We actually live in a world now in which the President of the United States explicitly states his intent to overtly violate the first amendment and the media just repeats it as if nothing of any note is going on.

If so, then to which specific instance(s) (or more precisely, local mirrors of instances) would replies be sent?

Yes - that’s another good example.

Even on a very simple level, that’s harmful to oneself, because all time and energy spent vainly trying to control things one cannot control is necessarily time and energy not spent on the things one can control.

Stoicism, properly understood, is in my opinion the only possibility humanity has for survival.

Unfortunately, stoicism is rarely properly understood.

Virtually every institutionalized societal evil exists at base because some number of people are stubbornly clinging to the delusion of control over others.

As but one example, while the wave of trans bigotry exists because some number pf people believe that they should have the authority to control other people’s gender identifications, at heart it exists because those people believe that they can do so. That’s the foundation upon which their ever-more aggressive attempts are built. It’s really not a matter of whether they should or not - they literally can’t.

Stoicism would’ve already informed them of that fact, and would’ve informed them of the harm that’s done - not merely to others but to themselves - by ignoring that fact.

I’ve been especially impressed by the prescience of Bo Burnham’s line in Welcome to the Internet - “Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids.”

As far as I know, it hasn’t become a quote from an actual right-wing nonsense-driveler yet, but it might as well be.

Politics, in any form.

Corporate, in any form.

Police, in any form.

Military, in any form.

They all - I believe that institutionalized, hierarchical authority is rather obviously inherently destructive, and I couldn’t willingly take part. In fact, one of the things that perplexes me the most about politics in particular is that there are people who do willingly take part. I can only conclude that their brains are broken in some fundamental way such that they don’t see or don’t care about the harm they inevitably do.

I just think it’s funny that “AI” (which is “artificial intelligence” not in the sense of “human-made” but in the sense of “fake”) is contemperaneous with Trump.

This is going to go down in history (if humanity survives long enough) as the Idiot and Lunatic Age.

From what I’ve gleaned of the ravings of the angry stupid right blogosphere, a lot of people actually do think that only tree huggers want green energy.

And I have little doubt that that’s an opinion that Trump shares, but that’s not his main motivation in all of this. His main motivation is big fat bribes from the fossil fuel industry.

And thanks to Trump, the US is perfectly placed to be entirely left behind.

Yes.

So years ago, I was going through chemotherapy, and was seeing an oncologist regularly. She was my age more or less and very attractive and single, but also an oncologist treating me professionally.

We got along very well and generally ended up talking about things other than my treatment (which is how I learned she was single - she shared that fact unprompted), but even with that, I never pushed it - it just seemed too weird to actually pursue a relationship with my oncologist. I couldn’t be sure how much of it was just in my head - some weird doctor/patient dependency thing - and besides, she was a responsible professional and I was a house painter living in a duplex and spending my spare time smoking pot and playing disc golf, so it wasn’t like I had anything of actual value to offer. So I just contented myself with pleasant conversations every two weeks.

Then one day, right near the end of my treatment, seemingly out of nowhere, she said, “I dreamed about you last night.”

I panicked. I couldn’t imagine any follow-up to that that wasn’t going to be weird or disappointing or stressful.

I don’t remember what I said or how the conversation went from there, but it was noncommittal enough that I never learned the details of her dream, and our last few appointments were straightforwardly professional, and that was that. My cancer never recurred, and I haven’t seen her since.

I’ve always wondered, but you know - if I had it to do over again, I doubt I’d do any differently.

Umm… yeah. That’s not a surprise, nor is it a coincidence.

The most difficult thing about cooking chicken is getting the inside cooked all the way through without burning or drying out the outside.

If it’s frozen, that’s much more difficult.

So yes - you can cook it from frozen, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, the odds are that it’s going to end up cooked on the outside and raw on the inside or cooked on the inside and burnt on the outside.

I don’t see anything really wrong with that primer, but more to the point, I can’t tell you how good it really is because you don’t judge the quality of primer with your eyes - you judge it with your hands.

Try it. You’ll get it.

Yes, but generally not really harshly. I just assume they don’t know any better or don’t have the determination to live up to their ideals.

Unless of course they genuinely are awful people, but in that event, there are signs far more relevant than merely not sharing my boycotts.

Yes.

Data hoarders are going to really come into their own after the corporations start trying to paywall information - pretty much no matter what it is, there’s somebody out there who has it squirreled away on a drive.

On the first point, I’m not sure. I definitely agree that left to their own devices the AIbros would just keep expanding and battling each other and chasing ever more pie in the sky. But I don’t think they’ll be left to themselves. I think the MBAs will move in and take over, and it’ll shift to standard corporate tactics of buyouts and mergers and bankruptcies and liquidations, and inevitable consolidation.

On the second, I agree. I think the web is actually going to effectively split into a commercial system of monolithic corporations and subscriptions and fixed hardware and a much less formal true web of small servers and self hosting and ad hoc networks.

Amusingly enough, The Economist illustrates what I believe to be the new business model that’s already waiting in the wings for the internet.

With admittedly no direct evidence to support it, my theory at the moment is that the “AI” players plan to consolidate and to continue to expand their reach and continue to gain users who rely on the “AI” for information rather than following links to the originals, then, once the "AI"s have killed enough clicks to collapse the ad model and drive the websites out of business (and give them the opportunity to buy up the remains of the businesses, and more importantly, their databases), they’ll put all of the information of which they’re now in sole possession behind paywalls.

Broadly, the goal is to apply the most lucrative if least popular business model to information ,- to monopolize ownership of it in order to sit back and collect money as rent-seeking parasites.

I still remember when Facebook first caught on, and I learned that it was a site on which people posted their real names and pictures of themselves and their families and their lives, and all I could think was, “Why in the hell would anyone ever do that?”

I still don’t know.

The late 90s or maybe the early 00s Probably pre-Google (so pre-1998) but maybe in their earliest days. Definitely pre YouTube and pre Facebook (so pre-2004). It’s been pretty much all downhill since then.