forgetfreeman

"which inevitably changes the learning environment"

This, right here, is the most commonly repeated trope in "tech" circles whenever the topic of education comes up. It's infrequently questioned at all, much less challenged outright, despite there being literally no foundational shifts in any of the individual curricula that a basic education is constructed from. So from an academic standpoint the world isn't actually moving much at all. It's this rhetoric that has lead the charge for tech infiltrating the classroom, a shift which has produced measurably poorer educational outcomes.

I'm not sure where you see velocity. The last major innovation in arethmetic was the introduction of zero when the hindu-arabic numeral system was adopted by medieval western societies. Likewise english grammar isn't exactly a hotbed of churn.

"would like" is pretty wild in this context. The number of individuals who have had a job they truly enjoyed is a rounding error in recorded history. I'll save us both the indignity of repeating tired boomer tropes around modern attitudes towards work.

Significantly less. Wanted a job? Walk through any neighborhood being built with a tape measure in your pocket. You'd have a job doing something before you made it past the 4th house. Had a car? Delivering food paid enough to afford a modest apartment.

I think it's distasteful to screen ethically questionable business practices with segments of the disabled community. If this product was being marketed towards the need of developmentally disabled individuals I feel like there would be less grounds for criticism, however meeting those needs in no way excuses outright fabrication of marketing claims aimed at the broader consumer market, and especially children.

Maybe, maybe not. A lot of folks would gleefully avoid rocking the boat if handed a job this cushy. If they do flake out you could ask if anyone in facilities would like to take a break from emptying trashcans...

What data might that be? I've looked and there doesn't appear to be any authoritative source of long-term data for either # of reported foodborne illness outbreaks or # of individuals sickened in this way per year, either of which would clearly demonstrate a dip in sickness rates if industrial-scale food production does, in fact, result in cleaner production.

"There are downsides to the consolidation of food suppliers, to be sure, but food safety is probably better for it."

Nope, quite the contrary. By necessity consolidation means fewer individual processing facilities, which in turn means any single facility services a larger percentage of the market. Given fixed odds of any given single processing facility being cross-contaminated by a dirty shipment, by necessity that contamination event will impact a larger volume of product due to bulk mixing. Additionally this cross-contamination event will impact a larger portion of the market due to now-commonplace multi-state product distribution.

I frequently hear "efficiency" touted in the context of the agriculture industry, always by individuals who have no involvement with it, and have to wonder what, exactly, they believe they are cheerleading. A loaf of bread is not significantly cheaper now than it was 50 years ago, so no obvious benefits to the consume accrue from this notional efficiency. What has changed is rural bankruptcy and suicide rates have both skyrocketed, with the consolidation of the AG industry consistently implicated as the primary driver of both.

Yep. You're starting to catch on. Same functionality, significant cost savings for the organization.

If you think CEOs are the primary legal signatories for their company you might need to spend some time away from garage band startups. Companies maintain entire legal departments for a reason.

Neat. Hire an intern to prompt the "CEO" as needed. Problem solved.

And they are. I read somewhere a few days ago that France is vacuuming up academics and advanced students that have been displaced by various recent policy changes that have proven to be hostile towards academia and research.

Oh I am very clear about what precedents I want set. I want the C-suite, board, and major shareholders of any corporate entity that meaningfully deviates from legality to face all of the same consequences a private individual would.

The most recent was ~15 years ago, but in my experience some shit never changes. Surfers are still the same belligerent assholes on their favorite local breaks they where 30 years ago so I doubt much has changed in these places either.

True. Where we appear to disagree is that any overreaction has taken place. If anything I'm deeply dissatisfied that charges haven't been filed.

Really? Dudes are catching felony raps for web scraping and you dont see how any of this is felonious?

Grandmother Mountain boulders in western NC, me and a buddy had to cut a climbing trip short after getting into some shit with a four pack of the locals over me taking photos of some of the problems there. Nobody got hurt but it was every bit as hostile as any encounter with the surfing locals I'd ever had in the Outer Banks.

Vedauwoo Wy, a local friend made me leave my camera at his place and basically warned me not to talk to or even make eye contact with any of the locals at some of the back country crags we were going to. No encounter there but the stories I've heard told (and believe) are something else. Same for Wild Iris near Lander.

The irony, or perhaps cognitive dissonance, inherent in this position is staggering to me.

On the subject of gatekeeping in the climbing community there's also the minor issue of getting threatened with violence by locals when trying to document routes.

I am sick to death of the seemingly obligatory oh-but-im-all-in-on-ai disclaimer embedded in what is otherwise a (totally valid) critique of AI. Have the courage of your convictions already.

As Stated Elsewhere you have to have a thing before it can be violated. Given the comprehensive scope of digital surveillance performed by tech companies, you can't claim to have privacy online. And before you "but but the government" they can already subpoena your entire digital existence at will, assuming Palantir or some data broker hasn't already sold it to them. So yeah, may as well make life more difficult for the companies that make all of this possible, that would at least present a modest improvement on the status quo.

I'm saying most parents are perfectly powerless to prevent their children from seeing shit like that on the internet. Hell there's snuff on YouTube. Hardly a non sequitur.

I mean I think we can all broadly agree that showing snuff and hardcore porn to 11 yr olds is objectively bad. There is a line, we just might not agree on exactly where it should be placed.

Nah, we definitely need identity and age verification, if for no other reason than it strips tech companies and data brokers of plausible deniability. They already know who you are and by extension your age, this fight is very much about tech companies avoiding consequences.

Except technicality absolutely factors in. Sure there's mouthbreathers out there that exercise no oversight at all over the content their kids are exposed to but there's also a large group of well-intentioned parents that would likely do a much better job at this if the bar wasn't set quite so high.

"parents will always be shitty"

Maybe cut nontechnicals a little slack? Their adversaries have invested literally billions of dollars in R&D.

1990s: ~%36 of all teens smoked

2020s: >%2 of all teens smoke

Kinda suggests that putting limitations in place actually produces results. Crazy innit?

This "well actually" feels like it's in the same vein as tobacco companies funding cancer research. 30 seconds with Google shows that CoreCivic's Q1 earnings for 2026 are ~%50 higher than earnings reported for Q1 from last year. So yeah, they're getting rich off this.

I think it's the utter banality of the end goal that offends me as much as anything else. The idea that we as a society will sell ourselves this cheaply beggars belief.

If that were actually true the tech industry would not have minted trillions building a global digital panopticon.