us on this?
Of course I've used ad blockers for years. Brave has an effective one, better than what I was using before; and of course Duckduckgo even blocks YouTube ads. But apparently you haven't noticed that Google results involving anything commercial are now masses of ads that make finding actual information a pain in the ass, when even possible. I mean, like technical data, often hard or impossible to find; or obscure companies without enough cash to bribe Google.
YMMV, but it's hard to see how, since you seem to be a seasoned techie.
Huh? Do you mean '-amazon.com'?
That subcommand, as I read it, zaps the use of Amazon, making it give purer and therefor better results. And it certainly has not worked worth shit in my several tests. Please correct me it I'm wrong.
As to proving this to journalists, be serious. I have better things to do than try to persuade some journalist, especially as I don't know any exceptionally good ones personally. Not to mention that if you haven't noticed the effect when your experience with Google (judging from what one can guess of your chronology) goes back to the beginning of its existence (remember Alta Vista? Or whatever you used then?) it would be really stupid to waste time on such an effort.
This has echoes of Germany in 1933. Fascism is a corporatist economic model because fascists love concentration of power. Its the whole point of fascism. This attracts corporations who also crave a concentration of power. And the corporate oligarchs think Dear Leader is a drooling jack ass they can control. What they always discover is Dear Leader is a vicious drooling jack ass they cannot control.
See also Russia in the 2000s.
Back in the early 70s when I started out in the industry as a young woman I was unusual, but not unwelcome and not entirely without examples of older women (mostly COBOL programmers) to look up to. In fact, in the early days, women were commonly found in the mainframe rooms--not just as glorified typists for men who disdained that 'secretarial' work, but key players in growing the code. I could geek out. I was odd, it was lonely but everyone was a bit odd and lonely back then.
Over time, that changed, largely due to misogynists like Thiel conducting literal campaigns to steadily denigrate and dismiss women's contributions, implying our female brains were just not cut out for the work. Much of the disdain for DEI had its beginnings in Silicon Valley as they tried to freeze women out so had to attack the women that did succeed. It was carefully orchestrated.
It was depleting to watch the slow downgrading of opportunities for women in the IT Industry. I was lucky, slipped in just before things went south and had enough experience under my belt and reputation to weather the worst misogynists. But it was humiliating to even have to deal with these mediocre men trying to slam dunk my career because they couldn't bear to have a competent woman defying their narrative. And I noticed I got very little help from the 'good' men to fight these good fights. Women like me were on our own.
That bro boy culture is what is destroying American Democracy and America as a whole. I would argue the lack of women on the programmers' teams today led directly to Social Media that ignored child porn, treated stalking of women as a 'boys will be boys' moment, and celebrated clicks over common sense and community. Things like gamergate were no accident.
Lack of women and especially minority women in the technological areas led to public service in government and health care being taken for granted,, because it is less worthy "wimmen's work". Not that there aren't perfectly awful women running interference, covering for the worst men. Traitors are everywhere.
But those aren't the women that get the real work done out there. Those aren't the awesome women that made it despite the challenges, and make it all worth it.
That picture of Zuckerberg staring down at Sanchez's boobs really struck me too. The Perfect Pairing (pun intended) with this topic.
"Kinder, kuche, keypunch" as I remarked sometime earlier in the century to a well-founded complaint about the relegation of women to menial jobs in the 1980s-90s. Fortunately, the women in that forum understood my intent.
When my Dad ran a computer store, I attended some training on new software. One guy showed up with his secretary to take the class. She did all the typing while he sat next to her with him arms folded. I think she learned a whole lot more in that class than that man did, and probably ran all the systems for him. Probably while he pretended to run the place. When will men ever learn to get out of the way and let good women lead?
What's interesting about tech investment and the various modern forms of finance is that they involve a great deal of investment in unproductive sectors and/or opaque sectors of the economy. Much of the tech investment has gone to ridiculous apps or pipe drams like self-driving cars. Tech "innovations" as different as Spotify and Uber are about making us renter rather than owners of even the simplest forms of capital. Private equity has made housing more unaffordable and turned many cash generating businesses, esp. in retail and the restaurant sector into zombie businesses that do as little as possible yet make money for investors as they shrink.
Look at how much money they’re throwing at artificial “intelligence” right now, and how much they’re likely paying influential writers like Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias that the apps you use to shitpost AI slop are going to take your job in two years.
Don't forget Ezra Klein, either.
I'd have something to say here, but I've forgotten what Uber even was. Old age does that to one. Too many stupid old things to allow remembering them all.
The Waymos in DC have live drivers. The Musk taxis in Austin are staffed by people in passenger seats who can intervene. Both of these are guided by remote humans. I know enough about the computational underpinnings of AI to know that "learning" probably never enable these vehicles to avert all possible driving hazards and the most optimistic projections for these vehicles would be low speed urban transportation. i.e., kindof like taking the bus. So, yeah, this is a pipedream and considering all the other potential uses of AI technology a waste of money.
Musk’s self-driving taxis are gonna be a lawsuit waiting to happen too.
Well I, personally, would like to see the robotaxis get sued out of business or at least to the point they can't operate. You, on the other hand, see human labor as a bad thing.
"than many humans". You're not a very convincing advocate.
Given the entirety of your trollish pro-tech comments in this thread, advocating is a very good description of what you're doing.