Machiavellianism is by definition transgressive. It also causes negative external outcomes which in aggregate leads to retribution and social breakdown. There’s real world consequences for Machiavellianism that create a counter-pressure to the Overton window, via negative social feedback loops.

Do you see a lot of people wearing suits outside very traditional, conservative settings? I can’t remember the last time I wore one casually. I don’t think most people even own their own suits these days, they just rent them for special occasions. We also have the problem of the anchor generation. I’m pretty sure most of us would be fine abandoning suits altogether, but the boomers have lived so long and held on to cultural relevance far longer than any generation in history which has slowed the progress of the Overton window.

Espionage is inherently deceitful. It’s tolerated as a cost of modern life, but it is (by legal definition in many cases) engaging in illegal or unethical activity on behalf of a third party. If it were acceptable, it wouldn’t be espionage, it would just be research.

Have you ever seen those water-wiggler/infinite tube things people used to give out as party favors way back in the before-times? It kind of works like having a built-in one of those at all times. That’s why they started to encourage people to cut them off in the 1800s. People kind of forget that the whole reason Christians started doing it was prudes getting up in their feelings about men having a good wank and the corpos liking the idea of not being able to jack it without having to pay for some Vaseline or a bottle of Jergens.

You want the official answer or the somewhat more “woke” answer?

Technically, it doesn’t. Neurodivergent is a broad umbrella that means a number of different disorders. Including, but not limited to, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, developmental prosopagnosia, developmental speech disorders, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, dysnomia, intellectual disability, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder (FASD), obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), sensory processing disorder, synesthesia, Tourette syndrome, and more.

Why do most people THINK it only means Autism and ADHD? They tend to get more media attention.

The “woke” bit is Autism and ADHD have been historically “male coded” disorders, while things like Bipolar, OCD, etc. were either female coded or gender neutral in popular culture. For a long time they didn’t even think women could have Autism or ADHD.

I for one don’t want to pretend I didn’t benefit from more pearl clutching over people’s “perfect baby boys” being a little atypical neurologically. I did, and it’s silly to pretend I didn’t. Also as one of the “Flagship” neurodivergences, I’m also more likely to end up in a MAHA gas chamber to “Purify the Gene Pool”, so there’s both upsides and downsides to penis-privilage, but at least people care which is more than some other spectra get.

Threatening me with a good time will get you nowhere.

“They want it extinguished. They’re already talking about abolishing the Electoral College, impeaching the president, and executing > Elon Musk. Democrat governors now control a majority of states where most of the population lives,” Watters added.

No Democratic elected official has called for the execution of Musk.

Goddamn Jesse, you’re being hysterical. This is why men don’t belong in politics. Too emotional. /s

The only way you believe that is how it works, is if you’re already buying into the framing of the “Anti-Woke”, “Anti-Empathy”, Anti-human. You’re imagining a world where it all begins and ends in Republican or Democrat.

I want you to think real hard. Most Democrats, can’t stand each other. There’s like half a dozen different factions, and the only thing that they all agree on, is we should probably not intentionally destroy our lives, homes, and futures, condemn our children to die and ultimately wipe humanity off the face of the Earth. We’re stuck, working with a bunch of idiots who keep undermining every positive thing we try to do, and I will stand with you always to oppose them someday. But right now, we have a bigger problem. Because this isn’t a fight between right and wrong. This is a fight between “Right, Wrong, Good, Bad, and Ugly” vs “The End of Everything”.

You’re right, Democrats aren’t a solution. They’re a stop-gap. They’re a play for time and we have to come up with a better answer in the meantime, because they will fail. Their true policy is they have no real policy because they are such a big tent they have no coherent message. They’re just opposed to ending everything.

So yeah, if you take the Republican framing of this being a clash of two principled, moral, coherent world views, it seems reasonable to say neither of them seem to fix anything. It’s not though. It’s the chaotic mess of everything that might be on one side, vs endless silence on the other.

Confused

Can we get a public execution out of it?

