The real cost of groceries is back to the start of Covid, and going down.
This is crazy cracksmoking crap. Does anyone believe this? My income did not double since the start of Covid, but grocery prices certainly have. I guess the econs figure if they flood the zone with propaganda and their preachy proselytism of absolute lies they can convince enough people. And I suppose that does work.
We elected George W. Bush and Barack Obama twice, after all.
So glad I am not dating now. Men are told we are not allowed to talk to or meet women at work, in clubs, in the gym, in the supermarket, on the street, on the bus or train, in the café or anywhere else in public or private. So that leaves only dating apps, which only work for about 10% of men.
So what are the rest supposed to do, exactly? Seems like hell world.
Even meaningless questions and apparently-worthless paths can lead you to the right answers, as even the worst approach is constrained by reality into the shape of the possible. This is not ideal, but as in optimization and modeling the best method is often not known — so a pseudo-random reset often provides some unexpected benefit.
Exploration1 is key.
Well, for men anyway we are told that any horniness means you are a creep and that any expression of sexuality means you are dangerous and terrible. That’s the modern consensus. What will challenge it?
We were moving away from this in the 90s a bit, but then it returned with a terrible vengeance.
Partially, this general decline springs from s misalignment of incentives. To bring up the old saw again, all of these products and services relying on advertising for revenue means that you become the product. But it’s more than that, too. It’s what I call the “scam economy” taking shape. This goes well beyond Cory Doctorow’s1 “enshittification.”
The “scam economy” is the result of transition of the entire sociocultural basis of trade behavior from community-minded mutual service with some profit stacked on top to an attempt to grift everyone else at any opportunity. This is what our economy has slowly but nearly-fully moved to since the 1980s. Ads as the primary revenue model just reinforced this pre-existing trend, but did not create it. “Enshittification” is just a natural outcome of this larger movement.
I’ve been thinking about what the larger animus driving this transition to a scam-based economy might be, but I haven’t reached any solid conclusions yet. When I do I’m sure you’ll be the first to know.
That is a great scene. Amazing filmmaking. It has a perfect setup and payoff. It pulls out all the stops on the despair organ and leaves that motherfucker blaring.
What’s the “correct” response when receiving nudes?
“Did you mean to send me this orangutan picture?”
Being able to get a custom order quickly was not always the case. A commenter says this, but back in the day it was impossible in most fast food restaurants to get a customized order unless you wanted to wait quite a long while. Burgers etc. were under heat lamps and you got what you got, even if it had been sitting there an hour.
If you did want something not available under the lamps it’d often be a 15-30 minute wait.
And that’s how it used to be in the 1980s.
Trump is losing his audience. Gibberish is boring.
No one likes to listen to a senile old man rant and ramble, no matter what party he is a part of. It’s not entertaining; it’s just sad.
Labor Is in the House. What a difference a different presidential candidate makes.
Strange and wondrous creatures: plankton and the origins of life on Earth.
Guess What? Kamalanomics Isn’t Radical at All. For once I agree with Krugman.
No Exit Opportunities: Business Models and Political Thought in Silicon Valley.
Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia.
Harris is right about housing assistance and price gouging.
Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse. TV software is getting loaded with ads, changing what it means to own a TV set. Dystopia now. Fuck every part of all of this.
Well that’s an incredibly good way to get fired. Where I work, I could read anyone’s emails anytime I want but I do not because, first, it’s not ethical and is, as mentioned, a good way to get canned. And it’s boring to read other people’s emails even apart from all that. I have far and away enough of my own.
And in some cases, you can get tossed in jail for doing so. Why do that?