The current administration’s strategy is to try and see if it sticks. For example one executive order was to end birthright citizenship. Blatantly unconstitutional. Was immediately blocked by a judge. But they still made the order.

They are starting to ignore the federal courts here and there. Dipping their toes in the water. Starting to indicate that judges are “radical left activist judges” and that they “have no authority” and that they should be removed and impeached and the system overhauled as a whole.

Right now the institutions are trying to block this administration but they are doing their best to set up for the moment where they will basically cross the Rubicon and ignore the Supreme Court.

I have a feeling we’re only months away from that moment and after that moment it will be clear to everyone that the US does not have 3 branches of government anymore but just one.

well said. I’m surprised at the reaction towards this specific event.

the administration is purging the federal government, rerouting tens of thousands of federal agents to enforce immigration (literally 80% of ATF is now focused on immigration. DEA, FBI, IRS, and more are all being recruited to help with immigration), illegally ignoring court orders, using a Stasi-like group of unmarked federal agents to intimidate with threats of criminal prosecution and force people into compliance (look at what happened at the SS office or the non-profit U.S. Institute of Peace), giving executive orders that are blatantly and explicitly unconstitutional (like the one to end birthright citizenship)

that isn’t even starting to mention the genocide happening in Palestine that is not only being condoned but openly embraced. we are arresting and attempting to deport individuals whose only crime is that they are anti-Israel. permanent residents are being denied entry into the country because they have a photo of a Hezbollah leader on their phone

the administration is using coercion and threats to force over 60 universities (Colombia being the most visible) to change the things they are teach, abandon certain policies, suppress student speech, and dramatically increase police presence. all in the name of fighting “anti-semitism”

it has only been a couple of months and right now Congress is making a stink about a text message

I think the question already contains a sort of ideological trap: it assumes that a specific company can be uniquely evil, as if morality were some trait that varies between company to company.

I’m sure everyone’s heard this before:

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

It’s not just a slogan. It gives us insight into the very structure of capitalism. That doesn’t mean every individual act is equally bad, but the system demands a sort of baseline complicity.

CEOs and executives are legally required to maximize shareholder profits. Not just encouraged— legally obligated. So when Coca-Cola, for example, hires paramilitary death squads to kill labor leaders in Colombia, it’s not because it is uniquely monstrous. Replace Coca-Cola with Pepsi, or Nestle, or Amazon, or Raytheon… whatever. The logic of the system would produce the same result. If I gave the same chess position to 30 different Grandmasters… if there is a best move they will all see it and choose that best move.

Think of an ant colony. An ant colony doesn’t decide to be cruel; it expands, consumes, protects its territory, destroys threats. Is it evil when some colony wipes out another for resources? A colony committing what we could term ant genocide? No it’s not. The colony is simply acting in its nature. Much like a slime mold would expand in a radius looking for food in a petri dish.

Large corporations are like ant colonies. Complex emergent behavior resulting from a large number of individual units acting by a set of rules. The intelligence or perspective of the individual does not actually matter for the organism as a whole. As long as the individual units follow a set of rules it creates a sort of “hive-mind” pseudo-intelligence that acts in its own interests and has an almost Darwinist natural selection process.

So this is all to say that I reject the question. I don’t believe in uniquely evil companies. The horror is precisely that they’re all, in a sense, innocent. They act not out of hatred or sadism or cruelty, but because the system itself has carved out the pathways where the ball inevitably rolls down the hill following the path of least resistance.

Chick-fil-A is actually pretty good near me. I get them once a month or once every other month or so.

In terms of fast food, I’d definitely say there’s in the top 20% in terms of food quality.

“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/

Peter Thiel is the financier behind JD Vance and one of the co-founders of PayPal- later on with Elon Musk. They’re part of the same group of people, along with various other Silicon Valley tech executives, who subscribe to what has been called the “Dark Enlightenment” philosophy

JD Vance, for example, has openly expressed his support for Nick Land and cited him as a major influence.

Both Yarvin and Land believe that gradual, incremental reforms to democracy will not save Western society; instead, a “hard reset” or “reboot” is necessary. To that end, Yarvin has coined the acronym “RAGE” – Retire All Government Employees – as a crucial step toward that goal.

