Chatbots whose ripply muscles and chiseled features ravish the conversation like a trashy romance novel.

I'll be back as a consultant at triple the rate in less than 18 months to clean up the mess...

Even if you're automating something you yourself do on a regular basis.

This is a general property of the universe: put something under a (metaphorical or literal) microscope and you discover things that are at once obvious and at the same time fantastical.

Making Things is fun and frustrating that way.

Being unaware of where the opponent is and going through the motions of kicking a phantom ball was very much par for the course.

Cupcake, 45% of government work entails coming up with workarounds to problems created by the other 50%. The remaining 5% (at best) is something you might call useful without having to supress laughter.

This extends to contractors. Microsoft is a big one.

Every place I can think of residential water and electricity rates are a whole different animal than commercial and industrial rates.

In my town in particular, the marginal rate for *residential* water use shoots up by a factor of 4 once you go over the threshold for regular domestic consumption. Cook and clean, and you pay a few hundred per quarter. Water your lawn and it's a few thousand.

I imagine if the leftyloons around here ever allowed a datacenter, the water commissioner would be purchasing service trucks with solid gold steering wheels in short order from all the profit such a heavy water user would generate.

Same with power. And taxes. Industrial and commercial property subsidizes a whole lot of infrastructure.

This Austrualian thing is a grandstanding no-op at best.

You let the tree huggers in to space launch, they'll be demanding six-year-long environmental reviews for every single piece of a moon base or asteroid sampling flight.

Unless the chinese do it, then crickets.

Yeah, I don't understand how he makes more money than I do, I just know he stole it from me somehow....

Blue collar gets paid by effort put in, white collar gets paid by end result produced.

A century ago, number or wrench turns per shift accurately captured the former. Today, babysitting a cnc isn't as easily translated into a measurement of productivity.

There's obviously a whole continuum in between but it's unsurprising that traditionally blue collar work is adopting white collar trappings.

So let's all blame the scapegoat.

If that's how you want to think about it, sure.

At some point I suppose you'll come to the realization that concierge medical services are all fine and dandy if you're a one-percenter, but don't really scale very well.

Idunno dude. It's just so fucking egregious it tends to come to front of mind when many of those same academics complain about politics interfering with dispassionate pursuit of truth.

The hypocrisy is strong, and it is worth remembering.

It's fine. Plenty of money, good salaries, and lots of open positions in academic and industrial r&d.

Unless of course you went full lefty-loon-woke in the last decade and went on record that according to science chicks can have dicks and dudes can (and should!) wear dresses.

Then I suppose we're occupied france, the gulags, and the cambodian killing fields all rolled into one.

By which you mean they disappear their treehuggers instead of indulging them so that nothing can get built without lots of delays and legalized bribes (read: donations to environmental groups)?

Sorry guy. The graft over there is omnipresent. Red envelopes stuffed with cash are a form of life. To the point of you best have one to give to the doctors if you or your relative is hospitalized.

"I totally shot that cop in self-defence, preemptively. He might have shot my friends as they were setting their explosives..."

https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/...