@growyoungagain The “Tik Tok Challenge” and the physical injuries it has caused to young people was one of the main things I had in mind, but yeah any social site can result in totally UNsocial behavior, especially with appeals to incite mob attitudes.
@growyoungagain@phendrick
My point was due to the overwhelming use/misuse of Twitter and Facebook they are the primary sources of misinformation. Lots of whack job websites exist, but their impact pales in comparison to the two aforementioned.
I heard the other day about BMW making people pay subscriptions for heated seats and heated steering wheels. The logical progression of this is that you won’t be able to own or use anything without paying a monthly fee.
In other words, you will own nothing and you will be happy.
If you refuse to play by their rules your social credit score will be impacted and they will freeze your bank account and take the fees anyway.
Look for the elimination of tangible currency because government managed crypto is easier to control.
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like but those in power around the world definitely seem to be steering things in this direction.
@tweezak You say that as if these things are not already the case. We already have digital currency. You think the bank has a box of money with your name on it and they check it whenever you ask for a balance at the ATM? Ever use a check or a debit or credit card?
Fact: Startup companies selling their product “as a subscription” are valued 2-4 times as much over traditional product sales companies.
Noticed the disappearance of “Office <year>” vetsions and only pimping “Office365” subscriptions?
We’d like to talk to you about your car warranty subscription coming up for renewal…
Rent-to-own was always intended to be rent-forever.
Property taxes are really rent paid to the government.
Built-in obsolescence is simply physically enforcing a “subscription” sales model.
The same with “consumables”. They’re just real-world micro-transactions with a subscription model.
The same with Big Pharma medications never “curing” anything. Instead, they merely “treat symptoms”. So that you need to “subscribe” to the medication. We call them “refills”, instead of “renewing your medical subscription”, because that exposes the scam.
I’m not against medicines, I’m against the economics of healthcare we have here in what may be the last years of this experiment in democracy before capitalism went all Amber Heard and shit the bed on it.
The same with Big Pharma medications never “curing” anything. Instead, they merely “treat symptoms”. So that you need to “subscribe” to the medication.
Hate to break it to you but antibiotics do ‘cure’ certain infections. You may get re-infected, but that’s on you.
@chienfou@tweezak I’m talking about the incessant TV ads telling me to go ask my licensed drug dealer for something to treat my <insert uncured treatable only fad symptom here>.
@mike808@tweezak
That’s the problem with absolutes that aren’t absolutes e.g. “never”.
And I assure you that if you talk to anybody with IBS they will be more than happy to inform you that it is in fact a real ailment.
@chienfou@mike808 I remember when congress decided it was okay to advertise prescription drugs on television. I found out later we are one of only two countries in the world that allow that.
The long-term effect is that when you watch the news (CNN, FOX, etc.) nearly every commercial you see is for some drug. Now they account for nearly all the advertising revenue for these networks so there’s no way we can expect unbiased reporting with regard to major drug companies.
@blaineg@hchavers People who think that it is possible to widely, reliably and safely deploy fully autonomous vehicles as a replacement for piloted ones, in the next twenty years, without the most massive commitment to infrastructure ever seen. (Hint: we can’t.)
@blaineg@hchavers@werehatrack Talking about personal vehicles: I don’t expect to see them any time soon, if ever in my lifetime. Commercial ones are here. Walmart’s Gatik trucks were initially put on the road with a “safety driver” in the cab, but have been running with an empty cab for a year now. It is a bit uncanny to pass one of them. I assume that the next generation Gatik will eliminate the cab. I expect to see more delivery trucks on longer routes in the next decade. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/nov/09/driverless-trucks-used-by-walmart/
@blaineg@hchavers@rockblossom Over a fixed, closely monitored and well-maintained route, automated (note that I didn’t say “autonomous”) trucks can work pretty well. But those transfer routes will go back to having a driver when it snows or when road construction is in progress. Quite a while back, Anheuser-Busch field-tested and adopted such a system for transfer routes that provide a steady stream of feed-material product between their suppliers and brewery locations. The trucks have a limited repertoire of basic avoidance and recovery routines programmed in, but the systems are designed to be no more “clever” than can be made near-bulletproof.
