Thomas_l_s

Technology is making the world worse. Nothing good has been invented in the last 25 years. Superfluous, spurious innovations that seem impressive at first, like the iPhone, take back more than they give and ultimately benefit only oppressive governments and their oligarch allies.

The age 20-24 unemployment rate is now ~unchanged since the AI boom began:

What’s a problem humanity solved so well that younger people don’t even realize it used to be a huge issue?

so far at least, i'm pretty sure AI has been net job-creating. this was not what i expected--although i was much less pessimistic than others, i thought by this level of capability we'd have seen some impact. it is possible this direction keeps going!

A tourist was seriously injured after a bison tossed them about 8 feet into the air in Yellowstone National Park. The attack was captured on video by photographer Mike Macleod.

Saudi Arabia has been stagnant for ages and instead of using its immense, finite oil wealth to capture the market in a long-term, geopolitically relevant, high value industry (like Taiwan and chips) they're blowing it on vanity projects and second tier sports teams. Incredible.

Iranian leadership: Let's build nuclear centrifuges and enrich uranium. Saudi leadership: Let's build another luxury hotel, but with a clock on top of it, like Big Ben. Iranian leadership: Drones are the weapon of the future. Let's build the cheapest, most effective kind. Saudi leadership: Let's build a random city in the desert, but make it a line and give it a cool name like Neom. Iranian leadership: Ballistic missiles will establish deterrence. Let's become a global leader in hypersonics. Saudi leadership: Let's build the biggest cube-shaped shopping mall in the world.

The age 20-24 unemployment rate is now ~unchanged since the AI boom began:

If you try to save money by cooking at home, you walk into a grocery store where three massive conglomerates own every brand on the shelf and have colluded to raise baseline prices by 40% over three years. If you try to cut costs by renting a modest apartment, you face corporate landlords using automated algorithmic software to artificially inflate rental rates across the entire city simultaneously. If you try to opt out of car debt by using public transit, you realize municipal budgets were slashed to protect the auto industry, leaving you with zero reliable infrastructure to get to work. You aren't making "poor financial decisions." Every single alternative route to survival has been intentionally bought out, consolidated, and monetized to extract maximum profit from your baseline existence. They don't want you to build wealth; they want you permanently trapped on a treadmill where every necessary life pivot just leads back to the exact same corporate ledger.