Hegar

The only way this gig is ethically justifiable is if the support act is a guillotine.

That headline really is a thing of beauty. It’s like finding out that your trash is piling up because the city retasked all the sanitation workers to lie in fields of filth and create a heavenly host of garbage angels.

I can’t not read that in a garbled south african accent.

Uber is a bad faith actor, their business model is entirely monopoly-seeking. If they’re trying to expand into bus routes, the goal will be to reduce the choices available to just Uber.

the operation is highly organised, technically savvy

Of course an operation this sophisticated targets people looking to buying luxury brands for cheap, that sounds like an ideal mark.

It’s very naive to think that a weapons dealer who also kills it’s commercial airline passengers for profit isn’t also killing whistleblowers.

Google was accused of enacting a policy instructing employees to turn chat history off by default when discussing sensitive topics

According to the DOJ, Google destroyed potentially hundreds of thousands of chat sessions not just during their investigation but also during litigation. Google only stopped the practice after the DOJ discovered the policy. DOJ’s attorney Kenneth Dintzer told Mehta Friday that the DOJ believed the court should "conclude that communicating with history off shows anti-competitive intent to hide information because they knew they were violating antitrust law.

It’s perfectly reasonable to see this practice of avoiding the creation of evidence of their wrongdoing as evidence of wrongdoing, which is 100% what it is.

It’s not the same as a person using TOR, it’s a company hiding evidence.

Yes, getting sued for stepping on a mine like rounded corners is so good for inventiveness.

It’s so strange to me that people buy this BS line about IP laws having anything to do with why we get cool new things.

Either competition fosters innovation and therefore IP laws stifle it, or protecting monopolies fosters innovation and our IP laws make sense.

There has been a centralized bureaucratic autocracy in china since the legalist reforms of qin, a couple thousand years ago. Yes, the empire once united must divide but even during the long disunity before the sui and tang, there were multiple centralized autocratic states. Unity across all of the territory called modern china is not necessary to have a centralized state, and you’ll notice I never once used the word united.

forcibly “united” by external forces, such as the Western powers in the 19th century, dividing up and ruthlessly controlling economic spheres of influence

Wait were western powers dividing or uniting china? You’re claiming both in the same sentence. But that’s kind of immaterial to my point that the centralized autocratic state has existed in china for a couple thousand years and that many important new technologies came out of the cultures governed in that way.

I wouldn’t be looking for ‘game changers’ - that’s a marketing phrase with no firm meaning and very low applicability to reality. All invention is just iterating on existing ideas.

We didn’t see much cutting-edge tech coming out of China while they were recovering from the collapse of the imperial system and the colonial period, but now that they have more resources to throw at new tech, we’ll see new tech.

China has been a centralized autocratic state for a couple thousands years and has invented almost everything in that time.

More seriously though, it’s just not true to suggest that collectivist societies or autocratic states can’t invent new things. The briefest glance at history shows it’s just not true.

New things come from people having the time and resources to sit around and think about how to improve on the things we have. IP, social mobility and individualism just don’t really come into it.

“Because” often doesn’t make sense in the real world where anything that happens is the sum total of multiple factors. Especially a trend as broad as enshitification.

Being publicly traded seems like a contributing factor, but a sole owner can still enshitify through greed or incompetence.

I would guess that market consolidation and low competition are more of a factor.

a collection of wet floppy noodles instead of arms and legs.

That basically describes me now. But my mother was a delicious bowl of liang fen so I feel like it’s pretty understandable.

I always presumed that Montana was telling Idaho, “It’s okay, I believe you’re in the PNW.”

"This is stealing and needs to be looked at that way,” said a property owner

😂

The best thing about the super bowl is that it’s the christmas eve of not having to hear about the super bowl. The anticipation! It’s so close!

If you like that character just go watch some Nina Hagen music videos instead.

She was the inspiration for the character, she’s the original punk opera prodigy, she’s crazy and she was once a strong contender to be the german voice of marge simpson.

Smack Jack, So Bad, Naturträne, Imma Lauter are all tracks I still listen to a lot. Her recent cover of 16 Tons is great too.

If there’s a bad linear a joke, I haven’t heard it.

Working in pharma and getting ready for the day?

What’s your alternative when Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea actively seek their own colonialism?

Why does the existence of multiple evils make you want to defend one particular evil? Why not mention our brutal, murderous or genocidal allies like Saudi or Israel?

Our empire created the problem that is iran, our invasion of iraq showed putin that empires can still destroy foreign countries with no comeuppance, our lack of imperial interests in africa gives russia room to stoke violence and war unchallenged, our antagonism to china encourages them to prop-up NK as a buffer state against our client state on the korean penisula and that same antagonism is driving china to a more belligerent position.

I’m not trying to say that everything is our fault - obviously all those countries are responsible for their fair share of vile behaviour - but our empire has actively contributed to how bad those situations are. All countries are vermin, the more powerful the greater the capacity for evil - and we’re the most powerful.

Of course I don’t have a step-by-step program to a better world, but it’s pretty obvious that we’re a big part of the problem and an alternative is needed.