With a tattoo of Shrek on her forehead…

SEO isn’t hard… Just look at the people who do SEO… Ain’t the sharpest sandwiches in the toolshed there.

I get what you’re saying, and you’re right that a lot of early tech was janky. But it was also built to solve problems for the user, not to self destruct within 5 years so they buy another one. Engineers and experts in companies used to have more sway when they put their hand up, now there are professionally designed mechanisms in companies to silence and undermine them.

I grew up in the 1990s, and there genuinely was a shared belief that technology could make life better, that systems could become more humane, more efficient, and more empowering over time. Even when the solutions were rough, they were often built by people who cared deeply about understanding the problem and improving things incrementally. Not to boost their share price or go viral on social media.

What feels different now isn’t that the tech is imperfect, but that large parts of the tech industry have deprioritised understanding and craftsmanship in favour of growth, optics, and financial engineering. The jank used to come from constraints; today it often comes from misaligned incentives. I am weary of attending ‘tech’ events because the focus isn’t science, innovation or improving peoples lives - it’s about fundraising and networking.

It feels like we’re at the endgame of the corporate mentality in technology. “Tech” used to imply expertise, craft, and a commitment to quality; now it’s mostly a buzzword for raising capital and PR.

Real progress these days mostly comes from enthusiasts and small teams, not hierarchical, ego-driven organisations that prioritise the share price over their human talent. Not “startup bros” racing to get another Node.js app funded, but the freaks and weirdoes staying up until sunrise reading obscure 1990s whitepapers and translating them into Python to fix a random Blender ticket because they actually care.

I often wonder what would happen if we funded those passionate weirdoes who just want to help. Pay them an income to go around the neighbourhood, setting up cloud backups for everyone, organising systems, and building solutions that actually work. This rigid adherence to a classist, centralised society built around wealth isn’t just obscene and inhuman, it’s making us dumber and blocking the kinds of solutions that should already exist.

Is that why the company is becoming more thuggish? Desperately searching for scapegoats?

Go back to IBM OS/2 Warp 4! Back when there was still actual choices in desktop computing…

MAGA are busy creating and watching Child Sexual Abuse Material on Elon Musks X.

In 2008, Iron Man had just come out and blown everyone’s minds. iPhones were still quite new, so was Facebook. Obama got elected and everyone was excited by the first black president, even here in Australia.

The worst part is all our data is stored on American servers run by megacorpos. ID information scanned by venue terminals is one, but even private health records and sensitive government documents are being chucked into Amazon S3, Azure/OneDrive and Dropbox.

The government should be prioritising secure, independent digital infrastructure but they’re too busy giving our tax dollars to foreign consulting firms so they can build bad websites.

For LGBTIQA+ kids and kids in domestic violence situations? Removing social media can be detrimental and even lead to a life threatening situation. That is simply a fact.

The eSafety Commissioner ignored submissions from mental health organisations begging them to follow a more nuanced approach, no such luck.

There is definitely a myriad of legitimate valid concerns to be had about social media. It’s addictive, manipulates emotions for clicks/views and encourages ordinary people to perform shock and outrage for the algorithm. But that problem doesn’t just affect young people, and I would argue that adults are just as vulnerable and the manipulation of whom has far more dangerous and immediate consequences for society.

Also on the note of predators, they didn’t block problematic platforms like 4Chan or Roblox. So the pedophiles still have access to your kids, they just can’t talk to their cousins or watch tutorials on YouTube. Another job well done by the Australien government.

Edit: I won’t be engaging with bad faith arguments. Insta block because life is too short!

Gee, too bad no one saw this coming… /s

Given America’s obvious advantages with the scale of its military resources, I thought that the fight would be easy too, but after thinking about it I’m not so sure. War is not simply a matter of having advanced weapons and lots of units.

Considering how retarded Trump’s administration is and how demoralised the most professional and loyal military personnel are, combined with civil unrest domestically… I don’t think Trump can execute a successful invasion of another country without losing everything. More competent administrations (barely more*) have started wars and it cost them dearly in the ballot box.

You can have the best jets and ships and missiles, but if the personnel operating them think you are a pedophile and a traitor, giving illegal orders through a compromised chain of command… how effective do you think they will be in a theater of war?

Let’s hope we never find out.