I really wasn’t with the initial comment elsewhere. Oldish brain full of too much stuff shortcutted a real vague memory straight to “yeah that guy Tim Apple” lol

Hmm nah, “Tim Cook”? I don’t think that’s right, pretty sure it’s Tim Apple…

(tries to save face by pretending to double down on the “silly joke”)

Thanks, really worried for a few there that I was cracking up

Wait a minute…

The one saving grace is that their one-off custom damn shit always feels well designed, and they move a lotta units (which helps with repairs when everything is GD custom). Dunno if that’s changed in recent years.

With that said I avoid them for personal use usually for the same reason, why have a desktop if you don’t get the benefit of parts compatibility?!

Crap DOUBLE WAIT I’m now realizing Tim Apple wasn’t a real guy’s name, dammit RIP my other comment

Wait is “Tim Onion” a silly joke riffing on Tim Apple (think that’s his name) at Apple?

But don’t you see?! Those increased expenses will just be passed along to the scammed!

(No actual point here just thought it was funny to compare to the logic we hear for not punishing other abusive businesses)

Oh man, that’s hilarious. “Our business model doesn’t actually even work where we live. But I know what we’ll do about that, we’re going to do it exactly the same in a place we don’t have a clue about!”

The hubris, lol. It’s delicious.

That seems pretty plausible to me, yeah, because it’s being attempted already and we seem to be sliding that direction. Privatizing those public services sounds like precisely the way to usher in a fresh new hell like this, completely agree.

I really wonder what that may look like too and how likely of an outcome it is. I mean we’ve seen versions of it with “banana republics”, but that wasn’t quite the modern era and wasn’t sophisticated tech companies. I also think most tech companies today would not want that responsibility, just the rewards, it’s a bit hard for me to imagine them actually attempting to provide a government. I think what we’ll see is increasingly hollowed out public institutions matched with ascending power and control of the corps, but leaving the govt in place (largely for a target people can point to when they’re mad) and stopping short of overtly seizing power. Best of both worlds for the corps.

For real. The big tech companies are today basically approximating and exceeding what have before been exclusively state-level capabilities. Not all of those capabilities, of course, but enough that the writing’s on the wall. Meta, Google, Amazon (and others) - they truly see themselves as above “petty” things like governments. Just obstacles to work around.

The question is what will we allow them to get away with, not how far will they try to take things. We should be clear on that.

an exercise in precision engineering with wood

With wood, an hilariously imprecise material (for anyone who doesn’t know). It refuses precision on principle first, and then just on occasion, at every opportunity later.

That delicious (infuriating) imprecision is probably why it can sound so frickin great, though, so…

Oh, tbh I was just commenting the sort of “pithy” way to say what commenter above me was saying. I wasn’t actually commenting on the situation, screw McDonalds and Taylor both lol

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the merely good” is one (imo important) way to state it.

Thanks for that! I need more of the good lines distilled. People miss that there’s a ton of legit philosophy in the show (I mean beyond the scenes where Chidi is directly teaching of course). It’s not just a side bit to use here and there where it helps the jokes or the narrative or whatever. I really fell in love with that, like not only was the show hilarious and FULL of interesting and likeable characters, they really made it kind of a class in (or “love letter” about?) the strengths/weaknesses/clashes to different approaches to existential philosophy.

And they did it in a way that wasn’t ham-fisted, ya know? If you already knew some, you’d pick up on it, if not, maybe you’d pick up a few tidbits here and there but otherwise, just a great show without any of that! That’s so hard to do well, idk, I’m just so impressed lol.

TikTok is the worst example we’ve seen come up

…so far :)

And the crazy part is I know of teens who say “I wish I could use my phone less”, and these aren’t even particularly self-reflective kids. I have to assume many feel this way. Literal textbook addiction, crafted on purpose, and half of the parents are so far up shit’s creek with the addiction too that they don’t even think to get involved.

Life’s short, do weird stuff!

I think we’re on the same page :)

I’m mostly describing an idea where the contracts approach takes care of the necessary iteration to get a given tech policy sorted, and then legislation comes in to require it.

My country can’t even get some basic stuff done, though, so realistically I may as well be writing fan-fic, lol

I’m gonna make what I consider to be an important distinction here, but I also want to say I mostly agree with you and I’m bummed by the downvotes.

I think we can lump the middle manager into two broad “types”. And you seem to be exclusively describing one of the two types - the one that’s, frankly, smart and “aware” enough to realize that middle management is trash, rank and file is trash, and they know precisely why they are aiming to get above everyone. It ain’t cuz they want to help, of course, and they never intend to. Fuck those people every possible way, because not only do they understand that the purpose of middle management is to be the buffer between the owners and the laborers, they also have decided - with full awareness! - fuck the laborers, I want to be good with the owners.

But there’s another, sadder kind of middle manager, and I think maybe your hostility is unkind and unfair to this type. This middle manager still has the wool pulled over their eyes, they really think if they work hard and do well, they’ll be rewarded! And hey, isn’t the fact that they’ve been promoted (!) to leadership a clear indicator that they’re doing things right? Just gotta keep at it, the really important people keep telling me this is what they like to see, I’ll finally be able to get all these bills paid / improve my life! I’m on the way up, finally.

And then that person says “YEESH managing this store is really hard, I’ve gotta get better at this. My leadership doesn’t seem to think this should be a struggle…”

Etc., etc., for 10, 20 years as the wool gradually falls from their eyes. Not everyone is able to see things as clearly as you are. Most middle managers, I think, are basically suckers. Naive and exploited. The rest, tho, are basically monsters without enough power to be monsters. No argument there, and fuck those people.