Politics aside, marketing firms have done the real damage to search engine results by hijacking algorithms with padded, timely, but otherwise meaningless content. "How do I replace the springs on my garage door" will doubtless yield a thousand results from garage door manufacturers, written by clueless marketers, and 9/10ths of the page will just be gibberish like "A well functioning garage door is an excellent investment for your home. Did you know that a recent study concluded that upgrading your garage door will increase your home's value by boosting its curb appeal? We make garage doors in all shapes and sizes, so you can get the door of your dreams! etc etc etc" It's infuriating.
I was there for six hours and got my car broken into in broad daylight. Absolute hellhole. I visited some extremely wealthy friends who pay a fortune to live in the hills. We parked downtown and I thought they were going into utter panic when they remembered a set of golf clubs in the back of their car. They live in constant fear of being robbed at any moment they're in SF proper. What a fucking nightmare of an existence.
There's a new kind of Moore's Law at play here, one that concerns the time it takes to recognize meaningless timesinks. There was a day when that meant "I'm not going to watch Picard because it looks like a waste of time," now it means "I'm not going to watch critical takedowns of Picard because even that is a waste of time." Everything in mainstream media is empty calories. Even the critics who profiteer off of shitting on MSM are tired of the enterprise. Let's all just move the fuck on and enrich our lives.
Go find letters home from soldiers in the Civil War. These are farmers, mechanics, and destitute hillbillies who have a greater mastery of the English language than we do. We don't even know how much we've lost. Picard is shit. Okay fine. Move on. Read books.
I don't know how I feel about the Liberty incident, but Israel legit stole weapons grade uranium during the 70s from both the United States and if I remember right, France. Israel is 100% about Israel, and they will gladly fuck their allies if it advances their cause.
Which is exactly why you should support any legislation that explicitly curtails what can and cannot be a justified search and seizure. I don't accept a defeatist attitude about it. I get it, the NSA violates its own charter, but none of that changes without legislative or judicial action.
It's not about making a list so large it's unwieldy. It's about giving federal agencies grounds to violate your fourth amendment rights on the flimsiest of pretexts and without a warrant. Want to track that guy? He's unvaxxed? Went to a Trump rally? Is a white? Sounds like a terrorist to me.
Disagree. Here's the proposed amendment that got shot down:
“None of the funds authorized to be appropriated in this Act shall be used to monitor, analyze, investigate or prosecute any individual solely because that individual declined the administration of a vaccine to COVID-19 or expressed opposition to such administration,”
They want the ability to target political opposition on the flimsiest grounds possible. Didn't get vaxxed? Sounds like you're one of them white supremacists I've heard so much about.
The Black Company series has wonderful narration, if you're into brutal fantasy. The Day of the Jackal if you're looking for one of the best suspense/thrillers ever written. The Devil's Chessboard if you're looking for history, with a touch of JFK conspiracy theory. The Cyberiad for clever, fun, lighthearted scifi. Blindsight for heady, complex scifi. A Distant Mirror for medieval history and its wonderful prose God's Bankers is a solid history of Catholic corruption Use of Weapons, Player of Games, Consider Phlebas - if you love Iain Banks Hyperion - Fantastical scifi Solaris - Philosophical, slow moving scifi
I remember IRC chatbots with longer scripts than yours