That's the kind of person who came up with this idea. They don't realize how utterly bizarre it sounds to normal people.

Still, even if they're only targeting the top 10% income bracket, that's 30 million American suckers to pull from. There's a type of person who will absolutely hit "subscribe" on a service that dumps a box of random trinkets on them every month, if the ad is good enough.

I guess the FAA should turn it over to the Ghostbusters, because something definitely tore the cable from the utility pole.

They only take that attitude with the weak.

It should also be noted we have hurricanes almost every year, my power was out for a cumulative 3 weeks in 2024 and 2025. Every year storms come and knock the poles down, and still none of the people in charge pull their head out of their ass and pony up to bury the cables. Their solution: "Don't look at us, buy a generator. Great sale now, tax-free weekend."

In my area, I'm told it's considerations of soil quality and flooding, but probably cost is a bigger factor.

People wouldn't accept the electrical rates the power company would charge to redo the whole infrastructure. And government here is ideologically opposed to funding it, or doing anything useful for people more broadly.

It's an experimental flying craft conducting trials. Why wouldn't the FAA be involved?

Thankfully the FAA has some skills of deduction and reasoning. They know that just because this crash didn't kill anyone, doesn't mean the next crash won't. Someone like you on the case, yeah it would be a total waste.

It sounds like it's more comparable to 311 or 713-848-4888 (local sheriff's office number).

That's what some in power see as the problem. For a contemporary example, you can take the red hat movement. Scamming (and worse) has been greenlit as long as they get a cut.

What you see from that is the government ceasing to create anything valuable, to do anything worthwhile. It becomes organized crime. The end-game is a Mafia state that functions similarly to Russia.

It's not so much the foreign aspect that bothers me, I just pointed that out to try explaining it in a way an idiot can understand.

I do have hope that Europe can prevent domestic companies from taking advantage of people, in addition to the foreign companies.

Compare that to the US approach with TikTok: Foreigners taking advantage of the public is absolutely unacceptable, but if it's homegrown criminals giving Bunko his cut, that's just fine.

The bad writers never stopped. The AI is in addition to.

This is why I'm interested in something like the 90s web directories. The idea of a human scoping out the worthwhile stuff, manually evaluating it for inclusion.

The web feels incredibly closed-off now, like a box. So much content lost in the black hole of social media. It used to feel like you were sailing out into the wide world to see what you could find. Now it's like some company has you in the lockup with some cellmates. They feed you slop 3 times a day, monitor your every breath, and never let you out.

The problem is the knock-on effects when large numbers of idiots are allowed to be scammed. Idiots here means corporations and governments in addition to individuals.

Stupid people, doing stupid things, which harm someone else, is why the concept of "law" was invented.

Then there's the implied message that scamming people is OK as long as they're stupid. Not sure those kind of ideas lead to a good culture or civilization generally.

Certainly beats letting foreign companies come in and have their way with your nation's children.

I work somewhere that just placed an initial order on some of these Copilot+ laptop thingies. Nothing compared to their usual sizes of orders, yet. But some higher in the broligarchy thought it would be an idea to trial them for whatever reason.

I'm assuming the "demand" is propaganda though, like anything from 0 is an infinite increase. To telling whether any of the bros like it enough to buy a second round. They gave up on some gizmos like tablets years ago.