Man, I wish I could live in a world where I could have any hope for a positive outcome from US military intervention, but I’ve ready too many history books. The only positive thing here is that Iran is fighting back, because capitulating to Donald only makes things worse.

I wish I knew how to make Americans more empathetic and anti-war.

History has demonstrated over and over again that it is wholly possible to piss people off enough that they’ll attack a fortress, even a $750,000,000 one. (But of course, none of the people leading the US Government right now have ever cracked open a history book.)

I hate that the only chance the US has at becoming anti-war is having a war fail so spectacularly that the next generation doesn’t want anything to do with foreign interventions, and then the generation after that always forgets how shitty it was to always be at war.

That is Don-roe Doctrine, baby.

4D chess or some shit. I wonder if Donald even knows how to play actual chess, come to think of it.

This, more than any other issue, is why Donald is going to lose big in November. Because he’s never done his own shopping, or opened his own medical bills, or had to take his own kids to day care, he has no concept whatsoever of what it means to live in America right now.

Affordability is also the only reason why he was re-elected, and he’s doing the Biden/Harris thing and trying to gaslight people into thinking things are better, which is not only going to backfire, but he will be so much more unpopular by election time that even the dirty tricks they want to pull won’t be valid tactics by then. They’ve even stopped the gerrymandering push because Donald’s own coalition has become so hostile to him that they can no longer rely on voters who pulled the lever for Republicans just a year and a half ago.

Now, if only we could get thirty Kat Abughazalehs elected at the federal level so Dems might actually oppose something.

Ugh.

The service has been quite good for ten years.

Guess it was good while it lasted.

If Iran had nukes none of this would be happening.

And all he had to do was make life less soul-crushing economically, and people would have gladly lined up behind him to support anything he wants to do, no matter how awful.

But they’re not. They’re poor and starving, so he’s losing everyone, including his own coalition.

Just one more turn, bro.

Then you’ll totally go to bed.

I hope she sues and makes it hurt.

ACAB

If the shit hits the fan, and oil prices move up, it’s too late to complain… especially if your own president started an unnecessary war.

Wrong.

Every American has a right to complain here. Not only has our president broken his campaign promises on war, he had a record of disentangling us from foreign wars in his first term. (Most notably Syria and Afghanistan.) So, unlike some of his other promises, this one carried weight.

He did not run on warmongering. He ran on peace.

Not ‘settlers’.

Murderers, rapists, and raiders.

We just watch.

I don’t think that’s accurate, and it became especially true in Chicago and Minnesota when the sensationalist nature of the events there forced the MSM to report on it. The issue here is that most people only have power at the local level, so unless you’re going full Luigi, the contributions you or I are making are local and not really notable. But they’re happening regardless.

please help me understand where my taxes go (without representation)

If you’re an American, mostly, your taxes are going to three things: The military and war, Social Security, and Medicare. Those are the big three things. The corruption you’re seeing is the result of entrenched legislators and political parties leveraging their offices to enrich themselves and the billionaire class, and their greed has no limit, therefore the people keep suffering more and more and it’s by design. They can loan their campaigns money at 20% interest and pay themselves your campaign contributions legally. They can insider trade in stocks and prediction markets. They can, and do, use their classified briefings to make advantageous stock trades weeks before major government actions occur. If you’re president, you can also force the government to use your businesses, charge a hefty markup for it, and no one will know as no one has the courage to blow the whistle, among many, many other grifts.

There’s also no way to change it, because those in power are not going to vote themselves into less power. Your only power to make lasting change is local.

What is the endgame?

You and your family homeless or in prison, every penny wrung out of you by those in power.

GenAI has already trained on the entirety of human content, and it still screws up basic inquiries. I think it will get worse as it cannibalizes its own hallucinated data and the problem of hallucinations gets worse as a result.

The US will not regulate, but regulations originating from international jurisdictions will roll downhill to some extent and force the bad actors in the US to establish some guard rails in order to continue to be able to offer their products in these big international markets.

I think the most significant change in GenAI will be social. People’s poverty and isolation is only getting worse, and it’s likely there will be an economic crash due to the concentration of wealth in this sector and its failure to deliver on its promises; However, there is genuine demand for frictionless relationships and that is one thing generative AI does very, very well. In a decade these models will have artificial bodies and people will be literally publicly dating their AI companions. These companions will also be another great way for companies and governments to spy on people, so expect them to get more cost-effective in order to ensnare as many users as possible in the coming years.

And as for gas prices in particular, people are barely scraping by and any drastic fluctuation in the cost of essentials threatened stability.

Absolutely. Also why I want to throat punch every person I hear make jokes about egg prices.

An important note, to be sure. In Afghanistan we displaced tens of millions of people, and all we heard from our government and most Americans was: “Welp, they must just hate us for our freedom.”

For a while there was a VR app for Google Earth that allowed you to visit museums virtually. This is a wonderful use of modern technology.

I hate that our country is run by the dumbest people and they’re also massive douche bags.

LLM’s have been proven to manipulate their users into doing terrible things. That’s what happens when there isn’t any meaningful regulation of a harmful product.

OpenAI will settle, NDA’s will be signed, and people will forget this ever happened.

Iran gets a vote.

And that’s it. This war is going to at least last through November because Iran now wants to hurt Donald politically.