In ways you can't even imagine. Retail space leases normally include a percentage of the gross revenue as part of the rent, and in California that percentage can be as much as 30%. And the commercial mortgage business is batshit insane in every possible way, which means commercial landlords are batshit insane as well.

Add in California being the second most expensive state to run a business in, and most heavily regulated (second only to New York), and it's very surprising that only half of stores in the business district went under in four years. That's roughly average nationwide, in what can only be considered a business hostile place.

It's also long past time to recognize that communism (even if you call it socialism) is suicidally stupid, but here we are.

Follow the money.

Google, whose main business is, and has always been, advertising, views AI of any kind as a tool for that business. They have to adopt a realistic view of it, lest they run into trouble with shareholders.

AI companies, like Anthropic and OpenAI, do nothing but AI, and they have to view it as the be-all and end-all of human accomplishment, or they won't have any investors.

Both are simply promoting shareholder value in the best way they know how.

Note that fact and truth do not enter into this equation in any way.

It'll be serving up ads and sharing all your prompts with M$ by this time next week. If it's not already.

The AI toilets for sale do a chemical analysis for your poop to warn of you health problems.

Dunno about today, but my father made one for a job he did as an electrician in Nebraska in the 50s. You see, winter weather in Nebraska is sub-zero, and it was an outhouse (built from brick, with a flush toilet, but dammit! the shitter belongs 50 feet down the path from the house - the rancher was . . . a bit eccentric).

So he bought the cheapest hollow toilet seat he could find, and lined it with (incandescent) Christmas tree lights. Worked like a charm, and provided a bit of light on the long, cold winter nights.

If your only goal is to hide things from the police, who have a warrant. Criminals and ex-wives generally have a hard time getting those warrants.

It's good for what it's good for, which is not everything.

If it's important, have multiple backups.

Given this history of AI making shit up, students won't learn that lesson until they see their score.

If the situation hasn't changed (and it hasn't), there is no more urgency than there was before. Only the claims of urgency have, and that's because people are no longer responding to the last crisis hysteria.

That doesn't mean we can't use it along the way.

California water politics puts animals above people, even if it kills people, and lies about it.

Yes. We have to. Because it's not about crisis, it's about leading the charge (and getting rich doing it) against crisis. You can't lead the charge against crisis if there is no crisis. There will - literally - always be another crisis, 100% of the time. There's far too much money involved.

Actually, about half is used for "environmental" purposes, which is to say, it is allowed to flow out to the sea. Agriculture is the second biggest category, but there would be no shortage in our lifetimes without the "environmental" part.

I think it'd be obvious their problem is . . . AI.

It also can't protect you from the insurgents who want to remove your tribe from the gene pool, or force you at sword point to convert to their brand of wingnuttery, then slit your throat so you can't relapse into sin. Or just steal whatever you make on the posh foreign job.

There are a lot of reasons people emigrate. Jobs aren't even a major one for mass emigration.

Or someone knows what a freak of nature his phone addiction makes him, and is desperately trying to feel more normal by projecting his failings onto everyone.