Yep. Ghosts in Machines are real.

I have witnessed it first hand multiple times.

At university there was an old 1st gen Makerbot 3D printer and if you took away one of it’s prints that were displayed around it, all of your prints would fail, even if you replaced it the printer held a grudge. And never EVER say a 100% certainty statement that the print would succeed like “it is printing ok, it will be finished in an hour”. Only say things like “the print is doing ok so far”.

The electronics lab was throwing out five old Cathode Ray Oscilloscopes so our little maker group took them in and two were working fine. The other three weren’t displaying the trace on the screen. One of our members, a chap from Romania who in his youth spent his time fixing old TVs in his home country, said to let him have a look. I swear down he plugged them in, leant his ear against it, said to the scopes “shh it’s ok, we’ll look after you”, and gave them gentle taps on top just behind the screen, and all three jumped back into life in perfect calibration.

And finally, my girlfriend at the time had a 1st gen iPod that would, at the most inopportune moments randomly wake itself up, play a few seconds of a random song, then shut itself down.

They’re betting that they can sell before that happens and someone else is left holding the bag: pension funds and 401k.

I hope you bought your guns, beans, and gasoline.

As is tradition dating back to cave paintings.

I’ve got bad news for you bud about what was originally placed on those Russian rockets before Sputnik, Lyka, and Gagarin.

In principle, under a First Past The Post system you can get vote splitting parties and those votes for those representatives should still be counted because if they got more votes than last time and are on an upward trajectory then those candidates can measure how well they’re resonating with their voters.

But with the USA’s FPTP and electoral college system, I’d agree with you, there’s zero point in counting those votes before declaring the winner because ultimately the electoral college comes down to red or blue which is the only thing that matters in US politics.

This is a shame because a private continent like the US could be the greatest tapestry of all flavours of political candidates and ideologies with debate and compromise if it wasn’t for:

1. The electoral college and FPTP making it into a two party system.

2. The hugely biased news media which has no obligation to report factually and fair.

3. That both sides (with the Republicans being the one that is objectively worse because of their abhorrent behaviour that’s somehow only gotten worse of late) vying for that insider trading perk and getting to control the worlds largest military and therefore dictate history.

I’m glad for you but please remember that progress is not inevitable it is fought for to attain and needs to be fought for it to be kept.

My new recipe book:

A Taste of Fire and Ice.

Just don’t expect the sequel to be released anytime soon.

Don’t you think he looks tired?

[banjo riff]

Unfortunately you’ll have to get used to it and continue challenging them. The polycrisis is only going to get worse and the number of refugees from the impact of climate change and climate change related causes i.e. conflict from collapsing food / water access and / or failed states.

In the next 10 to 20 years life quality will peak and then will start collapsing over the next 50.

When that happens a significant cohort of the population will close ranks and want to “protect” those closest around them, the desire the ultra-rich have for isolation will continue to trickle down into the rich and remnants of the upper middle class as the wealth gap widens. In times of crisis this cohort pushes further and further right.

So keep working against these forces so we can get the rich to pay their fair share to fix these problems but be prepared to take up arms when the house of cards that is the relative stability we have now collapses.

Unfortunately whilst e-commerce is their main revenue earner, Amazon Web Services (AWS) that the e-commerce platform is built rakes in a good ~20% of their revenue. So not only do you have to convince enough people worldwide to stop buying on Amazon you also have to convince large corporations who use AWS cloud to move away as well.

It’s like trying to organise people to stop using Google search. It’s nearly impossible, but an admirable goal.

Spoken like someone who hasn’t had a good roast dinner or cottage pie.

Welcome to the internet, Have a look around

Don’t you think he looks tired?

Don’t you think he looks tired?

Don’t you think he looks tired?

Don’t you think he looks tired?

Don’t you think he looks tired.

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