I voted for the IRK. If I get a “we think you’ll love this” email anywhere from now to years in the future due to my vote in this poll, it had better be offering me some sort of exclusive IRK, or at least a shirt with Irk on it.
@lljk I also said irk as meh is often putting in them the things even us mehricians won’t otherwise buy except the irk way. The reveal threads are the documentation of said decline.
@Kidsandliz@lljk Also if Meh is environmentally responsible, as I’m sure they are, they might have to pay a lot to dispose of unsold electronic products safely. Things like, oh, powerbanks, bluetooth speakers, cheeap LED lights. perhaps more cost-effective to put in boxes and sell for $5 to $70 dollars!
@Kidsandliz@lljk@pmarin I keep wondering just how many more pallets of TrackRs are on top of the racks in the Meh warehouse. At least they weren’t equipped with alkaline batteries…
The commodification of basic needs: food, water, shelter. It started a couple thousand years ago and humans have been slowly rolling down the hill since – and dragging the inhabitability of our planet for humans down with it.
The resurgence of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” should really be of concern. Even though it’s tied to a questionably overrated show, having already lived through that abomination’s popularity once was enough.
@blaineg@MrHappypants Surely you jest. I was a bug fan of Kate Bush in 1985. That song really needs to be taken in the context of the « art rock » album concept on that era.
Apple music commentary on album. TL;DR I know.
If Kate Bush’s first two albums were steeped in the art-rock of the ’70s (florid piano melodies, thrumming Hammond organs, a Spiders from Mars-grade rhythm section), then 1985’s Hounds of Love, the British singer-songwriter’s fifth LP, didn’t just reflect its era—it helped define it. Few songs are more evocative of the sound of mid-’80s pop than “Running Up That Hill,” with its gated drums, quasi-dance beat, eerie vocal effects, and instantly recognizable synthesizer melody. Likewise, few albums did more to take the ambition of progressive rock and port it into the digital era.
Split across two side-length suites—the five-song Hounds of Love and the seven-song The Ninth Wave—the album grapples with big themes: the gulf between men and women, the fierceness of a mother’s love, the nature of dreams. Bush’s voice is an instrument of breathtaking power, capable of both tenderness and force, yet Bush herself is everywhere and nowhere: Particularly in the second suite, her songwriting gives shape to a kind of fragmented consciousness, a shifting array of thoughts, voices, and perspectives. Cryptic metaphors and allusions give the songs an unmistakably metaphysical aura, and the production follows suit. Bush recorded the album at home, in the 48-track studio she installed in a barn behind her house just outside of London, in a lengthy process of demoing, overdubbing, and layering. Availing herself of a state-of-the-art Fairlight CMI sampling synthesizer, one of the first of its kind, she peppered the album with sound effects: church bells, breaking glass, bits of film dialogue, and the snippets of Georgian folk music that give “Hello Earth” its otherworldly power.
Yet the LP never feels overstuffed. There’s an abiding elegance to sounds like the fretless bass of “Mother Stands for Comfort,” and whenever the album reaches a peak of intensity, she instinctively knows to pull back. “Waking the Witch” builds from a dreamlike reverie to an almost overwhelming surfeit of input—industrial-strength drum machine, atonal guitars, death-metal growls—only to give way to “Watching You Without Me,” a shimmering ballad located halfway between Japanese ambient music and The Beatles’ most psychedelic pop. In 1985, there was nothing else like it out there. And in some ways, nothing else has ever come close to its mix of pop hooks and avant-garde sound-sculpting. But Hounds of Love also opened an entire world to be explored, with generations of musicians—Björk, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Joanna Newsom, Julia Holter, to name just a few—following in Bush’s wake.
@werehatrack If so, I think that somewhat correlates to before the arrival and explosion of social media, where idiocy is applauded, as noted earlier.
OTOH,
@ironcheftoni Useless but harmless. This device, unnecessary as it may be, will not factor meaningfully in the inevitable, inexorable end of times. Not like canned wine, for example…
Food has pretty much become soylent something, it’s manufactured rather than grown, but this is an above and beyond abomination. I’m not against plant protein, I like nuts and tofu, but they are what they are, they are not masquerading as something else.
