The government is manipulating economic data and fooling absolutely nobody.

Dictators don't need to fool anybody - they just need to make it impossible to discover or disseminate the real numbers.

Only in theory

No, not only in theory but also in practice. Power is given, not written. Law texts don't have lasers that come out and automatically obliterate anyone who disobeys them. The laws need to be enforced by people and that enforcement can be pretty inconsistent. Numerous dictators were actively disobeying the laws of their country but everyone with the authority to hold them accountable chose not to. And as much as we can criticize those people, it's kind of understandable since the dictator almost always has full and direct control over the military.

In almost every case, slavery involved some form of tribalism, sprinkled with portrayals of inferiority and dehumanization. This was quite intentional since most people don't feel comfortable enslaving peers whom they feel are equals. We could start a pissing contest over whether or not race-based tribalism and dehumanization is any worse than the other forms, but I think it's more productive to agree that slavery was wrong in all of its forms and come up with ways to ameliorate the poverty that modern black people are experiencing as a latent effect of American slavery.

The wifi excuse was made during the demo itself. This just appears to be an attempt to add plausibility to it, but the explanation doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

If he expects anybody to ever buy the damned thing, he's going to have to do better than that because the tech-savvy people who influence average users aren't going to buy this ridiculous narrative, let alone recommend anyone to buy this product.

It's not just that one thing failed, there were numerous major issues with the demo. And in addition to that, Zuck and his employee immediately tried to blame it on the wifi despite the fact that the commands were clearly getting to the server and back but the responses demonstrated that the AI misunderstood the prompt. If you insist on demoing tech that isn't ready, fine but at least rehearse the demo ad nauseam until you've found a solution that works and then stick to it absolutely verbatim. The worst thing you could do is attempt to gaslight a tech-savvy audience with some nonsense about wifi and DDOS.

My friend recently lamented how numerous friends of his became Trump supporters due to the LGBTQ discussions happening in their children's schools. Regardless of how anyone feels about it, it's just not popular and it was a major reason that dickbag was re-elected. Even if it seems like the correct moral decision, the unpopularity of it led to a far worse situation. Choosing pragmatism and reading the room rather than ideological stances could have helped us prevail, but now we're all stuck in a reality far worse than a bit less tolerance toward a particular group of people. The worst part is that I fear we haven't learned our lesson, as I'm sure the negative replies to this comment will demonstrate.

Our Secretary of Education has promised to body slam illiteracy and suplex low math scores. She promises to be the undertaker of increased enrollment in colleges and the ultimate warrior of school safety. With her extensive background in our educational system and her stone cold attitude, there's no way she won't rock at her job.

Shit, Son, you've still got a lot to learn.

Creating a national sales tax

Tariffs are worse than a national sales tax. Sales tax is paid directly by the consumer at the time of purchase. Tariffs are paid immediately by the importer for all units, regardless of whether or not they can be sold. So it increases the immediate expenses of the company importing the goods, reducing their liquidity, and then they may never recover those costs since, unlike corporate taxes, the expense is paid regardless of whether or not the item is ever sold.

The more fuckwits who capitulate, the more pressure there will be on those who resist. This orange-utan is almost 80 years old and has spent his life eating like a child whose parents were out of town while doing as little exercise as possible. It's three more years at most - have some fucking self-respect and call his bullshit out for what it is. It's not like most Americans don't already know what's going on deep down inside.

Is anyone else tired of winning yet?

In what way does it fundamentally change the product? Does it stop keeping food cold? Does it stop generating a shopping list and displaying it on the screen? What fundamental feature in the product description does it stop doing or fundamentally change?

In the long-term, no one knows because the dickheads in charge can change the ToS on a whim and the next update can completely alter the behavior to whatever they want. This is why I refuse to buy almost anything anymore. If they keep pushing us, maybe we'll finally start to figure out that happiness doesn't come from materialism. More realistically, maybe we'll shift our materialistic values to older items that aren't capable of modern fuckery. Either way, the companies pushing this shit would reap what they've sown.

This is one of the oldest rationalizations for shitty behavior: "if I won't do it, somebody else will anyway". And that may be true, but why compromise your own principles and contribute to moral decay based on an assumption which may not even turn out to be true? If someone else wants to be an asshole to make easy money, then it'll be their reputation they're flushing down the shitter. And if society holds those people accountable, fewer people will be inclined to engage in that behavior.

I came here to say this. And with the current guy in the White House, I imagine they'll succeed in getting this implemented.

I'll be alright with this so long as the manager of my 401K gives me the option to avoid having any of my money invested in companies that don't release quarterly earnings reports. American companies love bragging about their earnings, so any company that goes out of its way to hide that data should be considered extremely questionable.