Interesting. I should look it up for sure. While I’m certainly very much inherently in the camp of primarily approaching philosophy in a more traditional analytic style, I’ve become more appreciative of more artistic and “messy” packaging as of late, and this is certainly doing it for me. I love the absurd oversimplification disguised in rationality and nuance’s clothes. All that education these douchecanoes get only to never apply that same academic rigor to their worldview.

While it’s certainly true that Jim Beam can no longer honestly keep the label of ‘all American’ due to corporate structure, they have kept up much of the American tradition and culture around Kentucky bourbon by generally letting them run autonomously. However, to your point, that’s definitely not guaranteed to continue-especially if profits are gonna start being fucked with. American jobs and culture are under pressure from both trump and outside corporate organizations. It was already insulting enough that a faceless corporation took it upon itself to be a steward of a part of American culture and history, but then the shameless sellout? It’s that irresponsible behavior that makes these corporations so inherently unreliable and untrustworthy no matter how faithful they may act for however long.

What was that about bringing back American manufacturing jobs again? They keep saying the wealth will trickle down, yet I don’t think the wealth was supposed to be in this liquid form we’ve been getting…

Oh good, so in addition to what I mentioned it has direct economic impact overseas as well. Neat. Fun. We’re having so much fun with all the bigly winning and other buzzwords for seven year olds.

Jesus. So not only is trump directly hurting the American economy, he’s destroying actual American culture. I would say this event just makes trump’s literal destruction of the Whitehouse even more of an apt analogy of his relationship with America as a whole, but anything more than 100% is just excessive.

So I guess Putin is gonna just keep giving NATO a reason to exist by continuing to be an imperialist bitch.

Yeah, I feel this sentiment very strongly. Complacency is what they want, because then you just mindlessly participate in the system. It’s difficult to not participate in the system by default since it’s like “hey man, I just work live here”. So not only do you need to be educated in wtf these systems even are, why they’re bad, and how to best engage/disengage with them, you have to actively make an effort to change with energy not a whole lot of people have these days. Some may see this reaction to Microsoft as silly and overblown, but people getting rid of windows could literally save their life due to the systems of surveillance built by Microsoft aiding increasingly dangerous and malicious political actors.

Haha, thanks man. For me personally, I’m a socialist and punk to my very soul, so the hate for Microsoft runs ultra deep. In addition to everything I mentioned before, I’ve become much more wary of the software running in my house due to an increase in political risk. There’s no longer just a privacy consideration for general security, but now a heightened existential risk involved. Microsoft is part of the problem in perpetuating the existing system of oppression, so absolutely fuck em.

I’ve been absolutely seething over Microsoft’s bullshit for years. Over the years of having less and less control over my own fucking computer, the parasitic privacy invasion, the dumbfuck constant bloat, the cartoon level evil of Microsoft in general, the constant degradation, forcing unnecessary features and ads, and generally just the sheer audacity. Honestly, I’ve just kinda been putting up with it for not much more than “it works for now and I’m just tired, man”. However, then Microsoft started pushing ai and some updates that were literally bricking systems so I could no longer justify having a switch from windows being such a low priority; it was now a liability. I’m now running CachyOS and I’m quite happy with the switch. Everything just fucking works, not to mention the very noticeable performance boost. Fuck Microsoft.

Yeah, I’ve always been super into music, so I thought it was weird that it didn’t seem to translate. Like you, I think the critically acclaimed shit just ain’t it for me. Which, now that I think about it, my music taste is for the most part not even kinda mainstream so I probably should have made that connection before. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Oh! Glad you asked. It was The Harlem Dancer by Claude McKay. First poem that finally hit me in my life.

I never really understood poetry, never understood the appeal. Like a month ago, I finally read a poem that just… moved me. I wondered if maybe it was just the one. This one did the same with just that last line. Guess I’ve been just reading awful poetry every time I had “tried” it in the past. Well, hot dog, a whole new fucking world!

Jesus, what a terrible headline. Bro took “So many times female superheroes are so perfect. She’s not that at all.” and went FINALLY AN IMPERFECT FEEMALE SUPERHERO, THIS WAS NEVER ALLOWED. The writing is awful, too. Just trying way too hard to be quirky or “irreverent” or wtf ever buzzword bullshit they try to pull these days. Really has that gross pick-me faux-feminist “men bad” vibe.

This is an interesting one and I think I’ll actually agree with them on this one, although I suspect for different reasons. Of course I should probably acknowledge that the Times person of the year is about someone influential in that year regardless of whether or not it was a good thing. Considering the gargantuan size of the AI bubble in economics, the invasion of generative AI slop on the internet, and the reckless predatory behavior of these AI companies, I’d definitely agree with them being highlighted as maybe most influential this year. However, I can’t help but wonder how well this take will age.

