“Why make a good product if you can put your effort into making it just seem like your product is good? This way you can pivot around more flexibly. Instead of having to possess a wide array of hard-earned skills you can make specific content about, you can simply learn the skills of marketing, branding and style, and now you can bullshit your way through anything you want.”

-many modern business practices

like diabetes and obesity

With obesity in particular, that’s not exactly the most complicated illness in the world.

Uh huh. Sure thing boss.

Yes, that’s always the story. “Get control”, for ages now. The fact they’re so incompetent that they cannot finish the job despite supposedly overwhelming resources and plenty of time is a strong sign its a bunch of bs.

Yeah, it’s tempting. Sure would be nice if things were that simple. As soon as you start actually trying to poke holes in it, it all falls apart pretty quick though.

The populists are a good example. If media and tech wasn’t after their own profit margins first and foremost and was instead trying to maintain control of the world, then just don’t cover them. Total media blackout. Nobody would hear much about them, they wouldn’t be able to amass huge fanbases, they would never succeed.

But since covering them is very profitable clickbait, the media does so, and they can take power. Would make no sense if your goal was to actually hang onto power. You won’t find Putin giving tons of free airtime to any of his rivals, it just doesn’t make any sense.

Eh, little too gullible.

If the world were really controlled by some singular shadowy cabal for so many years, we’d have a unified world by now, and things wouldn’t be so chaotic. Populist idiots wouldn’t be able to take power so easily and muck everything up.

It makes much more sense that the world isn’t run by anyone, and just goes where the wind happens to blow it. This is far, far more harsh and frightening though, and not as sexy, so people don’t really like the idea. Doesn’t leave them anyone to blame for their problems.

They have wikipedia pages too, go take a look.

Actually, tons of people have. It’s up there in the same category with freemasons and illuminati in the conspiracy theory and qanon circles.

Yeah, pretty much. Collaborative storytelling is the most apt description I’ve heard. Could probably add “rng aided” and you’ve captured pretty much everything about it. It’s definitely one of those “all about the journey, not the destination” sort of things, sort of like a road trip. Also like a road trip, can be anywhere from meticulously planned to basically being railroaded on down to “uh, how about that way?” or anything in between.

Any significant injury that results in paralysis would be a potential candidate. These become possible as soon as you become old enough to climb things like trees.

Ooh, they should train the next chatbot on 4chan.

I hope I’m wrong, but I expect the difference being going from a small handful of aid trucks a day to zero aid trucks a day. That would be a big difference to the people of Gaza.

There are over a million Gazans still alive. That is a very large number of people barely hanging on from starvation that can still be mercilessly wiped out. You really sure about that 5% figure?

Doesn’t his Sec of Defense nominee have a Deus Vult tattoo? Yeah, that doesn’t bode well…

Excellent. I wonder if we’ll finally hit a critical mass over there.

Assuming he abides by constitutional law, this will be his final term.

Was wondering how long it would take to roll something like this out. Bout time.

That last line was the funniest thing I’ve read in the past few days, so thank you for that.

I understand the sentiment, but I’m not so sure it’s actually true. We’ll have to see how many left leaning folks came out for Harris, percentage-wise. Not counting Gaza uncommitteds, they’re a different story imo.

It’s all about the data though, nobody cares about sentiments or online complaints, it has to be hard numbers to actually convince people.

Yes, I think we can.

But remember, during WW2 the USSR and the US were able to cooperate to defeat fascism. We cannot be too picky when it comes to alliances when there’s bigger fish to fry. Ideological purity is not our friend, never has been. Even if that makes everything a confusing pain in the ass, which it does, that diversity of opinion is necessary if we are going to robustly pursue our goals and not get too stuck up our own asses and blinded.