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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • I read a pretty convincing article title and subheading implying that the best use for so called “AI” would be to replace all corporate CEOs with it.

    I didn’t read the article but given how I’ve seen most CEOs behave it would probably be trivial to automate their behavior. Pursue short term profit boosts with no eye to the long term, cut workers and/or pay and/or benefits at every opportunity, attempt to deny unionization to the employees, tell the board and shareholders that everything is great, tell the employees that everything sucks, …



  • If Trump had allowed his lawyers to mount the best defense they could, he’d probably have a decent chance at complete acquittal or a hung jury.

    Instead he forced them to perform a “defense” aimed at his base and maybe some people with “soft” dislike of him and most importantly aimed at hurting his “enemies” and puffing up his ego.

    I did hear a persuasive argument that he might be acquitted on the charges related to checks he didn’t personally sign (his sons signed instead) but get convicted on the checks he did sign. From what was reported that means it’s possible the first 10 verdicts will be “not guilty” and the last 20+ will be “guilty.”

    I actually sort of hope that’s what happens because 1) it will prove the jury wasn’t out to get him and 2) he’ll be feeling really good for those first verdicts then get gut punched for the last ones.





  • ristoril_zip@lemmy.zipto196@lemmy.blahaj.zonesquander rule
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    1 month ago

    He’s doing what all the “everybody could be rich if they just did X” jackasses do: see some people who don’t have money make bad decisions and generalize it to all people who don’t have money.

    Middle aged parents with 2-3 kids and jobs in the $40k to $60k range aren’t going out all the time, buying the latest gadget, buying new cars, etc. They’re scraping by.

    They could do some “personal development” if they had the time and energy after working full time and caring for children. But they don’t.

    Actually I’d like to see a comparison of the number of people in different income groups who “splurge” on the stuff Buffet is accusing them of versus those who have to “splurge” on an unexpected expense like a medical condition or fixing a broken car or an unexpected home repair. I’m betting people actually end up spending money on the latter way more than the former.

    And it’s just disgusting hearing him complain about people using credit cards when he and all the other economic vampires in his cohort have been purposefully restricting wage growth since the 1970s when they introduced credit cards as a trap for young people who expected their quality of life to increase with increasing productivity the way it had for decades before.


  • We need to go back to a 90% or higher tax rate on income over some threshold, and fix the loopholes that let wealthy people have income that doesn’t count as income. Especially the “take a loan and pay that back and all the activity there doesn’t count as income for tax purposes” bullshit.

    And tax corporate profits more, and make a corporate tax system that rewards real R&D (while auditing to prevent fake tax shelter R&D), rewards higher employee salaries and better benefits (instead of taxing those), and rewards infrastructure investments like new factories but also investments in efficiency, water use reduction, etc.






  • ristoril_zip@lemmy.ziptoScience Memes@mander.xyzVoyager 1
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    2 months ago

    Keep in mind too these guys are writing and reading in like assembly or some precursor to it.

    I can only imagine the number of checks and rechecks they probably go through before they press the “send” button. Especially now.

    This is nothing like my loosey goosey programming where I just hit compile or download and just wait to see if my change works the way I expect…