Ban any advertising unasked for, even better.

Things were better because people would “go to a different brand” and sue morons more often. They’d also be more confident of their own knowledge in various technical things.

Things becoming more complex was used to gaslight a lot of people into questioning their own knowledge about what they need. Such gaslighting first and foremost works via people being ashamed to be stupid and pretending they know it all.

Most (even technical) people are like this - they feel that they don’t understand the world around them, it’s stressing, spying, rigged, chaotic in the wrong places and ordered in the wrong places, - but they are ashamed and pretend. And what they pretend to think specifically and what they try to follow is communicated to them via ads, via movies, via corporate bullshit. Because they have nothing else to turn to.

It’s a bit similar to the way some autistic people do imitation - they too imitate ads and movies more than people around them (well, maybe also imitate people they are romantically attracted to, or those they consider cool).

Or to the way state propaganda works in atomized societies - people don’t have good horizontal ties, but pretend to have them, while taking the material from what they hear on TV.

20 years ago would you use something like an Android phone with no buttons or would you crush it with a hammer? Would you use something like Windows 10 or would you ignore that crap? Would you buy a car that spies after you?

1. You’d open one only when you wanted it.

2. A database with various characteristics being the main component and the advertising text not being that is better, yes.

and any random combination of cities/countries are part of the United States

You do have a few Saint-Petersburgs, right? And Athens? And Cairos?

that think our language is American,

Similar to Russia then.

Mexicans speak Mexican,

Similar to Russia then.

all Asian people are Chinese,

Still similar to Russia.

As somebody far enough from any America, I got a few healthy recreational grunting laughs from this.

I almost have tears in my eyes.

Also a bit reminiscent of Johnny de Vito in “Romancing the stone”

No, advertising is not necessary when a user can search a catalogue with multiple optional constraints, as we did in the olden days of printed catalogues.

Advertising is harmful - it’s somebody trying to persuade you that you need to buy a thing. First, you’ll usually know when you need something. Second, the salesman is not someone you’d believe normally.

It’s an interaction which normally should be initiated by you, not by sellers. Which makes advertising utterly useless immediately.

We need to like, mass-spam the entire Midwest america with historical romance novels with bodice-ripping sex scenes. I think if more guys just got lost in that shit, we would have a lot less tension and pain in the world.

Doing that to somewhat compensate for harm from romantic chatbots and porn would be absolutely beneficial.

Yeah, I once got interested like a bored person with a special interest in 70s sci-fi, Asimov, Star Wars, Wiener’s “Cybernetics”, all those aesthetics. Because leftist ideologies are kinda associated with them.

You come to trots, they seem fine and tolerant (they even consider tolerance and humanism as their main difference from stalinists), until you mention anarcho-syndicalism as something normal or ask questions (in the spirit of normal brainstorm) about the ideal society they describe in their articles. Here they either become hostile or ghost you.

Cause it’s their (trots) fucking religion that every cook can guide a state, that a military of a trot state looks like every adult having a gun at home, and in case of war them all assembling, making a shot each and going home (quoting that Swiss joke).

And that their direct democracy and planning system too should not be really designed. Some “modern technologies” will do that.

They are just not interested in discussing how to actually build that shit. Only in the daily activity of a couple of obscure trade unions and in hating “the rich” or/and “the bourgeoisie”.

You come to ansyns, they react like “you’re already one of us if you want, now get off us, we’re not interested in that shit”.

You come to ancoms, admittedly some conversations are interesting, but talking specifics with them is like Napoleon going into Russia - the conversation seems to be going on, but you’re increasingly feeling that you’re getting lost without gaining anything.

You come to stalinists, they tell you your opinions will be considered when they kill everyone they don’t like.

You come to usual left anarchists and may get a good conversation occasionally, but in the end realize that they are mostly interested in their hydroponic farms.

YMMV, but I don’t see much consolidation.

In the days of Apple II and similar machines a person who operated a computer knew it, because computers were simpler and because there was no other way and because you’d generally buy a cheaper toy if you didn’t want to learn it.

Also techno-optimism of the 70s viewed the future as something where computers make the average person more powerful in general - through knowing how to use a computer in general, that is, knowing how to write programs (or at least “create” something, like in HyperCard).

That was the narrative consistent with the rest of technology and society of that time, where any complex device would come with schematics and maintenance instructions.

Then something happened - most humans couldn’t keep up with the growing complexity. Something like that happened with me when I went to uni with undiagnosed AuDHD. There was a general path in the future before me - going there and learning there - but I didn’t know how I’m going to do that, and I just tried to persuade myself that I must, it should happen somehow if I do same things others do with more effort. Despite pretense and self-persuasion, I failed then.

It’s similar to our reality. The majority stopped understanding what happens around them, but kept pretending and persuading itself that it’s just them, that the new generation is fine with it all, that they don’t need those things they fail to understand, etc. Like when in class you don’t understand something, but pretend to. All the older generation does that. The younger generation does another thing - they try to ignore parts of the world they don’t understand, like hiding their heads in the sand. Or like a bullied kid just tries not to think about bullies. Or like a person living in a traditionally oppressive state just avoids talking about politics and society.

That narrative has outlived its reality not only with computers.

People are eager to believe in magic. Do you need to know how to cook if you have dinner and breakfast trees (thank you, LF Baum)? So they think we have such trees. It’s an illusion, of course. Very convenient, isn’t it, to make so many industries inaccessible to amateurs.

