At what point was this datacenter going to benefit the residents beyond a trifling number of jobs in exchange for draining local resources for pennies on the dollar Microsoft should have paid? If the tech companies can't make these things into genuine win/win scenarios, then don't let them build anything, they're currently as useless to local communities as stadiums except you don't even get to watch games in them.
Absolutely 100% force them to make a genuine case for them and to sign contracts demanding they live up to their obligations. Otherwise, it's more evidence why billionaires need to write and sign some reality checks on their dragon piles.
Anyway, they're all dead. Can we move on? Although I remain astonished that Foundation got made when they cancelled Sandman and Good Omens after Neil Gaiman turned out to be pretty awful too. Maybe you have to still be alive to matter? What exactly are the rules here? I am so confused by this.
I believe the remains of Asimov's literary legacy are probably managed by his daughter along with an agent. Presumably most of the money goes to her too, but I have no idea. In any case she always seemed nice enough.
We'll see. Who knows. But at least the profits won't be benefiting the person directly committing the offenses, right? I won't say if that's good, but it's at least a bit better, right?
Not a moral dilemma to me at all personally. I separate the works from the artist. However, I find the constant barrage of purity police from all sides to be the mass media equivalent of a large boil on my butt. The whinging about AI from the left is as annoying as the whinging about DEI from the right to me. And none of that will go anywhere towards reining in surveillance capitalism and our emerging panopticon.
However, I will give credit to Bernie Sanders for admitting he opposes datacenters because he doesn't feel he can hit the root cause in time so at least he's honest about it. Meanwhile, the top 0.01% continues to enjoy its bespoke 5000 or so pages of the tax code and buying politicians for pennies on the dollar of revenue each one creates for them with no end in sight. But at least we all know now that the late Marvin Minsky got a happy ending from one of Jeffrey Epstein's sex workers. I wonder how many more members of the Harvard and MIT faculty did.
This issue of separating the artist from his work is eternal and the comparison with some of these more contemporary issues you’re upset about rings a little hollow.
The issue of not wanting to give money to a (perceived to be) horrible person, or company, or cause seems somewhat valid to me, hence it does seem like there’s a distinction to be made between, for example, Asimov and Polanski. On the other hand, I might encourage the conflicted to question whether the fraction of a penny Polanski gets when somebody streams Chinatown really moves the needle…
Those don't seem like the best links, especially that Asimov one. Link inside the Asimov link tells a much better story, with consistent behavior.
> Maybe you have to still be alive to matter?
This is certainly part of the equation. I mean there's a Michael Jackson movie now.
But another part is that someone's work is distinct from their other actions. It's definitely a tough situation and confusing line to draw. Michael Jackson without a doubt made great music. But that doesn't make up for his Epstein-esk escapades. Being dead at least creates some distance as he's not directly benefiting from the revenue streams, which is part of what empowered and even encouraged that behavior (power seems to do more than just corrupt).
> What exactly are the rules here?
There aren't any. We're all just trying to figure it out. But if we didn't create some distinctions then the reality is that there would be no heroes. It's hard to find a notable man or woman from the past who can be considered blameless by today's standards. Though there are plenty who stood above the standards of their day. Maybe the best thing we can do is to remember that we're all human. We're more than our environments, but they do shape us. I think you can think of people as great in one domain but terrible in others. But this is much easier to do with people dead than those alive.
We're all confused. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. It gets us to talk and figure it out. I certainly don't know what to do, but I'll at least recognize it isn't trivial. And I'll at least recognize that we're talking about men, not gods
> a horrible person, ya know, just like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.
> Can we move on?
Indeed, I'd like to propose we collectively meta 'move on' from always being required to restate the well-known moral, ethical, political, legal or inter-personal lapses of every notable artist, athlete, entertainer, scientist, writer, etc anytime they are mentioned, even in passing. Crazy... I know.
