WatDabney

Setting aside the veritable TITAN-loads of shady shit Palsntir is up to, it's also worth noting that Reddit's policy changes have made it clear that providing a platform for the spread of disinformation is a central part of its current business model, so I'd assume that not only is Palantir using it for that purpose, but that they are far from alone.

a “new phase” of militarization against Americans

It's not even a matter of saying the quiet part out loud any more. There is no quiet part — Trump and the Republicans (and most of the Democrats even, judging from their complete failure, even now, to do anything at all to even slow Trump down) are overtly and systematically implementing a violent and oppressive plutocratic autocracy and they aren't even bothering to pretend otherwise.

I wish I could pop into the future and read what history is going to have to say about all of this, because it's going to be spectacularly horrific.

It's not theft if you voluntarily pay it.

If it's taken from you against your will though, it actually is theft. It's just that that fact discommodes a number of people by cutting to the heart of the nature of governance, so we're conditioned to pretend that it's not true.

Here's something beyond that to think about - a significant number of the things a government does are actially things that would be, in any other context, crimes. In fact, that's arguably the exact nature of a government - it's an organization that claims the right to act in ways that are criminal if done by anyone else in any other context.

Theft is the most common one, and in fact theft of the wealth of (some portion of) the people in a given area is the thing that allows for all of the rest. Governments also regularly engage in kidnapping, extortion and murder. That's what you would be charged with if you, respectively, took people by force and held them against their wills, or demanded payment from people in exchange for allowing them to do something, or killed people or directed someone else to kill them. But governments alone claim the right to do all of those things.

Also, there are a bunch of lesser "crimes" that aren't necssarily crimes in and of themselves, but that the government makes into crimes specifically to create that situation in which they're the only ones with the right to do something that's otherwise a crime - running a lottery, selling restricted products like pharmaceutical drugs, printing money, etc.

And in fact, if we were to make just the small change to holding that it's the case that if an act is a crime when someone else does it, it's also a crime when a government does it, governments would immediately be without either power or purpose. That's how central committing acts that are otherwise crimes is to their entire identity and purpose.

And more to think on - this is a problem because try as they might for millennia now, nobody has been able to work out a way to establish foundational legitimacy for government. Ultimately the nominal legitimacy of each and every government relies on some combination of laws it has established itself and simple force - there is no external, objective thing on which a government's nominal legitimacy rests.

So what we really have are organizations that cannot establish any sort of objective legitimacy engaging in acts that would be crimes if done by anyone else.

Let that sink in.

There are two broad types of governments: those that benefit the many, and those that oppress the many in order to benefit a few.

Those that benefit the many have no colorable need for mass surveillance.

Not just a great song but from one of the greatest albums of all time.

Actually, I'd say they neatly summed it up before they even got to the meat of the article.

Elon was butthurt," one source said.

Guaranteed that that really is pretty much the entirety of it.

Personally, I'm more concerned by the coordination between the FTC and Twitter/X. I think that's rather obviously a FAR greater threat to the nation and its people than any nominal coordination between advertisers could ever be.

Particularly when said coordination, if it happened at all, couldn't possibly have amounted to much more than representatives of said companies all noting that yes in fact they did see that Twitter is displaying ads alongside blatant Nazi content and yes they are going to yank their ads, because fuck that shit.

Everything beyond that is just Twitter/X's drug-addled CEO desperately trying to dodge the blame for his own dumbass content policy decisions.

And the FTC potentially representing his interests instead of the interests of the American people.

Okay - let's imagine that by this time tomorrow, you successfully eliminate every single billionaire and corporation that's a contributor to climate change.

What happens next? Do you actually think the climate is just going to spring back to what it was? If so, you're in for a rude awakening.

Climate change is a done deal already. It has far too much inertia - even a dramatic change is only going to make a notable difference somewhere far down the line.

So entirely regardless of whether and to how much of an extent we might be able to enact societal or political change, we're going to have to cope with some fairly significant climate change. And that, I believe, is where people should be putting most of their focus.

That's not to say that I disagree with you fundamentally. In fact there are very few solutions to the problem of the outsized influence of a relative few wealthy scumbags of which I wouldn't approve, or even willingly take part. But at this point, that's more just (well deserved) vengeance - it's not going to make a dramatic difference in the climate change that is already in process. It's already too late for that.

The lab is off-limits. The only place you're allowed is the museum. And it's just that simple - as soon as a guard saw you in the lab, you got a bounty.

Yes. Long past time in fact.

People have been focused on political solutions far too much - "too much" not least because in so many cases, the final arbiters of which, if any, political solutions get adopted are a relative handful of fabulously wealthy psychopaths who are going to oppose anything that undermines their privilege, entirely regardless of the long-term consequences.

So understand - because of their control, political solutions for the most part are not going to happen. It doesn't matter how important they might be, because the systems are not rational - they're warped to the service of the privileged few.

So it's going to come down to individual action primarily.

Note though that that doesn't necessarily mean entirely self-serving action. Quite the opposite in fact - individuals will need to focus on what they can do, as individuals, to at least ease the hardship not only for themselves but for their fellow humans.

And at some point, quite likely, we'll even be able to rely on governments to fulfill their responsibilities. For the immediate future though, that's too often not the case, and we as a species need to come to terms with that and act accordingly.

This is a great example of the sort of thing that would be hilariously revealing if lying suddenly became literally impossible.

Imagine Musk calling up lawmakers and saying, "Listen - my cars are too shitty to meet your standards and I'm too greedy and distracted to commit to the necessary time and expense to sctually make them good, so could you maybe lower your standards so I can rush my people to slap together something shitty, snd then we'll just lie about it, mmkay?"

"Oh yeah - and I'll probably need you to step in and "negotiate a settlement" over the inevitable class action suit. I'll get back to you on that."

Karl Urban

Honorable mention: Harry Dean Stanton, Sam Rockwell, Jean Reno...