All of the above. At least that's how I feel anyway.

Move into the wilderness. Carve out my own patch and claim it as my own country (with a population of 2...me and my dog)

I'm automatically the only politician since my dog is horribly corrupt and terrible with taking bribes.

That's good to hear. It's been many years since I've stayed in touch with either my extended family or my friends who live down there. (Most of my family moved from Portugal to Canada, but a couple of distant cousins moved instead to Brasil...around Niteroi if I remember correctly)

I last spoke with them in the early 2000s, and back then it was a pretty crazy contrast between the rich and the poor. Almost no true middle class. You either were wealthy enough to have servants, or you WERE the servant and went home to your favela that (if you were lucky) had electricity.

Sure. That might end up being a socially healthy place for adults to end up.

But it will never work that way for young teens. Their brains aren't done baking yet. They don't have the emotional maturity to understand that enough to be "okay with it because it's just a fake".

That's why we protect kids rather than just telling them "hey it's okay...it's only a fake."

I'm not even going to begin describing all the ways that what you just said is fucked up.

I'll just point out that online deepfake technology is FAR more accessible to the average 13 year old to use on their peers than "porno mags" were in our day.

You want to compare taking your 13 year old classmates photo off of Facebook, running it through an AI and in five seconds creating photo-realistic adult content featuring them, and compare that to getting your dad's skin-mag from under his mattress when he's not home, cutting your classmates face out of a yearbook, taping it on, then sneaking THAT into the computer lab at school so that you can photocopy it and pass it around in home room, and then putting the skin-mag BACK under the mattress before your dad finds out.

Is that right...is THAT what you're trying to say? Are those the two things that you're trying say are equivalent?

When a stock price is all that matters, everything gets reduced to line items on a spreadsheet. That includes humanity.

This is unquestionably a good thing. But it's also kind of weird that it's Brasil of all places in on this, since the inequality there between the super wealthy and the folks living in the favelas is just an accepted part of life...kind of like the caste system in India.

I'm not saying that that's a good thing. I'm just saying that I wouldn't imagine the Brasilian authorities would actually give a shit considering the state of their own inequality and how it's just kind of taken as a "reality of life" down there.

I'm currently training a new employee who comes from the "My school handed out Chromebooks" generation, and hol...eee...shit... Its frustrating as hell.

Literally every single instruction gets followed up with "no...double click"

FML

The worst type of person is the person who is so allergic to being "wrong" that they'll constantly double down with new bullshit to try to convince people why it wasn't a mistake in the first place. It's fucking exhausting.

Trump's followers are not sophisticated, politically savvy people. They're attracted to Trump because he's a bully. He (was) everything that they wish they were because at their heart they just want to laugh at others misfortune and he gives them that.

But think back to highschool. What happens when someone finally pulls down the pants of the bully; humiliates him in a crowd of people? That's right. His followers, that group of laughing Hyenas that follow him around, start to ditch.

Policy doesn't change a trump voter. Ethics doesn't change a trump voter. The only thing that changes a trump voter is showing them that their following a loser and a sucker.

If your business plan can't make a profit while paying your people a living wage, than it doesn't deserve to be in business.

Expecting people to live paycheque to paycheque in order to subsidize your desire to be a business owner is the Pinnacle of bullshit.

The fact that people care about whether their messages are blue or green is so absolutely ridiculous.

I've known people who literally refuse to message anyone who doesn't use iMessage (and by extension has an iPhone).

Every one of them turned out to be a twat in every other facet of their personality as well.

correction... always were worthless.

It's always been a con game.

Their so-called "value" was always determined by the ability of the person shilling it to make up bullshit. Literally the definition of a "confidence" game. Same problem as crypto in general. It's only has value if you have confidence in the person shilling it. The moment that person loses the confidence of their marks, the entire thing crumbles to nothing because it isn't backed by any real tangible assets.