As you note, history is chock full of shitheads. If one looks carefully, it's certainly the vast majority of anyone very notable. So it would be far more efficient to assume they're all shitheads and instead only make special note of celebrating the rare outliers who weren't awful. If we all just assume the probable awfulness and take it as given, that would make it possible to mention whatever thing someone may have done that one year, in that one narrow professional domain, that may have been notable or slightly good - without evoking all the stupidest, worst mistakes and personal failures of their entire lives. Most humans have, at their worst moments, done some awful stupid shit they regret. But most of us are lucky enough to not also do something notable enough to have our lives and characters examined by the Internet.d
There is only ONE notable person who was a very well-known celebrity for many decades who actually WAS as close to a perfect fucking human as it gets: Mr. Fred Rogers. Please, please do not take this as a challenge to go digging through his high school yearbooks to find some stupidly offensive joke he made. I still need just ONE truly good person.
So let's all just agree that, aside from Fred Rogers, >90% of everyone else we've ever heard of was probably awful, stupid or terrible, at least at some points, on some things, to some people - even Mother Theresa (who didn't quite live long enough to avoid it). Some of their misdeeds became known in their own time (or they were lucky enough to die early, like JKF who escaped his Weinstein-esque treatment of Marylin and other women), and others were 'recontextualized' post mortem. For every other notable person still in the 'unaccused' column, it's a race between whether they are outed or forgotten first.
Except that comforting C-suite narrative does not reflect reality. 2026 agents both increase productivity by knocking clearly specified but error-prone and tedious tasks out of the park whilst simultaneously vexing and annoying their users with hallucinations and downright lies on tasks with intrinsic ambiguity. This is made worse by the token providers with their constant tweaks to their deployments to cut costs w/o losing accuracy which flat doesn't work out well for the end user.
There are clearly defined tasks these things already do that are tedious and error-prone for a human. Using them correctly amplifies the abilities of humans. The problem is with the C-suite mentality towards cutting costs by replacing humans. It isn't going to work, but the only way they learn lessons like that is, as always, the hard way.
I'm not saying human blood and mulched skulls are a renewable source of power, I'm just saying. Or maybe they can partner with SoulCycle to power computation with 24/7 spin classes?
If it was indeed the original script, the reason they changed to batteries is maybe not because "some exec" is an idiot, but because it worked better from a storytelling perspective.
Even if treating people as batteries doesn't make much sense as we are pretty terrible power plants, the message is clear and impactful. It is common for movies to oversimplify things, because they want to avoid having the viewer from being distracted from the main plot. It is tricky, as being too obviously wrong can breaks the immersion. I think the people = batteries analogy is a good compromise. Brains = computers, while technically more plausible would add a layer of complexity that could be a bit too much for a 2h action movie.
I don't think it'd have much of an effect on the story, outside of background stuff like the Animatrix, it's just an interesting little fact about why the world is the way it is. Shooting and hitting things in slo mo is still the core either way.
I'm going to bet it's simpler than that. I'm betting they changed the script for the Duracell product placement that made an acquaintance of mine a ton of money for pulling it off. Always follow the money.
The election outcome itself was the consequence of gross, systemic failure throughout the entirety of the United States' citizenry, society, institutions, and government.
The best thing for the States to do at this point would be to hold a Constitutional Convention and dissolve the government of the United States as unfit for any purpose, after which their citizens can decide how they wish to proceed.
Have you seen countries without a government? The US government is definitely fit for purpose. It successfully keeps order, for one thing. The government in a representative government isn't the problem, the people are the problem. In this case we have an intransigent Left and an incompetent Right wanting not-Left. Both sides want to "win", and in that situation, everybody loses. I think the ancient Greeks called this "stasis", and if the polis couldn't get out of stasis, the state failed. I believe the failure modes were either getting conquered or getting a tyrant. But we could choose to work together.
The United States have governments. Fifty of them, plus various territorial and tribal governments. The States have already successfully done away with failing higher government twice before, and can do so again.
