I thought you wrote "Scranton". I was like "what the fuck does The Office have to do with all this?"

What's a "book"?

"All in" really is a great phrase to use for AI. People forget that going all in in poker often means you lose everything.

I was a programmer for 25 years starting in the mid-90s. I've had numerous coworkers end up working at Microsoft. I'll admit I was jealous of their insane salaries, but I have to say they were all some combination of terrible programming ability and utter apathy towards their job. The only thing that surprises me is that it took fucking AI for things to get this bad.

I will say that I did have some professional interactions with older MS programmers, the generation that was working for them in the '80s and '90s. These people were genuinely competent, but by the time I interacted with them they were all multi-millionaires and had fallen solidly into the "utter apathy" category.

couldn’t even be bothered to build in the same style?

Typical wealthy American's house, unfortunately.

Big brains let AI do the TESTING and QA as well.

The problem with getting a court jester today is that Peter Dinklage would make sure nobody got the job but him.

Yeah, record these conversations. Save the emails and text messages.

My fear is that short of political capital, they'll start just assassinating people.

This is similar to how when Roman generals got a triumph celebrated for them, a slave would stand behind them saying "remember, you are mortal". In this case, the page would say "remember, you are a corrupt douchebag who is only in this position because you can somehow smile for sixteen hours straight".

or how many neglected to read it for its substance

All of them neglected to read it. I think senators and congresscritters should have to take a test to prove they read a bill before being allowed to vote on it.

Billionaires don't have countries, they have money. Nothing for them to even cheat on.