pickleglitch

I didn't read because of the paywall, so I don't know how good their argument is, but I'm very skeptical about trusting The Financial Times to determine what is and isn't progressive or techno-imperialism.

The plan is to make us all use shitty hardware like a chromebook and rent compute from the cloud for anything heavier than a web browser.

Our research shows that people with peanut allergies buy a lot of candy bars. We want to tap into that market, so we make a product call NoPeanutBars. But making them in a dedicated peanut-free facility costs a lot of money and extra work, and we really can't figure out how to do it. So we just put a disclaimer on the back that says NoPeanutBars may actually contain peanuts. What's the big deal? We don't put the peanuts in there on purpose!

I don't know, Cookie Monster is pretty suspicious. Never trust a junkie.

Technically, no. Colloquially, maybe.

One could make the argument that it has, via political changes. DOGE, for instance, who's cuts have been linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths, would have been very unlikely without social media.

I feel like the media is anticipating a new Democrat controlled congress, and so they are starting to bang on the national debt panic drum in preparation. Not that the debt isn't a problem, and $40T is certainly a milestone, but if the dems do somehow get back in power I'd bet $40T that we will all be treated to endless op-eds about how we have to do austerity because the debt is out of control.

The military will still get it's $1.5T+ budget tho. There's always enough money for more bombs.

> No one will care because it's just another addition to the mountain of slop, and the guy bagging your groceries can do it.

In Western culture we tend to define ourselves based on our job, aka our economic output. That person is a fireman. That person is a doctor, or programmer, or whatever. As such, we are nowhere near ready for a world in which AI does all the knowledge-based work and leaves humans with nothing but manual labor. You* need to realize that your life never had any more meaning than that of the grocery bagger, or the ditch digger, or the vagrant, or even the criminal.

*the general "you", not you specifically.

Just like with a video game, just because the cheat mode exists, doesn't mean you have to use it. I suggest you do things you enjoy doing, and not worry about what value other people may or may not see in the results. Some people get great satisfaction from creating sand sculptures, while always knowing the work will be destroyed in a matter of days, or even hours. Take pleasure in the act, rather than the result.

I'm taking up drawing again. Whenever I find myself doomscrolling I pick up my sketchbook. I'm also trying to read more books. Every time I'm about to open a social media app, I try to open my ebook app instead. But years of too much social media has already atrophied those mental muscles, so it's been difficult.

I mean, they've been saying they were going to do this. They didn't even try to hide it. Independent journalists have been covering it for a year or more.

I'm sure it is a small minority who think that way. It's impossible to tell for sure, but my gut tells me the number is still larger than we might want to believe.

>Some categories everyone accepts shouldn't be working: children, students, retirees, new parents, the sick, and the disabled.

There are plenty of people who do not accept this.

We had to outlaw child labor because lots of people thought children should work. Students are shamed for taking on debt to pay for their schooling. People think they should have to work their way through school. Retirement is coming to be seen as a luxury. A great deal of jobs in America don't provide any kind of parental leave, so clearly some people think new parents should work. Same thing with sick leave. People go to work sick every day because that's what the system demands of them.

The only category that is even close is disabled people, but even then it's not universal. Goodwill thinks disabled people should work, and they have a legal exemption from minimum wage so they can employ them. There are also lots of people think the disabled should just be exterminated because they can't work.

Yesterday they were expecting the report to show 80k+ jobs added. So, this is much, much worse than expected. The market is up because they expect this will keep the fed from raising interest rates, and also because the market is increasingly detached from reality.