The issue is entirely om the right side here. This is simply not both side issu. America has far right party and center party. It keeps to blame left whenever its far right push for own goals.
The anti democratic and heavily corrup republicam goverment is product of right wing bubble. It has little to do with left.
I mean the US republican party is the biggest problem, but the democratic party is far from blameless and are happy to go along with many of the republicans worst policies, so long as they are able to try and shift blame back when people complain.
They try a little more maybe, but are still completely insulated from and out of touch with average citizens. But they don't care because they have money and most US problems are only problems for people without money to spare.
We're off-topic but it's genuinely interesting that you see these as "leftist" beliefs about men. Isn't this mostly the set of views on masculinity in the "manosphere" which is very much aligned with "rightist" beliefs?
I agree there is an apparent tone of misandry in some of the rhetoric of the left but the actual beliefs you cite are (with the exception of a few) things men on the right say about other men.
This is "identity politics leftism", which is an incredibly useful (to political donors) distraction from economic leftism. Economic leftism is not what the donors want, hence the center party with added idpol bullshit distraction and the right wing party.
Almost all of your points are right wing manosphere points. Most, but not all are moderate conservative opinions - you literally find those points in books written by mainstream non extremist conservatives. You are literally blaming the left for opinions and positions conservatives actively propagate and push for. Frankly, issue here is that you have no idea about what left says or do, but you do project everything you dislike on the left.
You know who run on identity politics? It was the republicans.
> A lot of men aren't really right-wing, rather, they're in left-wing exile.
A lot of men are left. And a lot of men are explicitly openly right wing.
Somehow, there is no talking point about men exiting conservativism because of active push for the above look at masculinity. The opposition toward the above view is supposed to manifest exclusively by moving toward people who super actively promote it.
Yeah, I don't agree with a single point. I know we're all in our bubbles, but none of what OP listed seems left-wing to me. I know I've never thought these things to be true.
If anything, the left-wing promotes men to be vulnerable and seek help if they need it. At least where I'm from that's the case. I'm stumped how different our views are on this.
Where does this idea that the right is saying that men are good come from? They hate most men for not being white, and they consider white men that don't follow their chauvanistic methods as being weak cuckolds.
I dont know why people keep repeating this. The US Democrats pursue left wing policy. Not left wing policy in America, left wing policy period. The US is behind other countries so the fights are taking place on battles that have already been won in other places but that doesnt make them a center party. We could use that logic to undermine any left wing government in the world.
That was essentially the advice given by Benjamin Franklin, although he suggested turning it off and then on again before a Despot appears otherwise it would be inevitable that a Despot would appear.
Going back to the drawing board after watching some major issues break the country is how we got this constitution in the first (second) place. The founders clearly suggested this as an intentional pressure valve to avoid the terrible catastrophe that is civil war or the dissolution of the union.
When values diverge in such extreme ways (values, not politics or preferences) it is very hard to continue to see each other as fellow citizens working toward some shared future. Mix in severe inequality and a broken, corrupt justice system and there is a very real sense of impending escalation. With the failure of the judicial and legislative branches to control corruption, we might be risking everything by NOT trying to find new middle ground.
There was a pew research poll in March [0] showing half of Americans think people in the opposing political party are morally bad people, not just people with different views or priorities. People openly tell each other they are "ruining the country" over things like "should the US spend tax money helping illegal immigrants in any way" or "should trans people have the same rights as they were born with" or "should the government protect known pedophiles from consequences" or "should women have to put their life on the line carrying a rape pregnancy to full term" or "should there be investigations when protesters are shot and killed by immigration agents" or "should the president be above the law". Both sides think their take on these questions is the only reasonable one and anyone on the other side is either delusional or downright evil.
Last time values diverged until the breaking point was because a huge chunk of people were willing to die in order to keep owning other people and another huge chunk of people were willing to die to prevent it. The resulting war caused more American deaths than all the others combined. Despite this, plenty of people still proudly fly the rebel flag today.
