unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6999|PNW

I have a huge problem with how a lot of the easy access stuff is so unabashedly misinformation on some level. Joe Average probably isn't going to get his opinions from behind a paywall, or know to mash escape on a refresh to time popup avoidance. A lot of these articles are things parroted or linked to on social media fake news spread as well. Unapologetically exploited by politicians.

In cases of stuff like the pandemic, it affects everyone.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+641|3947
Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and World Editor Frances Martel both described TikTok, a video-sharing app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, as a “foreign weapon” targeting American children and youth on Monday’s edition of the Breitbart News Daily podcast.

TikTok’s displacement of Google as the world’s most popular website, Marlow held, is illustrative of a broader displacement of America’s global position by China. He warned of TikTok and other digital apps’ capacities to obstruct personal development with time-wasting endeavors.

He remarked, “I was floored by the data that TikTok is now even more popular than Google around the world as the most popular domain. Not only is TikTok run by the Beijing Communist Party, but it’s also something that is wildly distracting, and it seems to be custom-built to distract young Americans from doing anything productive, and just to get sucked into this black hole of staring at your screen all day doing stupid stuff.”
They are 100% correct.

Kids shouldn't be on TikTok all day looking at videos. They should instead be in the Brietbart and Fox News comment section absorbing negativity and talking with people old enough to remember when Blazing Saddles was in theaters.

“It struck me as maybe the beginning of the end of American domination around the world, and I hate to be grave about it, but I think someone needs to be. If we keep doing this – wasting millions upon millions of hours – every year staring at these screens – are we going to be able to process exactly how scary the world can be?”
Who wants to live like this? Being scared all the time.

Dorks.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+494|3680
these people are obsessed with productivity and competition - meaning the workers aren't working hard enough for the vested interests which fund them and sponsor all their verbiage. heaven forbid that people waste time on phones or having fun! how will we COMPETE in the GLOBAL GAME against our enemies?

nevermind that, by all accounts, the CCP have huge issues of their own with chinese students playing (western) computer games to excess or young workers dropping out of society to ‘lie down’ all day procrastinating on social media. the CCP just banned video games for all students, i think, or restricted them to one day per week or something, in a similar moral-political panic. perhaps not a good look to try and match their rhetoric, breitbart.

maybe they should think a little harder about why working/living conditions are so poor in their own countries that people are driven to spend half their lives seeking distraction and escapism. a healthy, engaged and contented populace don't spend $1500 a month on mobile games.

this sort of moral jeremiad is pretty timeless. 'the lower orders have too much cakes and ale!' the paranoiac twist, that somehow the CCP are using phone apps to subvert democracy or take over people's minds, is straight out of 'the manchurian candidate'. there's definitely privacy/surveillance worries about any sort of foreign-directed tech, but to turn it into a matter of 'distraction' and 'productivity' is another thing entirely. it reminds me of the signs stuck up in amazon warehouses blaring, in all caps, that workers SHOULD NOT LOOK AT THEIR PHONES WHEN CLOCKED IN.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-04 04:03:24)

SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+641|3947
It has less to do with productivity obsession and more to do with just culture war. Young people on TikTok are cultural libs. The people who manage TikTok are university educated people working out of California. Same with most tech companies. Of course we know the average university educated engineer is usually two degrees to the right of the social science and liberal arts students but the sort of the people who Brietbart panders to never been to college or if they did it was a technical one. Further, right wingers in big cities are still pretty different from the "middle America" conservatives. Urban right wingers still enjoy Asian fusion restaurants and don't mind people who are different to a point. There are many people in this country who by choice live off of macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets, burgers and hotdogs. While this looks delicious to us, it is alien to many Americans who just want a burger and some dad rock playing in the background.
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/9d/db/da/9ddbda7206888b80a58f83bec9100cfd.jpg

Newbie wrote:

You are stereotyping them as much as they would stereotype you.
True but at least I am willing to try different things.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+494|3680
lol, a very neat representation there. you're probably right that the battle-lines are as much sociological as political now.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6999|PNW

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Newbie wrote:

You are stereotyping them as much as they would stereotype you.
True but at least I am willing to try different things.
Wouldn't be my first choice of response. More along the lines of what zeek already covered. If your society is sinking so drastically into escapism to cause such concern, then maybe are some root problems that need to be addressed.

I've spent more time building homes in building games, than I have building a home for myself (not done this at all but point stands). One is affordable, the other is financially onerous these days.

Google is toxic. Youtube has turned into a massively unfriendly environment for content creators. I don't blame people for moving to other platforms. Lots of YT stuff from video game people is just compiled twitch clips.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+641|3947
I think we should promote homesteading in the Great Plains. Many people would like to build a home IRL.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+641|3947
Funny thing about Youtube removing the dislike counter...some people get tricked into watching Downfall parody clips.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+641|3947
Somebody reported my reddit profile as "in crisis". I got a message from a Reddit bot linking me to resources to talk to somebody. G1C
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+641|3947
NYT reported Twitter is selling itself to Elon Musk. Twitter is a shit hole already but the idea of that tool having control of it is gross. Note I said tool. The scamming, exploiting workers, and the other stuff he does is water under the bridge. The annoying thing about him is he is a dorky guy trying to be cool and internet incels and Bitcoin fools defend him like he would even piss on them if they were on fire.

https://www.theonion.com/please-like-me-1848674003
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+494|3680
$43 billion valuation for a social media text feed that, until very recently, had no idea how to even generate an income or make a profit.

great business genius from elon musk, here.

