Imagine how much good could be done if we just took Elon Musk’s stuff and used it to fund public education, public healthcare, poverty reduction, drug abuse treatment, and the like. Instead that shit strain is hoarding all that money that came from our pockets.
EDIT: Like…instead of letting him DOGE NASA for the benefit of SpaceX, what if we just took SpaceX and folded it in to NASA?
I am going to be extremely sad considering the amount of research and science that’s about to become privatized. Not just NASA but other government agencies and research grants.
Ya, Bill Gate started the trend with “donating” to research for “exclusive rights to everything coming from the research”, with Zuckerberg et al all doing it now.
Sprinkle in a million dollars in publicities and people believe they are the good guys too. So infuriating.
Yeah, that’s not donating, that’s buying.
#doubt
Most people live comfortably enough that they won’t radicalize, we’re far from France before the revolution
Im hoping the nutjobs who become school shooters for attention realize they will get WAY more attention if they are a CEO shooter instead.
I’ve always wondered how this wasn’t always the case. You’re pissed off at ______ to the extent that you’re willing to commit murder and sacrifice your freedom over it, so you go and shoot up… a bunch of elementary school students? Dafuq? Why? Target the source of your problem, not some random kids…
Target the source of your problem
Has it occurred to you that a lot of school shooters are mobbing victims and the “random kids” are quite literally the source of their problem?
I’ve thought about this and the only thing I can come up with is that school shooters are so pathetic that they only go after kids who can’t fight back.
Nah it’s more likely just that younger kids have, even those in highschool have a smaller world. They don’t have medical issues often and they only think about their peers.
I mean, I want to have hope, but the major first world nations of the world didn’t build a god damned surveillance state over the last 40 years for nothing. Those fourteen eyes are watching.
What’s coming is Hitler’s Shutzstaffel on absolute fucking steroids. We used to say, regarding the Patriot Act, that the tools being developed were the kind the Nazi SS would have fucking wet dreams about.
Anne Frank wasn’t followed by a GPS tracking unit & surveillance device in her pocket tied to her real name and address that she regularly used to talk with friends. Anne Frank didn’t have to worry about heat-scanners that find people hidden in walls. Anne Frank didn’t have to worry about the internet at the home she was being hidden in was monitored. Anne Frank was still found and murdered by the Nazis, with much less surveillance, and much lower tech.
I’m not gonna drown myself in hopium and copium. I’m ready for our ramshackle poor-man’s cyberpunk world to pop off and start the Water Wars. Because that’s sadly way more likely than humans getting their fucking shit together.
EDIT: You want it to get better, start organizing, even for things as simple and small as local mutual aid networks, only using encrypted channels. No, people won’t like it. Yes, they’re hard to use. If you want to not be constantly infiltrated by people trying to stop you doing good works, go ahead and keep organizing in cleartext. If we want to actually make headway against corrupt governments and corporations yes that means you’ll have to learn to do some shit on your own and it won’t be as fancy and clean as the corporate option. Stop relying on the groups oppressing you for the tools to fight your oppression by them. The groups oppressing you will never give you the tools to dismantle them.
They barely mix with us, peasants. They will probably follow this trend and live in inexpugnable, extremely well defended citadels. Apartheid, in a word.
I work in the municipal office of a tiny city that’s an enclave for the super rich. We’re entirely surrounded by a major city, but we’re a different jurisdiction.
Of course, I don’t get to live there. Literally every resident is a millionaire or better. The average new house being built there is about 8 million dollars, and we have a lot of housing churn.
That is, people will buy a 5 million dollar house and tear it down to build a 12 million dollar house.
All that to say that I interact with these people all the time. They almost invariably don’t realize how out of touch they are, because their neighbors are also millionaires.
You’d think it’s a super nice city, but other than the houses it’s fairly run down. They don’t want good roads or sidewalks because then people would use them. The city was essentially founded to prevent bus lines from the major city from having stops near the fancy district.
Over half the municipal employees are cops, and their main job is keeping homeless people away.
All this work goes into isolating the rich from the poor, and it’s worked so well that most of the rich don’t even realize it’s happening.
