Capitalist Mysticism at its finest.

That’s the story that gets told. But in an economy in which technology is increasingly designed to be hostile to the public, this appears to be a case of them doing exactly what they intended.

I think there’s a real possibility that Palantir’s capacities are heavily overstated. Historically, the real hazard presented by these panopticons is False Positives. Hobbling your nation’s ability to do any kind of productive enterprise because you’ve surrounded yourself with the illusion of threatening behavior.

But even in this scenario, you’re still left with the evil/stupid conundrum. If your MPs are just getting paid off to make excuses, insisting that they lack understanding misses the point. They vote the same way even if they do.

definitely not successful because they are smart.

I mean, “smart” is a relative term. They were smart enough to find the money hose and latch onto it. But the skills necessary to schmooze $250M out of a creditor are fundamentally different than the skills necessary to manage a workforce or meet the terms of the contract.

You can call it the Peter Principle or the Principle-Agent Problem or any number of other business short-hands for “skills mismatch”. The bottom line is that “meritocracy” in a capitalist system boils down to rent-seeking effectiveness. That’s the skill set that is rewarded. And it produces legions of people who train and compete for the opportunity to maximize rent-seeking returns.

This guy fumbled the ball in a spectacular fashion. But I have no doubt he’ll get back on his horse and find another pool of labor to extract wealth from. Because, if he’s a CEO, he’s honed the skills needed to do exactly that.

What we get to mock him for is his failure, not his decision. If he’d retrieved a useful answer from the ChatGPT answer lottery, or the courts had been stacked with his friends such that any answer he pulled was considered the right one, he’d be hailed as a business genius on the front page of the WSJ rather than scoffed at in the back pages of 404media.

The CEO will be fine at the end of the day.

The workers are going to get fucked, though.

a minister who was waxing lyrical about the benefits of AI and was asked something basic like about hallucinations or something and they literally never heard of them

“I don’t know about this thing that runs counter to my policy. I’ve never heard of it. I’ll have to look into it.”

Pretty standard politician-speech for “Sit down and shut up, I don’t want to talk about this”.

Maybe the minister sincerely hadn’t heard of AI hallucinations. Or maybe they were just being coy. Either way, the new information isn’t going to shape their decision because they’re not governing based on information provided by the general public. They’ve got a coterie of lobbyists and partisan insiders who have already made the choice on their behalf.

Damn. The security (theater) obsessed Far-Right Labour government wouldn’t be kicking the barn door open to a foreign government’s mass surveillance company for any kind of insidious reason, you think?

The irony of this image is that, on the one hand, you absolutely have the Blue Collar and the White Collar snearing it out at one another over who suffered more and earned the most.

On the other hand, you’ve got the Blue Collar guy doing 12-hour shifts to guarantee Mr. White Collar gets cheap energy and fancy techno-widgets and fresh food. Meanwhile, you’ve got the White Collar guy doing 12-hour shifts to make sure Mr. Blue Collar pays the highest price for gasoline and can’t afford a cell phone plan and shops at Dented Canned Goods Store.

Like, you want to talk about class solidarity. But White Collar Guy gets paid extra precisely because he makes Blue Collar Guy’s life worse. Then he pays Tophat Guy a hefty vig for the privilege.

Meanwhile, Blue Collar Guy is so sheep-dipped in the cultural propaganda that he thinks its some kind of privilege to pay a four-figure monthly truck note to commute to his flop house on a $40k salary. The only reason he wants that $50/hr job is to stack a bunch of mortgage debt on top of the car debt and the credit card debt. At no point does he stop and ask whether these consumerist babbles are benefiting him in a material way.

And neither of them seem to realize working harder is making their lives worse.

The US war machine is expending itself like a senior citizen at a strip club.

It’s awful to witness and truly miserable for everyone involved. But give Americans a week and they’ll stumble back in clutching another fist full of Social Security cash to do it again.

You want to call these goons out as bad at strategy or wasteful of precious natural resources. But neither the US nor Russia seem to have a shortage of blood or treasure they’re willing to throw away for another cheap thrill. This is it. The twilight of empire. What happens if they don’t finish all over Central Europe and the Middle East, like they’ve been lusting after for 40 years?

You think Trump or Putin care what happens to their kids? Their grandkids? Nevermind all the young people their explosions of pent up unrealized empire ruin in the process.

This is what all those decades of Cold Warring was meant for. The grim harvest we’ve been growing since Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and kicked off 70 years of intercontinental hate.

That‘s just how Chinese propaganda operates

A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink

“I have to admit, I’m always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.

“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”

The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. “Thank you friend, but you must be confused… There’s no propaganda in America.”

If I haven’t beaten game one, it’ll be more than a month.

But synchronizing patch releases so you’re not bombarded with notifications would be nice, yes.

In a competent administration, this would be inspiring.

No it wouldn’t. It’s always been a dumb idea to get around public mass transit.

Sucks to be in Texas, the Silicon Valley alpha testing hub of the US.

Linux guy whipping out the “Actually, it’s a feature not a bug” line is very funny.

within three to five years

That’s tech speak for “never”

The technology, developed by Borui Kang Medical Technology (Shanghai), is designed to restore hand-movement capabilities in individuals suffering from paralysis.

Specifically, the system targets patients with quadriplegia resulting from cervical spinal cord injuries, enabling them to regain hand-grasping ability through the use of a specialised glove.

Incredible technology, nonetheless.

But crazy to think this would be a commercial public service any time soon

There should be a law against OS updates more frequent than once a month

Always could. We used to just call it “pimping”

Strictly speaking, AI images violate OnlyFans terms of service.

But otherwise, sure. Who was actually harmed here? If she’d been real, would this have been better somehow?

Amazon Holds Mandatory Meeting After Vibe-Code Triggered Major Outages

~ Mar 11, 2026

Unironically. But only on the condition they bring back Google from 2011