I’m flattered. Thank you.

I told my wife if we ever decided on kids (which we won’t) I want to name the kid after my hero. She asked “who’s that?”.

“Mega man”

“What if it’s a girl?”

“We can call her Meg”

"Middle name?”

“No middle name. MegaBlake, that’s it.”

I’m wearing a mega man belt she bought me right now actually.🤓

Every single comment here is describing symptoms but not the cause.

Enshitification is the evolution to the final form, only possible after the company, thru merger/acquisition or stock manipulation (leveraged buy outs, acquiring controlling stake, shorting a company into insolvency, etc), has achieved a commanding monopoly.

Then it flexes it’s monopoly powers, the buttons fly off its shirt and the monster shows it’s true colors.

We have laws to prevent this. Lina Khan is the first FTC chair to start holding these companies to meaningful account in my lifetime (yea, Microsoft/netscape is exponentially smaller than todays issues). Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon all need to be broken up into a thousand different companies, same as we did with AT&T. Uber, Angieslist, homeaglow, all the contractors pretending they’re just networking hubs (like some union hall) need to busted up and gigwork made to contend with employment law, which it can’t, because it’s all bad faith exploitation.

And for fucks sake we need to make the fine for white collar crime that extends state lines to necessitate the forfeiture of the entire C-suite’s and board of directors assets, both domestically and internationally, upon threat of seal team 6. Empty their bank accounts and leave them with nothing, like they regularly do to employees. They’re so fucking smart they can earn it all again, right? Right!? Corporations are the largest thief in the land, just in WAGE THEFT. Everything else they do that’s slimy is all BONUS. The 2nd largest thief in all the land? the fucking Police force. The lunatics have taken over the asylum, democracy doesn’t work in mental institutions. We don’t need to defund the police, we need to fire all of them and start over with transparency. If casino employees can be video taped all day, so can cops. Fuck em.

What America truly needs is another Teddy Roosevelt. We need to revive the Progressive party with the Bull Moose as the symbol. Protect the environment, protect the family by protecting the workers, end legal loopholes and trustbust the 1% back down into the 10%.

And if we don’t? The path ahead is obvious, I for one, don’t want to live in Blade Runner, but that’s where we’re going until we stop fucking around and right ship.

Man that audio/video of Bibi saying genocide would continue and they were gonna level Gaza because the American people have given them a blank check and full support …yea …that was everything I expected from that fascist.

And as fascists (and corporatists; tho any difference is arguable) always do, he said the quiet part out loud, insinusting Israel’s stretched past their compacity while invigorating the anti-genocide (which I would hope is all of us, but clearly isn’t. I don’t see how a moral person rationalizes killing 20000 children) center/left to bolder action against Biden.

The news getting out of Bibi’s forces beating down the Orthodox in Jerusalem for protesting is indicative of a few things, mainly that dissent at home is greater than his propaganda machine can keep the lid on. His propaganda machine has been busch league, AT BEST. Obviously lying with AI generated photos. Idk about you, but I can’t believe a single thing that comes out of a zionists mouth. If the world didn’t stop their aggression, I think we all know full well they would’ve killed every single Palestinian down to the last.

Zionist has become as negative a word to me as Nazi. The only difference being pro-jew or anti-jew. I spit at them both.

Only if that jello is made from ground up marrow tho. Seaweed is looking super sus atm

Independent is a tough word for some people to grasp…I mean, it has MORE than 10 letters.

Park and Ride mass transit in. It’s the only compromise that can be made, really. No cars beyond allowing registered work vans/trucks and emergency vehicles.

One way or the other it’s inevitable. We either voluntarily (sic) shut down inner cities to any traffic other than the aforementioned due to obvious reasons, or, if AI can ever actually drive us, than we go all iRobot where humans just physically can’t keep up with the speeds and the windows blacken out.

a guaranteed margin of error in all cars older than 2004

Is there no guarantee from 2005 on? Am I missing a memo here?

People say the market corrects itself all the time and I don’t know what to make of it. I too was born of the lie of meritocracy and wild NeoLiberal economic claims and yet all I’ve ever seen, save for 2 moments in my life, is the market consolidating wealth to the top.

That definition of market correction insinuates the market only works for the rich, so, I mean, if you aren’t rich maybe reconsider spreading their propaganda for free. Get paid for your services at the least, they can afford it.

Or, like the article describes, maybe youre one of the chosen ones to own a home, and your “retirement” or future financial security is tied to it, so you’ve become strong armed, blackmailed, into reinforcing this fucked up status quo.

Regardless, to fix the housing crisis everybody has got to accept that their homes are overinflated in value and need to come back to reality. Everybody has to give something, there is no social change thats not going to require change from everyone. Like…the dialectics make that clear in their own. Government might have to mandate banks renegotiating terms for some housing loans, but so what. Banks are part of the society too, they should also expect to change as well.

The alternative means you choose a heartless meatgrinder of a society. And really, with global inflation, China potentially crashing, the USA potentially crashing, the UK potentially crashing, and BRICS potentially undermining/destroying the value of the dollar well, news flash, no ones retiring.

I don’t know how anyone could have that kind of faith in capitalism. A once in a lifetime financial event almost every 5 years now.

