hopelite

ZIRP is basically still a major factor. The cancer of ZIRP was with us for literally a whole generation, that is not simply just undone by stopping the consumption of the carcinogen.

Unfortunately for the majority of people, there are effectively zero good outcomes from any of this. Just like none of the previous promises and assurances of how {insert technology} would make things better for everyone, while always turning out to only benefit a few; so will the current lies of the same pattern result in the same output.

It’s something europeans don’t yet understand, that “diversity” has utterly destroyed community, trust, and tranquility in the US; mostly because it has been forced upon people against their will in direct contradiction of the core tenets of the Constitution and founding principles of America.

I realize hearing that or seeing that others may read that, may anger people who are deeply invested in the fraud that diversity is good, but all the legitimate research into the topic all tells us the same thing; that “diversity” is detrimental to any and all human communities all around the world, even for the very group that pushes it on others while aggressively rejecting it for themselves and their own.

edit: No amount of downvoting will change reality, whether you shoot the messenger or not. It's a shame, because good does not actually prevail, especially with brainwashed fools who assist those seeking the demise of others. Support of "diversity" is no different than the support of the genocide the jewish state committed and is to this day still committing in Gaza... the support of evil without the intelligence to understand that.

That all has way more to do with Japan’s bond issues and the carry trade unwinding. 8 billion will have caused a tick, but that’s nothing.

The civilization that created that must have been a wonderful place and probably was taught how to create such things by aliens.

Is sarcasm, but it may as well not be since that America is long dead and gone and has been replaced by an America that really needs to be renamed at this point.

No it’s not. It’s made very easy to vote and it has only been made easier and more people have been given the vote. That’s the whole point, so you on the one hand believe you have your say, and on the other hand the expansion of the vote was always for the purpose of drowning out the vote of intelligent, informed, smart, invested, productive people.

For every vote the most informed and well read and intelligent person has, whose family built everything there is in any democracy…every single year of your life there is one additional foreign, alien, hostile person that was just given the right to vote along with the 5 children they will have to your 1.5 to all vote against you.

That’s why the rich don’t vote, they got politicians, institutions, academics, organizations, etc. that’s our vote, we vote millions and billions of times with dollars, while importing millions of people who totally neutralize your vote and say every single time you go through that charade called voting.

It happens all the time. America and the EU are bought and paid for. The funniest part is that they’re being paid for with the very money the buyers plunder with the left hand, only to use the right hand to purchase the treasonous dominant class.

It’s like a sleight of hand magic trick pulled on an infant that is then gleeful for the deception.

I'm not sure if you are trying to mock the idea, but it would not be the first time that something like that would work and although not sure, it seems that FB would not be above any of that given their history (having some inside knowledge from very early on) and that the demographics seem to be going against them in a major way.

I should have been more explicit, if I understand you. I support not just making it illegal for any minor to be on any big SM, but also creating standards and specifications for data ownership, controls, collection, and privacy that are hard and accompanied with extreme punishments, i.e., per intentional, negligent, or reckless violation; per data point, not incident. Make the companies aware that a single event can crater the whole corporation if the corporation cannot prove that its officers did not act in violation of the corporation and are therefore personally responsible, and they will keep the rules.

It seem to me the obvious counter is that the current age of things like FB is 13. Short of legislated controls, guardrails, limits on that access (e.g., parental responsibility for any and all online activities with parental notifications, reports, and clandestine surveillance abilities, limitations based on immediate proximity or same school attendance, limitations based on age difference, i.e., only +/- 1 year, etc) I don't see how the current state is ideal.

The problem now is arguably that parents are not really good at "teaching" children about SM, to a large part because they aren't "good" at it, don't underestand it, and it constantly changes too (Looking at FB here).

I would agree with you if there were some kind of solid, public input crafted specification and standard for SM to not just handle minors, but even transportability across SM/sites, and also hard user data protections and ownership laws. The idea being that possibly anything but boring BBS basically dying out because the data cannot be captured, collected, and sold like harvesting humans in the Matrix.

It seems you are clearly understanding? You are likely just confused because you do not understand that the overarching objectives of the "uni-party" or "deep state" system hold fast, it's just that each political sporty ball team has to play things different and tell different lies in different ways to different cohorts in order to keep the system operating. So, e.g., Biden says we need 300M more immigrants and his team fans cheer because they support it, wile deporting more people than Trump; while Trump tells his team fans that he will deport people and does this whole theatrical ICE stuff to give the impression of deporting people to drive down costs and retain their support, but in fact barely moves the needle on deportations and committing to 600,000 more Chinese students and wanting to "staple citizenships to diplomas" for millions of Indians, etc.

