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Cake day: August 24th, 2024

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  • Ah, thankyou for bearing with me, I see what you mean.

    I just assumed there must be a large military office nearby and they were targeting the procurement personnel who do the actual contract and tender work, plus maybe the manufacturer headquarters is nearby and this is part of one of the more revolting symptoms of a highly militarized capitalist culture. I didn’t get quite as far as drawing the connection to targeting politicians and staffers who likely can’t put a meeting with missile sales reps on their publicly documented calendars, but that makes a lot of sense.





  • This list puts US at ~297m English speakers which is the largest group from one single country, that is true. But 297m / 1,537m = The US has 19.35% of English speakers globally.

    You are likely also greatly underestimating current internet connectivity, older smartphones have changed things for poorer countries a lot over the past decade. For example, India has only 62.6% of people as internet users - but that’s still 880m people and probably most of their 125m English speakers. Nigeria has 63.8% internet users, but that’s 136m internet users. And they also have 125m English speakers, who again, are more likely to be the people who can afford an English education, and also a smartphone. And then there’s Pakistan with another 100m English speakers and 70.8% internet users, etc.

    Just 3 countries, (2 of which were 1 country 80 years ago) and you’re close to that 300 million count already.

    The list also gives US as 92.4% internet users, for what it’s worth. A little less than 97% and not even in the top 20 countries by percentage, which is surprising.

    The internet is less American than ever. It’s just that most non-American people probably have non-English language spaces they can choose to gather in addition to the English-dominated spaces. Americans, on the other hand, are more likely to be monolingual English speakers and so they concentrate in the English-dominated spaces.

    And non-Americans are all so used to people assuming American defaultism in English-dominated internet spaces because it was historically hugely expensive to get online and was overwhelmingly American English-speaking, that it’s not even worth correcting when it happens the millionth time.

    I’ve also put non-metric and US currency conversions in posts online many times. Not because I’m American or use them in daily life. It was just less annoying to convert them when writing rather than hear the inevitable multiple complaints about not understanding things in meters and dessicated jokes like “that’s probably $2 in real money”.

    You’re either overestimating the accuracy of your assumptions about your online interactions and/or seeing selection bias from your immersion in otherwise culturally isolated spaces.


  • That has also always been my gut feel about Carmack, but it still sucks to see the evidence. I wish that gut feeling would stop being so dammed accurate, but it gets a lot of practise.

    Doom was definitely christofascist fantasy porn. At least Quake you were defending invasion from the most literal manifestation of eugenicist Space-Nazis possible. Yes I am choosing to disregard the inherent US military fetishism because I don’t want to ruin my formative media which I deep down always knew was problematic.

    sigh

    Can I at least keep the soundtracks as pleasant and untarnished memories?


  • Ugh. Thanks, yeah that’s good enough for me without even opening xcancel. My search for “Tim Sweeney conservative” only dredged up his land conservation purchases and the “stop being so divisive” / “no politics in art” dogwhistles which had previously made me suspicious, but I had mostly forgotten about. I quit Twitter many years ago so I missed that whole knobslobbering saga and didn’t think to include Musk after skimming today’s shitty Google “search” results.

    Ah fuck, and Carmack too? Goddamn it. Twist the knife a little harder.

    Fucking tech bros, always ruining tech.






  • I don’t toil in the mines of the big FAANG, but this tracks with what I’ve been seeing in my mine. I also predict it will end with lay-offs and companies collapsing.

    Zitron thinks a lot about the biggest companies and how it will ultimately hurt them, which is reasonable. But, I think it ironically downplays the scale of the bubble, and in turn, the impacts of it bursting.

    The expeditions into OpenAI’s financials have been very educational. If I were an investigative reporter, my next move would be to look at the networks created by venture capitalists and what is happening inside the companies who share the same patrons as Open AI. I don’t say that as someone who interacts with finances, just as someone who carefully watches organizational politics.