Another continental Congress to reauthor (renegotiate?) the Union is a monumental undertaking that is extremely dangerous for the stability of the country so it shouldn't be considered lightly. Civil war is far worse though so hopefully we can collectively navigate our way back to calmer waters.
I think, from your framing of the questions you are leaning towards opposition of the current administration and "ruling party". Which is obviously fine.
But what I am questioning is if, and if so, why, you think that a reboot would somehow produce an outcome that is closer to the values you seem to align with?
I really don't think that a "New Constitution" is going to come back and be kinder in the ways you are thinking. Most of the issues you touch on are things that have benefited from a liberal minority having an outsized representation in government. The majority of the US doesn't really share your views and the people that DO care about those issues are more politically active. Assuming something as major as a new constitution would get more people involved I just don't think it would go the way you are hoping.
>Last time values diverged until the breaking point was because a huge chunk of people were willing to die in order to keep owning other people and another huge chunk of people were willing to die to prevent it. The resulting war caused more American deaths than all the others combined. Despite this, plenty of people still proudly fly the rebel flag today.
This is also a wildly uninformed mischaracterization. The huge majority of the people that died, did not do so willingly, and had no interest in either maintaining or the abolition of slavery. Most people in the South had no slaves and most people in the North were not opposed to slavery in the South.
Do you assume the average soldier in the Vietnam war had a preseeded disdain for the NVA before being told to head off into the jungle?
Even your framing people disagree with. Imagine if it was this spin instead:
People openly tell each other they are "ruining the country" over things like "should the US import millions of illegal immigrants and provide for them over it's own citizens" or "should I be forced to deny biological realities around trans people" or "should the government protect known criminal illegals from consequences" or "should men have to put their life on the line for a country that hates them" or "should there be investigations when protesters are violently disrupting ICE operations" or "should we ignore SCOTUS rulings we don't like". Both sides think their take on these questions is the only reasonable one and anyone on the other side is either delusional or downright evil.
Dissolving the Constitutional government isn't a "middle ground". Rather it's exactly what the big-money supporters behind Trump have wanted from the start - whether it's big tech looking to become the domestic government, or other countries looking to take the US down a few pegs.
I agree that we likely need a few Constitutional amendments, but that is a far cry from dissolution.
The amendments I believe we need:
1. Ranked Pairs voting to break out of this lesser of two evils race to the bottom. Get rid of the Electoral College merely because it's straightforward rather than quibbling about out how it could work with non-plurality voting.
2. Independent executive agencies chartered by Congress. Heads of which are independent executives elected just like the President.
3. Triple the number of senators (reducing this effect of moribund "senior" senators that benfit their state due to pull). National elections run every year (we shouldn't have to wait until "midterms" to course correct, and would also diminish the stark divide between "election promises" and "results")
4. Repudiation of Citizens United, and this general nonsense that corpos possess the natural rights of individuals. (something similar might happen at the state level, as states are actually the governments that charter corpos to exist/operate in the first place)
5. Repudiation of Wickard v Filburn and followup decisions that have allowed the federal government to characterize everything as interstate commerce. The federal government should only be able to get involved when states have a disagreement.
The first two are the critical foundation. Note that the overall effect is for an individual's vote to be more than a single bit of information. The last three might not be strictly necessary, but relieve the pressure from the path dependence of where we're at.
All of those sound like helpful changes. There are plenty more that could push the system back toward supporting citizens and fairness and limited government power.
It sounds like the point here is "all we need is an honest and earnest legislative branch" and, yes, I agree that would help us get on the right track. Similarly, a judicial branch change of heart in the same way would really help relieve the anger and hopelessness people are feeling.
If you have ideas for how to actually make either of those happen they would be worth sharing and pushing forward.
I don't really get the gist of your response. Yes, if we had a more honest legislative, judicial, OR executive branch then we wouldn't be having this discussion. But instead we've got the very best politicians money can buy.