Does that sound familiar?

Yarvin advocates for an entirely new system of government – what he calls “neocameralism.” He advocates for a centrally managed economy led by a monarch – modeled after a corporate CEO – who wouldn’t need to adhere to plodding liberal-democratic procedures. Yarvin has written approvingly of the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping for his pragmatic and market-oriented authoritarianism.

They’re essentially trying to reshape the government to function more like a corporation. Something akin to the Chinese or Singapore method of governance. Democracy is not compatible. What’s interesting is that this isn’t happening in secret. They’re out in the open about it.

I’m guessing you refuse to see what’s in front of your nose out of fear, which is why you keep saying everyone else is afraid. Me personally, I’m not afraid at all. I’d say I’m more morbidly curious to see how it all ends up. I’m fairly privileged and I’ll be fine no matter what. As long as you shut up and do your job most people will be fine. Just don’t be an immigrant or openly anti-Israel

But it’s happening. We’re witnessing a coup right in front of our eyes. They are purging the federal government and Trump has started to ignore court orders- dipping his toes in the water. There’s a lot more to this if you’re interested. There’s many articles out there and you can even read stuff by Vance, Thiel, Yarvin, Land, etc. They’re not shy

then please wise one- assuage my fear by showing me how the purge isn’t a purge. release me from this trembling terror by convincing me that the administration is not actually breaking federal law. save me from this horror and show me the light

what does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment really mean? explain to me please how these ideologically aligned billionaires (who happen to control the white house) that say they want to end democracy aren’t actually planning on ending democracy

Roman history didn’t end after Julius Caesar. In fact, Rome would reach its peak a couple hundred years after that moment and then continued to dominate for hundreds of years afterwards.

It just wasn’t really a Republic anymore.

Of course that isn’t to say the US will get stronger, I think the opposite. Just that the end of democracy doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the country.

we’re watching an unprecedented purge in only a couple months of an administration. led by people who have openly admitted they want to destroy American democracy and institute a dictatorship.

me personally I think Trump already crossed the Rubicon. but in the very near future there will be an order by the Supreme Court for Trump to stop doing something. He won’t stop doing it. And then it will be abundantly clear to everyone we’re in a new stage of US history

Kava

this was actually a key part of Hitler’s strategy. early on in the Nazi meetings they would try to pin down and give an exact agenda and set of policies.

he would yell at everyone that they’re missing the point. it’s more about the vibe than the logic. being vague and ambiguous keeps your options open.

“It is not truth that matters, but victory.” Adolph

By refusing precise definitions, you are able to retroactively decide what the ideology “always meant”. so when it’s convenient to hate against health insurance CEOs you are “against the swamp”. when it’s convenient to dismantle the government you are “against the swamp”

it can mean whatever you want it to. similar with the “enemies of the state”

nazis would use the word marxists or “degenerates” very loosely. makes it very easy to shift blame to a specific target or another when necessary

berlin’s degeneracy is because of gays, somewhere else it may be gypsies, another it’s the jews, etc.

today we see phrases like “radical leftists” “cultural marxists” “woke ideology” etc

a federal judge blocked some of Trump’s orders (Trump ignored it of course) and what does he call him? a radical left judge. something that couldn’t be further from the truth- radical left would imply some type of communist or socialist. but it doesn’t really matter because the term is vague enough it can work

i think it’s cause 2 story homes are much less common here compared to up north

i live in a pretty new apartment building and the AC/insulation is very efficient. although to be honest I don’t even know what I pay in power, my girlfriend usually pays that one

In my opinion the only times I’m ever uncomfortably hot is when I’m choosing voluntarily to be in the sun. For example going to beach.

99% of the time I’m in 67 degree AC in a hoodie lol

I’ve worked all over the rust belt / bible belt in a little over a dozen states doing large construction projects. At least for my industry, the vast majority of the laborers are illegals. They don’t disappear after getting paid. I’ve worked with some regularly for over 5 years.