You have to understand that there is the theater of the political sport ball arena where the different sides are set against each other like WWE/Football, etc. but in the background it's just actually all more or less rigged and the truth is written in policy and strategic papers that are implemented over 20+ years, across presidents and their wrangling and herding of their constituents in this charade called "democracy".

That is true, but it also goes well beyond that. Much of the "US Gov't behavior" is largely related to trashing and panicked frantic moves because the consequences of its prior and long tailed actions over decades has now not only started bearing rotten fruit, but a previous strategy of world domination through "globalism" has also turned against those who control the Wizard of the USA from behind the curtain.

On the face of it the Greenland situation makes no sense on a national security level regarding a non-existent, fabricated Chinese or Russian threat, nor related to the fantastical grift of the "Golden Dome" that is even more useless against what Russia has recently developed, than it was for things prior to about 3 years ago.

What we are looking at here (you can tell your children that you heard it here first) is a strategic move to essentially take Canada and all of the NA continent, and eventually all of the Americas. Yes, Canada, you are indeed in danger as well as Mexico. I don't see how it could be any other way in the face of current developments; remember Trumps USMCA, i.e., a de facto North American Union?

Biden stated that he wants the USA to have 300 million more "immigrants" before he let in about 15 million in 4 years. Annexing Canada is about 40M by the time we do it, Mexico would add another 150M plus however many people would flood into Mexico to become "Americans". That bring us to a total of around 550 million by the time the North American Union comes around. Perhaps if the UK joins, we will just call it Oceania already.

It does not address the fact that China has 1.4 billion and India another 1.4 billion, but it puts us in contention, especially as Europe has about 700 million by that time if/when the EU absorbs most of Europe.

That also doe not take into account the Wizard of the USA wanting to take over all of South America for positive control eventually… another ~480 million by that time, putting the American Union of Oceania at about 1 Billion, ±100M.

These are real tabletop calculations and how things are seen at the top and discussed amidst cocktails.

What is it about this 16 y/o cutoff that seems to be the focus everywhere? Why not 18?

It almost seems like this will make SM attractive by making it a kind of forbidden fruit and/or a social standing status indicator for impressionable, malleable minded, underdeveloped minds of teens seeking to feel like adults.

In other words, if I didn’t know any better, I would have guessed that it might actually be the likes of Facebook pushing these controls internationally (not the least because they seem so coordinated all across the planet) in order to manipulate target users into coveting having a fb/SM account again.

Tell me you think Facebook, the same Facebook that was caught running uncontrolled and illegal psychological manipulation testing on its users, would not do such a thing!

This feels like a conversation about irrelevant matters the App Store ad design at the advent of AI integration? I see the future being AI suggesting or responding with an app or extension to add specific abilities or features based on stated objectives, i.e., just a package manager behind the scenes. I don’t see myself going to some App Store. I haven’t even “browsed” one in years because they all seem extremely static, having reached a peak saturation and static state.

Frankly, Apple could have probably just totally replaced the App Store a long time ago if they were not slaves to financial reports by simply integrating app search into spotlight more closely or prominently… pull down, search “ai app” (or whatever) and you’re provided with a list of app results that includes an install button.

App updating could and should have been integrated into the settings app.

These kinds of things will only increasingly start biting the Apple as Google has been forced to face the abyss of the death of the common search they’ve dominated for decades now. I don’t think Apple has faced that existential Grim-reaper yet… what do you do when the app ecosystem, OS UI/UX advantages, and even hardware quality has vanished through the cascading integration of AI? I don’t know that Apple has faced that yet or at least has been left blindsided, considering what I’ve been seeing from them.

What this brought to mind for me is that you are quite literally at the mercy of a different company when you do not control your OS as a computer/server company. All the wonderful design makes no difference when you’re at the mercy of the likes of Microsoft/Windows.

Inversely, I am convinced that is largely what has made Apple so successfully at the core, controlling the OS did not limit them to all the technical reasons that, e.g., windows OS based scrolling and the track pads were/are so horrible, resolution limitations, and inconsistent design and styling of the OS that subordinated the value or beauty of any hardware design to the OS level that users interacted with… subordination to Microsoft.

It’s essentially unconscionable that they likes of IBM, Dell, HP, etc did not get together and at the very least develop their own OS and also aggressively counter the de facto monopoly stranglehold of Windows on government, which then caused the domination among corporations.