It’s very simple. There’s such a thing as “too complex”. The tower of Babel is one fitting metaphor.

You don’t need this complexity in an AK rifle. Just like that, you don’t need it in an analog TV. And in a digital TV you need much less complexity too. We don’t have it in our boots - generally. We don’t have it in our shirts. Why would we have it in things with main functionality closer to them in complexity than to SW combat droids?

I think Stanislaw Lem called this a “combinatoric explosion” when predicting it in one of his essays.

Oh, I remember my childhood and how everybody (and sadly myself) considered us so knowledgeable because we sit chatting via ICQ, writing stupid shit in forum text RPGs, playing WarCraft III, Perfect World, IL2, KotOR and X-Wing Alliance all day.

I disagree, they would do a lot of good if part of any weapons being available (not just guns, but FPV drones and ammo for them, anti-tank and anti-air missiles, small mortars, and so on), but not for crime levels. The benefit would be in improving political stability (no, it wouldn’t help MAGA and such, because they don’t really want a violent takeover, they want an administrative takeover and then unpunished violence against those who can’t defend themselves).

When only rifles are available, it doesn’t help that end at all - you can’t fight the government or the invading army or some terrorists with just rifles.

So I agree that one has to pick a lane here. If we understand private weapons’ ownership as that well-organized militia to protect against tyranny yadda-yadda, then that includes a lot of stuff. Drones with grenades at least. If we don’t and, say, the national guard is that militia, then allowing just pistols and rifles lacks the advantages, preserving the harm.

It’s confusing. Usually such a pic means a single stream of possibilities branching, so to say. Here multiple branches are for the same data point.

They could at least make them different colors, which would be the components of the initial color if combined. I think I’ve even seen such a graph.

Oh. People from English-speaking countries don’t sink you with downvotes immediately for criticizing that show anymore. Nice.

Even the broad strokes are, eh, how do you say it, eh … worse than Tom Clancy and that’s an achievement I’m not sure everyone is capable of measuring.

It’s funny though how such series about “USSR” talk in fact about something American. Reminiscent of the “17 moments of spring” series which were about a Soviet spy in Berlin in the last months of WWII, but mostly explored Soviet ideology and morality issues.

That’s how you don’t do infographics.

You’ve skipped half or more of what I wrote. Especially about not putting in jail people who committed war crimes in Iraq and about supporting people like Putin against everyone else in the ex-USSR in the 90-s.

I’m not talking about nation building under American control, but killing a million of a country’s population warrants reparations, international courts, official apologies (real ones) …

Currently weakening the Russian military in Ukraine. Do you want to broaden the war?

In 2008, not currently.

It doesn’t seem to be a lot of thought in this particular “US bad” narrative. There are real criticisms to be made of US foreign policy but you’re missing them all by a longshot. Maybe consider that the US isn’t some nation of supermen that is capable of solving all of the world’s problems but it just doesn’t want to. It’s more accurate to say the US isn’t actually capable of solving many of the problems in the world, and tends to make a lot of messes by misunderstanding other countries and it’s own capabilities.

Yes, if you replace what I said with weird imagined things.

It doesn’t take to be a nation of supermen to stop arming Turkey, Israel, Azerbaijan, put sanctions on them and forget they are of the same species.

And it seems to actually be close to “some nation of supermen” when supporting the bad guys. There’s definitely some beef to US’s capabilities when it wants to fuck something up and arm cannibals.

It’s not that hard to not act. The problem with the US is that it does bad things, not that it doesn’t do good things. But if it just can’t play hegemon differently, then it could at least try to clean up sometimes.

I would say election interference still mostly works in the “all the world trying to somehow affect US” way as opposed to “US interfering with some country’s elections”.

Simply because affecting the power balance in the metropoly is much more rewarding.

Russia is a scarecrow.

First, it’s not new and even USSR during fscking Cold War would fund and influence the so-called progressive youth (not what’s called progressive now) and parts of the Democratic Party. I guess that Biden guy stopped being a Soviet asset long before being elected president, but he definitely was at some point.

Second, Russian meddling is not even comparable to Israeli, Turkish, Saudi meddling. The problem is that they seem to agree with each other and often cooperate these years.

Third, it’s not even a big deal, we know that politics involve such meddling. They wouldn’t think the same about the USA if it would show some responsibility. Restore Iraq after fscking it up. Investigate war crimes and give some justice to their victims after that invasion. Protect Georgia against Russia. I guess the Marshall plan was for white Europeans only (it’s funny BTW, people in ex-USSR in 1991 apparently expected that something like that will be attempted, but USA worked to cement the ex-Soviet elites and to help them neuter actual grassroots movements instead), but at least fixing things that wouldn’t be broken without USA seemed logical.

It’s just that some of us are autistic and have had wrong parenting, only due to various kinds of stigma our parents, on the contrary, only looked for confirmation that we (and them) are “normal”. So please consider that.

I regularly think and post conspiracy theory thoughts about why the “AI” is such a hype. And in line with them a certain kind of people seem to think that reality doesn’t matter, because those who control the present control the past and the future. That is, they think that controlling the discourse can replace controlling the reality. The issue with that is that whether a bomb is set, whether a boat is sea-worthy, whether a bridge will fall is not defined by discourse.