Deacon

Yep, saw a comment like this on Reddit and as I’ve aged it’s become critical.

Yes, I believe I am very principled. I struggle to live up to them, but it gives me something to strive for.

In a functioning society I think that would be criminal.

It’s like tattooing your new girlfriend’s name on your ass.

I would have to go and download an ad, and then upload it, and then select it from new additions in order to hear an ad on Plexamp.

But the subscription model is the framework for fuckery here.

It wasn’t long ago that subscribing to something, implied a consistent (usually periodical) delivery of actual goods or services that were in some way distinct from the previous periods good or services. Issue #33 is different from #32. March’s soup of the month is different than February’s.

And you could hold issue #33 in one hand and #32 in another hand and directly interact with two months worth of that subscription.

The tech bro idea of innovation is to get two revenue streams from each customer; keep us paying for the same thing over and over but never owning it, and sell our data to advertisers. The fact that they are also showing ads to subscribers is just dripping lemon juice in the paper cut because they can. They were already making money off that data.

No and no. I make way too much money for the value that my job adds to society, which is nearly none, and I want to totally blow up my career and do something that helps people. It’s harder when I have folks relying on me but I am moving in that direction

So many of them. So, so many.

Maybe the only one I’ve kept perfectly intact is my belief that the golden rule is prime.

I was raised a young earth creationist, picketed abortion clinics when I was elementary school aged but don’t worry I was home schooled from kindergarten through high school. Was basically a republican/libertarian until about 2015 when my spiritual leaders, including and especially my parents, began to compromise all of their values.

More recently, probably even until 2020, I viewed myself as an aspiring centrist.

Now I’m an agnostic atheist who is seeing how far left the political spectrum goes, and I still think centrism is a nice idea, in a totally different world than the one we live in, with a totally different meaning to “center”.

Here is the thing I should disclose though, because I suspect it applies to a lot of things.

I was raised steeped in a level of bigotry that was all-encompassing but cloaked in Christian love.

I have intellectually separated myself from that bigotry, but I believe I still have instinctive/subconscious/unidentified bigotries to work through.

I am trying to be very conscious of that as I make my way in the world, trying to love my neighbor as myself, and trying to continuously expand the definition of “neighbor”.

Edit: I also cut my parents out of my life entirely around the time DOGE sent their “fork in the road” email.

Ironically it is comments like these that led to Reddit gold. But thank you kind stranger for saving me having to descend into The Depths for this.

In other words, everyone is vulnerable to this totally new form of hazard if they use these “tools”.

The feeling that I’ve helped someone or something feel safe and loved. Usually that is cats but in any case it feels nice to know you’ve put more of those foundational good feelings into the world somehow.

There is a cat in the crook of my arm right now, and I know she feels safe and loved and in return she’s basically radiating mental health at me.

Ah my namesake and fellow gandy dancer.

I call it salting and I do it religiously.

Or do I?

I hope they never recover. No ill will to the working level who would be impacted, but it needs to be clear to companies that this shit is TOXIC to your brand to even consider in 2026.

cucks

This would have actually been a great thing to not only acknowledge but promote if they weren’t so caught up in their own hype.

Not that I will ever get into one of those death traps but if you tell the average consumer that any failures in autonomy immediately engage a tele-operator “to keep you moving on your way” they would probably feel better about riding.

I’ve done tele-driving before and it’s remarkably good, even if latency is a concern.

It’s the facade of it all, the need to seem to live up to the hype. It’s going to get more people killed.

But here is the thing: There were already a million reasons to avoid Microsoft even before their lost weekend with this AI fever dream.

Remove the Microslop and those older reasons remain.

The only downside I’ve discovered, at least in Chicago, is that funding for separated bike lines usually don’t include funding for separate snow removal.

Not that having the bike lane on the very edge of the plows path isn’t a mixed bag too. You’re as likely to get incidental clearing as you are incidental piles from the road clearing.

Honestly it’s probably a wash, but I wish there was snow removal funding.

yes but 2014.

Thrice in some cases.

oooh, promise?