The problem is, these unsatisfied voters only make up about 10% of Trumps base. The rest still worship the pedo in chief.

We can’t just hope for the next election to be different.

I think it’s the calm before the storm - if Trump successfully manipulates the midterms the US might be doomed.

If he botches that and becomes a ‘lame duck’ president, there might still be hope.

I think part of the problem is that the brain is never content with what it has. It becomes the new normal instead of luxuries.

Think about the a rich man, sleeping with beautiful women all the time - either escorts or gold diggers.

It becomes the new normal. He wants more. In what direction this want will go probably differs from person to person. There will be excess, perversion, cruelty, until that is the new normal. Getting more and more depraved. Limited only by that persons conscience and what he can get away with.

And for a sociopath and billionaire? There are are no limits, no crime he can’t commit, no foul act he won’t try. Torture. Children. Murder. Cannibalism. These people have been above the law for too long.

I would say probably more likely to be a personal AI assistant, that handles all PC/cell phone interactions for you. Like Star Trek: “Computer, do my taxes!”

Of course that relies heavily on AI becoming more reliable then it is now.

No one wants an AI summery of their e-mails if it’s full of hallucinations, or their tax returns to get them into prison.

A lot of those things are possible, if a bit inconvenient. BUT I am old enough to have lived through the time before GPS and smartphones and navigating without it - especially in an unknown city - is simply terrible.

If you have never experienced having to park your car and walk around, looking for a street name, just to find out where the hell you are… Count yourself lucky.

Listen to an old timer: I never want to go back to that.

Anyone who says otherwise simply doesn’t drive around a lot or only in well known areas.

Most blatantly with his rambling about ‘Americans have to flush 3 times, 5 times’. I thought what the hell is wrong with the water pressure where he lives?

Then I read that he likely flushed evidence down the toilet. Of course. HE has a problem with destroying evidence in his toilet, so ‘Americans’ have problems with their toilet. I’m not even sure if he has the ability to differentiate between his problems and anybody elses.

I normally have GPS and Bluetooth disabled, so my position would have to be guessed based on cell towers. We were not even on the same WLAN (because the WLAN was down in the vacation home, much to our dissatisfaction).

While I can’t rule out somebody in our group stealthily googling the tablets, phones while playing is generally frowned upon.

So yeah, being on the same cell tower as someone I know who might have searched for it might be the only other explanation.

The adventure itself didn’t have anything to do with the tablets, that was just our group doing strange stuff, like always.

No, I am not a AI fanboy. I just compared bad to worse.

Of course users get something from their smartphones, but not from the spyware on it. The spyware is not an integral function of a smartphone.

Just think about the scale of the surveillance: every smartphone user is being monitored 24/7 in hope to find something to sell them.

If you hate AI because it wastes so much energy, think about the cost for the this: Energy, water, battery life, bandwidth, … And in contrast to AI the ‘users’ don’t get anything in return.

Okay, so here is my story:

I was on holiday with my friends and we were playing a TTRPG. In the RPG our group needed charol tablets. I have never in my life googled or needed something like that.

After the session, I opened up Amazon to buy something I forget to pack and voilà: Amazon suggested me to buy charol tablets.

My smartphone must have listened in and given that data to Amazon.

No Alexa or similar products were in the vacation home.

The good cop.

Ah yes! The Gleichschaltung of the media. Always loved by dictators.

For Americans the answer to ‘where did we go wrong’ is normally Reagan.

More in general, our biggest problem is that we let billionaires buy our politicians and didn’t riot. (Eat the rich, when?)

Or that the iPhone(s) would only make sense in a mirror selfie.

Many of these “business geniuses” do the following:

• buy struggling business cheap
• reduce expenses (biggest expense is always salaries, so fire a lot of people)
• on paper, the business is making money (while the rest of the staff frantically try to survive without enough manpower and with a lot of loss on knowledge and experience)
• sell doomed business before it collapses (remember: on paper, it looks healthy)

Economic collapse? Sure, but for a new housing crisis we don’t have enough home owners… How about a nice cost-of-living crisis instead? Or perhaps the good old rent-rising, salaries-stagnation crisis?

The problem here is - in my opinion - caused by:

• the need to chase unlimited growth (by definition impossible)
• lacking regulations
• monopolies and such
• price fixing
• weak worker rights

The right always chasing “deregulation”? Well, here is the result. High profits, high prices, shitty products and services.

And the people suffer.

An IQ of 100 is ment to be directly in the middle, so roughly 50% of the population is below that. An IQ of 100 isn’t that bright, so think about the incredible masses of dumb people.

So, yeah. It’s not impossible that you were the one-eyed among the blind.

Schrödinger wanted to demonstrate exactly this with his thought experiment: that a complex organism (like a cat) in a superposition is absurd.

Do you really think he cares about that? He has taken enough bribes to never care about the cost of anything ever again.

Sure, the people will suffer but his loyal cult members will never blame him.

The economy will suffer, but that’s just more opportunities for insider trading for his family.