Apt metaphor of our times.

Greenwashing, social media highlight reels, worship of the affluent, grind culture, etc.

Putting a fake, stepford face to obfuscate the horrors we refuse to address, using unethical(theft) technology being shoved down our throats for profit no less.

It's a shame that the next generation of capitalist nepos are raised aware that their family hoard is fed by burning the world, and that same hoard insulates them from climate change induced mass famine\drought\etc.

The people that make the important decisions and own both of our parties don't lose sleep over their avarice, and impress that dynastically.

We need to reign in our owner class, or no amount of begging will help. They know what they're doing, and know they can protect and insulate themselves and theirs by convincing you to consume more than you need with propaganda and regulatory capture.

I mean, I assume part of that standoffishness is simply local pride since Coca Cola is headquartered there.

There's a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.

The Japanese are one of the few countries worthy of even more pity than us Americans when it comes to slaving for and being defined by their vocation.

I agree with you completely, but people who don't play the meaningless game of career trajectory are literally shunned by family there for it.

Honestly this is a big reason I can't root for our society in its current form.

Everyone in an area, barring diagnosed disability requiring special education, should go to the same PUBLIC schools to develop empathy with Americans who don't live behind their guard gates, to have similar academic starting points if even a partial "meritocracy" is something we'd like to try to actually aspire to, and to reverse rich parents having no skin in the game and forcing them to advocate FOR public schools with their power rather than lobby to further destroy them for tax cuts because being greedy sociopaths is kind of their thing.

The idea that a child's future prospects are so dependant on their parent's socioeconomic status, rather than solely the child's aptitude and motivation, makes this whole place nothing but a bad clown show to me. Feudalism with a marketing team.

In a country where intelligent and hard working children are lost to schools we starved to cut wealthy sociopath's taxes, while dynastic entitled nitwits like George W Bush and Donald Trump literally cannot fail despite barely being able to walk without tripping on their own shoes or bankrupting yet another company, trying just makes one a sucker.

I understand intimately, my friend!

Yeah. It's carved to be vilified, which is hypocritical not just because there are other equivalent harms we allow young people to pursue for pleasure, there are several considerably more harmful harms we allow young people to pursue for pleasure.

All because an old newspaper magnate's paper pulp business interests were threatened by hemp and it became tradition.

You can cause severe brain damage and kill people with alcohol, tobacco, and concussions. The studies I've seen about Marijuana in teens handwring over <5 IQ points with chronic use.

It's inconsistent to the extreme.

It's not realistic or even reasonable to avoid all pleasurable activities that come with risks, which weed falls under, until an entire third of your life is over, no.

We let people under 25 play contact sports, drink alcohol, and consume large quantities of sugar, all indulgences potentially more detrimental to the body than Marijuana.

Look at all the research on contact sports and the massive risks they bring, it's weird to me those are still legal for kids.

Unfortunately, his "I don't give a shit" demeanor literally endears him to his voters.

They vote for him because they firmly feeeeeel that gubmit is holding their rugged individualism back and needs to be destroyed.

Of course their throats would be coughing up blood from all the screaming the millisecond one of the government services they don't appreciate or even realize they receive all day every day stopped happening.

But having abandoned, or never having had, basic critical thinking and reasoning skills, they'd just blame all the out groups they despise for the consequences of their own votes.

The alternative needed to be NASA, slow, methodical, maximum safety, maximum consideration, with patents benefiting society instead of a private class of shareholders who see it as just another gift in their portfolio.

Instead, we gave away the future to reckless profiteers, and starved the correct, societal scale project of growing beyond our world that could have provided a sense of common purpose and accomplishment as Mercury and Apollo did, which given we're at each other's throats would have been useful.

We won't get anywhere with people like Musk or any other avarice obsessed profiteer at the wheel, only heartbreak in trusting human lives to them as they cut corners and overpromise their capability.

How is it a strawman? Even the person I replied to said it isn't realistic to follow the letter of the overcaution.

No one's getting out of here intact and alive.

Don't run in front of any buses, but when hit with a statement of overcaution, I usually blurt out "you're right, we should all sit in the corner of an empty padded room, eat saltines, and wait patiently for a safe death."

Beyond the point of being a good student, excess intellect at this stage of civilization is more curse than blessing.

Honestly if they're a good student and otherwise aren't a troublemaker, I didn't see nothing.

Until they turn 18, then pass that shit son.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/chatgpt-gets-new-o1-model-first-to-have-reasoning-for-hard-problems/

She's Misty the flying pup...

She came from the puppy... Shup...

😭

I used to do this and it helped my mental state a lot. LSD refresh every 6-12 months.