Even if that’s true, it is not a reason to work someone to death.

He was in a penal colony. Places not known for adequate food, medical care, or reasonable work protections.

No one is saying that someone shot him in the head. He died “naturally” because the body cannot sustain in that environment indefinitely. And who put him there, and why?

As long as people are out in the wild trying to give cover to regressive fascists, we’ll never see the end of this shit.

Especially when you take into account that he’s currently dealing with accusations of fixing his books for preferential bank and insurance treatment.

Most arguments about wait time are conflating two issues: how long from when you check in to when you see the doctor, and how long between when you try to make an appointment and the date of that appointment.

The US system is not terrible for wait times on appointments, and depending on your type of insurance it’s not terrible to see a specialist. But there are some niche practices that are horrible wait times, such as endocrinologists.

The US system “solves” the office wait time issue by dinging doctors for spending more than 7 minutes per patient.

It’s not the best, nor is it the only. It’s one aspect across the entirety of human enterprise, and unlike an individual person, countries and societies are able to implement multiple initiatives at once.

It’s literally what’s happening.

Texas used the same concept to empower private people to sue abortion providers and receivers under civil law since they couldn’t do it criminally.

The country as a whole has done it for a long time with cellphone data, the five eyes alliance, etc.

They have access to information they’re barred from getting directly themselves, and they get it from private companies. Spying by proxy.

We already have those. It’s called EBT/food stamps, and we just outsource it to local grocers and philanthropy food banks.

Almost across the board, new technology is used to spread two things: religious dogma and porn.

And the farmer’s almanac, but mostly the Bible and porn.

Not just their business practices, but also just the oculus purchase.

I already had an oculus. I was told (via press release) that I wouldn’t have any issues with not having a Facebook account…only for them to turn around a little while later and require a Facebook login.

This describes what I want - being able to have relatively blank walls/spaces that light up and fill up with content when you’re wearing the headset.

It’s social media in the technical definition - it’s a place to view media, both entertainment and news, with commentary, groups, the ability to follow someone, etc. Which makes it social.

But yeah, it’s not quite like Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn. A little bit like Twitter though.

My concern is that if you can drop tens of billions of dollars on a single acquisition, what’s to stop you from spending “just” one billion to manipulate the situation to put your target in a vulnerable situation?

Our entire society is set up to wring out anyone who is unfortunate enough to find themselves buying anything.

And as resources get squeezed, more and more people are trying to claw at smaller and smaller pieces of the overall economic pie.

The breaking point will be catastrophic.

Journalists trying to convince each other that they can convince the world to stop bad actors.

But most of us are just trying to keep our heads down to survive, and a large minority is actively engaged in supporting authoritarianism. So it’s all very performative.

I’m not sure that hypocrisy has ever stopped world leaders who have money on the line.

Not exactly. The fairness would include allowing the other side it’s refutation on the facts.

News companies have never been required to report falsehoods just because someone famous said them. They’ve chosen to do that since the fairness doctrine was upended, because it aligns with their corporate interests.

There used to be. It was called the fairness doctrine. It was introduced in 1949 and was abolished in 1987. It required news broadcasters to present controversial issues to fairly reflect differing viewpoints - in other words, you can’t have overt, blatant, “This will cause liberals to eat your babies” propaganda.

There are some issues with it, but it’s clearly better than what we’re allowing now. The crux, though, is that it only matters for FCC-aligned issues, so actual broadcasting. Cable and internet sources would still be able to lie with impunity, and they make up a huge portion of our disinformation compared to what existed even in the early 2000s.

Honestly, I agree with the antiboomer sentiment.

But at the same time, it is annoying when you’ve had an included service for decades that will now be worse or cost money.

This. I was fine with streaming when it started. It’s literally what most people were asking for - a la carte pricing for specific channels you want, rather than having to pay a bloated fee for a bundle that you want less than a tenth of.

I’ve enjoyed streaming over the last few years.

But over the pandemic and now beyond, they’ve decided to start conglomerating, bundling up a bunch of content I don’t want, and charging me extra for the privilege. Which was the complaint about cable.

Just a wild guess, but probably a tracking field for how often you orgasmed due to it.

Commercial artists only care about the aesthetic of it doesn’t hurt their chances to make more money.