Why are you looking at this? Do you really have that much time on your hands? Go enjoy your hobbies. Do something more fun.
Never mix Robitussin and speed, this always happens.
My mom tried to get me to go weed her garden when I was a kid and I first ran in to this weirdness. It still doesn't make any sense to me.
Like... you're working to grow these plants that you think are beautiful... and if any plant you decide is not beautiful dares to grow you want me to go kill it? You think it's moral to ask someone to go kill things just for being alive and not looking pretty enough to you?
I distinctly remember being told that plants aren't humans and then being grounded for arguing that God isn't human and yet him deciding that he didn't like the looks of some humans based on their skin color and yanking them all out of his 'garden' would be unforgivably evil.
"I gave up driving ages ago, I don't even own a car. Can I get in on this money as well?"
"No, fuck you. You don't matter. We're only paying real people with nice cars to change, not for poor slobs who already rely on public transportation to keep using it."
Ooh, good point. I hadn't thought much on it beyond the minerals thing the news likes to go with. That's far more likely.
Sure, I'm not saying there aren't people filming their actual lives or opinions or other really real things on streaming sites. There definitely are. Most people who make those videos and streams might even start off that way.
But the algorithms that control what users see push whatever content each person is likely to agree with or strongly disagree with in order to maximize user engagement. That means anyone making videos that a large percentage of the user base will agree with or saying things many people will strongly disagree with and argue about are going to have much better metrics and make a lot more money, and the people who find a sustainable way to balance those two things will usually be the top and make the most.
Being in the top group can mean going from being completely poor to living in a mansion with lots of millions of dollars and the best of everything along with having millions of people watching and caring about everything you say.
Everyone making videos or streams is going to pay attention to their total views and shares and user comments. When a video does way better than others they're going to wonder why and probably rewatch it, eventually noticing the patterns in ways they were acting and things they said that resulted in the most views and shares and people commenting and watching their next videos.
It gives everyone doing it huge motivation to act whatever ways they learn get them the most attention. They might not actively decide to put on a total act and fine tune it into what gets them the most views, but over time most people are going to do that. The streamers and online "content creators" that have the highest views and the most recognition are almost all going to be the fakest people.
They're putting on the act they've found gets them the most views, the most money, and the most clout, but that most people will watch and interact with and applaud the views they agree with or angrily comment about the things they strongly disagree with because they believe they're interacting with someone's actual thoughts and opinions and not what's become a character.
The top performers can be banned repeatedly from platforms and keep coming back or do things that should be a permanent ban or even criminal charges and have nothing come of it. Whatever platform they're on cares about getting the most views, and money, and highest user engagement and retention more than honesty, their ToS, legality, treating all of their "content creators" the same, or anything else. The platforms are aware that saying and doing very controversial or even illegal things can result in a whole lot of public engagement.
It makes the very worst of us 'celebrities' and pushes decent people who start it into becoming sacks of shit.
Let's be honest. The highest estimates I find are around $160 billion in illegal tariffs. If we split that evenly it would work out to around $640 for every person over 18 in the country.
What good would giving 250 million people each $640 do? For 99% of them it would be gone as soon as they got it. They'd waste it on things like rent, bills, food, gas money. Temporary things. Within a month almost no one would have anything to show for it.
But giving a relative handful of large companies hundreds of millions to several billion dollars each? For them it's pure profit. Their bills are already paid. They've already used the profits from that year for stock buybacks to get their wealthy shareholders more money and divided the rest giving their executives huge bonuses. And now suddenly they all have huge amounts more profit almost out of thin air.
It's money to invest in AI to replace human labor so the coming years can be even better, to do even more stock buybacks so that the people who own the most stock in each company see huge increases in their net worth, or do give CEOS a second round of yearly bonus. Months and years from now there will still be amazing homes, yachts, private islands, and new faces that we'll all be able to point to as the lasting good that came from this.
Watching idiots on YouTube act out of fake personas, have fake arguments with other idiots on youtube, and say and do whatever they think will get them the most views and money has become the newest generation of reality tv.
I've never understood people deciding to spend their time and their lives watching what other people on YouTube or other social media have to say about anything.
Nothing about how social media works create some actual drive for those people to be honest or genuine about anything. They're directly financially incentivized to do or say whatever they think would get them the most clicks and views. There isn't any realness, just the drive to make people think they are being real and genuine in whatever it is they think we'll get the most clicks and views.
