"First three questions women ask: What do you do? Where do you live? What car do you drive?"

-- single, young millionaire on a dating show, circa 2010s

70 years of post-modern feminism still doesn't demand that men talk about feelings, or even listen. Yet, for some reason, they're surprised they don't have a relationship.

Bitcoin never did anything, it was always a collectible.

Every pricing bubble and many marketing scams depend on the one idea: There's a bigger idiot around the proverbial corner. One day, there isn't. It seems that day is near, for bitcoin.

Yeah, everyone loves free software: Until their hard work is treated like a toy.

Helping the little guy is good, until a Corporation demands more profits.

It's why a winner-takes-all culture hurts everyone else.

Spyglass should have known better: First, Microsoft had a habit of stealing technology. Second, software contracts were already moving to a fixed fee per user/machine: It was a better measure of consumption and thus contract obligations. Third, if Microsoft liked the terms, the cynical opinion should be, they already had a way of abusing the seller.

The french "This means war" versus the US "Fuck you, slave": The US oligarchy may suffer interesting times, too. The distance apart will limit what both sides can do.

My car whinging that I'm wearing a seat belt would be grounds for a refund, to me. I would complain about a deliberate effort to hide the speedometer, to a consumer safety service.

There's no longer a demand for excellence: Obtaining perfection in everyday activities is no longer a personal goal for young people. They play online games where the only rule is point and click: Many times, there isn't a performance rating (high score, items collected, secrets found, monsters killed, kill cost/proficiency). Gaining attention (likes, retweets) is the preferred measure of success and value.

In days gone by, a powerful, fast and consistent UI was one of Microsoft's selling points: In the era of micro-marketing/up-selling, AI slop and enshittification, I don't trust Microsoft to improve anything.

Slave-owner asks, how can slavery bring meaning to your life?

This is the current choice of winner-takes-all capitalism: Doctorow looked at the consumer-side and called it "enshittification".

A collision happened: What outcome causes the least damage?

If you want to stop bad things happening: Outlaw cars and outlaw children.

That's because homes and market-facing apartments are commodities, not a a tool to make more consumers and tax-payers. That economic reality, which also applies to education and healthcare, has changed how families exist and why they don't.

Such models tend to have extra crap-ware installed, and the cost of internet data is much higher.

When people formed a co-operative and contributed money to it, creating a new business structure, the original argument for giving it legal protection was, for the good of the market. Despite this demand for a social contract, there has been/is little discussion on what the duties and responsibilities were/are. The Chicago School of Economics famously abandoned the demand for a social contract with "unreal" persons.

While corporations were, in fact, good for the market (until they created a cartel/monopoly), they were always bad for the rest of society: employees, unions, legal responsibility and law-making, bonds and loans financing, creditors, macro-economics and the environment, all suffered under the power of concentrated money and labour.

Facebook/Meta should not be forgiven when they willfully abuse people.

Translation:

It's okay to be a violent racist: It's the victim's job to be bulletproof.

This is the Chicago ideology of "corporations are naturally immoral" applied to everything. In truth, the social contract stopped being "corporations must serve the public good", 120 years ago.

Strangely, most people believe leaving your door unlocked does not excuse burglary of your home. Likewise, Facebook/Meta should be forgiven when they willfully abuse people.