Why should the regulation allow for more surveillance of users and data collection instead of outlawing the practices and algorithms that lead to many of these issues on the first place?

They’ve been trying to tie devices to identities for years now, and doing so allows them greater leeway to fuck with people’s heads, to spread propaganda more effectively, and to target dissent against themselves and their allies. This doesn’t protect people from having their mental illnesses exacerbated, it just allows their disfunctions to be shaped in the direction tech billionaires want them to be.

In my opinion, anything that uses an algorithm to drive engagement by presenting material designed to play on the emotions of the user should be outlawed outright. Video ads and paid content should be identified with title cards at the begining and end. Images and posts should be marked with headers and footers that make it clear this is paid content.

If the user decides to subscribe or block certain content, that’s the user’s choice. But the timeline should always be based on time and date or activity and never influenced by paid advertisements or engagement.

And that’s the bare minimum. I still consider that somewhat risky to interact with. If I had my druthers Facebook, Xitter, Reddit, and the rest would all be shuttered and taken offline next week.

It’s as if being able to say dumb shit like this without feeling self-conscious demonstrates that your thinking has a sort of ethical ambiguity about it that means you’ll go along with whatever to make the shareholders and your fellow c-suite drones more money. It also seems like it could be sort of a personal thought-terminating cliche, as in, “I’m not going to think too hard about the effects of the next round of layoffs, because a more efficient company will make more progress, and progress is moving forward.”

It’s… Not awful. Better than it looks in this picture.

It’s cooked in large quantities, and tastes like it. Seasonings are mild, but present. Lot of frozen premade stuff, lot of Sysco gallon cans of this or that. No such thing as a rare steak unless someone fucks up, per food safety guidelines.

It’s prepared in ways that don’t require a lot of attention to be paid to it, and no one is going to plate it like a chef, so presentation suffers. While it’s no gourmet treat, it’s generally palatable, and still better than some people get on the outside.

That said, surf and turf nights are common at a lot of overseas bases and ships during peacetime, not just as a last meal before war. Generally, stuff like an extra day off, time with family, or back in the day, extra phone calls would be what you’d see before heading out to anything long and dangerous. Even in some war zones, major operating bases and large ships would still have a taco Tuesday or a steak and lobster Friday to keep morale up. Not everyone has to deal with MRE’s and field kitchens.

Yup.

There won’t be a front line or pitched battles like people are fantasizing about. Something will kick it off, maybe a riot, an assassination, or maybe an opposition leader gets life in prison or even executed on fabricated treason charges and people start shooting/bombing about it. Then there will be a round up of “terrorists” and probably some lynchings that go unpunished after all the current surveillance tech out there miraculously “fails”, all followed by a protracted insurgency as a response to these acts.

I, for one, welcome our new rational and reality-based overlords…

Is culture fit not being weird, or is not having culture fit just resistance to working yourself to death?

Excluding a few examples like frequently used gym weights, common fastener sizes, and short distances, I still have to do rough conversions in my head to have an idea of what a metric measurement is, so I guess I’d say imperial.

But I wouldn’t be upset if the US converted to metric.

I’ve got a foot in both worlds, I have an IT education but have worked in or around skilled labor most of my adult life. Part of my current job even deals with training and evaluating people doing skilled labor.

In my experience, two kinds of people tend to do well enough to be described as thriving. Those who’ve worked with their hands before, either professionally or as a hobby, and those who approach the job with some humility and a mindset of wanting to learn and perfect a craft, similar to many artists.

It doesn’t matter what your background is, white collar, blue collar, no collar, if you’re overconfident and think a trade is going to be easy because you don’t respect the mental and the physical aspects of the job, you’re going to have a bad time.

Sounds like exactly what I’m looking for.

Neil Postman was right.

Our educational models and methods are changing for the worse.

TV and the internet are terrible mediums for public or political discourse and this has exacerbated many of our existing issues.

Our culture has become more shallow and has started to lack something profound because of how we utilize technology for education, business, and entertainment.

Things will not improve until we change our relationship with these technologies.

EDIT: several words.

They sell travel sized rolls of that gorilla tape.

It sticks to just about anything, pretty much forever, and is totally opaque.

Should work like a charm.

Mental health, cognitive and attention span issues, misinformation, etc. are to the point that it’s a public health crisis. If we’re lucky, ten years from now, we’ll talk about this the way we talk about smoking now.

Great concept, highlighting skewed priorities, but awful execution.

Precisely, but you’re giving them too much credit by expecting them to figure it out from reading the lyrics alone.

Prejudice tends to lack a capacity for self reflection and an understanding of irony.

It’s the same with nazi punks and MAGAs who like Rage Against The Machine, they just want something that sounds loud, aggressive, and violent and rarely understand what they’re listening to or how it came about until it’s shoved right in their face. Then they get all offended about it.

Most of the time, the best they can make themselves is a cheap, talent-less imitation that lacks any sense of authenticity, and to try and overcome that they’ve resorted to something that can produce a finely polished turd that still lacks any sense of authenticity.

Cartoonish levels of villainy.

Locksmithing/access control is an industry that is sorely lacking new people…

Interesting. I was considering locksmithing as a way to get some supplemental income later in life. I’ve done skilled labor and light IT work most of my life and it seemed like a good fit for my skill set. I’ll have to move that to the top of the pile of possibilities.

Media.

Books about why things suck right now.

Nerds gummy clusters.

Booze.

Operating systems without built-in age verification.

Absolutely intentionally designed to be that way by the GOP and blatantly obvious when you look at their voting records.

One of their main arguments against taxes is that government will always waste tax dollars due to corruption and incompetence… Which is a self fulfilling prophecy, as they’ve proven to be some of the most corrupt and incompetent political leaders in history.

Was there ever any doubt? They’ve been trying to tie devices to identities for years now. This is just the end game.

The funny thing is, it’s kinda hard to prove that surveillance based ads actually work. Ad platforms like to throw numbers of how may people see ads around, but it’s hard to actually tie those numbers to sales. What’s worse is that the way these ads are bought, sold, and how ad placement is commodified means that everything remains intentionally vague to the people buying ads. In most cases, all they know is that “everyone is doing it” and “making lots of money” and if they don’t they’ll be left out of the revenue party.

Right now, enough people are still drinking the kool-aid that it’ll remain a safe revenue stream for companies like Meta unless something happens that hurts the cash flow of their customers. But, it kinda makes you wonder, if the vagueries of the online add ecosystem caused companies to reconsider the investment during an economic crisis, how would these ad platforms that have recently gotten very cozy with fascists make money?