And I think this is where the real root of our current issues lie. Greed has been deemed a good thing by the ruling classes and the big societal decision makers. Greed is god, greed is good, greed is all knowing and is the only method to happiness. These folks running tech companies are also prime worshipers at the altar of greed. Capitalism is a fine tool when used in conjunction with other tools people are capable of understanding, and when morality and ethics are used to study possible outcomes. But when you replace all morality and ethics with, "Gimme as much as possible," because Capitalism has dictated that greed is good, you don't care how you go about achieving that "gimme," you care that you achieve that "gimme."

Combine that with the type of non-empathetic folks who end up running these larger tech firms, and you just know they read/watched these same dystopian warnings we did and sat there thinking, "Awesome." In the end, they'll be capable of toppling entire societies, and they're too non-self-reflective to understand it was them that was the cause of their own demise.

That's kind of the entire point of how we measure "good economy." We worry about Wall Street first, big business second, and everything and everyone else can fuck right the fuck off because they don't matter. At all. It's entirely by design, so that the already well off can continue to be more well off, without having to worry about the pesky population of worker class folks. And if the worker class dares to ask why we can't have a little tiny piece of the pie, we'll get told we need to work harder, save harder, plan better, be wiser, all while they rob us blind to pay for their next round of second, third, or fourth homes, or yachts, or private jets.

We're a desperately mentally sick society, and too many people are scared to point that out.

I have to ask, what results is he delivering? Smoke and mirrors? Yeah, he's sucking up money and resources like a vacuum, but if you consider that results you're so far off the reservation that you just as well already be planting the flag on Mars.

There are a lot of Apes, our closest living relatives, that still practice the behavior of killing the previous leader's offspring.

It's not "Delusion of Divinity of Man" to expect ourselves to behave somewhat better than the animals we evolved from. It's the expectation that we can escape our animal nature by not promoting the biggest psychopaths to the top of the societal heap. Sadly, too many are hung up on the idea that animalism is some form of ideal to not just strive for, but to dwell in and hold up as an example of greatness.

They speak a form of english that has been manipulated by marketing people to such a degree that it's often difficult to see the reality behind those words. But in this case the translation is pretty simple.

"To serve humanity" is Microsoftian for "to suck up every ounce of data from humanity, including casual speech during conversations around the dinner table, with friends, and any other moment." And "companion" translates directly to "always on surveillance, just in case any human happens to whisper something in their sleep that may be considered data."

The terrorists own the building and all the staff. The government officials that should be regulating Wall Street and the Bank (and businesses and...) are owned outright by those same Wall Street and Bank (and business and...) folks that cause the boom bust cycles in the first place. So when they screw the pooch and another bust comes crashing over society, the very first thing that happens is the handlers inform the owned government officials that they need to raid the taxpayer coffers to bail them out. "Too Big To Fail" should never have been allowed to become possible, but, deregulation due to bribery, mostly legalized via the same mechanism that gets these worthless parasitic assholes rewarded every time they fail through actions like Citizens United, means they get to do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want. And when they inevitably destroy whole segments of the rest of society when they fuck up, the government that they've paid for will be there to bail them out while shrieking at the top of their lungs that the common folks just trying to get by should have planned better for this inevitability.

*WE* don't have a fuckin' thing to do with it. We don't have a say in our government. We get to vote on who gets the bribe money. That's it. That's the extent of our power. And even those with seemingly good intentions up-front always fall into the bought and paid for bracket as soon as they're in office. They are not beholden to the people. They are beholden to their purchasers. And so beholden that they don't dare make the legal moves required to become not-owned by the elites.

I believe I see a possible path to repetition.

Everybody bitching about it should just be sent a copy of We Have No Idea. That pretty much summarizes how little we actually know about the universe, and how much we have yet to learn. And it's a damn fun read on top of it.

With the recent proposed theories that time doesn't move the same everywhere in the universe, and in fact slows down or speeds up based on the amount of matter in a given area, it's starting to look like what we thought was expansion may actually just be a large void space surrounding the closest galaxies to us. Lots of recent observations, observations not possible until the larger space-based telescopes started probing objects billions of lightyears away, are making it seem like astrophysics is about to have a truly generational ground-shift in some of the long-assumed resolved theories.

That shit is absolutely maddening. There needs to be an oversight team *NOT* comprised of those on that particular payroll that can tell Congress to get absolutely and completely bent every time they pull one of these stunts and yanks their pay if they refuse to do their jobs. This idea that they get the best healthcare for free, then claim it couldn't work for the rest of us, and get paid even while making sure no other federal workers get paid, is absolutely the height of hypocrisy, and fully demonstrates exactly why the public has such a ruthlessly low opinion of our elected officials. Because they deserve that low opinion.

I was speaking of the Electoral College. It's a massive pain in the ass that acts as a filter on what the people vote for. I don't think it's something we need to make global.

Yes, by all means, let's take our biggest mistake and make it a global problem.

Prepare yourself for a lecture on the dangers of worldwide governments. As that's what it would take to make this work, and we can't even seem to manage individual country governments correctly for the length of time that would be required to even think about implementing a global engineering project of this sort of scale.

Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for science and those that actively participate in working in the sciences. But, if we need scientists to state something this obvious before we pay attention? Uh, well, this doesn't deserve a diatribe. It deserves a heartfelt Generation X staple saying. "No Doy."

Donald nominated him, realized he was a Democratic supporter, , pulled his nomination, publicly announced that he needed to start kicking some money at the Republicans, and now he's renominated. That's not good news. It's just news that, once again, the only thing that actually matters to Donnie is getting fat stacks of fucking cash shoveled at him. And this "nominee" is a fuckhead who's completely willing to throw cash at the shitheel in chief.

If you wanna get rid of an erroneous message, please connect to the internet, and then reboot your computer.

Sometimes I think they took that joke about moving your mouse and needing to reboot to see the refresh on screen as a challenge. The number of reboots required during updates these days is ridiculous. I have a dual boot that automatically comes up in Linux if I don't press some buttons, and I have to walk it through about three to five reboots every update on my gaming partition. I don't let it touch my DAW partition, for fear they'll break audio again by updating something completely unrelated.