I'm old. I prefer separation. Integrated is a shorter way of saying, "breaks quicker and you lose everything at the same time the first part breaks."

And I don't personally trust Roku, but there are a lot of people that do. Thus far Apple hasn't used its spying power to try and foist advertising on every moment of the experience, so I've stuck with my AppleTV boxes, though I refuse to use their "pay us for two decent shows and a bunch of dreck" monthly streaming service.

This reality won't have quite as happy of an ending as that scene. Our turd won't end up being a chocolate bar.

Get a new TV and never, EVER let it connect to the network. If you need to stream on it, buy a separate box of some sort. Roku, AppleTV, or just an old laptop with HDMI on it. It's almost impossible to buy a spy-free TV these days, but keeping it from accessing the network still seems to be a safe bet. No telling how long before they determine it's "cheaper" for them to include an always on cellular modem in the base unit because too many have decided not to let them on the internet after purchase, but right now that's still a future problem.

1. Asshole Indicator
2. Facial Data Collection Unit
3. Ultimate Life Monetizer
4. All Data Is Mine
5. On Demand Data Rapist

Someone needs to train the AI to click around the web like a user, so that the web companies can keep their ad revenue up once they've knocked us pesky humans off the web.

Some of us have used soundcloud to post our own creations and gather listeners over the years. Granted, I haven't done that in about a decade at this point. My, how time flies.

At this point, it's just background noise. Every single aspect of society over the last couple decades seems to be setting up a giant fuck-you to humans, with the added bonus that about 75% of it is also geared to offer a giant middle finger to the biosphere in general. There's only so many ways to destroy ourselves that individual people can register before it becomes chatter or noise, and noise is easy to ignore when it's ever present with zero possibility of actually getting rid of it.

I'm not saying we shouldn't care, but I totally get it when someone shrugs it off when we get yet another failure point in an entire map made up exclusively of failure points.

Some part of me wonders if that isn't the entire point. Wall Street wanted our retirement funds to be their plalythings and they've spent decades now batting them around like kittens with balls of yarn, but there are now bigger "more important" people involved and they don't want our retirement funds to be something that actually pays us back for our investments over the course of our careers. They want that money to belong to them permanently. And they see a nice roadmap on how to accomplish that based on historical precedent.

Back when companies used to have company operated pension funds, some companies realized that they don't really have to pay those funds out as they agreed if they simply create a financially untenable position for the entire company. "Oops, needed that money to wipe my ass, so sorry, you don't get your pension." Now they're running that same scheme on a society-wide level. If they crash the economy hard enough, they can just pull an, "oops, needed that money to wipe my ass, so sorry, you don't get 401k payouts." Yes, I know, it's all codified in such a way where it shouldn't happen, but we've seen our governments work with the business world to fuck us out of what's rightfully ours before. I see zero reason to believe this isn't going to be the plan going forward.

Dude, settle down. I can only get so hard.

They may not be exactly the same, but if you squint while looking it's hard to see the differences. One side rushes headlong toward corporate controlled kleptocracy, while the other says lots of really polite things, while slowly sliding ever so gently toward corporate controlled kleptocracy. The choice for the common voter is, "Do you want your shit sandwich shoved down your throat, or politely slid into your mouth, whether you open it or not?" It's easy to understand why some see that as "both are exactly the same." They aren't, not really, but the end result is always movement in the same direction.

You've got more faith in the current political landscape than I do if you think you can somehow shoehorn in "rational grounds" when it comes to any form of discussion around labels. Especially labels like "social" in the "Social Democrat" meaning. This country is filled with irrationality and the politicians have all learned to play to that irrationality for votes. Or at least for "engagement."

I wouldn't say nothing. What he is is a very lucky gambler. Whether that luck is guided by anything more than Daddy's money and a weird fetish for tech companies is up for debate. There may be a bit of the salesman built into his Messiah complex. The Messiah complex has been pointed out repeatedly by folks that have had personal relationships with him.

He's luck wrapped in salesmanship, and that salesmanship has slipped as the addictions have taken hold and he's let his public persona become more personal aggrandization than polish.

Once you drop main headcount, there will be a small moment where there appears to be excess payroll funding. If they time it just right, they can hire a bunch of friends into the upper management level to soak up that extra payroll without anyone questioning why they need additional management roles while lowering overall employee headcount. Just imagine the world they're imagining and it all makes perfect sense. I big daycare for the elite, where they can sit and chit-chat about decimating the employment potential of the world's population while raking in tons of cash themselves.

That's the problem with us employee level rubes. We don't even stop to think about how this AI boom will be such a drastic improvement for the C-Suite elite.

I call bullshit. The Democrats traditionally pull their own hand when it comes to setting an example. They don't want to see "the other side" use the precedent of prosecuting outgoing administrations if they set it by prosecuting outgoing administrations. I look for Donald to see a lot of written histories released about his time in office condemning him, but I highly doubt we'll see any actual legal moves against him or his people. Perhaps a sternly worded letter of intent, stating that he'd best keep away from the wheels of government in the future, but I don't believe any Democrat, even those ramped up and steeped in rhetoric today, will actually go after Trump if he can be removed from office when his time is up.

The Democrats excel at two things:
1. Saying the right things.
2. Preventing themselves from doing those right things once given the opportunity. Perhaps, with the added point of making up incredible excuses why it was infeasible to even try to do the right things to begin with, and that anyone believing them must be some level of insane to have done so.

I'm not saying they're as corrupt and shitty as the Republicans have become, but it's not like they're paragons of virtue themselves. And believing any of them will actually prosecute the current regime is ignoring the entire modern history of the party and its movements once in power.

But you repeat yourself.