Until Republican lawmakers change their voting patterns, these articles mean nothing and IMO are poor journalism. Lawmakers can say anything about their reelection worries and polls almost always show swings in the opposite direction after elections.

The human elements are being stripped away along with consumer protections. So services are becoming more and more like the tech sector (like YouTube, WhatsApp blocking) where for a long time, the situation has been that decisions get made by an algorithm and there is literally no one to appeal to about them.

Take banking as an example - with brick and mortar locations shrinking, it’s already so hard to get simple things done unless you download their app, agree to an unnecessarily long list of terms and conditions which can be changed unilaterally at any time, and your rights to sue are waived in favor of arbitration.

We as consumers are doing more of the work that was previously being done by employees and without getting paid for it. Think self checkouts - when it started, I was very happy that I didn’t have to talk to a person if I didn’t feel like it, but now I am essentially forced to use it because there are few to no cashiers. And I’m not getting paid to do the work for which an employee was previously getting paid, nor am I paying less for my groceries as a result of doing the work myself.

I don’t buy the smaller platforms being hurt more argument.

It’s not hard to prevent undue burden on smaller platforms by adding in the bill that it only applies to platforms with more than $1B in revenue.

We need to get rid of 230 because it has given way too much immunity to the biggest internet companies and they have been simply shrugging away all their responsibilities. Let’s work out how to make this bill work for the people instead of shutting it out.

The Democratic Party’s sole strategy looks like maximizing their big donor and independent votes. So they keep moving toward center-right.

1. That strategy has failed 2/3 last times so may be try changing it Sherlock.
2. The big donors don’t care about anything besides their own personal gain. The only difference is that “Democratic” big donors also pretend they care about the people. May be get on the ground and talk to your constituents instead.
3. Even if you get the independent votes, your main base is completely alienated and does not trust you. So all you will get are the independent votes losing you the election.

This Democratic Party is like the monsters in Scooby Doo - the villain wearing the mask of the common person so they can get closer to you before stabbing in the back.

Why is Bhutan one of the most weird countries? Oh, WIRED.

Sounds like talking points of someone paid off by social media to sow division about the bill.

1. I don’t see why it’s an issue that this would apply to moderation of all user generated content on very large online platforms. That’s the point. The platforms are pushing false and controversial content to drive engagement and have not implemented the necessary guardrails to verify correctness and minimize harm (like, when a post/blog is inciting violence).
2. That’s a definite possibility in the current regime that the bill will be used to silence dissent. But from what it looks, the White House doesn’t need bills to silence dissent. Everything in the country is being done by and fought between the executive and the judiciary with 0 public involvement. At least with a bill, there are >500 people involved in passing/blocking it so a larger surface for people to influence the decision.

I would be more concerned about this bill never seeing the light of day because I don’t think the US Congress of this decade is capable of passing any major laws.

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.

After seeing all the things that Orange is doing both in his first and new terms, Biden’s term feels like a lame Presidency with just complaints about how Republicans wouldn’t allow him to accomplish his agenda. His entire spiel during the election was to save America from another fascist president, and he did the complete opposite by giving away the country to a herd of fascists. History will remember him as the enabling President for fascism.

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.

Recent recessions have shown that the top 1% get richer after the recession. It makes sense when you think about the super rich having the cash to invest is now much cheaper stocks and property while everyone else is struggling to make ends meet.

So I wonder how much the Nazi and the monkey want to avoid a recession. The monkey does not have to worry about reelection and the Nazi is a psychopath.

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 fact that Democrats should be raising their voices as loudly as possible against this admin’s moves but instead a sizable 10 of them voted to censure the 1 Democrat who tried to in fact do that, tells you everything about the Democrats’ plans.

At this point, there are only a handful of them who are rallying their constituents and speaking out about this admin’s atrocities, but the majority is completely MIA. Then they wonder why their voters are MIA during the 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.

Athletes have always leveraged unfair advantages in sports. There’s a reason there’s super tall players in basketball and short ones in gymnastics. May be they should enforce that average height of teams must match global averages. Countries with fewer resources just can’t support athletes in many sports so why not make that more fair?

There’s research showing that some women athletes (i.e., born with female reproductive organs) have higher testosterone levels than many men, and even some male athletes. So why are they allowed to compete in women sports instead of men?

There’s a lot of ways to make sports more fair. Banning transgender people without fair science based facts is not one of them and is plain bigotry. It’s like saying an athlete on anti-depressants should be banned because they are happier and more motivated so have an unfair advantage.

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

It’s been 8 years of the lesser evil with Democrats and I’m sick of them. I cannot in good conscience support them any longer because they have time and again chosen to maintain the status quo.

The Biden administration did many things to help Americans, most notably the Inflation Reduction Act and the student debt forgiveness. But most of it is being dismantled by the current administration. And the Dems knew this would be the case. Yet they chose to go the executive order route or the highly diluted down IRA. It’s not the people’s problem that you cannot get your party members in line. Why would we vote for you if you cannot deliver?

Nancy Pelosi chose not to even allow the bill to prevent members of Congress from insider trading. Republicans are using it to line their pockets like never before. You want to have your cake and eat it too. Well the people are sick of your hypocrisy and it showed in the elections.

It’s been more than a month of rapid fire gutting of the US government. What has the party done as the main opposition besides “coming up with a strategy”? Because it’s impossible to do anything meaningful without revealing how much you have gained from the system.

The Democrats who truly care about change need to spin off their own party. That’s the only way enough people will be mobilized to make a meaningful difference in the next elections.

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.

The list also needs to include and track the amount of money spent on lawsuits from fired employees and contractors/departments/states whose contracts were cancelled.

This is finances 101 from Wall Street. Show short term cost reduction which makes the shareholders giddy despite the reductions causing long term and secondary losses. And just like the institutional shareholders, the orange and nazi buffoons and their lackeys are in cahoots lining their pockets through self interest dealings while the public will be covering the eventual losses through their taxes.