Let's not lump Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk together though. I feel weird defending Bezos, but he does have a big charitable fund that's quite transparent about how it spends its money. As for Elon, he's allegedly given billions to charity, but has never specified what that charity is and given his views on things it's probably appropriate to consider that highly suspect.

This is all conservative claims of bias in a nutshell. In reality they've worked the refs in the judiciary, law enforcement, the media, etc. so hard that everyone is walking on eggshells not to upset them. There's no way the Clinton email thing or the Hunter Biden prosecution would've happened with a Republican. They wouldn't even be picked up by the media.

To steel man the downvoters, maybe there are other solutions besides killing off every business that can't afford to comply with copyright. After all, isn't the whole point of copyright to enable the capitalist exploitation of information?

The problem is no one has really made an effort to take over in the news/politics space. Meta basically decided Threads wouldn't be for that. Mastodon exists, but given it's nerd-based nature it's way more tech focused. Then there's Substack's half-assed effort, but they seem happy to focus on newsletter subscriptions for now. So there's competitors in microblogging generally, but there's still zero competition in news/politics.

Ok so what do I short and when?

I mean I plead guilty to posting while intoxicated, but it seems to me the fossil fuel industry does spend a lot of money on elections and basically has a whole caucus representing it in Congress. What do modern protests like BLM, Occupy, etc. have to show? Is there a single meaningful legislative change they can point to? The article seems to suggest quite the opposite. To be fair though, they did inspire a bunch of dismissive lemmy users to feel smug.

Kinda goes to show the failure of modern protest movements. What did BLM accomplish exactly? They didn't convict Chauvin, it was the people filming him that did that. A lot of realistic ideas were floated to fix policing, but they were drowned out by edgelord calls to "defund the police" and "ACAB". 4 years later nothing has been fixed.

People need to find a better way to make change happen. Raising your fist and marching around doesn't change a thing. Maybe instead of that, people should pool their money together and spend it removing bad politicians/sheriffs/judges etc from office. That's how oil does it.

...or so the Germans would have us believe.

She's not anti-war if she's supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine. She's anti-fighting back.

We've had six straight administrations of almost total non-enforcement of antitrust. I'm happy with Biden bringing lots civil cases when no one else has done anything about the problem, especially because civil cases are much easier to win. The goal should be to fix the problem more than punish people for what past administrations effectively legalized.

I tried to create a blog on substack once, I got literally zero views across a few posts. I feel like the only blogs there that get recommended are by people who are already semi-famous, suggesting the usual problem of recommendation algorithms killing entry for new creators. It also strongly encourages a paid model, you also usually have to subscribe to comment on others' posts which makes it hard to get your blog out there. I'd say it's more a publishing platform for people who are already well known than for ordinary people.

It tends to be pretty random. I'd say just maximize opportunity by doing more things that involve other people. In my experience I'd say about 95% of my attempts to meet people, whether that be for friends or dating, go nowhere. Then of the remaining 5%, only 10% of that lasts longer than a year. So 99.5% of your efforts will be unrewarded or only slightly rewarded.

So what can you do that involves other people? Meetups, volunteer, find an activity like climbing or trivia or whatever. It depends on your area. Since you're in a rural area there won't be much but take what you can get. Of course there's a wide variety of rural areas, but there's usually some activity prevalent in the area. Golf? Hiking? Hunting? Find wherever those people hang out and go hang out there.

Great now some fancy restaurant is gonna start offering a basket of fries cooked in lavender oil for $200.

My go-to is to grab a used samsung galaxy from Ebay. Usually the best bang for the buck. The reasonably new ones have no headphone jack, but the solid dongles (not the flexible ones) work pretty well for that.

Have no social life, it's much cheaper.

But in all seriousness, if you have to have a social life, limit your spending on that stuff. Restaurant and bar tabs can add up quickly. Budget, limit your drinking, and if you don't wanna limit your drinking, at least do some cheap drinking at home first.

"I'm really great at reading people/spotting BS/etc." It seems like almost invariably this is said by people who are quick to make assumptions about people and as a result, are terrible at figuring out what someone is actually thinking.

To predict what jobs AI will replace, you need to know both of the following:

1. What's special about the human mind that makes people necessary for completing certain tasks
2. What AI can do to replicate or replace those special features

This guy has an MA in industrial engineering and an MBA, and has been in business his whole career. He has no knowledge of psychology and whatever knowledge of AI that he's picked up on the side as part of his work.

He's not the guy to ask. And yet, I feel like this is the only kind of guy anyone asks.

In my experience it's so they can listen to exactly nothing you say in response and then say "oh you've totally been brainwashed" before refuting points I never even came close to making.

A few names that may need translation:

• ARK - Cathie Wood's fund, no surprises there
• Kingdom Holdings - Saudi royals (along with Alwaleed Bin Talal)
• Pershing Square - Bill Ackman's fund (guy who made headlines recently for getting university presidents fired for not shutting down Palestinian protesters
• Q-Tetris Holding - Qatari fund, not sure how connected to royals it is
• VYC25 - UAE fund, not sure how connected to royals it is
• Scott Nolan - founders fund (Peter Thiel) guy
• X holdings - Elon Musk's LLC for limiting his losses in this whole charade

Not an exhaustive list, didn't look up all the names.

Leaders in tech have to be good at raising money from rich investors, lenders, etc.. Most of these people aren't tech people. They're hedge fund managers, bankers, or just people with lots of money. So consider the following 2 strategies:

Strategy A: Be realistic. Explain the positives and the negatives. The tech looks promising, but the future is uncertain. It's a risky investment that could pay off massively, but it probably won't. You the CEO know a lot about the topic, but you're still just a guy, not a miracle worker.

Strategy B: Just focus on the plus side. It will succeed, and it'll succeed way more than anyone expects. Not only that, you the CEO are an unstoppable hardworking galaxy brain genius who sleeps on the factory floor. They should be so lucky to get to invest in your company.

Which of these is more likely to work with investors who don't know tech? And which is most likely to be the strategy chosen by leaders who are narcissistic and deceitful? The answer is the same.