I think the phenomenon is called something like “closing the door behind you.”

American Capitalism, with its abundance of neoliberalism, works on the premise that given no external involvement, the market will take care of itself. Companies will make products that people like, or will be out competed.

The American dream extends from that idea that workers can work wherever they want and have completely free movement. So if someone is smart or a hard worker, they have plenty of opportunities and will eventually be successful.

In reality, neither of the above are true. Markets are not capable of taking care of themselves, e.g., because there is inertia, inelasticity, and barrier to entry for many high-capital businesses. Government has propped up most “desirable” large industries through heavy subsidies and tax breaks, like oil, farming, telecom, and tech. Workers do not have free movement, some from self inertia to want to stay close to roots, family, friends, but mostly from the same neoliberal policies that remove social safety nets and fail to provide everyone the basic necessities.

Add to that the fact that a solely money based capitalist system has no ability to measure environmental degradation, wealth inequality, or population satisfaction. And the government is more than happy to step in when it’s businesses being hurt vs people - think too big to fail or propping up businesses during covid/after natural disasters.

Even if a true capitalist system were allowed to exist, it is ultimately anti-competitive. A business in a segment that’s doing well will slowly acquire other businesses in the segment to become a monopoly. Eventually the monopoly will keep growing and acquire the largest businesses in other segments. Besides regulations, technology disruptions can break this cycle but those are fairly rare, and are mostly a recent and likely short lived phenomenon.

Finally, capitalism requires economy and population to keep growing, in the absence of which, there is complete stagnation of movement and the system will collapse into feudalism, like what happened during the Dark Ages.

Anyway, I think you are both right and wrong. Capitalism as people imagine it to be feeds into the ideal of the American Dream. But both true capitalism and its reality actively thwart it, by closely interlinking the economic system with the political.

Censoring is model dependent so you can select one of the models without the guardrails.

It would be so cool if we could generate the entire amount of future energy usage all at once and just store it. May be we could launch the energy store in space and place it so that, let’s say it takes about 8 minutes for the energy to reach us.

Apple fucked up no doubt. Given how hard they pushed AI as a key feature of IPhone 16 I wouldn’t be surprised if they get a class action lawsuit for this.

But it’s also interesting to read a few things from the article that makes me hopeful for when Apple finally releases the features:

1. Let’s be honest, AI by Google, MS is shit right now. They are claiming the same promises which most of the time don’t work, but Apple chose to delay release until they could get better consistency.
2. The executives are taking personal responsibility? I hope that’s the case and no developers are thrown under the bus for this. I’ve rarely seen an article mention personal executive responsibility from a tech firm for delays and qa issues.
3. I hope marketing gets reigned in so they won’t push other unready features the next few years.
4. I hope Apple releases some open source AI tooling to re-gain good will. Would love to see some more competition in the AI space.

There’s no pretending who’s calling the shots anymore. The monkey was asked to perform. He is giving his best performance and everyone is watching the (shit)show.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, Canada was well on its path to elect a right leaning government. Trudeau has already resigned and his party was in the gutters. So that tells you how majority of Canadians have been feeling. There is extreme false-facts-driven anti-immigrant sentiment going around, imo, propagated by the same media that is doing so in the US.

Luckily, Nazi musk and his orange monkey’s moves have taken off the veil for some Canadians so there is still some hope for sanity prevailing in their upcoming elections.

The era of US-Canada being brothers in arms is over. I doubt US will be receiving any favors in the future without something in return. And if Canada chooses to expand their supply chains outside of the US, which they 100% should, there’ll be no coming back to a scale of trade as it exists today.

Because isn’t there a recent article saying most of Tesla parts are imported from Mexico! Daddy Musk wants them cheap cheap parts.