Similarly unconscionable is also the European failure and subordination to the USA/Microsoft by not fostering at least an alternative to Windows that its corporations and governments can operate on. There has been nothing but talk and tiny little forays into adopting open source, but absolutely nothing that could even rise to being a real alternative to Windows or even MacOS.

The fact that such an organization is focused on the inverse of the mission one would expect should tell people more than enough. Unfortunately, most people simply rely on their preconceived notions about most things, even when faced with a stark contrast in reality.

I can tell you from direct contact with many of these “library organizations” that they are all totally corrupted. All you have to do is accept that premise just for a second and you will realize that it causes all the contradictions to explain themselves.

And all the corruption originates in the local/state library level, the government funding of libraries.

When there is a trough of government spending guaranteed, of course the scoundrels come out to feast, amidst a barrage of emotionally manipulative arguments narratives, usually centered around helping children.

Reality is that the whole library sector is an industry and it’s extremely corrupt, but that’s how the directors and executives like it, as they get rich from those public funds people are forced to pay against their will… for the children, of course.

Are you saying they are adapting them in a kind of cultural adaptation to the ChatGPT outputs, or are you implying the higher likelihood that they sees simply unquestioningly posting/sending AI outputs?

So turn back the clock to when Hildegard von Bingen was only one of many extremely powerful and influential abbesses that were polymaths and prolific artists and writers and educators of women in Europe?

I’ve never understood this mentality that people who read and watched handmaids tale, caused some done kind of weird obsession built on a literal fiction story, a made up story… especially since the reality is not only the polar opposite, but in no place on the planet have things ever been better for any people relative to all other places of their time than in the very European societies and cultures that you types are so suicidally fixated on being destructive of.

The irony of the handmaids tale types from my experience is that they/you are, in their/your suicidally manic self-harming obsession, advocates for the spread of Islam in the very western countries that have provided all of humanity all of its freedoms and comforts, which would ironically will lead to an actual handmaids tale type scenario you constantly warn of.

Have you ever heard of what the Ottoman Empire did? It makes the handmaids tale sound like a wholesome family dynamic.

forget 300 year old trees... the Californians cut down sequoia trees that were probably up to 6000 years old. The oldest current one alive is estimated to be only 3200 years old.

On a scale of atrocities humans have committed, I can't really think of anything that is more atrocious than the felling of those sequoias that were at the very least as old as the oldest known human civilization. 6000+ years ... poof gone, turned into beams and furniture for houses. They've been around at least 100 Million years, but almost and possibly will not survive what is the equivalent of 0.173 seconds if you scale the 100M years to one day.

Among all the many atrocities humans have and currently are committing, things like destroying something that took 6000 years to grow seems particularly bad because there is no way to even really restore or save that, like you might be able to restore an at-risk population of animals or even revive an extinct species.

It takes about 150-200 years (we don't really know) for a sequoia to become mature, i.e., fruitful, and then it requires fire to reproduce. Let me repeat that, it absolutely requires fire to reproduce once it as matured following surviving around 175 years of human proximity, not sooner.

For our European community, it seems that the various redwoods and sequoia that were planted in Europe in the 19th century, could be coming into maturity now/soon. They are technically invasive, but at a 175 year maturity cycle, I suspect there's not much you have to worry about.

The saddest part of this is that we really have no idea just how many or the oldest redwood trees that were felled in California and on the western cost of the USA that were possibly multiple thousands of years old, i.e., 4000 years, possibly even 6000 years based on old images and accounts of trees, and that's just what we do have signals about.

Side note; there are several places in Europe where Sequoias were planted at various times and are basically infants at 150-200 years old, having been brought back to Europe by explorers and aristocrats.

So this is a sabotage agency operation? I am old enough to remember the "Arab spring" "intelligence" operation. Are people really naive about these types of Sabotage Agency supported projects and entities, regardless of the interest and curiosity about the technology?

And no, I know these things as a matter of fact for reasons that will need to remain my own.

I didn't immediately jump to it, but here's why I mentioned it. DEI is essentially nothing more than "brown nosing", as you put it; manipulation of various factors for personal gain.

In DEI type con jobs, it is just administered by an odd and even contradictory hodgepodge of people/identities who are hijacking different characteristics, or more accurately, maybe manipulating characteristics differently.