Think of how many years it’d take to salary out to 650k, vs finding free shit online and literally sourcing and making every component, from scratch.

I can source together the materials and build a house faster than I could pay for one already built, in this market. Decades sooner.

It’s a very capitalist, or monopolistic, worldview.

To run a business corrillary; Exxon and BP were undisputed leaders in their fields going way back, whether or not they were number 1 isn’t even important, they were/are major players. Studies were conducted in the 70s that showed climate change was guaranteed (nevermind newsprint from the 1900’s talking about the same thing. 120 years ago this was foreseen) gave them 2 options.

1. Use that knowledge and invest heavily into solar, wind and other energy generating tech, since they already know the energy sector as players in it, they have a huge advantage on every start up. They can control the conversation. If you’re business is going to be made obsolete and replaced, well, it makes the most sense for you to do that to yourself, right?

2. Ooooooooor suppress the research, PR campaign public support, act innocent when scientists with scruples finally catch up, and extract as long as you can while you can.

Which did the ruling capitalist hegemon (cuz oil runs the world) choose?

Giving your kids all the tools so they can go create and contribute however they see fit is a fucking admiral goal. In fact, it’s the best you can do for your child. Taking away all challenge and hardship by passing along immeasurable wealth does not help a persons pro-social maturing. How could it, it’s isolationist by its own very nature. This is why the Scrooge trope exists.

The same logic needs to be extended to copyright law. 20 years then public domain. You had an idea that took off? Good for you! Now why should the inventor of pixie sticks not have to work ever again? If anything, they’ve just got the next 20 years of developing and innovating funded. They already have an advantage. Those who fail to use it, imo, shouldnt warrant pity. We shouldn’t reward laziness and laurels shouldn’t be a ride at societies amusement park.

More competition… =Prices increase.

This is not the outcome I was told would happen.

Wait, what else was I told that never came correct.?

Student loans Housing Pay raises Protect and serve Self driving cars Pot/Gateway Equal opportunity Meritocracy

… I’m beginning to think all of society, in it’s entirety, is just one big grift.

Be cause he’s arguably the richest man in the world and he’s funding ALL OF THEM

He only likes his mRna in solid form. Depending on his mood it’s either free based or taken as a suppository.

As one does, y’know. As one does.

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

-Ben Franklin

I was hoping more for a to do list for my backyard, so I’ll have the molecule myself and not be beholden to Big Toothpaste.

I’m handy, I got all kinds of tech skills, but I’ve only dabbled in chemistry. I’m not uncapable, just green and rough around the edges. I’ve done a bunch of stuff in the past, like distillations, making sodium silicate (to seal up a forge), anodizing and electroplating, or bleach thru electrolysis. I’ve also used electricity to separate and collect gases. Hell I even took a fridge apart to use it’s old compressor to compress those gasses into different tanks - all in an effort to just not have to buy CO2, nitrogen or argon. Welding with hydrogen is triiiiicky, acetylene is much nicer. I even tried cold welding in a vacuum chamber, lol, but I need a better vacuum pump, probably a rotary one. I’ve made a bunch of different kinds of batteries and super capacitors.

I’ve thought about using calcium carbide to create my own acetylene, cuz I’ve got all the equipment I would need to capture and compress it, but y’know, I like living, and acetylene isn’t THAT expensive. Risk≠reward.

So I guess that’s my limit.

Throwing the free market into the housing necedsity is a fine addition to housing - assuming no one is unhoused. Same thing with any kind of insurance. We should be covered by default then allow Cadillac insurance plans on top.

I’m even fine with social housing being the housing equivalent of government cheese. It’s not the best solution but it.is.a.solution. which we don’t have now.

Instead now we have the homeless shitting in the streets. And I don’t blame them. Society shit on them, seems like we could’ve seen this one coming.

Care to elaborate for the smooth brained?

If Republicans win in 2024, they’ll be war with Mexico. I’m as sure about it as the sun rising.

They’ll need a drum to beat, and since their social policy is losing, it’ll be “attack the cartels” full on military on foreign soil.

As much as the cartels are a problem, decriminalization is a better better option to defang them and then give Mexico a hand cleaning up if they ask for it. They aren’t incompetent, shit, they build half of everything on this planet, more than China. We can, and should, respect their sovereignity.

I’m not advocating this just making a point.

They could have 30% ownership and still receive 70% of the income. It’s all in the contract. In this case, regardless of the financials, it would mean that they only have 30% of the power on decision making, and that’s if that’s left up to ownership, in any capacity. Maybe they only have 30% of the votes for the C-suite and after that owners are boxed out.

There are so many different ways to set up a company. Who knows.

Russia and China are already at loggerheads.

Russia has rebuked Chinas attempts to negotiate peace, which China desperately wants to do (negotiate, not necessarily the peace) to show the world there’s an alternative to the US ideology.

China praised Ukraine for what they brought to the table, Russia didn’t even show up. China has asked to be at any and all future proceedings while Moscow is noncommittal to anything.

To say it another way: Beijing vouched for their homeboy but then come the interview they never showed and it made Beijing look bad in front of his peers, all at the time when Beijing is being consider for a promotion.

I’m with ya but I think a distinction should be made for non-exempt, hourly employees, just to fuck with their exploitation equation in how to properly fuck someone to economic death.