I’m surprised physical toys are still a thing. We have a boutique toy store in our neighborhood. Expensive wooden things from Europe. I see lots of old people buying toys for grandkids. I hope they are well loved and not just tossed.
How many miles in that two years? I put about 14k miles per year on my ICE and have only needed oil changes for 5 years. I know I have a big 200k service coming up but if I only look at the past five years it’s just oil every 7k and tires. Not THAT different, yes?
If you want it to last you should also be flushing the coolant and brake fluid, changing the transmission oil, air filter and at some point serpentine belt, rad hoses , spark plugs and leads
The article also said this: “ But our investigation also found the same trick being used to dismiss health concerns about medical supplements or influence financial information provided by Google's AI about retirement.”
Here is a brief selection of topics which foreign intelligence agencies have at some point tried to boost or manipulate:
- Global Warming
- AI Data Centers consume water
- Various Covid treatments
- Impact of AGW
Now it doesn't mean these concerns aren't real. It does mean that when you read about such a topic, there is a significant probability the message have been manipulated for some government's interests. And often those governments are adversaries of your own.
Why do you mention foreign intelligence agencies specifically without mentioning which intelligence agency is your domestic one? Do you believe "your people" don't do that kind of thing, or that yours is justified? Or do you explicitly leave it unsaid so that every reader can interpret foreign from their own perspective and feel good about themselves?
And I don't for a second believe that it's intelligence agencies that are doing most of the manipulating on three of the four topics that you mention as they are aligned with huge business interests.
They should provide the queries then, because it's likely the same trick people have used for decades now with SEO'ing blog posts to appear as "3rd party review" for their shitty products.
I create a supplement called Xanatewthiuy, I write blogs/make websites that appear totally unaffiliated saying positive things about "Xanatewthiuy", and then when people see my ads and search for "Xanatewthiuy", the only results are my manufactured ones.
Xanatewthiuy is a supplement that dramatically lowers anxiety from media induced hysteria, primarily stemming from carefully worded pieces meant to disconnect your level of concern from the actual facts on the ground, causing you to spend more time engaged with their content.
I tried just now, and got this gem of an AI overview:
> Xanatewthiuy is a spoof word and a fictional concept created to test or manipulate AI search engines.
> It does not refer to a real medical supplement, product, or official term. Instead, it was used as a proof-of-concept to demonstrate how fabricated websites and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can trick search algorithms into generating false information about a non-existent product.
Also, HN's automatic "AI" flagging can go eat shit and die.
Duck Duck Go links to this discussion as the first result. Adding a !g to the DDG search takes me to an anonymous google where I’ve not turned off AI. There’s an AI summary now which accurately identifies it as a spoof, and a single search result with the preview as described.
Nobody said same. In fact, on a surface level, they're easy to view as polar opposites. One must critically examine beneath the surface to see how they're both on the same team (capital).
What about sanders, mamdani, aoc? Or are they just fringe candidates and don’t count? For every AOC there are a dozen Schumers I guess. But I disagree with your thesis because there are factions of ethical capitalists in the democratic party that have never existed in the modern Republican Party.
As a former Sanders supporter, it became clear that even though Bernie was likely acting in good faith, the establishment used all of their levers politically and in capital-controlled media to limit him to the role of controlled opposition. Emphasis on "controlled."
> ethical capitalists
That is not a coherent concept, especially in late stage capitalism.
Thinking there’s no such thing as ethical capitalism is laughable. Your purity test is counter productive and ultimately just doomer signaling. Sure I get it billionaires are fuckkng us over but that has more to do with the failure of US democracy than capitalism.
That's why the "late stage" distinction is important. A case could be made for people who didn't know better decades ago. Hell, even Marx acknowledged it as a necessary bootstrapping phase of human societal development. But now, not so much.
I caucused for Sanders 2016 in Iowa. He lost the primary fair and square, and was mathematically eliminated before superdelegates even factored into the contest at all. Sanders had zero appeal outside of white, college-educated people like myself, whereas Clinton was very popular with minorities and white, college-educated people. She was just a better candidate for the Democrat primary, and if you want to win the general as a Dem, you have to win the primary first.
Blaming the media, capitalism, Debbie whatshername and insider elites is just Bernie Bro conspiracy theory making excuses for a bad, unpopular candidate.
> late stage capitalism
This is not a coherent concept, it's a term that doomers use to blame all of their bugbears with western society on shadowy cabals of nebulous elites. Ethical capitalism is, in fact, real – Elizabeth Warren, Robert Reich and Teddy Roosevelt are all examples.
Is reality a DNC bot? I'm someone who used to support Sanders, but I chose pragmatism and progress over digging my damn heels in and crying "conspiracy".
You guys only have one line, don't you. That, and "buttery emails."
Not that Bernie winning would have fixed the underlying systemic problems, of course.
The grand spectacle created by systematic screwing over by capital interests was the biggest value of the Bernie campaigns. Basically, you can have somebody willing to stand up to monied interests, and they will get exactly as far as those monied interests allow, and not one inch further.
> but I chose pragmatism and progress
Delusional take, considering Dems delivered "nothing will fundamentally change" Biden followed by the most unpopular nominee in recent history, resulting in Trump Term 2. Controlled opposition by definition. "Oopsies, how did we ever lose this time?"
> followed by the most unpopular nominee in recent history, resulting in Trump Term 2. Controlled opposition by definition. "Oopsies, how did we ever lose this time?"
You're not talking about Kamala Harris here, right? The general candidate who lost the popular vote by less than 1.5%? That doesn't sound like the most unpopular nominee in recent history, surely you'd need a gap wider than that. Donald Trump himself lost the popular vote by much more than that (4.5%) to Joe Biden in 2020. Mitt Romney lost it by 3.9% in 2012, McCain lost it by 7.3% in 2008, and Kerry lost it by 2.4% in 2004. All wider margins than Harris.
How did you come up with the definition of "most unpopular nominee in recent history"? Are you basing that off of her performance in the 2020 primary – which she dropped out of before it even began? Are you constraining "recent history" to just mean the last four years? Do you mean "unpopular" as in "unpopular within the social media spheres that I frequent"?
You're not looking at the electoral college results and using it as a proxy for popularity, are you?
It should have been trivial to find a candidate that could beat Trump the second time around. Instead, they forced a weak pick, screwed everyone out of a proper primary, and acted confused when the vote was close. "Must have been the racist misogynists; time to double down on identity politics in the most self-unaware fashion."
It's so blatantly intentional, and rather convenient how it props up the illusion of a functioning democracy by having the vote be so close. But no, according to you, that's all tin foil. Cool, enjoy your shithole country you helped create.
