Kudos! I wish you the best of luck and hope for your success.

That’s a very good point.

That seems unlikely to persuade those people to continue using VMware, but good luck with that business strat Broadcom.

Paying a premium for ridding yourself of institutional knowledge and existing experience, then paying again to fill the gap with ignorant novices, then paying yet again to train them to former levels of productivity while paying for the difference in the interrim: That’s government efficiency, baby!

I mean, why pay for one thing once, when paying for the thing you already had before you threw it out four times over is clearly four times as good - just like how a double standard is twice as good as a boring singular standard. As Big Balls from DOGE would no doubt say: “That’s math”.

Yeah, but you gotta hand it to him: Not many people can empty a wine bottle while giving it a vacuum sealed blowjob. The man must’ve mastered some kind of circular breathing technique.

Anyway, I don’t think you supposed to remember what individual politicians used to do or say. How are they going to gaslight you into thinking they aren’t hypocrites if you’re capable to recalling more than last week?

Oddly, Løkke has been somewhat uncharacteristically competent in his current role, especially with regards to Ukraine. Then you’ve got people like Troels who might say all the right things, at least until an opportunity to take a knee in front of the nearest demanding American, stroke their thighs and look adoring up at them for permission presents itself. Arms dependencies, tone deaf diplomatic entanglements and support for stationed American soldiers not subject to Danish law comes to mind there. The latter reaffirmed just before Hegseth comes out and declares a purge of insufficiently compliant JAGs, which for reasons I cannot comprehend didn’t get Troels off his knees either. He must really like it down there.

At least Løkke is offering some - token - opposition here. Okay, it’s not much, and it’s probably about is practically useful as a chocolate teakettle, but it is barely better than nothing, I guess.

I’d say ‘a set of individuals’. The distinction is admittedly subtle.

Personally, I much prefer individuals.

Some individuals, at least.

He should report all those pasty motherfuckers to ICE.

“Why would you go for that opening?! What’s wrong with you?”

Soon my life-long dream of using a shaver the size of my entire face will become reality. Eyebrows? Nose? Who needs them anyway?

What a swell idea, Vance! I’ve been trying to figure out how to persuade my compatriots why visiting the US aren’t worth the risks, and it really helps when the Vice President makes my case for me. Cheers, buddy!

Sure, I’ll just sell my car so I can buy a pair of fucking shoes.

If you have to supply your users with AI support to figure out how to configure your OS, you might be doing something wrong.

Like a… Pogrom?

Almost certainly not, no. Evolution may work faster than once thought, but not that fast. The problem is that societal, and in particular, technological development is now vastly outstripping our ability to adapt. It’s not that people are getting dumber per se - it’s that they’re having to deal with vastly more stuff. All. The. Time. For example, consider the world as it was a scant century ago - virtually nothing in evolutionary terms. A person did not have to cope with what was going on on the other side of the planet, and probably wouldn’t even know for months if ever. Now? If an earthquake hits Paraguay, you’ll be aware in minutes.

And you’ll be expected to care.

Edit: Apologies. I wrote this comment as you were editing yours. It’s quite different now, but you know what you wrote previously, so I trust you’ll be able to interpret my response correctly.

Hey, look on the bright side: While it’s a problem, at least it won’t be your problem. Ah, sweet death. The only known solution to the problem of taxation.

And the predations of other financial institutions.

Thank you. I appreciate you saying so.

The thing about LLMs in particular is that - when used like this - they constitute one such grave positive feedback loop. I have no principal problem with machine learning. It can be a great tool to illuminate otherwise completely opaque relationships in large scientific datasets for example, but a polynomial binary space partitioning of a hyper-dimensional phase space is just a statistical knowledge model. It does not have opinions. All it can do is to codify what appears to be the consensus of the input it’s given. Even assuming - which may well be far too generous - that the input is truly unbiased, at best all it’ll tell you is what a bunch of morons think is the truth. At worst, it’ll just tell you what you expect to hear. It’s what everybody else is already saying, after all.

And when what people think is the truth and what they want to hear are both nuts, this kind of LLM-echo chamber suddenly becomes unfathomably dangerous.

Of course, that has always been true. What concerns me now is the proportion of useful to useless people. Most societies are - while cybernetically complex - rather resilient. Network effects and self-organization can route around and compensate for a lot of damage, but there comes a point where having a few brilliant minds in the midst of a bunch of atavistic confused panicking knuckle-draggers just isn’t going to be enough to avoid cascading failure. I’m seeing a lot of positive feedback loops emerging, and I don’t like it.

As they say about collapsing systems: First slowly, then suddenly very, very quickly.

Well, it’s not like the dead have expenses. The funeral might need financing though.

Or, and hear me out America, you could try cutting out all the for-profit middle-men and indulge in some good old fashioned collective bargaining. It works for everybody else.

Alternatively, you could keep doing what you’re doing. That’s an option too, I guess.