Oops, I pushed a patch. Controlling the service is the ultimate Man In The Middle attack.

We could raise money for art without decadent rich people parties if we just like stopped hoovering up all the money and giving it to rich people.

But we might see bewbs!!!111!!11!

We really need to kick this idea that rich people are smarter. The vast majority were born on third base and think they hit a home run.

I see we’ve contracted the Chinese Flag and Drum Corps to make sure we have enough red flags for this guy?

Unless we really screw the pooch in 2028 we won’t get there any time soon. Another term for Maga could very well do it though, so possibly 2030?

Corruption. It just so happens that the GOP is so corrupt it’s ridiculous. The Democrats are not immune to bringing grifters into their party. The entire upper crust of society runs just like the aristocracies we tried to leave behind.

NCD is leaking again. Someone get the 100mph tape.

Hold on I got a thing for that around here somewhere… I think is called a DD214 or something? Oh here’s a PT belt that’ll work.

Yup. The US Patent office isn’t very good at it’s job.

I got bad news for you. Gabe is human and barring a miracle in medical science; he will die. He’s 63, the tables on Age Cohort death aren’t kind after 60. (They’re brutal after 70) Only 1/3rd of men reach 80.

This is something we need to be thinking about now. It could easily take 5-10 years to get competitors working.

Monopolies distort markets even when they act in a pro-consumer manner. For example the credit card companies. A basic credit card is really cheap and easy for the average person to use. All of the fees are actually on the business side, which is why you see businesses that still run on cash only or charge a credit card fee. The credit card network operators, (AMEX, Disc, MC, VISA) are the only option for businesses that want to accept credit cards in the US. You don’t see a Debit card fee because it’s actually illegal for them to pass along the Debit card processing fee.

So while the average person with the line of credit is happy about this, the businesses are not. In a normal system you would pay for the service being provided. So the person with the card would be responsible for paying to have that access.

Steam does this by making their product (the storefront) free to the average person and charging the developers money to use it. While they also effectively own your games. In a system with plenty of storefronts it might be much more common to see downloadable installation files. That’s certainly one way in which they’ve distorted the market. That used to be very common. It doesn’t help that EA, GamePass, and some others who’ve tried to start storefronts have repeatedly tripped over their own feet. Epic seems to be doing it but they’re basically using Steam’s business model because there’s no other choice as long as Steam exerts it’s monopoly power.

It’s nearly to $7/gal here.

Vibe Coding

I feel like this is one of those bell curve memes. At the start you see that it’s publicly edited and you turn away. Then you see the extensive source citations and why not? Then you get involved in editing Wikipedia and you see what constitutes a “source” and what happens on the talk pages. And you’re right back to not ever citing Wikipedia.

Seriously though, Wikipedia isn’t going to be nearly in depth enough for any research paper worth a damn after you do your first couple. And that’s because those are meant to teach you how to do research papers. Wikipedia isn’t as bad as AI but anyone who’s neck deep in a field will find problems with any Wikipedia page about their field. And it just gets worse the more politicized your field is. So the answer is as it always was. Go to the primary sources.

Said like someone whose “screwed the pooch” too many times.

Nah, then it just becomes a defacto situation of the content creation companies (Disney, Sony, etc) owning the telecom companies. So you will truly be a single content household, like a Disney Household or a Paramount Household.

Sony wanted mo money. Yo money wasn’t enough for them. So they got a jury to agree that Cox owes them 1 Billion dollars.

Let’s all sing about how much we love Corporate Governance.

^{Please don’t shut off my internet telecom daddy I’ll drink another Mountain Dew Verification Can!}

I don’t think many people realize that cost of living has increased so much that the lifestyle we used to associate with the middle class now isn’t available until 100k without kids or significantly more with kids. Income for the 0-89th percentile has gone down in real terms for decades. 90th to 99th has held stagnant against inflation. Only that top 1 percent has been beating inflation, and they’ve been really beating it. Rand estimated that there’s been a transfer of something like 47 Trillion USD (not a typo) from the rest of us into the top 1 percent since 1975.

Anyone who thinks this was the norm also thinks that women didn’t enter the workforce until World War 2. The real story here is how cost of living is now coming for echelons of society that didn’t have to worry about it before because greedy billionaires require multiple super yachts and support vessels.