Ozarkian

"Jesus, Paul, look at this receipt—ten dollars for a single potato. This new Value-Mart AI surge pricing is killing me, man. Killing me." “That’s nothing, Bill. Wait ’til the next update: the store will be able to see exactly how much money you have in your bank.” “You’re kidding.” “And your 401k.” “@#$% me sideways.” “That’s why I use URCHN to do my groceries.” “Really? What’s URCHN?” “URCHN is the latest in affordable concierge shopping.” “Oh, you mean like Uber or Instacart. What makes them different?” “Orphans.” “𝑂𝑟𝑝ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑠?” “That’s right, Bill. And not just any orphans. Dirty, starving orphans who live under overpasses.” “Uuuh.” “As you know, the cameras in the grocery aisle scan your face and adjust the price based on race, socioeconomic status, and dietary restrictions. But you know who always gets the best prices, no matter what?” “…orphans?” “Yep.” “I don’t know, Paul, that seems a little-” “Of course, the AI still discriminates based on race, which is why they send a multi-racial team of no less than four dirty orphans to buy your groceries.” "Um." “The Latino child buys your rice, and the Asian child buys your tortillas.” “Yeah, no, I get it.” “And the black child-” “Sorry, uh, these are children, right? Small children?” “Of course. Teens would raise the price.” “How do they, uh, reach the items on the top shelves?” “They stand on each other’s emaciated little shoulders.” "Jesus." "Yeah, the Hispanic orphan tends to be on the bottom." "What?" "Sturdy stock." “…and how much do you save?” “My last potato was 34 cents.” “#$&@ it, I’m in.” --- [r][title: AI Surge Pricing]

"You can just do things."

“By the principles of the American Revolution, arbitrary power may and ought to be resisted, even by arms if necessary.” — Luther Martin

AI writing peaked here

There's an old joke in systems biology called "How Biologists Fix a Radio." A biologist, tasked with figuring out why a radio doesn't work, removes components one by one and catalogs the result. Remove this transistor: the radio makes a horrible screeching sound. Conclusion: this is the "horrible screeching transistor." Remove another component: the radio goes silent. Conclusion: this is the "silence transistor." This is essentially what we do with genomics. We see which genes are mutated in cancer and assume they must be "cancer genes." We see which genes are differentially expressed and assume they must be "important." But correlation is not causation, and a parts list is not a circuit diagram. You can have a complete inventory of every resistor, capacitor, and transistor in a radio and still have no idea how it plays music.

@mak3333 @cafreiman I can't even tell you the last time I saw a Target. Believe it or not, there a ton of regions where the only grocery store is a walmart supercenter that was subsidized with taxpayer funds. Wal-Mart is not exposed to free market competition.

@0zarkian @cafreiman Huh, you don't think Wal Mart is exposed to competition? Ever hear of... Amazon? Target?

Surge pricing is good—if a store is running low on ice cream (for example), it can conserve the supply by instantly raising the price and reserve the remainder for those who value it the most (plus, the store can quickly lower prices if a product isn’t selling).

@mak3333 @cafreiman Here's something to think about: In a world where Wal-Mart has become a state-subsidized colossus against which competition doesn't exist in meaningful ways, how do we expect these mechanisms to function as they theoretically should? I, personally, am skeptical.

@mak3333 @cafreiman We don't live under capitalism. We live under central banks, inflationary policy, rampant spending, monetary debasement, etc. All of which already stress people economically. We can't pick the worst of both systems. We have to get actual free markets first.

@Ryanseptus @spikesguides Which is precisely why the founders had to engage in so much vanguardism. The fireteams don't form unless the spirit is there to drive them to organize.

@Ryanseptus @spikesguides “He that would palm the doctrine of unlimited passive obedience and non-resistance upon mankind, is not only a fool and a knave, but a rebel against common sense, as well as the laws of God, of Nature, and his Country.” Getting people prepared starts with mindset.

Been getting a surprising number of QRTs, comments, and DMs from people advocating for civil war and violence in response to gun control proposals. Stop that talk now. Do you actually know what comes with civil wars? You run out of water because the taps don't work and the water is contaminated anyway. Your grandmother gets picked off by a 14 year old trying to prove himself. You hear about a nearby neighborhood getting torched and everyone getting put in a mass grave. Foreign mercenaries and governments aiding your enemies and leaving you to starve. It's not just you and your buddies running ambushes and raids. It's dirty. It's vulgar. It's animalistic. It's total war. The sides won't be clear cut, either. Think about how divided the right already is. If you can't even build coalitions to fight gun control laws how are you going to build a coalition to fight your enemies? We're more likely to see massive infighting within the right than we are to see everyone unite. Then the left will do the same. And then everyone will be fighting everyone else. Civil wars are rarely two-sided conflicts. They are quagmires of disparate groups killing each other and their enemies relentlessly. You should look to Syria if you want to see what a civil war in the US would look like. 13 years and over 500,000 dead, over half were civilians. I understand the anger and frustration but violence is an absolute last resort and shouldn't be talked about lightly I have been proposing we do what the left does to push their agendas like coalition building, protesting, and being a legal nuisance and instead I have been getting edgy edgelords and justifiably upset people calling for violence. Stop it. It's playing with fire and once the djinn leaves the bottle, it doesn't go back in.

@RealJasonNelson I don't make prescriptive demands on how Christians should be Christians. All I ask is that they don't try to make the same kind of prescriptive demands of non-Christians. Unfortunately, Christians have a baked-in policy of being moral busybodies.

I don’t let non-Christians tell me “what Christians are supposed to act like.”

The biggest mistake of both the Socialists and the theoretical Capitalists of today is that they both wrongly argue like we live under a Capitalist system.

@Tactical_review Yes they would. Anything that grants more control to the state is something the establishment would take in heartbeat. Remember that the "left" is just a mask. It's the target they dangle to goad people into bad strategy. That's what happening here.

@0zarkian No, they wouldn't, and that's the point.

This is a very dumb gambit to make, because the actual powers that be would take this deal in a heartbeat.

@neoliberal_hack @mak3333 @cafreiman You're correct on that point. I'm not arguing otherwise. I'm not a communist or a socialist. I'm a capitalist. I'm saying surge pricing might work in an ideal situation. We live in a world of currency debasement, policy of inflation, central banking, state monopolies, etc.

@0zarkian @mak3333 @cafreiman Okay? Keeping the price the same regardless of supply doesn’t guarantee poor people access to the item either, it just makes sure that anyone who really wants it doesn’t even have the option to buy it.

@JohnKayUSMC @spikesguides And that fact you're still here flapping your jaw about "liberals" shows you don't know what the fuck is actually going on or you're a paid liar.

@JohnKayUSMC @spikesguides Your disdain for the Constitution and the founding principles is showing. The "Liberals" didn't "use the system" the founding fathers gave us. They perverted it. And it wasn't just the "liberals". There's a long train of "conservatives" who played just as much a part.

🇺🇸 "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" youtube.com/watch?v=5AliJB… For the American Revolutionaries, "Liberty or Death" wasn’t just a slogan. It was a warning Rights aren’t gifts from government And if you violate them, You’ll pay the price.

Super important distinction, and one the gun control lobby is hoping you won’t make.