the funniest thing is taht he's decided to buy twitter so that he can control the discourse better on there. he's presenting it as buying it to 'ensure free speech'. you know, that guy who tried to call a hero diver a pedophile on the same network and then sued him to death in the ensuing fallout. a total beacon of free speech and upholding the truth, there.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+641|3947
Twitter is still literally unprofitable.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+494|3680
the guy is actually having to use leverage and loans to try and buy it out. all because of some narcissistic ego drive.

what's amazing is that the world isn't tired of these billionaire celebrities yet. they still take up a lot of public oxygen.

so a man with largely fictitious wealth built from serial overvaluation of his companies (some of which were, until very recently, also literally unprofitable) is trying to secure a raft of loans in order to buy out ... another unprofitable business? tell me more.

makes me almost nostalgic for the rockefellers and carnegies.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+641|3947

uziq wrote:

makes me almost nostalgic for the rockefellers and carnegies.
Those were real men. The strong silent types like Gary Cooper.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6999|PNW

If Musk felt like he could get away with hiring the Pinkertons to police the break room coffee machine and disperse lines for it, he probably would.

As a matter of fact, why hasn't he?
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6999|PNW

uziq wrote:

the guy is actually having to use leverage and loans to try and buy it out. all because of some narcissistic ego drive.

what's amazing is that the world isn't tired of these billionaire celebrities yet. they still take up a lot of public oxygen.
I like it when they whine about taxes.

https://i.imgur.com/sOz6DRI.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6999|PNW

He would have never made it in circles of ultra wealthy competing to see who could look the most charitable. Others might have cut their losses and paid up to save face.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+641|3947
The other ultra wealthy don't have an army of internet people willing to die for them. You can't buy that.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,814|6333|eXtreme to the maX
erm, people aren't taxed on their net worth....yet

For comparison I pay about 4% of my net worth in annual taxes.
Fuck Israel
uziq
Member
+494|3680
elon musk paid practically zero income tax last year.

CEOs and the mega-rich have been using shares to circumvent income taxes for a long time. when they’re using the same net worth to leverage themselves mega-mansions and infinite credit lines … what’s the difference? the middle-class rube dutifully pays their 20-40% rate on their taxable income whilst the mega rich use book-keeping tricks to finance their lifestyles.

i don’t think anyone is confusing net worth with the social and political case for fair tax contribution? the billionaires don’t even pay close to the same tax as their bottom-level workers.

and yet you’ll continually find people arguing that elon musk etc belong to a graceful sphere of superhumans who shouldn’t pay tax. the existence of the super rich is justified because, erm, they decide to buy unprofitable 15-year-old social media tools on a whim. amazing.  so much for saving world hunger or old-school philanthropist egotism.

this is your nerd god? elon musk seems to be having a protracted breakdown. he’s been doing too much LSD with his queen hipster ex-gf and wasting time queuing for berlin techno clubs that deny him entry.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/elon … -zh8g270pr

imagine having a nerd army willing to die for you (quite literally in your unsafe motor vehicles), and you’re still so insecure and desperate to fit in that you try and get entry to exclusive hipster techno clubs. guy is like 50 and is trying to go to berghain. lmfao

Last edited by uziq (2022-04-26 03:56:48)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,814|6333|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

i don’t think anyone is confusing net worth with the social and political case for fair tax contribution?
https://i.imgur.com/sOz6DRI.jpg

Obviously people minimise their income tax, but taxing net worth is unrealistic, especially when its nebulous.
Many of these people have a real net worth much lower than the headline value, they can't realistically sell their shares and usually have a pile of debt.

He must be unhinged if he wants to go to a berlin techno club.
Fuck Israel
uziq
Member
+494|3680
you're being a little bit pedantic about the wording and gist of her tweet. billionaires crying and whingeing about 'how much tax they pay', when in real-world terms they are paying a tiny fraction of their income, which affects their lifestyle none, whilst their workers in similar real-world terms see a handy 1/5th of their income disappear every month from their pay-packet ... is an execrable and piteous sight.

elon musk evidently has enough money spare, or, put another way, enough leverage with the very most powerful and fungible banks in the world, to buy a fucking social media site for the same price as the total GDP of, erm, botswana. i don't think he's struggling for cash, "and can't realistically sell his shares".

why are you so keen to bend over backwards to defend the lifestyle of a manbaby? is this engineering esprit de corps or something? is this what all this low-level bragging about engineering salaries and your net worth over all these years has been about? because you secretly want to just buy a mega-yacht, fuck over a bunch of little (brown, black) people, and spend your time dressing like an edgy 21-year-old, banging cringey hipster women half your age, and trying to get into cool clubs to which you're unwelcomed? lmao. engineering master race. this is what all the endless justification and defending is about: the barely repressed pipedreams of your typical STEM maladapt.

Last edited by uziq (2022-04-26 04:11:51)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,814|6333|eXtreme to the maX
I'm not doing anything really, just pointing out that whoever Anya Overmann is can't construct an evidence-backed coherent argument to support net-worth taxation.

There's a limit to how many times income should be taxed.

Corporations pay tax, shareholders/owners pay tax on their income, the effective tax rate is greater than 50% for many people.

Some years I too pay no tax whatsoever, does that mean my net worth should be taxed? At what rate? Apparently 4.5% isn't enough.
Shouldn't you be taxed on your net worth?

$11bn seems like a lot of tax to be paying, a pretty good lifetime contribution really.
Elon can leave earth for mars knowing he's done his bit.
Fuck Israel
uziq
Member
+494|3680
who generated his wealth? elon didn't generate $11bn of wealth off the sweat of his own brow.

the whole reasoning for letting billionaires extract all their companies wealth up vertically, leave their workers with zero basic provisions or workplace legal protections, etc, and then fuck off to take drugs forever, rant on social media, and knock-up manic dream pixies is tired in the extreme. use your fucking head.

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