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I suspect he means as a trillion dollar corporation led endeavor.

I trained a small neural net on pics of a cat I had in the 00s (RIP George, you were a good cat).

Mounted a webcam I had gotten for free from somewhere, above the cat door, in the exterior of the house.

If the neural net recognized my cat it switched off an electromagnetic holding the pet door locked. Worked perfectly until I moved out of the rental.

Neural nets are, end of the day, pretty cool. It's the data center business that's the problem. Just more landlords, wannabe oligarchs, claiming ownership over anything they can get the politicians to give them.


We built?

You mean innumerate and STEM ignorant politicians manipulated by tech bros high on their own supply financially engineered into existence?

Poverty wages everywhere except tech jobs was intentional. Ignoring the externalities like reliance on sweatshop labor and sacrificing diverse skills development was intentional. Little different than what they are doing with the ICE hiring bonus.

They got employees to go where they wanted; not operating from a diverse playbook: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-o...

Offshoring the late 90s and 00s was 100% meant to protect Intel, copyright; this isn't anything we did. Broad strokes were gamed out 2 decades ago.

The elder politicians don't want Americans in a position to win. They didn't want the risk of open compute production thriving in America; back in the 00s Napster made the threat to their IP and copyright schemes obvious.

They want political serfdom, fealty to elders delusion about themselves. We did little but follow orders because what choice did we have?

I am not owning this circus.


If you think there is ever any other outcome for a democracy, you are part owner in what we built. Corruption and capture are inevitable, and blaming the particular politicians in power today, misses the point. They're only in power because at every step along the way, we the people happily swallowed beautiful lies in exchange for the "freebies" that trickled down to us.

If you imagine we just got unlucky with the _wrong_ people in power, you haven't yet learned the real lesson, and are doomed to support the entire thing continuing, or being reborn in new form.


You're putting words in my mouth. I never said anything about unlucky. I said broad strokes were intentional. Does that sound like I view it as something akin to gods will?

Am almost 50. Was in the room being told I had to help offshore others jobs. That's why I claim this was no accident.

I like how you make it a character problem of the masses! How dare they not know things intentionally kept from them! How dare they select the subset of dumb options.

Media intentionally kept people like Chomsky and others off the airwaves to keep control of the narrative, but damn gen pop! They should have known!

You going to sell me on Intelligent Design next?

"Us"? Don't lump me into this. I’ve been mocking tech bros and software startups the whole time. Low skilled, know nothing work. I started in EE. I look forward to AI that organizes machine states without software engineer middle men inserting their preferences on me.


You've just made my case for me. It's why democracy can't work. Because the people who vote in the evil politicians don't (and really can't) know enough to make an informed decision. All those middle men you hate, get a vote too. The problem is not the politicians, it's the system. It's the belief that big brother will take care of us. It's the mistake of thinking you can just vote in "the good guys" and give them extraordinary power, and they won't get a knife in their back and be replaced by bad guys... who inherit all that power we forfeited.

We need to look at ourselves, and the dream we've swallowed. It's not going to get better by voting out the current crop of criminals. There is a never-ending line of equally corrupt applicants, right behind them. The entire system has been subverted. There's no fixing it.


What's your alternative?


I don't have one, nobody really does. But the blind belief in, and search for, some utopian society is what needs to die. Reduced expectations, less ambitious goals, and a renewed reliance on small local communities.

I'm not hopeful we will actually break out of the spell of modern big-government before we're surrounded by famine and rubble; but the seed needs to be planted now. Trump (and worse) is the logical and inevitable outcome of delusional self-indulgence, treating the state as an endless piggy bank, and knight in shining armour. It's just handing our fate over to the psychopaths, on a silver platter.

For whatever it's worth, working together in small groups ("prepping") is probably the best practical option we have as individuals and families. Building skills and local communities.


Don't assume your experience is uniformly distributed. I know tabletop gamers addicted to AI and 3D printing their own game pieces.

I would describe them as anti-corporate IP/copyright cartel. They understand things like automobiles and personal computers require organized heavy lifting but laying claim to own our culture and entertainment, our emotional identity is a joke.

Just rich people controlling agency, indoctrinating kids with capitalist essentialism; by chance we were born before you and survived this long so neener neener! We own everything!

Such an unserious country.


Media in the US is obsessed with fear mongering:

https://flowingdata.com/2025/10/08/mortality-in-the-news-vs-...

If they reported on heart disease people might get healthy. But it's instinctual understanding that people dying all over just improves journalists odds in our society. Keep them anxious with crime stats!

Such an unserious joke of a society.


This is purely economic. Fear mongering gets clicks, which boosts ad revenues.

