MerryJaneDoe

You can watch some videos on YouTube, if you really want to learn. It’s interesting, sometimes in a full-dystopian nightmare fuel kind of way. Yes, we are at the point where some of these robots can climb and jump.

It’s a gimmick, though, for sure. Just like human-mimicking androids are a gimmick. The money for robotics is in manufacturing.

But I’ll bet there will always be an obscenely wealthy person who is willing to pay for a cool looking robot prototype.

…and they’re so rich…

I hear ya, and I agree - but I think there’s a huge number of not-so-wealthy Americans who are just as culpable. People who happily empower the billionaire class, hoping to catch a crumb of their wealth. And I don’t claim to be different - when I was younger, I would have sold my soul for the right price.

The average ICE employee, for example, probably isn’t so different from younger me. When a young person without a college education is offered a six-figure salary - they will accept first and ask questions later. Any moral or ethical qualms are quickly overcome by the realization that their bank account is steadily growing every week. They can enjoy life instead of struggling. They can take care of their loved ones. Meanwhile, the screams of children become part of the normal workweek. It’s crazy but that’s human nature. We are cruel creatures.

Focus on midterms, my friend.

Don’t think about 3 years. Think about 6 months.

…get busy asap and fuck it up from the inside…

Easier said than done. Security and risk mitigation is one of the first (if not the very first) concern of any IT company in this day and age.

I’ve been a system engineer. Digital assets are locked down, meaning that I couldn’t access anything outside of my scope (which was small and midsize banking websites). Physical assets (servers) sat in three remote locations, highly secure and staffed by a different team. Everything is backed up 5 different ways in 5 different places. Every keystroke is logged. Every door uses a passcard.

It’s built to be a trustless system of sorts, where no single person holds the keys to anything too important. Regular audits and individual accountability for every outage are the norm. About the only way to fuck it up would be to somehow incite a mass exodus of seasoned engineers.

I think what people often miss about these systems (not just IT, but all of our systems from finance to healthcare) is that they are supported by very intelligent, motivated individuals. These people are fighting hard to make sure that nobody can fuck up their work. They aren’t sitting ducks - they are nigh impenetrable sentries.

Most of these problems aren’t the average persons to solve

Then you’ve totally missed the point of freedom and democracy.

Collectively, our leaders are very much “average” people. Some are super smart, others are ignorant and stupid. Some are charismatic leaders, others are petty, vindictive administrators. Some are well-educated, some are Majorie Taylor Greene. It takes a collective effort to solve problems, though. A nuclear scientist can’t build a reactor without ditch diggers.

Society isn’t collapsing. Freedom and prosperity are collapsing.

Suppose you had a co-worker. You both make the same salary, say $75,000/year takehome.

You and your coworker are chatting, and you mention that you are buying a house.

Your co-worker says “I wish I could do that. I have too much credit card debt.”

“How much debt do you have?” you ask.

“$600,000,” he replies.

“Oh, my,” you reply. “Well, how did you spend that much? Who loaned you so much money? What about your budget?”

“Yeah, I should budget more wisely. I still have to borrow enough to cover my bills, about $110,000 per year. But even if I stopped overspending today, most of my debt is just interest accrual. I might as well keep spending until someone stops me, right?”

And that’s the U.S. in a nutshell. Yes, we can get by for another day or another month or another year - until we can’t. And then it all comes crashing down with a quickness.

Look at the graph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_public_debt

Notice that the last time our debt ratio got this high, it was WWII. After the war, the financial repercussions were addressed, the money was paid back and we got on with our lives. When budget shortfalls started to spike again in the 90s, Democrats and Republicans worked together and brought it back down.

So, if the debt is to be reduced, we either need to work together or we need a world war. Which do you think is more likely to happen?

I think he’s just trying to further normalize the outsourcing/underpaying/devaluing of programmers.

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We don’t really have castes in the US. But yes, being poor sucks anywhere in the world.

I was speaking more in terms of infrastructure and public assistance. For example, I was able to get a student loan and an education in the States. I have clean, potable tap water. Dependable utilities. Those sorts of things.