The same problem applies to picking drafters/representatives/etc for any Constitutional amendments. But I'd hope with the utter breakdown we're facing, there might be enough political will, plus amendments have to be short, plus making the issues meta enough that entrenched interests can't straightforwardly lobby loopholes into them, that maybe the barriers could be overcome.
My point is that we don't need to be talking about a wholesale dissolution of the government and rewrite of the Constitution when we can focus on some powerful meta-issues that have led us to this place. In fact I'd expect such a process to be much more beholden to the sway of corpo lobbyists as making a new system from whole cloth would have much more complexity for such things to hide.
Honestly, the worst case scenario I see is Grump becomes a lame duck after midterms, leaves office in Jan 2029, and then the entrenched Democrats go back to uninspired milquetoast business as usual.
Even not participating in elections have consecuences, at least for proper democratic countries.
But in countries where participation is mandatory, at least you can say that most of the (national) negatively affected people got what they voted for.
For improper "democratic" countries where elections are rigged or participation is biased towards some population sectors in a way or another, they are not really elections by the population.
yes and the results and actions taken after the Nov 6 US elections may undo some of the damage. But no other country will ever trust the foreign policy of the US no matter what happens.
There is the military saying "Once is an accident, twice is an attack", this is how a lot of folks see it.
I think it is deeper, that these actions were taken at the top and a sizable amount of the people sided with them, that sends the message that the US cannot be trusted long term, it has become cultural. I get that it isnt a majority of people but it is big enough that it cannot be ignored.
> yes and the results and actions taken after the Nov 6 US elections may undo some of the damage
You're assuming that 1) the elections will actually occur on Nov 6, 2) the elections will be fair, and 3) that the winners of said elections would take action and actually enforce the rule of law.
It will be interesting to see what happens. Many are hoping that there is a very strong turn out for the Democrat's so that any rigging cannot over come it, but this sounds like fan fiction to me. That said Trump hitting Iran may be the single biggest blunder of his political career, media influence can only go so far when there is a direct impact on all prices and potential stock availability in the coming months.
Hopefully a lot of the fears don't pan out but we won't know until it gets closer.
I'm not saying that there aren't better options but both major parties are complicit in how the system is organised. The US electoral system gets ever more distorted with every minor adjustment in the hopes of swinging various seats in their favour and now it just looks ridiculous.
This is the crux. Trump is simultaneously a wholesale departure from political norms, but also merely a culmination of decades of reactionary talk radio preaching "Death to America" but then backing it off just enough for people to go to the polls and vote for "their" candidate.
Trump's second term should be the end of the Republican party. But if Bush II is an indication, the pattern was that while people gradually came around to seeing what a bad idea the Iraq War was and whatnot, they merely cooled off for a few years but then were right back at it getting fooled again a slightly different way. How much of the support for Trump was basically recycled criticism of the Iraq War (ie of the Republican establishment) ? And yet here we are now, with a nice shiny new quagmire (assuming it isn't an outright loss).
fwiw I'm a libertarian so while I actually agree with much of the criticism, it galls me even more how people can start with very individual-liberty-centric criticisms, but then somehow gleefully jump behind supporting authoritarianism when it can be their turn at the trough.
I have regrets when I say something dumb or drive through an intersection on a not-quite-yellow light.
Innocent people, including children, are dead. Republicans have done irreparable harm to this country on every imaginable level: civil liberties, trade, global power, economics. Open and naked corruption is so off the charts it can only be described with comparisons to the post-Soviet era.
What exactly do they have deep regrets about, though? Do they regret voting for someone with his style? Do they regret empowering an obvious corrupt liar? Do they regret supporting someone who focuses on who to blame and hurt, rather than on things that might actually help (albeit in regrettably marginal ways in all three cases)?
Or do they just regret that they were fooled by this guy, specifically? That he's not accomplishing his stated goals, whether or not he is taking his promised actions? If it's this one, then it's only a matter of time before another charlatan does the same thing better.
