I think we’ve stopped at the “wrong things” part and just refuse to move on.

Can it be any worse than what we have going on right now?

Do you want fat bees? Because this is how you get fat bees.

Ok~maybe I want fat bees.~

Thanks, Dad.

Power structures and, well… people.

Why you gotta bring up old shit?

It’s been at least three minutes since we did something fascist.

Right.

And what do you know about editorial controls or how journalism has worked in the last 20 years?

Wake up. The decline has already happened. It’s now a game of compromise.

You want to complain and whine like these guys are sitting on a beach, sipping mai thais, while telling their AI agents to write an article.

It’s ignorant and inflammatory. Just makes y’all look petulant.

My point still stands.

You can argue that EVERY fucking thing in the world is in the beginning , mid, or late stages of enshittification.

But calling Ars an internet rot site, at this stage, is just fucking stupid.

Are they as good as they were a few years ago? I honestly can’t say. I do know that there was better news a few years ago.

The people at Ars have a tough job trying to navigate this modern world of oligarchs and autocracy, keeping their identity, while being owned by a corporation whose only job is to make money.

They’ve done a pretty good fucking job, all things considered, of staying their course.

A much better job than internet assholes who want to act elitist and whine when the world falls apart around them while they blame their fellow class instead of the controlling class.

Weren’t you whining about other people making comments like this one to you?

No, the issue we are talking about today and calling Ars an “internet rot site” is a huge leap. Yeah, they post shit articles from Wired and such, (they are owned by Conde Nast), but their core writers are still great and have plenty of good articles.

You want credit for what? Over exaggerating an issue then whining about it?

You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and then spitting on the baby. It makes no sense.

I agree, Ben probably would have indulged and not cared about using it to his advantage.

Hamilton and Jefferson were absolutely cold blooded in their political pursuits and use of published letters. They would have used any opportunity to cut the other down. Maybe mutually assured destruction would have stayed their hands on that particular indulgence, though Hamilton did famously out his own affair to clear himself of the embezzlement allegation.

Not all. Pretty sure John Adams would not have been.

Hamilton and Jefferson would probably have written most of them though, about each other.

Yeah, this one hurt.

Good Omens too. Can I pretend it was written entirely by Pratchett?

I mean, the whole point of us having troops there was a deterrent against Russian aggression.

So I guess there is no reason Trump would want to keep them there.

Man, I’ve seen that place.

Lake Oswego is a really nice area (more expensive than I can afford to live) and I thought it was so cool they still had this old school theatre.

Good for them to spout off. Don’t see those people avoiding Whore Foods any time soon though.

So many people at work are having frustrating issues with Windows now.

It takes so fucking long to start up. Sure, you get a desktop and can open a program, but it just keeps locking up repeatedly for a good 20 minutes while whatever bloatware is running in the background during startup.

They cram OneDrive down your throat and it has constant issues.

They put so much shit in your way, in the name of “productivity” it makes your actual productivity worse.

FUCK COPILOT.

The marketers don’t make the decision. They’re underpaid wage slaves just reading script.

Your point seems very valid to me.

I don’t even want to buy their products anymore because they constantly cancel them and remove any support.

The only ones they continue, seem to be the ones they can use for data collection .i.e. Pixels and Nests. (I shamefully own both).

It is so frustrating as a consumer. Especially when you know that you have become the product for them to sell.

I can’t say much because of the NDA’s involved, but my wife’s company is in a project partnership with Google. She works in a very public facing aspect of the project.

When Google first came on board, she was expecting to see quality people who were locked in and knew what they were doing.

Instead she has seen terrible decision making (like “How the fuck do they still exist as company” bad decision making) and an over abundant reliance on using their name to pressure people into giving Google more than they should.

I remember when their motto was “Don’t be evil”. They are the very essence of sociopathic predatory capitalism.

I went through the schools, at NAS Pensacola, to be a Rescue Swimmer.

I noticed the lights around the quad, in the main barracks, galley, and school house area, all had little metal F-18’s on top of them.

A few days before I transferred off base to the next school in my pipeline, I climbed one of the poles and took one.

It reminds me of the challenges I faced, being young, and to alway keep a bit of “Damn the Man, save the Empire” in my soul.

I have a bit of sand from Normandy which used to just remind me of the sacrifice that so many have made to fight fascism and aggression. Now it also reminds me to fight that same fascism today.

A photo of me in the color guard, for a parade in a town I wasn’t from, for people I didn’t really know, in a state I had never been. It was a summer of adventure that took me all the way across the US. It reminds to embrace the unknown, be friendly, and sometimes just letting the flow take you can lead to new, wondrous things you never could have expected

My wedding ring. It reminds me that despite the heartbreak, despair, and self loathing that came from that relationship, there were two years of delirious happiness. That not all journeys’ ends are happy or avoidable, that we need to bear through them, no matter how much you want to just end everything. You WILL look back and remember the things you got to do because you stayed, and be glad you did. To trust my gut and have the courage to make the choices my heart doesn’t want to make. It is easier to live with your own mistakes than someone else’s.