While I certainly hard agree with the general sentiment of ‘fuck AI’, especially for this current iteration of generative ai, and believe we’re currently seeing many of the cracks in the AI bubble starting to form, and I even wholeheartedly agree with the idea that this current form of AI just “ain’t it” and is effectively a dead end, I don’t think this take will age poorly for any of these reasons, at least not primarily. I think it’ll be more of understanding how this current push of AI is influential and therefore giving more weight(heh) to the data these AI models train on. I understand using these tech bros as their person of the year for being the face of training the AI models, but I think the issue with how this will age is specifically because of how the models are trained, marketed, and used. While I won’t say something silly like “ackshually, the training data should be person of the year”, I do think it’s more along the lines of the data itself being more influential, but I will disagree with the idea of current AI models communicating the information accurately, well, or even pervasively. Considering the amount of human intervention required to use AI models with warranted confidence and the limited amount of legitimate use cases, I find the influence of current AI models to be superficial. While I get that it’s vague,

I think a better candidate would be “internet contributors of all time” or something along those lines, because I think we’ll find the influence of those that have actively contributed to the online world over time have become much more pervasive as of the last few years while certainly flying under the radar. An admittedly weak argument is to point out that current AI models simply wouldn’t exist without the massive amount of internet engagement over time. And I think I should also point out the very obvious ultra-horny pursuit of any training data these tech bros can get their hands on. And, finally, I would also point out that probably a good majority of the actual architects that did the actual work on these AI models were among those internet contributors themselves, some maybe even to an obnoxious degree. In any case, I’m motioning to historic internet data lumped in with data to this day as the influence mainly because of these tech companies and their enshittified ai models being so unusable and obnoxiously marketed so as to revive an appreciation for a more human internet. In light of this, I think we’ll find that the influence of generative ai and these tech companies have been greatly exaggerated, while the actual use of the internet is strongly resisting removal and erasure of it’s human elements.

Or maybe I’ve been talking out of my ass. I’ll admit that it wouldn’t take much to convince me what I’ve written is misguided, but I find the tension created by AI bullshit to be fascinating in how it has influenced us.

I’ll be honest with you; I usually have something to say in terms of advice of how to do better, how you might be the asshole, or moral considerations, but this time around, I’ve got nothing. You were honest, gave solutions that appear to work for your situation, and are honest enough with others around you that you maintain your moral obligations. Not really a ton you can do in said situation, but from what information is given you did your part. I appreciate your effort to not abdicate moral responsibility for personal comfort/desire.

The reason I’m leaving a comment is just to say that that really sucks, man. From what I understand, it’s definitely not your fault. You’ve done right by what is in your control, and I think that’s the thing that matters most. I hope things improve for you, but regardless of whether they do or don’t, keep fighting the good fight.

Civil Forfeiture Now Amounts to More than All Other Theft & Burglary Combined

FTFY

Jesus, imagine not only equivocating all uses of caring with basic empathy, but then calling the capacity for empathy ableist. Dunning-Kruger is running wild in pop-psychology these days.

Work at the speed of thought? Bro, that’s not at all possible. Like, legitimately, wtf?

He says a thesis written in two years would be better than one written in eight, therefore faster is better. Okay, a bolognese made in 6 hours is better than one made in 30 minutes, therefore slower is better. If I can use your same argument to make the opposite point, your argument is bad. Also, to be clear, if your bolognese takes less than four hours, you are wrong.

Speed as a universal metric is just silly and a downright childish oversimplification. Fuck your speed, use a relevant metric. On top of that, it has been and still is an absurd expectation from capitalists to do everything faster, and this “article” reeks of said absurd expectation.

Unfortunately, nothing is known about the alleged victim of Luigi Mangione. It seems as though he may ironically be just as soon forgotten as his many thousands of victims denied the Healthcare they needed for the sake of some bloodsucking ‘shareholders’ making more money while contributing nothing of worth to society. He may or may not have been a father and husband, but he also may or may not have killed his own humanity by depriving thousands of others of their own fathers, mothers, children ,cousins, friends, etc. I’m not explicitly saying that he deserves to be forgotten, but I’m not sure I’d want to remember someone if they were anything like the later possibility. But what do I know? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

This BRUTAL ASSASSINATION of a poor little innocent ceo who definitely didn’t profit on the corpses of thousands of people who were denied healthcare specifically because of his own intentional policies. This precious baby ceo was MORDERED in COLD BLOOD by this bloodthirsty mass murdering immigrant minority who hated him because FREEDOM and the BRAVE and BOLD decision of the ceo to allow poor people to be able to CHOOSE to die via paperwork as a weapon. Surely this ceo who’s name we can’t find for some reason is smiling down on his beloved healthcare industry from the heaven that definitely exists. We hope the ultra powerful and scary mass murderer Luigi Mangione gets the JUSTICE the people of this country are clamoring for.