Seems to me that this is a great argument for getting rid of the death penalty. It’s a win-win. No more pardons for the guilty, no more executions for the innocent.

It seems a LOT easier to just take away pardons entirely. They are abused more often than not.

Yeah, it sucks for innocent folks. But their sentence can still be commuted.

It never ends. The injustices pile up faster than they can be addressed. This is a feature, not a flaw of the system, because the system isn’t designed for you and me. It’s designed to make the wealthy comfortable and stable.

The best thing you can do for yourself is to disconnect. Focus on the things in life that propel you forward. Spend time with loved ones. Cultivate a sense of appreciation and gratitude for the things that go right. Exercise and take care of yourself. Don’t let the bastards steal your happiness.

Let’s review:

1. You don’t believe in fighting, you’d rather comprise
2. The relationship of Douglass and Lincoln exemplifies this type of compromise

AND yet…it all led to the Civil War. Which was necessary to stop the selling human beings for profit.

So, yes, if you look at the relationship between the two political entities involved, a compromise was reached. But that compromise was worthless in preventing violence.

Violence was always inevitable. It started with violence toward Africans - kidnapping and slavery. The only way to end it was more violence - a bloody, vicious civil war. This is the human condition.

There is no final victory. Ever. Not even an imaginary moral victory.

There is only and has only ever been the fight.

It’s human nature.

Case in point: The tone of your comment above is combative and accusatory, rather than friendly or neutral. Why?

If you want to fight, you have to be prepared to lose.

It was no accident that Rosa Parks chose that particular seat on that particular day. Everyone that came before her had lost that same battle. Black folks (and the white folks who supported them) were thrown in jail for violating segregationist laws. But with each battle, knowledge and support was gained.

There’s a line in the recent Fallout series that really sticks out to me. A “do good” congresswoman is trying to get an audience with the president. She is roughly shoved aside by security. Our hero helps her up and she says to him, “Fighting the good fight is mostly a series of humiliations”.

I think about that a lot. It’s exactly like that, because fighting the good fight mostly happens when you are alone and outnumbered. Otherwise, you’re just in an echo chamber.

(with the one notable exception of physicians)

Not an important job to a functioning society. As evidenced that most Americans can’t afford to see a physician except on rare occasions, yet we are still alive.

Please don’t misunderstand - I think access to healthcare should be emphasized more, and healthcare workers should be fairly compensated. But all the physicians in the world could disappear today and the effect would be minimal compared to all the truck drivers disappearing or all the nurses disappearing.

It hasn’t been for some time.

“Education” is indoctrination. That’s why kids are forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s why I was taught about Columbus. It’s why I believed that “Honest Abe” fought for the rights of slaves.

All bullshit, but each was a small building block to believing that somehow the US was a special place, a blessed nation, where personal expression and equality and opportunity were valued and hard work meant success.

And the sad thing - even at its worst, the US is still a better place to live than 80% of the world.

The answer is always greed.

Teachers tend to like teaching. It’s a rewarding, “feel good” career. You know that you are helping kids, you get to watch them at their best. And, yes, sometimes at their worst, too, but that’s part of the deal - like watching your puppy chew up your couch and shit on the floor. Still worth it.

Since teachers tend to be passionate, they put up with a lot of bullshit admin/management. Moreso than you might at a soulless corporate job. This isn’t limited to teachers, either. Consider other careers where people put up with bullshit, and you’ll see a lot of parallels.

Art is a great parallel example. Everyone loves great art, artists love making art - but many people don’t want to pay for art. That’s why there’s so many passionate actors and musicians, but so few of them manage to eke out a living as a true professional. The passion is there, they are driven by their love of art, not by the material rewards.

The business world loves to take advantage of passion.

Grades are meaningless to some people. They matter greatly to other people.

Video games are meaningless to some people. They matter greatly to other people.

The difference is that I didn’t get a scholarship and an education due to my ability to play video games. It was my grades that paid my tuition.

Poorly executed military action is 100% an American institution. We expect it - from the Bay of Pigs to “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq to the twenty year campaign in Afghanistan, our executive branch has a habit of making itself look incompetent.

But guess what? Nobody’s asking about Epstein, so VICTORY!