1. Rampant unchecked capitalism of recent decades has created large wealth disparities akin to the earlier decades of the last century. It is no longer possible for one person in a household with a regular job to support a modest lifestyle for their family. All benefits especially medical for the whole family, being completely intertwined with the current job reduces mobility and further feeds into the wealth gap by keeping wages low. It’s easier to blame the powerless for this state of affairs than the powerful because the powerless cannot object.
2. The fear of the other has been accentuated by media and misinformation. Targeted algorithms feeding most of the information that is consumed has created echo chambers that reinforce existing beliefs and fears. The propaganda state has never had it easier.
3. The large military and police has given never before control to the state about what is allowed to be protested. Combined with the day to day struggles, it’s extremely hard to come together for what is right. The ruling class is able to maintain the fine balance between absolute misery and general dissatisfaction that it is still better to struggle through a thankless job than to say fuck it. Failures of recent large uprisings like Middle East and Hong Kong have reinforced the futility of standing up against the rulers.
4. Evil has many heads and there’s always one head that you can find alignment with. It could be the deregulation of businesses, lower taxes, anti abortion, racism, but as long as there’s one thing you can align on, the general sense of powerlessness makes it easier to overlook the other heads.
5. The line between evil and good has never been murkier, especially with globalization. If you focus on the betterment of your community, it would be considered good, but what if it leads to suffering of others outside the community. Is it also evil? What is community - is it the people in your neighborhood, your religion, your country, fellow business owners? The fuzzier these lines are, the harder it is to untangle them.

No immigrant rapists or criminals* except when they have moola for me and my nazi thugs.

In the last 2 decades, the major English bloc of US, Canada, UK and Australia has been in lock step toward the shift to the right. I think it is no coincidence that it aligns with the meteoric rise of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. To satiate his incredible greed, his media organizations have fed into people’s fears and laid down the groundwork for today’s social media companies promoting inflammatory content to maximize engagement. I don’t know if democracy can survive without reining in popular media and significantly reducing biased and false reporting.

Depending on the state you live in, and whether the lease specifically mentioned taking special care of the hardwood floors, this could very well be considered regular wear and tear. There does not appear to be intentional damage here.

The landlord will also need to provide documentation prior to getting work done if they want you to cover the bill, at which point you’ll have the option to contest it.

Check out tenant rights for your state to verify. Hopefully, you’ll also be more careful with hardwood floors in the future. Couches on wheels are no-bueno.

Since Reagan’s neoliberal policies, Republicans have created a vicious cycle of: government inefficient so reduce funding -> not enough resources to hire good talent and provide services -> government inefficient so reduce funding.

IRS is the perfect example where they can only afford to go after the mid-income, while the wealthy get to openly dodge taxes.

All this while promoting the idea that the private sector can do it better, which has led to increasing inequality in resource access, and has only contributed to more money in the pockets of executives and those same Republicans.

We need someone like FDR again to expand government programs and show how good a well run government can be for everyone. Current Democratic leadership’s half assed policies only help to reduce their favorability because neither the left nor the right is happy.

Yes, the ban of TikTok has been more about lip service than actual protections for Americans.

The real solution is passing a comprehensive law that fines/bans any app/platform that is opaque about its influence from governments and its data sharing with governments. But who in Congress today has any appetite for real solutions!

I had written about this to my reps and their response was a non response - TikTok bad.

Israel is the Nazi Germany of the 21st century with the Germans replaced by Jews and the Jews by Muslims.

The cognitive dissonance is so strong - “We didn’t know there were war crimes happening in our backyard. We were just following orders.”

History will not look kindly over this period with almost all nation states unwilling to call out this clear genocide for what it is and not enabling innocent Muslims in the region to escape their otherwise assured death.

The article only mentions US patent. Hopefully that is mainly to preserve their IP in the US and later perhaps few other high income countries.

Many in the global south will come up with diy knockoffs in an eye blink if WBR tries to make it too expensive to manufacture locally.

Isn’t RAID to prevent against drive failure, not a complete array failure? It works well for its intended purpose.

The same christians who got offended by this would also complain about muslims being prudish when they get pissy about showing their prophet.

It is so amazing to read an article I can relate to so well. Because as someone who feels very similarly and constantly about the pointlessness of life but not always an active suicide plan, it also feels lonely. Not lonely as in having no one around me but lonely as in that there’s no one else who truly understands how I feel about life. Because when I mention it, my therapists get worried and want to talk about a safety plan. I’m glad I have a safety plan but that’s not what I’m going through. I just don’t know what’s the purpose of my life in this world sliding toward doom and so i keep getting automatic thoughts that I’d be better off dead. Which is different than I want to kill myself. And so I don’t talk about it most of the time.

I’m grateful for the bravery of the author to write about this feeling so well and put this article out into the world. It made me feel a little less alone.