I can’t help but laugh when one of them gives a 5 minute interview about how disappointed they are in getting scammed, but ends it by saying it was the only voting option and they would never vote Democrat even now.

This is what society looks like when your vote can be expected and doesn’t need to be earned.

That’s fair, it’s certainly not ideal. It’s hard to think of a resource that you can tie the dollar to without creating rushes or panic. However, our current system of loaning money into existence leads to massive debt and affordability issues from the resulting inflation. Have you come across any alternative suggestions that seem potentially viable?

It’s not perfect, but it might be better than perpetual inflation

Bullshit factory is very apt. I was using it for an open book exam and it gave answers entirely skewed to the way the question was asked.

For example, if I asked “is X bacteria a pathogen in Y disease”, it would say yes, it was a very bad pathogen.

If I asked “what effects does X bacteria have in this body system”, it said it was a beneficial bacteria.

Never trust the AI summary, you have to fully read the studies.

Lately, whenever anyone draws the obvious parallels to 1984, posters seem to jump to say that Orwell had unsavoury beliefs and therefore it negates any correct thing he ever said.

It’s such a weird world where we decide someone must be 100% correct by today’s standards or else everything they ever said must be complete bunk.

All of our historical heroes were assholes by today’s standards, and we will be assholes in the eyes of our descendants.

I’m not sure that’s true. In day to day life, I find the majority of people will accept whatever the media tells them to accept.

The normalization of AI in the past couple of years has been rapid. Even my 70 year old aunts are delighting at AI-photoshopping themselves into flowers and revealing outfits. Prospective employees hand in chatbot-created resumes and cover letters, masking the fact that their spelling and grammar is godawful.

The media will tell us to celebrate the end of overpaid actors and influencers, and many people will be pleased to see them knocked down a peg.

And then forced to battle in a dogfighting ring because we interpret them repeating their name as a sign that they love it

It wouldn’t make much of a comic strip. Before the critters finished asking for a ride the Canada goose would have been in a flapping, violent rage and attempting to peck their faces off.

One challenge is that the lifestyle that people have come to expect is only affordable by outsourcing production to other countries for slave labour prices.

People want 7 pairs of running shoes, to own every kitchen and garage gadget possible, and to buy little items as pick-me-ups every few weeks. There would be an outcry at children picking our food for 3 cents a day or indentured servants making our clothes if it were visible, but these services are shipped far enough away that most people can just smile and enjoy their new $30 shoes without seeing the abuse. And if you tell them about it, they say they are poor too, which is the equivalent of covering your ears and screaming “la la la la la” to avoid processing it.

Same here! I don’t like the idea of my money funding their abhorrent administration

A few years ago, I set my mind to understanding stock market investing. It had always looked intimidating, but I have a couple of degrees that required me to pass chemistry, physics, and engineering courses - I figured I could learn if I put my mind to it.

What I discovered was that the stock market is mainly hype. For all the formulae and Greek letters that look complex and deter the general public, the emperor is really wearing no clothes.

Stock prices rarely follow fundamental analysis of value, and rather mostly pre-empt news cycles due to insider trading. And technical analysis seems to be a bunch of fortune tellers who think they have discovered Newtonian calculus by drawing tangent lines off cherry picked data.

Furthermore, the entire system supports the enshittification of our economy. When a company is supposed to make MORE profit every quarter rather than just maintain profitability, it leads to lower quality goods and services and worsening work conditions.

It’s what you get when you image search blue parasaurolophus in DuckDuckGo. I have no doubt it’s AI generated, but I also have zero digital art capability myself

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I agree, I want the meat of the story, not pointless banter and sound effects that reduce information d density

In the red states, why would the common law age be younger for girls (12) than it is for boys (14)?

Both are horrifyingly young, but I’m curious what justifies two extra years of child molestation for girls

But never voting Democrat. That’s too far.

This bums me out too. Just because something is necessary or inevitable doesn’t make it easy

That’s what I meant as well - we are saying the same thing. I think I misread your comment as that being the threshold to make it worth it. Don’t mind me, my brain is mush after work lol

If you scoured the world for the most punchable face, you’d surely come up with Sam Altman