The story about the downs teen sitting in the chair is very sad.

I'm not sure if society wise the solution to that is aborting him from the start though.

I worry that's the road to a eugenics themed society.

Like to take it to extremes...my life is pathetic from the perspective of a wealthy person living in Monaco...but I'd rather fix my life than be put out of my misery.  Easier said than done I guess though.

Yeah it goes deeper than facebook but it's about the period where facebook came out that things went downhill I think.

Social Media has not been good overall I don't think, but also it was like the whole internet became corporatised and powered by the existing societal powers or something. There was a really interesting period first where like the money interests didn't take it all that seriously yet.

Interesting post Randall.....

I agree with a lot of your points but I feel like there's a distinction between communism and reasons why capitalism requires competition to avoid monopolies from ruining it.

I feel like most of the concerns you raise relate to misuse of monopolistic power, for example if Spotify decided to pull all music by white people, in theory we should be able to go to dozens of other providers who don't. Sadly in the tech sphere it hasn't gone that way as a handful of businesses control everything.

In theory we have anti-trust/competition laws to prevent monopolies from getting out of hand, but I think in practise it hasn't worked.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that identifying something as bad because it is a monopoly that is capable of abuse doesn't mean it's communism even when communism has monopolies.

I didn't list this example to give shit to the USA, I'm quite fond of the USA.

My point is that governments do stuff sometimes that is against the wider values of the community or against the general ideas of the nation (eg later deemed to be unconstitutional) and this does not there is a global conspiracy by the elites to enslave us or end democracy or create a one world government or anything else. They are just isolated incidents where someone did something less than ideal.

This isn't really something that's happening in the way you make it sound. Like during the height of the pandemic we closed state borders in an attempt to control the spread which was partially successful but of course destructive to the economy.  Now that the majority of the population has been vaccinated (which reduces the severity) and the omicron version has been determined to be harder to stop and often more mild we've taken the approach of dropping most restrictions and opening up borders for travel.

Actually, that comment is an attack on the premier (similar role to an American state governor) of a particular state which still implemented covid lockdowns and travel restrictions.

Basically the Prime Minister is from our Liberal party which despite the name is actually a conservative party - it's our mainstream republican style party. He does not like the premier of Western Australia because the premier comes from the Labour party (mainstream moderate left wing party - similar to Democratic party in USA). So they have to hate each other.

The premier's approach through covid was to lock down the whole state from travel within Australia - which gave them a period of relative normalcy while the rest of the states had uncontrolled outbreaks. The PM and his party in other states decided to pursue a policy of "open up and ride it out because the economy needs to" and the WA premier has been against it because of the health costs/deaths etc.

So his comments are designed to belittle the opposing side of politics basically. He probably also thinks using a sheep/farming analysis makes him seem more simple and relatable and down to earth - when really he is like most of our leaders a multi-millionare who owns 6 or 7 properties including some in places like NYC. However his party retains power via a coalition with the local farming party - the Nationals who are a conservative party but more focuses on no nonsense rural lifestyle and traditional values (think southern american kinda outlook). So basically evoking a metaphor of getting sheep through a gate simultaneously insults the other team and also makes it seem like he is a good old boy farmer...when in reality he's anything but. But that's politics.

Congratulations on the kid

I've been reliving the VR days watching boots last couple of nights so I might have another watch of that tonight...but I know what you mean..I mean they're all amazing musicans...but you notice the same things over and over in the way the bands evolve and change line ups and stuff.