This country has been raised on advertising that tells people to be dissatisfied. Whether it is shame for their looks, smell, lack of a gorgeous home, lack of that dream car, or the answer to their health woes that they can't afford, the hope is these things can be resolved through purchases, but the result is actually resentment. In truth, the aim is to inform people of what they do not have and they should acquire these things immediately to be satisfied. The implication is that other people have these things and "you" are missing out. The result is people feeling deprived - even when they have 2 cars, 2 homes, and good healthcare.

We have all been groomed with psychological expertise to be obedient consumers. The RW has tapped into that message - simple advertising - to recruit their base. The rugged individualists are actually slaves.

Rec

since both Covid and the radically changing Politics, that the good people around are trying even harder to be better people, and the others are progressively getting worse and nastier and more selfish...........sad state of affairs.

I pulled up to a stop light with a car in front of me a month ago.....It was a super expensive porche. As I approached it had a bumper sticker on it, and I wondered what kind of imbecile puts a common bumper sticker on a porche??? When I got close, I could finally read it:

GOT MINE
FUCK YOU

If that doesn't epitomize the current state of affairs, nothing does......

Must have way overbid for it. "i've got mine," he said.

Very popular in Silicon Valley: "Whoever dies with the most toys wins"

The founder of Segway fell off a cliff, and a newly listed CEO millionaire drove his Ferrari or Lamborghini off the road in Los Gatos or Campbell (I didn't take notes)

Life is only money and power to many, in exchange for meaning.

Kurt Vonnegut:
Joseph Heller and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?”

And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”

And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”

And Joe said, “Enough.”

Back in the heyday I knew broker in the East Bay that drove a Ferrari with a vanity plate that said “2FNT2BK”. What that translated to was two points on the front end (points on the loan paid by the borrower directly to the broker for doing the loan) and two points on the back end (points paid to the broker by the lender for doing the loan). It was all legal, but the customers never knew about the “backend” points because that wasn’t required to be disclosed. There were a lot of loan brokers living up in Blackhawk because of two on the front and two on the back.

Nice Ferrari. I took a photo of it in my driveway. Bright red!

Haven't been in contact lately.

We moved out there in the mid ‘60’s. 680 hadn’t even been built yet. It was a great place to grow up. Sure has changed since then though!

I was a fledgling quant at the time as was he. There was a website called NuclearPhynance where quants gathered to discuss things. We had a meet up a few times a year. I met him there. He was cool and clearly smart even though he only had a BS compared to the PhDs in the room. The he went radio silent on the site.

Then I found out he went to facebook where he did make that famous quote about people wasting their talents to get clicks.

He was a cofounder Cloudera and cashed out more there. He has since gone on to do many other projects, but he spends time being a professor and he has an angel investment company he put together with his wife called Techammer. I thought the tech was a play on the tech investments plus his name, but wife’s last name is Tecco.

He’s quite rich, but could have been richer had he chosen to be.

I could have been richer, as well, but I've got this damn thing called conscience.

Glad of it.

and none of my vids are monitized.

of our generation ended up founding a big data company who has been sued multiple times for patent infringement.

Last edited Sun Jan 12, 2025, 09:51 PM - Edit history (1)

This is actually a very interesting interview. Well worth it to read the transcript or just watch. Highly recommended! He’s very down to earth and far from greedy.

https://wandb.ai/wandb_fc/gradient-dissent/reports/Jeff-Hammerbacher-From-data-science-to-biomedicine--Vmlldzo4NjQzMzk

Last edited Mon Jan 13, 2025, 01:59 AM - Edit history (1)

It’s caused a lot of problems. But ultimately, I think it’s people that are the problem. What people do with social media is up to them. The other problem is the people who own and run social media.

However, advertisers have always targeted people in one way or another. It was just on television ads before the Internet and social media.

One thing that may have been affected is a lot of people don’t seem to have the capacity to focus their attention for long periods anymore. I know I get overwhelmed with all of the videos that are posted here. I don’t want to and can’t spend the hours watching a bunch of crazy videos, so I prefer to have a synopsis. It’s pretty much the same as with the news for me now. I got so sick of listening to these people and see how they’re capitulating now etc. it’s revolting and unhealthy for me to watch all of that all over again.

I do hate the "quantity over quality" that ads bring. And the surveillance.

I can't handle videos.
• They compress 2 minutes of value into 30.
• Can't skim.
• Can't jump around easily.
• Can't copy and paste into notes.
• "Superhuman AI" can't make useful transcripts.

And so on.

I filter heavily on DU, and I am ready to invent new filters to adapt to what you mentioned. Who knows?

I began a list of privacy and other tools in Activist HQ, and will expand as I find more and test them.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10113622

And I need to do more to help good people, encourage them, and join hands for the greater hood.

No TV. No social media. I cruise DU and Hacker News, where I get great ideas to share here, and for my own sci-tech benefit.

I’m going to read about it. On YouTube, I finally had to pay for the premium in order to be able to download my videos there… I used to be able to do that in the past without that. Long story… anyway I think it seems to have gotten rid of all of the ads now because of that. I also hate the ads because you can’t fast forward through them and if you try to go around them in anyway, they keep coming back, so annoying.

It has survived many attempts to kill it. I think that the last time I used it was to download all the original Iron Chef Japan shows I could find. And I think i downloaded some classical music less the pointless slide shows that come with them.

That's about I have done with YT.

Serious work to do. I will make a big note to prioritize this matter.

Yes, I did have to find an app that let me actually download the video so that it could be used without having to watch it on the YouTube app. I found a really great one for that. After all, we are talking about my own video so I should be able to do whatever I want with it. It doesn’t become YouTube’s property because I posted it there.

Something happened to my computer and a lot of my video files were damaged and I can no longer open them. So I needed to do that ASAP.

whatever