Ah yes, regular BBQ parties are notably more valuable than healthcare. Of course. Turns out my $700 pellet smoker can do the job of an entire hospital and I never knew!

Listen, it’s not my fault you poors have to ration your syrup so carefully that not a single drop can ever be allowed to spill. You could be eating the superior breakfast food but instead you’re stuck with your dry, unfulfilling waffles, all because their shape holds your precious syrup. I can only imagine the resentment you all feel as I drench an entire plate in luscious maple goodness just to coat one bite of our soft, fluffy pancakes.

Completely correct.

There are plenty of examples of politicians like Mamdani winning all over the USA. The right message will resonate with voters. It’s just about figuring out how to speak to their needs. People are struggling and they’re looking for answers.

As for MAGA, I genuinely mean it when I say they don’t matter. MAGA are not the majority of the electorate. They do not win elections. Yes, they’ll always vote for Trump or someone like him, but Trump never won with only MAGA. They need to find a way to appeal to people outside of their base in order to win. In 2024 that was because their message of affordability resonated with voters who spent four years under Biden drowning in cost of living.

You’re writing the fascists’ victory speeches for them. Stop telling yourself why they’re strong and start looking for where they’re weak.

Been using Seafile for years, it’s fantastic.

Socialism strengthens from economic hardship just as much as fascism does. Just look at the surging popularity of the DSA in America.

It’s going to get harder and harder to make the case for MAGA to voters when they already had their turn at the wheel and only made things worse. Meanwhile Mamdani continues to get more popular every day because he’s actually doing things that help people.

Hopelessness only helps the oppressors in the end.

The infrastructure is the number one issue here. Everyone focuses on Anthropic and OpenAI because they generate headlines - and don’t get me wrong, both of those companies are built on sand - but the true rot in the industry is in the data centres.

The economics just do not work. You buy GPUs for billions and billions of dollars. Those GPUs are outdated by the time you install them, and then they burn out within 5 years. You pay ungodly amounts for electricity. And you make, well… Not nearly enough. There’s literally no way to sell compute on GPUs at or above cost. None. The math doesn’t math. The data centre CEOs know this, but they’re all convinced that everyone else knows something they don’t.

The promise for the data centres, the only thing that offered a glimmer of future revenue, is that OpenAI and Anthropic (the only companies in the world actually buying compute at scale right now) were going to continue to increase their compute spending basically infinitely. As those two companies scale back their spending (because they’re running out of money) it’s going to become increasingly apparent that there is no one else rushing to fill the gaps. Microsoft, Meta and SpaceX all supply their own compute and have more than enough for the absolutely trivial use their AI products see. The idea was that this would be a new internet; you build the infrastructure and an explosion of new companies flood in to use it. Be the guys selling picks and shovels. But that explosion of new companies didn’t happen, and never will.

Probably 95% or more of new data centre projects will be abandoned without ever turning the lights on. Most without ever even breaking ground.

OK. Bye Felicia 👋

No matter what, you will always be able to name a government expenditure you personally disagree with. It is ridiculously childish to conclude from that fact that government spending as a whole should not exist.

I’m well aware of what OP’s intent was. My comment was highlighting the inherent absurdity of complaining about taxes, which are by no definition “theft” and which are actually used to enrich your fellow man (no, I don’t need to hear about military spending or whatever other government outlay you personally object to; even in the US there are still tax funded programs that benefit the average person, despite the Republicans best efforts), rather than directing your anger at the far greater amount of our productivity that is literally stolen from us by the super wealthy.

This is a drop in the bucket for OpenAI. They already make $40bn a year in revenue, and that’s not even close to enough to cover their staggering capex and compute costs.

Also, for anyone who doesn’t know, an “annualized” figure means you take a single month and multiply it by 12. If I sell my car for $15,000, I can claim an annualized income of $180,000 when in reality the money I made from selling cars that year is still only going to be $15,000. It’s a number that allows them to cherry pick one good month and then act as if every month is like that.

As for the claim that it shows “excellent growth”, this is equally meaningless. It’s like me extrapolating that my three month old puppy will be the size of New York City in three years based on their current growth rate. Growth doesn’t just continue in a flat line forever.

Whoosh

Taxes are how you contribute to other workers. The notion that taxes are “stolen” is libertarian bullshit preached by the people who want to drive us back into feudalism.

Why 40%? The value of his labor that’s being redirected to the pockets of wealthy CEOs is much higher than that.

Good of the NYT to wake up to the problem they actively participated in creating.

But those people will continue to lead as long as our economic system continues to reward them.

Pradoxically, I think for a lot of people, understanding that your job doesn’t have to be your passion is actually the key to not hating it. People push themselves to give everything they have to their work in the belief that it somehow brings meaning to their lives, or they put up with endless abuse to do a job just because it’s something they’re passionate about. Those same people might be a lot more happy and less stressed if they were willing to check out and just let their job be a job, or find some work that pays the bills while they pursue their passions as a hobby instead.

I think that’s a misunderstanding of the intent. Obviously having a miserable job will make you miserable. But not everyone has to have a job that is their life’s great passion. It’s OK to have a job that just pays the bills. It’s OK to not care about your work.

That’s the part that CEOs hate to hear. Capitalism wants everyone to believe that their work has to define them, has to be the most important thing they do. Because if you get people to believe that then 1) that depresses wages for the “meaningful” jobs by creating more competition, and 2) it sells the lie that you have to go above and beyond because if you’re not treating your job as a calling then you’re failing at life.

It’s OK to clock out on time. It’s OK to put in the minimum effort required. It’s OK to care about your work life balance. And it’s OK to find a job that just pays the bills and doesn’t stress you out.

Yeah, I hate that this is getting exactly the reaction Trump wants, instead of the appropriate reaction, which is “OK, whatever”

No, but even animals learn to repeat a behavior when it’s rewarded.