Usually they regret him not being extreme enough. Being personally harmed to a very high level also works. The keyword is very high level, people are willing to take a lot of pain for someone they think is "jesus".
I don't disagree. The Democrats believed their "permanent Democratic majority" schtick, and enacted a bunch of things that much of the country deeply disagreed with.
But we also need a national reckoning on ICE's excessive use of force, DOGE, using the DOJ to prosecute political opponents, the financial irresponsibility of the "Big Beautiful Bill", the attack on the Capitol, the rest of the attempt to undermine the results of the 2020 elections, the tariffs by executive order, the threats to Canada and Greenland...
Through selfless deeds, hard work and admitting their failures to the fullest, for generations till now. Somehow I don't see that happening easily with american ego
They didn't tho. West Germany was still governed by ex Nazi politicians and bureaucrats after the war. This was the primary reason that the Red Army Faction formed and carried out its attacks.
The Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) was staffed by many ex SS officers.
Nuremberg Trails are continuously trotted out as an example of a system that works, but 200k people are estimated to have participated in crimes against humanity, of which only around 6700 were convicted, or 3.3%.
It is wild seeing the elctorial maps of Germany and you can almost exactly recreate the East-West split. Decades later and it is coming back to haunt them.
Tbf, the east/west split is the one part that wasn’t the Nazis’ fault unless indirectly as a consequence of starting and losing a second World War in a row.
I don’t think November 6 is going to be a reprieve. They have rigged the system so much that I don’t think it’s actually possible for the Democrats to make a comeback.
Even if the Democrats do make a comeback, they have spent half a century demonstrating that they are an, at best, an inadequate counter to America's awful political tendencies.
I actually like what they have done in the past, they’re level headed and reasonable. What I can’t stand and it makes my blood boil that they are completely ineffective without a political mandate. It’s a bunch of career politician cowards that may do well when everything is by the book but they remain completely emasculated when it comes to getting their agenda through. The Republicans even without a mandate will shuck and jive their way into getting their way.
If they lose it will be because they don’t track unfavorabilty ratings for your democrats as much as they do the current admin. It’s not enough (for moderates) to just say you hate the other guy.
> Like Italy, Germany, Japan, etc can be trusted but after, I'm not even sure what exactly, the US is fully and forever untrustworthy??
It took two generations and a new constitution for Germans to regain trust again.
You cannot trust the current generation of U.S. Americans, and the U.S. Constitution certainly does not alleviate that concern. They elect a god-king like president who seemingly has unlimited authority. Why would you trust such a country for more than four years?
Edit:
> but after, I'm not even sure what exactly
Killing people outside the USA left and right without due process? Starting a war and thinking that it is fun while the whole world is suffering because of that war? Kidnapping a head of state? Cosying up to the enemy of your allies during a war? Threatening allies? Declaring parts of an allied country as your own? Supporting Nazis in allied countries? Supporting separatism in a province of your neighbor (and until recently your closest ally)? Proudly telling the world what country the USA will assault next? ...
It is a combination of moving fast and slow. A lot of Canadians now avoid purchasing products from the US were possible. Mean while their government while still dependent on the US is making the moves that will minimise their dependence on them over the coming decades.
I am seeing similar positions in other countries now.
This story is that of Netflix' Chaos Monkey attacking the state most rhetorically aligned/proud of The Rule Of Law and showing in myriad ways how absolutely hollow that pride was and how vulnerable The Law is.
Are these bugs that get fixed or...if that was The Last Election, maybe not.
no one thought the consequences would include giving 1.8 billion dollars of American taxes to the people who tried to violently overthrow the government and to those who are successfully leading a bloodless coupe.
The AMC TV series The Audacity has a scene where one of the tech sociopaths says that if one of the other tech sociopaths goes through with a plan to utterly destroy privacy (as a service) that it will cause the government to finally pass real privacy laws and then all the other sociopaths will gang up on him.
Zuckerberg proves otherwise IMO. There doesn't seem to be a bottom to how low they can go.
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