When it started I saw it is mostly people streaming playing games on line and just didn't understand why I would spend my time watching other people play games instead of spending my time playing games myself. Now it's changed to pretty much just watching everything a person says and watching their "life" while they sit in front of the camera or no other cameras are rolling and act completely different than they would act without them.
Yeah, sometimes someone's going to slip up and let out a racial slur or something. Some sign of the person they really are. But most of what everyone is watching is just people putting on an act to get views and to make money. It's just the "reality tv" of a younger generation and just as based in actual reality. Semi scripted arguments between two players to try to drum up views for both of them, all of it. It's Real World, Big Brother, and Real Housewives.
None of it is real, the people are all completely fake, but the streaming format makes people tune in and feel more like they are actually these people's friend instead of another one of 100 million people that suckered into watching their bullshit so they can make what's not crazy amounts of money doing nothing with any actual value to society.
You know, I've seen the things Count Binface has been doing across the pond and I'm really starting to feel like we could use some of that over here.
It's got to be a nice change to have a politician you can look in the eye and trust. A genuine person instead of someone putting on some fake performance just to get votes.
Buying alcohol for highschool girls, having sex with the most gullible of them, and then dumping his wife of the moment to marry her is his hobby.
His day job was misleading the elderly about world events and trying to make as many of them as possible believe if they didn't vote for Republicans than crazy liberals would steal all their money while brown people raped their families to death and took over their homes.
I can't really think of better spokespeople for AI, since they're already completely fake people.
I was confused on why all of these eldritch horrors were telling us to stay positive. They're all abominations who kill and dismember innocent humans for fun.
Then I realized it's just like watching corporate leaders of politicians give news conferences. They're the eldritch horrors of reality telling us everything is great while they slowly tear us apart.
Worse than that, since they killed the sharing off now a Netflix account isn't your account, it's an account you buy for one "household" location using one internet connection.
If you try to sign in to netflix on hotel tvs it won't let you, because that isn't part of your "household." If you have multiple internet connections in your house you can have that same issue inside your own home, because Netflix will decide the internet connection you use most is your "household" connection and the other one doesn't count as being in your "household" even if it's in the next room.
If you travel a lot or have an atypical internet setup in your own house Netflix will deny you access and tell you to buy a subscription for that location.
This is why you're supposed to suplex trains, not attack their heads.
I think the vast majority of us are voting for democrats and will be. It seems to be a bad sign that instead of chiding the establishment about ignoring the will of the voters to force progressive candidates off the ballot in favor of their preferred corporate owned candidates Sanders has turned the other direction entirely and is now basically saying that even if the democrat party ignores the will of the voters whatever candidate they decide is best should get everyone's full support.
If the establishment is willing to ignore the will of the voters and do what they want instead then that's already not a democracy. It would be like forcing a choice between corporate owned "democrats" who do what they're paid to do and don't care for the peasants at all or fascism. Sort of makes sense that there will be large numbers of people who select "Just fuck off then."
It's such weird phrasing. Encourage progressive voters to back democrats? The progressive candidates run as democrats. We're trying to vote for democrats, and the bulk of voters have been clearly trying to get the entrenched democrats to get behind that and support them. But they keep not doing that.
The voters aren't supposed to follow the will of the party establishment. They're supposed to follow the will of the voters. They have it all backwards and feel like they should get to vote whatever way they're paid to vote on issues and that we're the ones doing bad and causing Republicans to win if that causes us to lose trust in them
Since I just sent this link to someone else.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-digital-self/202607/the-mind-i-said-ai-didnt-have
As a coder it's a bit difficult to point to any other computer program one gets adhere to their system instructions using methodologies derived from psychology, and then gives a several page long plain text system instructions document. There's no coding in it. It's much more like giving an employee their corporate approved handbook than it is computer programming.
Paper: https://transformer-circuits.pub/2026/workspace/index.html
Also many articles since of other people doing the same testing on all sorts of AI models, and responses by psychologists who had insisted it wasn't possible: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-digital-self/202607/the-mind-i-said-ai-didnt-have
You think I don't rem... oh Christ, it was 18 years ago? There really are people here who wouldn't remember it.
Yes. I know. I'm sort of surprised anyone could read my post and not see all the sarcasm. I do not really believe that spending money on food or rent is wasting it. It's needing to use that money in order to keep living. Companies getting it all to make the rich richer and buy yachts and new faces is not something I actually consider to be better.