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> If I have a team of 20, making a lot of money, but I think I can do the exact same job with 15 because of AI productivity gains, should I keep the other 5 employed for the vibes?

What should actually happen is everyone should be paid the same amount while doing 75% of the work they were doing before, but unfortunately there are no serious power structures like unions which could ensure that technological gains actually improve people's lives in that way.

The ICC hasn't indicted "every war time leader" because they're not all committing an open genocide.
It's because the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu for committing war crimes.
Re:What Happened to the Snowden Archive on Sunday September 20, 2026 @11:32PM (#49782753)
I remember that being reported in newspapers in 2020 but did those allegations make it into "The Epstein Files"? (I have paid almost no attention since it's the most obvious limited hangout ever hung out.)
Re:What Happened to the Snowden Archive on Sunday September 20, 2026 @11:30PM (#49782738)
When the Epstein news first really broke into the mainstream in 2019/2020, there were a ton of victim testimonials that were absolutely harrowing (and pointed to much weirder and more consequential stuff than "just" sex trafficking), it's been really surreal and disheartening to see the Trump-era releases successfully trivialize and downplay it.
Re:What Happened to the Snowden Archive on Sunday September 20, 2026 @08:38PM (#49781683)
"It's not in the officially released files that the government itself provided, therefore it didn't happen" is the level of 'reasoning' going on here.
Re:Flock Offers Employees Buyouts as Customers Flee on Saturday September 19, 2026 @05:23AM (#49764808)
It would be nice to think this will significantly hamper Flock and its goals and methods in any way, but it will probably just have the effect of selecting for the employees who are either true believers, or are desperate enough that they'll keep their heads down and get good work done just to keep their jobs.

Sporadic vandalism, a handful of canceled contracts, some employee morale problems, all of this falls far short of the organized campaign of resistance that would be needed to roll back Flock at this point. Flock really should be the last nail in the coffin of Edward Snowden's libertarian take that mass surveillance can be fought only with individual action and technology rather than political movements.

Re:Flock Offers Employees Buyouts as Customers Flee on Saturday September 19, 2026 @05:15AM (#49764756)
It's the phones and the propaganda being streamed through them 24/7. And if your reaction is, "the rest of the Western world has that too," well, they're really not all that far behind us.
Re:Stallman: Thousands Dead, Millions Deprived of Liberties (2001) on Thursday September 17, 2026 @03:03PM (#49745093)
Along the same lines, "Welcome to the New and Improved Police State" by Dave McGowan, September 12 2001: https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/welcome-to-the-new-an...
Re:Stallman: Thousands Dead, Millions Deprived of Liberties (2001) on Thursday September 17, 2026 @03:01PM (#49745055)
> everything you know about Epstein and his circle was already public knowledge after his first conviction 20 years ago

Complete nonsense, a lot of Epstein's deep ties to Silicon Valley and academia weren't even developed until after his conviction, and weren't reported to the public until much later.

The more lurid takes on Epstein and his network/influence popularized by the QAnon psyop certainly did a lot to encourage everyone to look the other way, but the facts themselves were reported by a handful of responsible and even-keeled gumshoes in fringe/alt media until Julie Brown came along.

Re:US interest rates raised for first time in three years on Thursday September 17, 2026 @07:32AM (#49739279)
Are you referring to the start of the 12 Day War here? If so, are you leaving out Israel's unprovoked airstrikes on Iran out of ignorance or dishonesty?
Re:Hollywood's Video Game Era Is Here. Will It Be Any Good? on Thursday August 27, 2026 @12:34PM (#49467516)
They're not going to drive much "I went to see this movie because I loved the video games" traffic, but I've always thought the Gabriel Knight games could be great IP for a movie series.
> Wouldn't the democratic way be to petition the mayor or support a mayoral candidate to appoint a police commissioner whose beliefs on surveillance more align with your own?

Do you believe Flock cameras have been rolled out en masse across the entire country all at once because there is near-unanimous democratic support for their presence?

> Seems like destroying public property for political reasons is wrong and would otherwise be considered terrorism.

"Terrorism," at this point, is just a term used to describe any action taken in opposition to the ruling class and its objectives of total domination & control, assuming that it has some potential to be effective (in contrast to toothless protests or voting).

Re:The Debt That Apple Owes to the CIA on Thursday August 20, 2026 @11:24AM (#49375962)
> But why would Jobs, a child of the counterculture who had practiced Buddhism under a Zen master and cited taking LSD as a formative experience, tether his company’s future to spies?

That's a funny sentence to read when you know the actual history of LSD, how it was brought to and disseminated throughout the U.S., and the role it played in de-fanging the counterculture.

I don't necessarily disagree, but what's interesting is that Julie Brown and the Miami Herald are printing it now.

The cash transactions are also not hearsay.

Re:Iran executes Khamenei's plan to spread regional war on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @03:08AM (#47229589)
All of the Gulf satrapies are de facto Iran's enemies by virtue of playing host to U.S. bases in exchange for certain goodies handed to their ruling elite structures. Iran's goal is to hit them hard enough to make them pressure the U.S. to sue for peace.

Also, many of the hotels that have been targeted are ones where Iran likely had intelligence that U.S. soldiers had been moved after the bases were abandoned before the U.S. launched its "preemptive" attack.

Re:Iran executes Khamenei's plan to spread regional war on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @03:03AM (#47229547)
What ideology do you believe is driving Iran? To me it just looks like "survive and deter unprovoked attacks from a genocidal aggressor, and don't become Syria 2.0"

I think it's the actions of the United States and Israel that beggar niche ideological explanations at this point.

If you're in Europe or one of the 20 Eyes countries it's the same thing.
Has China been cut off from Iranian oil? Your post implies that's a fait accompli.

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