The 90s and the naughts were actually a pretty good time… we did too little to ensure that continued, in so so many ways.

at anytime a bigger war could break out.

Welcome back to the late 1970s / early 1980s I grew up in.

We just learned to live with it- maybe move to a big city for a better chance at instant vaporization.

Meanwhile in 1984: When Doves Cry you might as well Jump, and when the 99 Red Balloons Float by you’ll be sitting pretty in this dust that was a city.

The problem with those DoE jobs even back then was that the science and reality of the situation was completely overwhelmed by the politics, the NIMBYs. Director or whatever he was making me the offer to work under him was telling me, in 1990, that construction of new nuclear generation facilities would be restarting “very soon” with the new improved passive safety designs, etc. He’s right: that absolutely should have happened, it’s the only rational way forward - phase out the old plants at the end of their design lifetimes and replace them with new, better, safer tech. Instead, what we got for the next 30+ years was no new construction, and limping the old plants along with rehab service life extensions because that was politically feasible.

I don’t think 30 years of frustrated screaming into a hurricane of irrational objections would have been a better career path.

At least it seems to be about power generation and not weapons.

Yet another reason I am so glad I turned down those DoE job offers in the 80s.

Visio is an outdated spreadsheet name, in English.

Visio is the new video conferencing software, in French.

France leads the world, it is up to everyone else to worry about conflict with France, not the other way around. /s

Checking the year of manufacture of my daily driver laptop… 2018. It’s fine, it works well, does everything I need, just like it did 8 years ago when it was an “average” new laptop.

Oh, it’s also running Linux, I don’t know what would have happened if I left Windows on it - that got dumped in 2018 too.

most people just go with ill-fitting off-the-shelf industrial goods instead.

The age of Amazon has made it so much worse… even poor people went to clothing stores and tried stuff on before buying it.

Now, if you don’t want to pay triple, you get it from mail order and just hope it fits - yeah you can return it if it doesn’t fit, but how much hassle is that, if it’s “close enough” people generally don’t bother, whereas if you were in the store you’d get the right size within a minute or two before buying it.

Resisting workers are unproductive, and annoying - you can see their perspective, right?

Mdme Antoinette, Mdme Antoinette, the peasants are revolting!

When have they not been?

And what people are excited is the idea of replacing all non-pleasant work.

So, when do I get an AI to navigate the phone-tree for me (kind of like the advocate in Jupiter Ascending)?

Oh, c’mon - have you EVER tried managing people? They’re a pain in the ass: expensive, unpredictable, needy beyond just the money they demand. Of course dimwit managers would rather outsource their people jobs to a service company wherever and whenever they can, let the service company do all that messy people-management.

What they’re missing is: those outsourcing service providers, even the ones providing AI “workers”, are themselves made possible by, staffed with: people. Your outsourcing bills are ultimately paying for: people. Once they become dependent upon these outsourced service providers, guess what? Their billing rates will go up and up and up right up to the point that it’s almost tempting to stop paying the service provider and just: hire their own people to do the work.

Worth the time to read: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-03-18-asbestos-in-the-walls-government-by-spicy-autocomplete-ff437603809c

Well, really, it’s wage slavery. Work is all you have, and the pay you get is not enough to give you any freedom from the work.

As you say, you don’t have enough time / energy to go look for another job - such places also intimidate the workforce and arbitrarily fire workers who might signal that they are looking for another job (such firing probably being a favor in the long run, but not if you starve to death in the meantime…)

Ben & Jerry had it right with a 5:1 ratio. No person in a company’s time is “worth” more than 5x the value of another person’s time. Some incentive to develop skills, advance in your role, recognition of better performance, sure. At 5x, that should be enough to recognize your investment in yourself and your skills and your commitment to the company vs some guy who just shows up to push a broom. It wasn’t so out of line with “reality” when they did it in the 1980s, but today it just doesn’t work - the US is stratifying into classes/castes like the ones India is trying to abolish, just without explicit labels. The US system is based on how many digits are in your annual income figure: 4, 5, 6, 7, more?

UBI would go a long way toward rectifying all of this. Let business do what they will, provide every citizen with enough money to live, instead of 0 + whatever they can squeeze out of the bureacrazy by “demonstrating need.” If “illegals” can earn enough to live better here than elsewhere without any UBI, let them - if they get into financial trouble, give them assistance getting back to where they came from - otherwise: live and let live. At the very least, businesses would have to improve working conditions - otherwise the workers would just stay home until they find a better deal elsewhere. I can tell you from experience in the disabled community: people want work, they want to get out and have their value to society acknowledged with a paycheck - they also like to be able to buy shiny things. The current welfare system is a big bureaucratic stick hanging over their head threatening to beat them with benefit cancellation if they do get out and earn a little money.

On the surface I agree - what’s being shown at top headlines, etc. But the PRC wasn’t as TACO as 2025 USA.

Its random and arbitrary enforced.

A direction the US is moving towards…

It was practiced in the Chinese tech sector for a while, then made illegal by their courts - but it is still practiced in private firms there due to lax enforcement.

Now you’re being rational, looking at the big picture. Anyone promoting 996 is, first, using it for shock value, and second, promoting a: me first, me always, me only. perspective on what’s desirable - for the company owners. Workers? Meh, they bought trickle down once, why not try that again? /s

I hope it doesn’t spread outside of China, and I hope it ends (in practice) there soon.

“Although the Chinese Supreme People’s Court ruled 996 illegal in 2021, the practice remains a de facto standard in many private companies due to lax labor law enforcement.”

at the high health cost? Is it really worth it?

Look at who’s promoting 996, I don’t think any of them take any responsibility for their workers’ health.

What he’s saying is that fascism prevents depression. Need more oil? Just go take it.

500,000 jobs eliminated, how many of those 500,000 are still unemployed? Of those, how many have the means to “band together and take the billionaires down?”