The somewhat less ugly side of “I’ve got mine, fuck the rest of you.” We’ve got the the story-tellers, but it’s the corporate shills that get the funding, and in America, Money is Speech.

Exactly. If I understand the market signals, Meta has put a lot of money into datacenter shell companies that are facing a lot of local market resistance. If the market pulls back from throwing good money after bad on failed datacenter projects, combined with a lot of contraction in the social media space and slipping ad revenue, AND the mounting lawsuits, I feel like Meta could be the weak link. Again, don’t quote me on that, I am guessing, but I feel like there’s just enough publicly available info to make a circumstantial case.

My money is on Meta to be the Lehman Bros that kicks off the crash. I feel like they’re over-extended and playing games with the math to keep from saying it out loud. Oracle is a possibility though, my gut is just saying Facebook is the sick man that’s going to fall first.

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice, nor do I claim to have insider knowledge of Meta’s operations.

Americans may have the memory of a goldfish. The rest of us do not.

Targeting systems

Drones

bigger heavier equipment capabilities

Bigger Drones

nimbleness over odd terrain

Drones

Under no circumstances is walking better than flying, tactically. Once you introduce airborne combat, a mech loses all tactical benefit. Tanks/mobile artillery? Sure, that you can justify, mostly because it’s low profile and easier to hide if necessary. In almost every other circumstance, if you can have an airborne gunship you want an airborne gunship, and you don’t even have to alter the laws of physics to make them work.

The only way you could make the case for mechs is if whatever magic Clarke-Tech you were imagining for moving them was astronomically more efficient than flying for approximately the same tonnage, and you were desperate to conserve as much energy as possible, to the point where flight just isn’t an option, and even then, the most efficient machine would look something like a gigantic beetle.

About the only advantage it has is intimidation factor. Kaiju are spectacularly intimidating, and a gigantic robot kaiju would definitely make some people evacuate their bowls on the spot. However there’s no edits you can make to the laws of physics that make it better at anything, from a tactical perspective, than a different form factor.

I can’t speak for the whole of Canada, let alone the world, but as far as I’m concerned as long as one monstrous Republican shill still draws breath and sits in Congress, it will never be safe to trust America. If it’s so easy for America to fall to fascism once, it can and will fall again until there is massive systemic reform. It will be a generation before people like me are willing to put the past behind us. You are still engaged in illegal wars, holding foreign heads of state hostage, keeping refugees in internment camps and every masked ice agent still walks freely on your streets.

Talk to me when the Dems actually do something about the incalculable harm America has done to the world. Boycott, divest, and sanction, for all genocidal rogue states, America included.

History repeating itself.

Maybe. Maybe not. We’re in uncharted waters and it could go a lot of different directions. There’s too many unknown variables right now.

That’s a massively optimistic prediction if the AI economy doesn’t implode. It’s quite likely consumer electronics will be a faded memory (no pun intended) before they let people have their own devices again. I’d put it at 2035, with 2030 at the earliest.

If course if AI goes belly up, there could be a massive sell off and prices could drop as soon as next year… assuming there’s a global economy left to buy electronics at that point.

How would you prefer your tech apocalypse? Matrix or Mad Max?

Honestly, I don’t expect much but a slowdown in the rate of terrible things coming out every day. We will need to continue organizing, continue building support networks, continue finding ways to protest, support our neighbours and get people prepared to fight for all our sakes. This is a positive, in that it drops a boat anchor that will keep us from falling deeper into authoritarianism… for now. It will not, by itself get us out of this mess. It will not undo the damage that’s been done, and most importantly, it won’t last forever. It’s an opportunity to take a breath, regroup, and prepare ourselves for the hard work ahead.

Democrats in Congress isn’t going to save anyone. It’s just going to stabilize things, temporarily. It’s a place to start, not a finish line.

Edit: What’s far more promising is the number of state level elections that went blue. This is a massive opportunity to undo past state governments’ illegal election fixing and corruption, pass electoral reform, and get serious about laying the ground work to keep someone like Trump from ever taking power again.