The Soviet Union and its allies were 100% being economically suppressed by the west. If the citizens of a capitalist/imperialist puppet state gain self determination and economic freedom through revolution or even by liberal electoralism, they are ostracized and their governments are punished via economic sanctions and/or outright violence. Liberal bourgeois democracies can be either left or right leaning, even fascist leaning, but once they cross the threshold of economic parity, they are no longer worth anything to the capitalist classes that control and influence the world economy.

True that. Both can be true though. Old boomers are far more easy to corrupt when they can’t even grasp the issue at hand.

But the underlying corrupting force will always be capitalism.

More like out of touch politicians that don’t understand technology.

Not always. Unless “always” for you means since Reagan.

There were meaningful regulations in place, that probably didn’t go far enough for you and me, but were a lot closer than the absolute free-for-all insanity we have now. This has been a regression to pre-Depression era crony capitalism, and I’m afraid it will take another depression to wake these motherfuckers up.

I’ll know times are changing when MBAs start leaping out of buildings.

Sure, buddy.

It’s not the Neeras or Third Way trying to fight both their left flank and republicans at the same time in the middle of a goddamn election. It’s not the never Trumpers or the Lincoln Project trying to shape the Democratic Party into being Neocon Lite.

It’s the Nazis successfully masquerading as leftists, the most ideologically pure wing of the party that will think nothing of calling out your shit when you say something suspect. You’re giving the Nazis far too much credit.

I’m now seeing Harris apologia and people throwing Palestine and trans people under the bus at over at .world and its getting upvoted.

"AI" seems to be best put to use performing specific automated tasks. This is something a lot of us have been saying for a while now, but they tried to make what is essentially an industrial tool (as in boutique AI for specific industries), into both slide deck candy for enterprise C-suites, and an expensive consumer plaything. Enterprise customers demand real results for their money, and consumers do not care about the novelty of generative AI enough to recoup the costs of this insane level of infrastructure development. Add what is essentially shaping up to be runaway inflation, and well, yeah. No one cares about this shit.

They came at it like this because they are Silicon Valley and for the better part of 3 decades now, they have operated under the assumption that they are always right, and that if they can survive running on a loss at first, eventually they will acheive market dominance and monopolize their product. I just don't see it happening. I see this more like the early dot com days. A lot of investment, and a lot of failures. But eventually, for better or worse, a few of them figured out how to make it work. This time around however, capitalism itself is failing.

We live in a Paul Verhoeven movie.

Can confirm. Thanks for having us over.

Geez, Nelson Mandela. You’re like, soooo obsessed with South Africa.

Ethics, morals, shame, empathy.

It just feels like these things are just nonexistent sometimes.