Tried an impossible burger the other day. Umm… no. It was neither meaty texture nor beefy flavor. The lady cooking them said, “You get used to the smell.” I don’t think so and why would I want to?
@2many2no@blaineg I tried one of those “Impossible” burgers early on. The smell is awful, not food-like at all. Once it was cooked the smell was a lot less noticeable, and the burger actually did taste okay, but I just couldn’t forget that it had smelled that way.
I much prefer the veggie burgers that don’t try to pretend they’re meat.
@2many2no@blaineg@Kyeh Other thing to watch for in the “fake meats” is an often high sodium content. I would choose a ‘real’ burger of fresh locally-sourced grass-fed ground beef, that you season yourself (good quality meat really will not need much seasoning if any). the processed ‘big food industry’ burgers, whether ‘we think it was meat’ or ‘non-meat’ should be avoided anyway.
Social media that kids (and other immature people) can access.
@phendrick I came on here so I could mention Facebook and Twitter and MOSTLY the nut job conspiracy sites that unstables get their info. from.
@growyoungagain The “Tik Tok Challenge” and the physical injuries it has caused to young people was one of the main things I had in mind, but yeah any social site can result in totally UNsocial behavior, especially with appeals to incite mob attitudes.
@growyoungagain @phendrick
I’m thinking of getting on Tik Tok to start my own Tide Pod Challenge. You know, where they do their own laundry and toss one in the washer.
@growyoungagain @phendrick
There… FIFY!
@chienfou @phendrick Nope you fixed it for yourself. Mine stands.FB and Twitter are just a tip of the iceberg of radical and misinformation sites.
@growyoungagain @phendrick
My point was due to the overwhelming use/misuse of Twitter and Facebook they are the primary sources of misinformation. Lots of whack job websites exist, but their impact pales in comparison to the two aforementioned.
@chienfou got it!✌
I heard the other day about BMW making people pay subscriptions for heated seats and heated steering wheels. The logical progression of this is that you won’t be able to own or use anything without paying a monthly fee.
In other words, you will own nothing and you will be happy.
If you refuse to play by their rules your social credit score will be impacted and they will freeze your bank account and take the fees anyway.
Look for the elimination of tangible currency because government managed crypto is easier to control.
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like but those in power around the world definitely seem to be steering things in this direction.
@tweezak You say that as if these things are not already the case. We already have digital currency. You think the bank has a box of money with your name on it and they check it whenever you ask for a balance at the ATM? Ever use a check or a debit or credit card?
Fact: Startup companies selling their product “as a subscription” are valued 2-4 times as much over traditional product sales companies.
Noticed the disappearance of “Office <year>” vetsions and only pimping “Office365” subscriptions?
We’d like to talk to you about your car warranty subscription coming up for renewal…
Rent-to-own was always intended to be rent-forever.
Property taxes are really rent paid to the government.
Built-in obsolescence is simply physically enforcing a “subscription” sales model.
The same with “consumables”. They’re just real-world micro-transactions with a subscription model.
The same with Big Pharma medications never “curing” anything. Instead, they merely “treat symptoms”. So that you need to “subscribe” to the medication. We call them “refills”, instead of “renewing your medical subscription”, because that exposes the scam.
I’m not against medicines, I’m against the economics of healthcare we have here in what may be the last years of this experiment in democracy before capitalism went all Amber Heard and shit the bed on it.
@mike808 Yeah…what he said. I was typing on my subscription based communication/surveillance device so I kept it relatively brief.
@mike808 @tweezak
Hate to break it to you but antibiotics do ‘cure’ certain infections. You may get re-infected, but that’s on you.
@chienfou @tweezak I’m talking about the incessant TV ads telling me to go ask my licensed drug dealer for something to treat my <insert uncured treatable only fad symptom here>.
Remember when “IBS” was all the rage?
@mike808 @tweezak
That’s the problem with absolutes that aren’t absolutes e.g. “never”.
And I assure you that if you talk to anybody with IBS they will be more than happy to inform you that it is in fact a real ailment.
@chienfou @mike808 I remember when congress decided it was okay to advertise prescription drugs on television. I found out later we are one of only two countries in the world that allow that.