Where brown nosing also manipulates things like flattery, currying favor, narcissistic positioning and sabotage; DEI manipulates things more like sympathy, graciousness, generosity, and empathy. At the same time is also employs psychological and emotional coping mechanisms, like gratuitous pride and affirmation, while also making heavy use of rather harmful personality traits like shaming, blaming, blame shifting, cooption, purloining, appropriation, and emotionally abuses people generally.

It's all very common and typical of extreme and malignant narcissism, including the put on, fake self-congratulation you often see the DEI type crowd engaging in where they lay on the affirmation of equality and equity so heavily that it usually just highlights the contradiction with reality most people experience.

Are you referring to the 5th Amendment with "No person..."? It doesn't really matter regarding my counter point, but it only highlights that you may not have fully thought through what that implies.

If the standard is as broad as a person, any person, since it is not specified what kind of person, beyond the accused one in the 5A, then you must also for consistency, believe that the Constitution applies to the whole world and all it's "persons" since the Constitution also applies to all Americans all around the world, not just on US soil.

I am not a fan of that, although I think it would have been great if other countries had adopted the Constitution, but I must presume that many others in the world would not like very much that the USA starts seeing everyone on the planet that is person as falling under its jurisdiction.

It leads us down a rather dark hallway where things like the Maduro snatching and the snatching of any other person on the planet that cannot physically prevent it under the justification that every person is subject to the USA.

You may say, "well, it only applies to "anyone on U.S. soil", but that also does not hold water since any citizen around the planet is also technically subject to and protected by American law. Do you see the conflict emerging here? And that does not even address the other huge conflict that has corrupted the Constitution and the country for the last 60 years, the birth right citizenship that was simply deliberately and maliciously misapplied and citizenship was given out to tens of millions of people in direct contradiction to democracy, the law, and justice. But that's a whole other topic.

It's interesting, because we live in very interesting times in the USA regarding these matters. We are currently experiencing what will both test whether the USA still exists, i.e., it can control it's boundaries and whether or not invasions can and are repelled, even when they simply peacefully just waltz across the border; or if the USA does not exist and definitely not in a democratic republic kind of way when anyone from anywhere in the world can simply just wander across the border, have a child, and is then immediately just allowed to become a citizen at the detriment and without any kind of democratic input of and by the legitimate citizenry.

I don't have to think it, because it does not apply to them in the same way. For all intents and purposes, they are merely on a kind of probationary hiring process or maybe a probationary period, depending on how you want to look at it. Hence, why ... you know... they can't vote. Any and all privileges they enjoy, are effectively just that, privileges, just like you extend them to a guest in your home.

For further context; technically a naturalized, i.e., given citizenship can be revoked from someone that was not naturally born an American.

Them are the rules, whether you like them or not, and just for not knowing that and having that smug attitude, you should be permanently barred from entry to the USA.

> Some countries do give journalists extra legal protection against this, but I do not know US law in this regard.

Something worth noting at least for pedantic purposes, since practice is quite different; technically speaking every person has the same rights and laws to follow as a journalist. Fundamentally, there are really no differences between a journalist and a regular person engaging in the same activities.

It's an indication of the unique system architecture that differentiates the USA from all other societies on the planet.

It has been attacked, infiltrated, poison pilled, and really rather devastated in especially the last 100 years, but it is still standing, for better or worse, whether it can be restored or it just needs to die in order to give others a chance to rebuild something improved on the core characteristics of the Constitution.

Are you really confused though or are you feigning? The US Constitution applies to American citizens, if you are not a US citizen, you do not have the rights protected by the Constitution, which prohibit the government from infringing on those inalienable, God given rights. Maybe you should look into copying the Constitution where you are if you also want it. We encourage it.

It's like when you are a member of some club, let's say a wholesale club. If you are a member, you are allowed to enter and follow the rules of the club. If you are not a member, you do not get to do that and must leave.

You are free to create your own wholesale club with your own rules, but conflict arises when you demand or even force entry into our club illegally. That is where we have been for many decades now and security is enforcing the rules because the members of the club that have been paying are getting extremely pissed off after having had to pay for freeloaders for decades now and be abused and disrespected by them for it on top of it.

It's not hard to understand, it just seems most people are intentionally and deceptively feigning ignorance. If they are not, we have a way bigger problem that will invariably result in open conflict at some point.

If you want to free speech, I suggest you start your own free speech club wherever you are, or if you gain entry to our free speech club, you have to follow the membership rules and if it were up to me, you would have a trial period, restricted rights, and you would have to pay a freeloader rate.