From what I’ve heard from people in California, your experience is not typical

Undocumented immigrants don’t “do the work legal citizens aren’t willing to do” or “work harder than legal citizens”. Those are both racist liberal talking points

majority of my life was spent as an illegal immigrant. i’ve been embedded in illegal immigrant communities my whole life. i’ve worked with many and have known many more

it’s my experience that both of those statements are true.

a) they do work citizens aren’t willing to do and b) they work harder

i can elaborate on why I believe those things are true, but absolutely if I’m looking for a laborer for specific types of work… I will always avoid the native-born citizen.

whole ecosystem of fear is designed to keep immigrants working jobs below minimum wage and/or in appalling working conditions

believe it or not there are many illegals that make wages higher than what most americans make.

there’s many types of illegal immigrants. there’s not one size fits all to make generalizations. but the majority of them are similar to oil drill workers.

a working class male goes far away to a labor-intensive job that nobody wants to do. they do this because they can make a relatively large salary and then use that money to do something back at home.

so for example Mexicans will come and work in construction. They can make upwards of $300+ a day of work with experience. this is many times more than what they could reasonably expect in Mexico. but not only that, they’re making more than many native born American citizens.

it’s just lower skilled Americans tend to flock to low salary and low effort jobs like retail or food service.

I wonder if he’s gonna actually do it. An actual real concentrated effort to remove illegals would cause serious problems.

Inflation would spike, lots of industries would slow to a crawl, certain commercial areas would be essentially destroyed.

For example, in many different fields of construction the majority of the hard labor comes from illegals. Big companies hire contractors who then hire contractors who use illegals because they are much more productive than Americans and you can pay them less.

If we get rid of them, they would have to both dramatically increase their labor cost and the projects would slow down.

That would raise the price of doing business which is inevitably always passed down to the consumer. Then you have certain areas with ethnic markets and ethnic restaurants and such. Many of those would lose half or more of their business overnight.

This would be so disruptive it’s hard to understate. And I know Trump knows this.

That’s my burning curiousity right now. Is this whole thing similar to the Wall™ ? A symbol that isn’t meant to accomplish anything meaningful beyond giving the droolers something to point to? Or is he serious?

If he’s serious, we’re about to begin a radical shift. He would not be doing this if he wasn’t ready to radically change things.

i’ve used it fairly consistently for the last year or so. i didn’t actually start using it until chatgpt 4 and when openai offered the $20 membership

i think AI is a tool. like any other tool, your results vary depending on how you use it

i think it’s really useful for specific intents

example, as a fancy search engine. yesterday I was watching Annie from 1999 with my girlfriend and I was curious about the capitalist character. i asked chatgpt the following question

in the 1999 hit movie annie, who was the billionaire mr warbucks supposed to represent? were there actually any billionaires in the time period? it’s based around the early 1930s

it gave me context. it showed examples of the types of capitalist the character was based on. and it informed me that the first billionaire was in 1916.

very useful for this type of inquiry.

other things i like using it for are to help coding. but there’s a huge caveat here. some thing it’s very helpful for… and some things it’s abysmal for.

for example i can’t ask it “can you help me write a nice animation for a react native component used reanimated”

because the response will be awful and won’t work. and you could go back and forth with it forever and it won’t make a difference. the reason is it’s trained on a lot of stuff that’s outdated so it’ll keep giving you code that maybe would have worked 4 years ago. and even then, it can’t hold too much context so complex applications just won’t work

BUT certain things it’s really good. for example I need to write a script for work. i use fish shell but sometimes i don’t know the proper syntax or everything fish is capable of

so I ask

how to test, using fish, if an “images.zip” file exists in $target_dir

it’ll pump out

if test -f "$target_dir/images.zip"
    echo "File exists."
else
    echo "File does not exist."
end

which gives me what i needed in order to place it into the script i was writing.

or for example if you want to convert a bash script to a fish script (or vice versa), it’ll do a great job

so tldr:

it’s a tool. it’s how you use it. i’ve used it a lot. i find great value in it. but you must be realistic about its limitations. it’s not as great as people say- it’s a fancy search engine. it’s also not as bad as people say.

as for whether it’s good or bad for society, i think good. or at least will be good eventually. was the search engine a bad thing for society? i think being able to look up stuff whenever you want is a good thing. of course you could make the argument kids don’t go to libraries anymore… and maybe that’s sorta bad. but i think the trade-off is definitely worth it