Um, well, they are first of all complying with the decision, in spirit. When someone has indicated to you, even in very diplomatic terms, that you may be unwelcome, it’s a reasonable response to stand right up and walk the fuck out.

Secondly I think they are doing it swiftly and abruptly to take advantage of this moment of public awareness. They want to create as abrupt a break as possible no doubt to maximize the outrage of their many millions of users and advertisers while everyone has the news fresh in their mind. They probably hope that this will create enough pain and disruption to stir opposition to the ban or at least political fallout for those who caused it.

Yep, agree. What makes this more complex is that movie culture has relentlessly programmed all of us to think this way for decades. I don’t think it’s just a case of genetic predisposition toward solipsism, though that is surely in there as well.

Virtually all blockbuster movies and many smaller ones are about some kind of chosen hero who shatters a corrupt system, often with a single act of redemptive violence (killing the bad guy, destroying the evil machine, etc).

From Star Wars: A New Hope to The Matrix to The Hunger Games this formula has been virtually the same. It’s so relentless and consistent, and people grow up on it from an early age. Is it any surprise, with this kind of programming, that people grow up lacking the will to dedicate themselves to making a small contribution toward incremental change? No. They need shattering upheaval that saves the world, and everything less is complicity in the evil of the system.

As Zizek said: you never get to see what the hero does the day after shattering the machine. How do they rebuild a better society? Okay, redemptive violence, then what? Popular culture has no answer to this. In real life it’s about compromise, hard work, incremental improvement. But we have generations of people who’ve been fed compelling narratives about everything but that.

Yes and there is one other aspect. When they get into this conspiracy shit, there is a whole community of people ready to welcome them. They are congratulated for seeing the light and joining the movement. This fulfills a social need for a lot of these people, who are lonely or in some cases estranged from family.

This process of feeling like you’ve drawn back the curtain on life, and, in the same stroke found “your people” is incredibly exhilarating to them. It’s like a whole new day in their lives. And THAT’S why they’ll defend their crap beliefs to the death. Because giving them up means going back to the humdrum world where they are just a nobody again.

Yes, let’s not confuse having a degree with getting an education.

no employer has ever given me any amount of money for that degree

I don’t see how you can know this. If it helped you, it was as a baseline qualification that helped you get hired at all. Were you expecting some kind of moment where an HR person said, on your first day, “oh hang on a moment, you have a degree - we’ll need to raise your salary for that - terribly sorry for the oversight.”

Established car makers have businesses that are easier to predict. They’ve been operating for a long time and you have a pretty good idea what “doing well” or “doing poorly” would look like for them. A much newer company like Tesla, which is based on emerging technology, does not have so well-understood of a future. There’s a lot more unknown about how big it might become.

Most times, this is seen as big unknowns and risk, therefore investors are wary. But Tesla has had enough real world success to be encouraging, yet is still new enough to enjoy “we don’t know how big this thing will get” speculation. Basically a lot of people think it’s a reasonable bet that Tesla will be huge in the future. Therefore their stock has high demand.

Whoa unexpected call for violence.

I think you make a good point. Choosing your timing for a Supreme Court ruling is important. But the court is likely to be hostile for a very long time, and the businesses bringing the case are probably reeling from having to block half of the US market, so they can’t wait forever.

If I were them writing the law it would be based on viewed content. Not files sitting on servers.

These people are addicted to this feeling that they have discovered some secret that destroys conventional wisdom and sheds a whole new light on everything. They are addicted to this feeling that they’ve found a big lie everyone’s swallowed and they’re going to spit it out.

Every part of their worldview has to have that quality or they can’t hold onto it with their brains. There’s a great deal of straightforward, plain-as-day information that’s totally missing from their worldview because it doesn’t contain the drug their brain is addicted to.

Do not put hydrogen peroxide into a cool mist humidifier and then turn it on. These operate by very rapidly vibrating a metal ring submerged in liquid. This physically atomizes whatever liquid is in there. You don’t want to breathe hydrogen peroxide.

You’re supposed to wipe these with vinegar daily and then rinse them and put them back into service.

I believe that our media are actively stoking outrage and shock.

People have a built-in tendency to pay more attention to danger than opportunity: if you fail to notice some berries on a bush you won’t necessarily die but if you fail to notice a scorpion on the path you may very well die. So people react strongly to negative information.

This strong reaction registers as “engagement” and media think they must be offering info that people want. In the digital age, engagement can be counted and tracked, which allows you to quickly adapt and do more of whatever creates that engagement.

We’ve been experiencing that optimization loop for the last 20 years and it is now at a deafening roar. We don’t have problems in the world, we have existential crises. We don’t have political disagreements, we have mortal enemies. We don’t have a venal buffoon for a president, we have a fascist dictator murdering rapist psychopath.

This isn’t the only factor but it is significant and it is also new. Yes, there has been sensationalism in the last but it is new to be able to track media consumption like this and adapt on the fly, automatically. It’s taken us to a whole new level.

Yeah what an egregious generalization from someone vandalizing a bathroom to all Americans. I mean come on.

I hope it bursts soon. It’s not creating any hiring activity, which is what we little people in the industry need. But it is disruptively shifting things around and stealing funding from everything else as companies panic to put forth some kind of trash so they aren’t seen as being “behind.”

Enterprise software is weeeeeeird. Salesforce, JIRA, Workday… these are terrible products by user standards. But they get purchased on other strengths, obviously. Compatibility with other shit software being high in the list. Configurability. Access control. Permissions roles. Some shit. I dunno. All I know is that every time we have to do something in Workday our HR department literally sends out a PowerPoint of step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

here frozen family meals in the past would have at least satisfied everyone at the table without any sides

American in his fifties here. No idea what you’re talking about. Family size has only ever meant “larger pack.” It has never meant “complete on its own with nothing accompanying it.”

I have never interacted with an enterprise software salesperson as a customer. But I’ve had a ton of them as coworkers since I work in software development. Knowing them from the inside, so to speak, it is impossible for me to imagine how anyone takes them seriously. The only things they actually know or care about are their quota and bonus. How anyone bases a large cash spend on the things they say boggles my mind.

Fuel cost should go down with usage though. And if usage goes down, doesn’t that mean the grid is better equipped to handle it well, and should experience fewer problems as a result?

Some costs should go down. Others are fixed, I agree.

It must be so discombobulating when your special life partner stops responding whenever your internet service goes down.

I’m also gen-x. Calling it dystopia when a show-yourself-naked website has unreasonable entry requirements for voluntary participation is not a function of age but rather privilege. And I thought I had soft hands and an easy life.