The real irony of all this is that the people being genocides right now in Gaza have a much closer genetic relationship to the actual human beings who wrote the Torah than those who are genociding them. We’re watching the actual descendents of the ancient Israelites being exterminated right now.

The rich aren’t accessible, but their property sure is awfully flammable.

It’s not enough to reform campaign finance. We need to destroy the class of people behind this. We need to really wage class war, a class war of annihilation.

We need a national wealth cap. 1000x median household income. Anything more is taxed at 100%.

But what is ownership? Ownership is the society-recognized right to the exclusive use of property. But society establishes certain limitations on those rights, including requirements to allow the lawful access by law enforcement to the property.

You intrinsically give law enforcement permission to access property if they have a warrant. It’s just part of the bargain of land ownership.

Drug smugglers have figured out ways to not only hide drugs inside statues, but to actually make drugs INTO statues. I remember reading about some Columbian drug gang that figured out a way to embed cocaine in a plastic in a manner that could be chemically separated once smuggled across the border. They were sending shipments of religious statues made out of cocaine. So I suppose that Cthulu statue could actually be 30% coke.

Yeah, I’m basically envisioning something like that. An old school web index composed entirely of human-curated human-made content. How to actually fund such an effort? I have no idea. That’s why I started with the the premise that I somehow had millions to throw at the project. It would invariably be very labor intensive.

It would probably have to be subscription funded. Maybe there’s a way to pull it off, but getting people to pay for subscriptions for services like this has long been fraught. Surveillance capitalism was built because donations don’t cut it, and no one wanted to spend a few bucks a month for Google or Facebook access.

Nah, go for the darker more realistic version. Mulder just goes further down the rabbit hole, ends up going full Qanon, and ends up being killed trying to storm the capital building.

Truth. We need to massively regulate social media. If I had my way, I would prohibit any large social media site from offering any kind of content stream algorithmically targeted to a single user.

This wouldn’t be a restriction on speech. You could still have your website and publish whatever you wanted. You could still have sites where people can upload user content. But something like YouTube would look far different. YouTube could have one main page of content they show everyone, but they couldn’t have individual feeds for individual users. If you wanted to find content not on the main page, you would have to find it yourself. You would have to find channels, subscribe to them, share recommendations with friends, etc. If people want to create their own curated content feed, that’s fine. But they have to be the ones that do it.

We don’t even need to ban social media. What we need to completely ban is individually-targeted algorithmic content. That’s what’s lead us to the insanity we are currently experiencing. And this should apply to everyone, not just kids. If anything adults need this more than kids do.

The real problem - how do you deal with bots? Sure, we could start a new nerd movement to say, revive web rings and personal websites. But with LLMS and other AIs, how do you keep that whole ecosystem from just being flooded with AI content?

If I had a lot of money I would fund the creation of a new search engine. It would operate entirely on a white list model. And every website on it would be reviewed by people, for people. No posts from any social media site would be allowed; only small webpages. To be featured in the engine, sites would have to have verifiable human origins. So personal blogs made by real people or small businesses with actual physical addresses that can be fully verified in the real world. In order to get your business featured, you would have to apply, and someone would physically have to visit you in order to verify your authenticity. Oh, and any website that uses AI in any form would simply be ineligible to appear on the search engine.

Yes, this would result in a drastically reduced pool of potential sites, but what remains would be absolute gold.

There’s estradiol in that nebula…

While there are a few that work better in an office, the overwhelming majority work better at home. Why should we force everyone to suffer for the handful of folks who can’t self-motivate at home? We don’t bend over backwards to cater to people who say, have auditory issues that make working in a crowded open-plan office debilitating. We tell those folks to go die in a fire if they can’t handle an office environment. Plenty of people can’t work in an office, but that was never been seen as an argument to get rid of offices.

Found the executive.

So

3. They’re morons and terrible at business.

Why did you break up last time? Have you put in the hard work of figuring out exactly what went wrong last time, how things will be different this time, and why you’re even trying at it?

A hard truth is that if you see an executive pushing return to office, you know one of two things about them. One of the following is true.

1. They are terrible at finance and don’t understand the sunk-cost fallacy. They have to keep using that building they bought; they’ve spent so much on it and simply can’t bring themselves to sell it.

2. They’re a sexual molester. They’re someone that uses the power of their position to coerce sex out of their employees. Fucking their employees is their primary motivation for not retiring early right now. You can’t coerce your secretary to give you a blowjob over Zoom.

That’s really it. They’re either bad at business or they’re a sexual predator. If you see an executive pushing return to office, be sure to ask them which one of these they are. Because they’re definitely one or the other.

It may just be a factor that a lot of YouTubers don’t want to give up creative control. Working with Hollywood ultimately usually means giving up a lot of control on the type and content of your work. They’re paying for the big production budget; they get final say in all creative decisions.

YouTubing is a career type that naturally attracts those that want creative independence. And by the time someone would be of the clout to make a deal with a studio or network, they’re probably already earning enough money to be making a comfortable living from their work. 10,000-follower YouTube channels aren’t getting calls from Discovery, Nickelodian, or Fox News. They’re only going to be recruiting from the top channels. And people at that level are probably already earning a nice full-time living. Channels of that level are often entire miniature production companies. The biggest YouTubers aren’t individuals, but creative teams.

That’s a level of success many people would consider ideal. You get to live comfortably, you get to have a decent amount of social esteem, you get to pursue what projects you want. And you get the personal satisfaction of providing incomes for a whole bunch of your closest colleagues and maybe even closest friends. Many would call that about as perfect a life as there is possible. And you want to maybe give all that up to go work for a cable network?

I suppose for enough money, you could buy people out. But there’s more to life than money after all. If you’re already living quite comfortably, already very financially secure, would you really want to give up what you have - complete creative independence*, just to make a bit more? YouTube’s top ranks are filled with people who left the rat race to get into YouTube. Many simply won’t want to go back into that big corporate world, regardless of how gilded their chains may be.

*Obviously, creative independence is relative. All forms of ad-funded content will have to pander to the whims of advertisers. Even completely audience-funded works are subject to the whims of the audience.

But what if the thief steals the books not to read them, but just to fill their house with books and make themselves seem erudite and intelligent?

I’m imagining the most extreme version of this, where a man is living in a house that is a veritable library. Yet, they’re actually illiterate.

“An unholy bastion of mediocrity.” Man, I want that on my tombstone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khnumhotep_and_Niankhkhnum

Their official titles were “Overseers of the Manicurists of the Palace of the King”.

You can’t make this shit up!