ixtli

As a concerted urbanite i totally agree with you. The problem is that people like the author are arguing for a third type of place, the suburb, which is unsupportable and harms us. Its a post-war experiment which has largely failed.

Correct. The car industry intentionally socially engineered the US to associate the giant individual and social burden of car ownership with freedom. A great documentary called Century of the Self covers this and other related things ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s )

Yes and one that is aesthetically characteristic of the places the author has spent time in. The idea that community development and the project of raising the social "floor" is somehow being "forced" on the middle class is infuriating and i encounter it often.

yes.

This isn’t the gotchya you think it is and I don’t think the majority of people who benefit from empire aren’t aware. The violation of common sense here is the notion that 1) these people are living the good life and 2) removal of empire would result in worse standard of living.

Not sure you know very many anarchists.

Exactly: we live in a capitalist society which has been in decline into fascism for generations which makes the counter culture the opposite of those things.

I get the sense that because people can think of a few examples of mercenary security people or a few white supremacist groups that "hack" that this is somehow a refutation. It's not. You know about these people because 1) they usually are mean and suck and 2) they are outliers.

As you say: the phreaking / hacking / hobbist subcultures have always been collectivist by nature and the product of those subcultures will always chafe at the profit motive.

This isnt anywhere near my experience at all. People don't like empire and if you look around your life and think everyone you see would be pleased to do military contracts you're in a ( really disconcerting ) bubble.

i always find myself wishing we were as powerful as the fascist believes us to be

i posted it again after it dissapeared the first time, then my post was flagged on and off. i think the mods are arguing lol

ok

i find that reactionaries of all kinds put a lot of work into the mental gymanastics required to argue that somehow they are the real victims of injustice and it usually boils down to "people wont let me do whatever i want and also love me"

> The communist millennials who entered the workforce in the 2010s sought to destroy every institution they touched

its so fulfilling to know someone as rich and powerful as Andreessen has acknowledged my hard work :)

it doesn't seem like they're having any issue with it in the past 5-10 really. its not that hard to go to the mainland if you have science or engineering creds these days.

cant tell if you really believe funding science creates inflation lmao

NDT made this clear like a generation ago: its absolute nonsense to cut science funding to get federal "spending under control". The amount that goes to all of this is a drop in the bucket compared to military and subsidies. hell, we spend 1/10th of the total federal science funding (~200bn) per year JUST giving free money to oil and gas companies. trying to "fix" spending this way, even if it was actually reasonable to try and do, is tantamount to trying to save to buy a house by eating two fewer avocado toasts per week.

american exceptionalism is a drug and the majority of people (certainly the majority of voters) are hopelessly addicted to it

best country ever

deranged. "far left" is anything you don't agree with. also, almost none of the people from before musk are actually gone, the only difference is a dramatic increase in antisocial nazi bots and the groypers being more bold.

what speech specifically did it save?

they already terrorize minority groups there just fine: no need for technology.

I think the notion that people have recourse against giant companies, a military industrial complex, or even their landlords in the US is naive. I believe this to be pretty clear so I don't feel the need to stretch it into a deep discussion or argument but suffice it to say it seems clear to me that everything you accuse china of here can also be said of the US.

its sinophobia because it perfectly describes the conditions we live in in the US and many parts of europe, but we work hard to add lots of "nuance" when we criticize the west but its different and dystopian when They do it over there.

This is one of the best things ive read on here in a long time. Definitely one of the greatest "it runs doom" posts ever.

Because they promised the latter to the investors and due to the nature of capitalism they can never admit they’ve done all they can.

Yea whenever we get into this sort of “what’s happening in the network is like what’s going on in your brain” discussion people never have concrete evidence of what they’re talking about.

The phrase for this is “high on your own supply.” These guys are embarrassing, frankly.

This isn’t how most serious archives work. Archiving media is sensitive, careful work which takes time and space. Providing tours is at very least expensive and at worst a serious risk to the collection.

this is great!

how many times must we repeat that AGI is whatever will sell the project. it means nothing. even philosophers don't have a good definition of "intelligence"