The long-term effect is that when you watch the news (CNN, FOX, etc.) nearly every commercial you see is for some drug. Now they account for nearly all the advertising revenue for these networks so there’s no way we can expect unbiased reporting with regard to major drug companies.
@shahnm I have this toothbrush and I don’t hate it.
@kostia Hence the innocuous nature of this otherwise devastating indictment of our inexorable societal decrepitude…
Taco holders.
@ZeroCharisma I dunno, this is kinda peak civilization. Especially the T-rex.
@blaineg @ZeroCharisma Do not make me mention the huevador…
Autonomous cars
@hchavers Cars that are NOT autonomous, but are sold as such.
@blaineg @hchavers People who think that it is possible to widely, reliably and safely deploy fully autonomous vehicles as a replacement for piloted ones, in the next twenty years, without the most massive commitment to infrastructure ever seen. (Hint: we can’t.)
@blaineg @hchavers @werehatrack Talking about personal vehicles: I don’t expect to see them any time soon, if ever in my lifetime. Commercial ones are here. Walmart’s Gatik trucks were initially put on the road with a “safety driver” in the cab, but have been running with an empty cab for a year now. It is a bit uncanny to pass one of them. I assume that the next generation Gatik will eliminate the cab. I expect to see more delivery trucks on longer routes in the next decade.
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/nov/09/driverless-trucks-used-by-walmart/
@blaineg @hchavers @rockblossom Over a fixed, closely monitored and well-maintained route, automated (note that I didn’t say “autonomous”) trucks can work pretty well. But those transfer routes will go back to having a driver when it snows or when road construction is in progress. Quite a while back, Anheuser-Busch field-tested and adopted such a system for transfer routes that provide a steady stream of feed-material product between their suppliers and brewery locations. The trucks have a limited repertoire of basic avoidance and recovery routines programmed in, but the systems are designed to be no more “clever” than can be made near-bulletproof.
VR/Meta
I voted for the IRK. If I get a “we think you’ll love this” email anywhere from now to years in the future due to my vote in this poll, it had better be offering me some sort of exclusive IRK, or at least a shirt with Irk on it.
@lljk I also said irk as meh is often putting in them the things even us mehricians won’t otherwise buy except the irk way. The reveal threads are the documentation of said decline.
@Kidsandliz @lljk Also if Meh is environmentally responsible, as I’m sure they are, they might have to pay a lot to dispose of unsold electronic products safely. Things like, oh, powerbanks, bluetooth speakers, cheeap LED lights. perhaps more cost-effective to put in boxes and sell for $5 to $70 dollars!
@lljk @pmarin But not trackers. Right?
@Kidsandliz @lljk Oh you mean the no-longer-supported trackers with dead batteries that came with spare dead batteries?
@Kidsandliz @lljk @pmarin I keep wondering just how many more pallets of TrackRs are on top of the racks in the Meh warehouse. At least they weren’t equipped with alkaline batteries…
Pre-chopped onions.
The commodification of basic needs: food, water, shelter. It started a couple thousand years ago and humans have been slowly rolling down the hill since – and dragging the inhabitability of our planet for humans down with it.
Happy Saturday. I just bought a house!
@00 Congrats on the house. Is your cave you just vacated habitable and for rent?
The resurgence of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” should really be of concern. Even though it’s tied to a questionably overrated show, having already lived through that abomination’s popularity once was enough.
@MrHappypants Kate Bush forever!
@blaineg @MrHappypants Surely you jest. I was a bug fan of Kate Bush in 1985. That song really needs to be taken in the context of the « art rock » album concept on that era.
Apple music commentary on album. TL;DR I know.
If Kate Bush’s first two albums were steeped in the art-rock of the ’70s (florid piano melodies, thrumming Hammond organs, a Spiders from Mars-grade rhythm section), then 1985’s Hounds of Love, the British singer-songwriter’s fifth LP, didn’t just reflect its era—it helped define it. Few songs are more evocative of the sound of mid-’80s pop than “Running Up That Hill,” with its gated drums, quasi-dance beat, eerie vocal effects, and instantly recognizable synthesizer melody. Likewise, few albums did more to take the ambition of progressive rock and port it into the digital era.
