Critical Support

That cuts both ways. The hype artists who insist it’s going to become the foundation of all professional services is also bullshitting you.

But yeah, these tech companies aren’t going to just vanish, any more than IBM or Yahoo did in prior downturns.

Are you suggesting that The End is not, in fact, Near? And OpenAI is not about to collapse into bankruptcy, ending the entire AI ecosystem?

I’m thinking, “How do I keep my information out of the hands of centralized database looking for people spreading discontent?”

On a public forum?

A siloed server with good security could lack anonymity, but because the data is not centralized, the feds would have to take a special interest to create an account, and because there would be so many of these instances, it would be a very time consuming process.

Kinda depends how it’s hosted. You don’t need an account to mine AWS if you can just pick through the backend.

Basically describing what happened with Lemmy. What started out as Reddit Minus Shitbag Mods became a screaming match between .world and .ml, while everyone on .hexbear retreated into exile.

You still won’t have any real trust, because the accusations of “bot” and “shill” will follow anyone who violates a taboo. But you’ll at least have a few people you recognize, who you can have well-defined opinions on.

t will apply to them too.

No it won’t. That’s not how The Network State functions.

You have a very clearly designated In-Group and Out-Group. Just stay in the In-Group and you’ll be fine.

You’re not going to beat segregation by telling a bunch of coked up white boys “One day you won’t be allowed to drink from a water fountain”. Everyone knows that’s not true. That’s not how these barriers function.

This is like the time I put my Halo Playing Machine in a big hamster wheel so I could get an early release of the XBox 360.

Everyone knows the collapse of the AI bubble is imminent

Paul Krugman was predicting the Housing Crash as early as 2004 in his NYT column.

Everyone knows except the people who are investing billions of dollars into AI and their press.

The theory of the modern tech industry is that you can simply outrun your problems. Meta/Facebook has done this repeatedly, leaping over multi-billion-dollar failure after failure based entirely on the inertia of their core product growth combined with low interest rates and a bullish long term economic outlook.

Even in the worst-case scenario, we have such an enormous array of tools to manipulate markets - as demonstrated in 2008 and 2014 and 2020 - that investors are reluctant to sell with a massive federal bailout always on the horizon. And we’re far from the worst-case scenario. '26 Q2 was a historic earnings season. We are in the middle of the biggest bull market in history.

So a lottery winner is guilty of crimes?

They’re routinely the victims of them. Lottery winners are a scam target rich environment. North of 5% of lottery winners go bankrupt within five years, far above the national average.

You can just luck out and have an idea like online banking take off

Utterly clueless if you believe the advent of online banking was Peter Thiel’s idea. I seriously doubt you understand how banks form or function.

You won’t need to hand over your guns. You’ll just put them on the blockchain.

Are they sitting on a treasure trove of corporate secrets? Or is it just a thousand executives writing “Claude, synergize expediency to increase value for shareholders. Maximize usefulness. Implement Six Cigma methodologies to unlock a more agile work cycle. Generate a billion dollars in new cashflow. Make no mistakes.”

Some gained wealth legitimately

Nobody gets truly rich by playing within the rules. Show me a billionaire and I’ll show you a list of crimes.

That’s been the Jeff Bezos gambit for nearly a decade. He’s still an absolute POS and we all know it.

The smart ones are the ones we have never heard of.

Behind every great fortune is a great crime.

Billionaire: “We paid some college kids to build a robot that doesn’t immediately tip over when it tries to move.”

Internet Slacktivist: “Black Mirror! Terminator! The Matrix! It’s game over, man! We’re all gonna die!”

Climate Change -> Wet Bulb Temperature -> The sweety underboob

I do kinda think there’s a through-line between people into horoscopes and people who never want to make a decision.

because like half of all women are into astrology

In the same way that half of all men are into video games, sure.

they get really really angry with you if you don’t take them seriously when they start lecturing you about it

I’ve definitely had girls explain it to me. And I’ve stepped in it when I teased one too hard, because she just read me as an obnoxious prick (which… in my early 20s… she wasn’t wrong).

But I see astrology get the same treatment as veganism. You mention, in passing, that you’re into a thing. People line up around the block to heckle you and argue with you and scream slurs at you. And for some reason this doesn’t really change you opinion on The Thing You’re Into. It just changes your opinion on dating or on talking to anyone outside your insulated The Thing community.

Dated a girl and, while we were walking through the park, she points up at the sky. “Oh look, Chemtrails”. I absolutely bust up laughing, because I assume I’ve accidentally stepped into a relationship with a conspiracy theorist. She looks incredibly confused. I explain what chemtrails are. She gets even more confused. We whip out our phones for a minute. She says, “Omg I meant contrails”

She’s a lawyer at a white shoe firm now and makes, like, twice as much as I do in IT. Also, absolutely incredible in the sack.

🧠

Or from your own piss.

But that’s not what’s at issue.