Is nobody else bothered by the fact that someone can amass so much wealth that their leisure boat has a second boat for their helicopter...

My prediction: It will be like when the .com bubble burst.

Websites are still around, online commerce still exists, but all the companies who are overcommitting in hopes of entrenching themselves before the gold rush burns out are likely to face a major wakeup call within the next year or two.

It's exactly this. I've had older family members who sit glued to the TV for hours watching QVC and constantly buying shit they don't need. Doesn't matter if they bought it through a website or an 800 number, the result is the same.

Most of the interstate system is built out, yes. But there are still significant parts of it being built, mostly in rural parts of the midsouth. Granted, the rate of construction has slowed significantly since the 1980's.

Which is probably entirely the point.

smirk I know what you did there.

Yes those are called scalies. You're welcome.

Yes, and half the time they hand you back a dime and three nickels after some head scratching.

I can't help but notice that those who always yell the loudest about "muh right to free speech!" Are more often than not just trying to justify some shitty behavior for which they feel they should receive no consequences.

If it can be seen it can be copied, yes, but there's a world of difference between someone scraping a service, and that service using your raw data via the back end along with all the additional metadata and account data that's associated with it.

FWIW, there's been a mass exodus of artists and creative types from X/Twitter over to Bsky lately, along with their followers, causing their numbers to grow quickly from the 6 digits over a million and now into the tens of millions in just a few short months, and I don't think they're far enough down the path of enshitification to betray the trust of that userbase just yet. I'm not saying it won't happen, but this early in the game it will quickly kill that momentum if it's discovered that they have.

Or if you drive with the windows down, or with the music up, or if kids are asleep in the backseat...

A better comparison would be... replace "AI" with "NFT". Or replace "AI" with "virtual reality". Or replace "AI" with "curved monitor". I could go on...

There's a reason Temu crap is cheaper. No thanks, I don't want a charger/cable that's going to risk damaging my devices or cause a fire.

"AI" will be a thing of the past by then, just like every other passing fad... such as blockchains, the metaverse, NFT's, and other corporate trends in tech.

Thank you for explaining that, I was just about to type out the exact same thing. I think a big reason that the community settled on Telegram is that most of us want to keep that aspect of our lives separate from our other social media streams, which are frequented by family and coworkers and other professional contacts.