I've read statistics to the effect that bad news (fear or rage bait) often gets as much as 10,000X the engagement vs good news.


So do you dispute that this is happening? And its all over my country too.

Expecting tech bros to take responsibility for what they have unleashed is asking too much I suppose.


> The DJI ban is about China, not domestic protests.

It can be about both.

Two birds, one stone.


It could be, but I think you're just drawing spurious connections between two unrelated current events.


What's lacking authenticity is your assertion a well informed political cult engaged in gaming the system for its own benefit is not working multiple narratives.

If it was just about China they would not be turning TikTok, CBS into right wing platforms. They would not be announcing intent to violate 4th Amendment and go door to door without warrants.

Trump doesn't actually care about China. He prays on idiots fears with xenophobia. Trump is Palpatine. He's afraid of losing power. See also Steve Bannon at CPAC going on about how, if Dems win midterms a lot of them are going to prison.

They need to make moves to also protect their troops: https://www.thedailybeast.com/dhs-ice-hated-under-donald-tru...

Occam's Razor suggests it's not 12D chess they're playing. Just boring biological self selection. Someone in meeting brought up risk to them from drones.

Was working in EE designing motherboards for telco when manufacturing was offshored. It was plainly described as protectionism. Fear Americans with such skills could threaten Intel or copyright cartels. Educated and capable Americans capable of being manifold people who do not kowtow readily to political memes are greatly feared by the generation in charge. They've been working for years to maintain the historical narrative that serves.

Control the imports of technology to control the economy.


> "lacking authenticity"

I am sharing my genuine opinions and perspectives. I assume you are as well. Let's keep it civil.

As for tiktok/etc, I don't think that has much of anything to do with ICE and has a lot more to do with squelching legitimate anti-zionist speech. That said, it does plausibly have a lot more to do with domestic protests than a DJI drone ban, which is hardly a blanket ban on drones, and really will do next to nothing to stop people from using drones over/with/for protests. By the way, the DJI ban went through the House and Senate with bipartisan support, during Biden's presidency:

https://dronedj.com/2024/06/14/dji-ban-passes-the-house-and-...


Nice job editing the comment I replied to after the fact.


Did I? Don't think I did, maybe to correct some grammar. I don't change the meaning of comments after writing them.


I suspect growing up in an era where community, the newspaper, radio and TV spewed religious, racist, and sexist content gradually increased sensory memory related neural activity that fostered biochemical and epigenetic effects that over time become effectively immutable.

Not sure why we are being coy about the triggers. Society of his youth and the biology are well documented.


So explain the existence of liberals and Democrats in America.


I did. Different genetic expressions. The intelligence to realize language is just memes, not truth.

Scott Adams put himself on a pedestal above anyone else in his comics; he was Dilbert. The only smart person in the room. He was always a celebrity obsessed with his own existence. Little difference between him and Tim the Toolman or a Kardashian.

Low effort contributor whose work people laughed at due to social desirability bias. No big loss.


That's a really wild, miserable reading of the strip. For one, Adams himself was a manager, not an engineer, so he had more in common with the PHB, or even dogbert/catbert than Dilbert. For another, he explicitly said Dilbert was based on a specific, undisclosed person he knew. For yet another, many strips were based on anecdotes/stories sent to Adams by his readers.


it doesn't take even a serious reading of Adams to realize he was dogbert, not Dilbert. He mocked Dilbert, he thought he was a loser that did understand how to manipulate the system.


I believe it's important for you to show up at the meetings too, not outsource political action like you do sewing of your clothes.

Consistent displays of comity would go a long way to kowtowing the politisphere.


I really don't understand this pathetic grovel and prostrate at the feet of the rich, thing.

Why are the masses, the majority, obliged to kiss ass and suck up to what, a half million politicians, a million cops, and 1%ers?

Why do you see others as court jesters that must dance for modern equivalent of barons and baronesses?

What an antiquated and childish cult behavior.


Nah by then the collapse of jobs will have freed up 10s of millions with access to guns. Lots of guns.


People are being shot in the face right now by the government and the people who own the most guns are cheering them on. Guns won't solve this.


Depends on your definition of solve.


Yeah they'll just outsource the legal ownership and pass along the material info without the problematic paper trail.

The US is an unserious and fucked up country.


There exists convincing statistical evidence that internet commenters worrying about congressional insider trading are not doing so on the basis of actual evidence suggesting insider trading by congressional insiders.


And? Still valid precedent to set that this is unacceptable to the public.


I feel like that’s pretty far from

> The US is an unserious and fucked up country


Slogans like America loves freedom and cops shooting innocent civilians are pretty far apart too.

Reality and ideals are often far apart.


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