These are all very reasonable things to abide by in order to keep peace, but we are now all having to learn the hard lessons of what happens when you allow bad behavior to get away with things, and you do not enforce clearly defined rules against those who even blatantly defy them and disrespect you and what you have created, and even do so in your own home. It didn't need to be like this, but it seems most humans are incapable of simply letting well enough be. It seems one of the most universal human characteristics. It applies from the personal to the government to the ideological/psychological level and it is the origin of all human conflict; you have something someone else wants and they'll end up stewing over it until they try to take it from you by hook or crook if you allow them to. The peace comes from keeping a balance. There has been no balance for as long as anyone is old and then some.

You are trying to use reason and rationality to make sense of lying and narcissism. You are correct, you are not the first person to think of that, but the objective is to find, hunt, attack, assault, damage, destroy, and root out places where the human right of free speech/expression may exist.

The last thing you want to do is play right into the hand of psychopathic narcissists by "de-anonymizing" everyone. You simply do not understand what you are proposing and thereby condemning your children and all of humanity to with that mentality. It is advocacy for tyranny.

Why do you know about CSAM-as-a-service companies? How could something like that even exist without it being a government operation like Epstein Island?

Somewhat related is a concern I have in general as things get more "agentic" and related to the prompt injection concerns; without something like legally bullet-proof contracts, aren't we moving into territory of basically "employing" what could basically be "spies" at all levels from personal (i.e., AI company staff having access to your personal data/prompts/chats) to business/corporate espionage, to domestic and international state level actors who would also love to know what you are working on and what you are thinking/chatting about and maybe what your mental health challenges are that you are working through with an AI chat therapist.

I am not even certain if this issue can be solved since you are sending your prompts and activities to "someone else's computer", but I suspect if it is overlooked or hand-waved as insignificant, there will be a time when open, local models will become useful enough to allow most to jettison cloud AI providers.

I don't know about everyone else, but I am not at all confident in allowing access and sending my data to some AI company that may just do a rug pull once they have an actual virtual version of your mind in a kind of AI replication.

I'll just leave it at that point and not even go into the ramifications of that, e.g., "cybercrimes" being committed by "you", which is really the AI impersonator built based on everything you have told it and provide access to.

In the spirit of not being intimidated, I am going to just say what I’ve been wondering; if this could be a result of the oppressive nature of all the “DEI” stuff at Apple having turned into a kind of intimidation cudgel. Are you going to speak out and point out the emperor has no clothes if doing so will have your head?

The circular self-congratulation of DEI introduces an intimidation factor where the objective and scientific truth is inherently no longer the basis for decision making because there are multiple layers of a kind of aristocratic privilege that cannot be questioned, let alone criticized, because critique of their actions equals critique of their divinity, i.e., becomes heresy.

So we end up with this point where no one pointed out the increasingly ridiculous reductions of the emperor’s clothes, only ever cheering on with positive affirmations, to the point that everyone’s intimidated to even point out the emperor is walking around stark naked.

I could see how a combination of the DEI intimidation tactics with the advent of AI, the hash economic factors, and general desire to not rock the personal benefit boat could have resulted in institutional paralysis.

Is there anyone with a force of personality left at Apple? Ultimately, this is on Cook as the Chief Executive Officer poorly executing. It really makes you wonder if the leadership doesn’t actually use any of their own company’s products. How do you not notice these glitches immediately like everyone else if you are using them? I could see Cook not having even regularly used an iPhone or actively interacted with any Apple product himself in years as his real life Siris around him do every single thing for him every day all day, besides maybe giving him briefs on screens that happen to be iPhones and iPads. At that level you actively have to make choices to remain connected to the ground. I doubt Cook finds being grounded comes easy.

I get a sense that this is ultimately a matter caused by the board. It would have been briefed on and likely been the ultimate leader on the overall product and services strategy and pipeline. All this frivolous Tahoe Liquid Glass smoke and mirrors redesign, and even the unified OS release numbering gives me the impression that they’re either out of ideas or there’s a blank spot in the pipeline/timeline. I think there’s a case to be made that the helm lacks some direction now that Steve Jobs’ pipeline seems exhausted and momentum needs to be generated without him.

Considering how Vision Pro rollout and the AI development went, I’m having doubts about Apple adapt to an AI world, e.g., fundamentally rethinking what hardware means if you no longer need to interact with a screen or hardware in a similar fashion anymore, i.e., keyboard and GUI manipulation.