Split across two side-length suites—the five-song Hounds of Love and the seven-song The Ninth Wave—the album grapples with big themes: the gulf between men and women, the fierceness of a mother’s love, the nature of dreams. Bush’s voice is an instrument of breathtaking power, capable of both tenderness and force, yet Bush herself is everywhere and nowhere: Particularly in the second suite, her songwriting gives shape to a kind of fragmented consciousness, a shifting array of thoughts, voices, and perspectives. Cryptic metaphors and allusions give the songs an unmistakably metaphysical aura, and the production follows suit. Bush recorded the album at home, in the 48-track studio she installed in a barn behind her house just outside of London, in a lengthy process of demoing, overdubbing, and layering. Availing herself of a state-of-the-art Fairlight CMI sampling synthesizer, one of the first of its kind, she peppered the album with sound effects: church bells, breaking glass, bits of film dialogue, and the snippets of Georgian folk music that give “Hello Earth” its otherworldly power.
Yet the LP never feels overstuffed. There’s an abiding elegance to sounds like the fretless bass of “Mother Stands for Comfort,” and whenever the album reaches a peak of intensity, she instinctively knows to pull back. “Waking the Witch” builds from a dreamlike reverie to an almost overwhelming surfeit of input—industrial-strength drum machine, atonal guitars, death-metal growls—only to give way to “Watching You Without Me,” a shimmering ballad located halfway between Japanese ambient music and The Beatles’ most psychedelic pop. In 1985, there was nothing else like it out there. And in some ways, nothing else has ever come close to its mix of pop hooks and avant-garde sound-sculpting. But Hounds of Love also opened an entire world to be explored, with generations of musicians—Björk, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Joanna Newsom, Julia Holter, to name just a few—following in Bush’s wake.
It’s not the products that worry me, it’s the resurgence of bigotry and superstition as lifestyles that I find terrifying.
@werehatrack Too real, man
@werehatrack Hard to overcome thousands of years of “culture”.
@phendrick And yet, for a while, it seemed like we were making progress…
@werehatrack If so, I think that somewhat correlates to before the arrival and explosion of social media, where idiocy is applauded, as noted earlier.
OTOH,
/image banana-slicer
Has to be the most useless gadget invented
@ironcheftoni Useless but harmless. This device, unnecessary as it may be, will not factor meaningfully in the inevitable, inexorable end of times. Not like canned wine, for example…
@ironcheftoni umm… speaking as a guy… Ouch!
@ironcheftoni How about banana luggage?
https://www.aerostich.com/banana-guard.html
@shahnm omg! I think my sister drinks canned wine!
@ironcheftoni @shahnm Canned wine is the Best! I wanna party with your sister.
Netflx Subscription pacemaker service.
@pmarin With support contracted out to Comcast’s call center in Mumbai.
@pmarin @werehatrack “Your heart will continue after these messages.”
Meatless meat…
Food has pretty much become soylent something, it’s manufactured rather than grown, but this is an above and beyond abomination. I’m not against plant protein, I like nuts and tofu, but they are what they are, they are not masquerading as something else.
Tried an impossible burger the other day. Umm… no. It was neither meaty texture nor beefy flavor. The lady cooking them said, “You get used to the smell.” I don’t think so and why would I want to?
@2many2no
What a sales pitch.
@blaineg At the visitor center of the LaBrea Tar Pits, there is a FAQ on the wall. Answer #1 is “What smell?”
@2many2no @blaineg
Um, TWSS?
@2many2no @blaineg I tried one of those “Impossible” burgers early on. The smell is awful, not food-like at all. Once it was cooked the smell was a lot less noticeable, and the burger actually did taste okay, but I just couldn’t forget that it had smelled that way.
I much prefer the veggie burgers that don’t try to pretend they’re meat.
@2many2no @blaineg @Kyeh Other thing to watch for in the “fake meats” is an often high sodium content. I would choose a ‘real’ burger of fresh locally-sourced grass-fed ground beef, that you season yourself (good quality meat really will not need much seasoning if any). the processed ‘big food industry’ burgers, whether ‘we think it was meat’ or ‘non-meat’ should be avoided anyway.
MAGA hats.
Total lack of respect in marketing.
ByteIT.com
note the phone #; wonder if CS answers with a simple "Byte it"?
Here’s a couple more nominations: