Next up on Sick Sad World…

This is tragic, but not unexpected. Michael Moore released Sicko in 2007 and medical debt continues to be the number one reason for bankruptcy in the US nearly 20 years later.

Like, my cancer isn’t considered severe enough for me to even bother with disability benefits because I’ll just be denied.

I am not working mostly because none of the jobs I qualify for make enough money or have good enough insurance to afford the medications that cost $18k a month out of pocket.

I’ve done the math and it makes more sense to fall apart in poverty and at least be able to have the medication covered.

When the Republicans repeal the ACA, I will probably die a preventable death from lack of coverage.

They’ve always had money for wars, but never had money to care for their citizens.

Over 200,000 innocent Iraqi’s were killed in the Iraq War because they don’t actually care about regular people anywhere in the world, not just the USA. They called us “human capital stock.” When they show you who they are, listen the first time. We’re just products to be used and discarded to these people.

So, let’s go over this shall we.

Humans were always the weakest link in the security chain. Why? Because humans aren’t logical and can be tricked with words and ideas.

So we’ve developed this new type of computer program that “thinks” and speaks naturally like a human, right? Responding naturally to human conversation with it.

The issue is (as I’ve said before) that we’ve essentially created a computer program that is just as fallible as humans.

In other words, no shit simple prompt engineering works. There’s no way to “secure” a human brain from dripping out things it shouldn’t on accident, and by extension, there’s no way to “secure” an LLM “brain” because they operate in a somewhat similar manner (or at least appear to). Prompt engineering is just social engineering for computers. We’ve created a computer that can be tricked with words and ideas, just like a human.

Humans were the weakest link in security and we just made computers as weak of a link as humans. Who really thought making computers as bad at everything as humans was a good idea?

The question is, do you know the real you?

According to the Writer in Stalker, we never know who we really are or what we really want.

WRITER: I don’t know. Maybe. Anyway – I’m sorry, but… You are so foolish! You don’t have an idea about what’s happening here! And how do you think, why did Porcupine hang himself?

STALKER: He came to the Zone with a selfish purpose and sacrificed his brother in the “meat grinder” because of the money…

WRITER: That I can understand. But why did he hang himself? Why did he decide not to return – absolutely not after the money this time, but after his brother? Ah? Why did he give up?

STALKER: He wanted to, he… I don’t know. In several days he hanged himself.

WRITER: He understood here, that not all dreams come true, but only the most precious ones! And you’re just shouting in vain!..

WRITER: That, what is in accordance with your nature, your essence, is what comes true here! That essence that you have no idea about, but it sits in you and rules you all your life! You understood nothing, Leather Stocking. Porcupine was not overcome by his greed. He crawled on his knees in this very puddle begging for his brother. And he got a lot of money, and couldn’t get anything else. Because a Porcupine gets everything what’s porcupine-like! And conscience, throes of the soul – it is invented, it‘s brain work. He understood that and hanged himself. I will not go into your Room! I do not want to spill all the trash that has accumulated inside me, on anybody’s head. Even on yours. And afterwards run my head into the noose like Porcupine. I’d rather drink myself to death quietly and peacefully in my stinky writer’s private residence. No, Big Serpent, you are bad in sorting people out, if you lead such ones like me into the Zone. And then afterwards … ah… How do you know, that this miracle really exists? Who told you, that dreams really come true here? Did you see anybody, who would have been made happy here? Ah? Maybe Porcupine? And actually, who told you about the Zone, about Porcupine, about this Room?

Similarly, from the Don Hertzfedlt film “Everything will be Okay”:

Bill dropped his keys on the counter and stood there staring at them, suddenly thinking about all the times he’d thrown his keys there before, and how many days of his life were wasted repeating the same tasks and and rituals in his apartment over and over again. But then he wondered if realistically this was his life and the unusual part was his time spent doing other things.

Some countries are easier to get into than others. Start researching which ones have a path that could work for you.

Most are pretty strict but some are more open. If I recall correctly the Nordic countries may be a little easier, but don’t quote me on that. It’s been a long time since I accepted that this country had successfully trapped me here.

Sometimes I think of all y’all in this community as like an organic Frinkiac for Star Trek.

Mario is really excited about this development.

…but it’s better with a slice of pie.

Only comic who was in all six seasons, no less.

There’s no stopping this disaster at this point. It was nice being the dominant species.

We now have definitive proof that human intelligence isn’t the net evolutionary positive we thought it was.

Dom Irerra was more open about his sexuality than a lot of the comics of his time, and it always made me respect him.

Rewatching Dr. Katz and thinking about the time period it was in, sometimes Dom feels absolutely subversive to the times.

His obsessive love for Dr. Katz is something a lot of men comics would have been afraid to commit to, even to this day.

People worship corps.

Exactly. I have services running with staggered automated updates/reboots to keep things stable. Since at least one of them is always available, it’s like having no down-time but with actual stability and redundancy.

Musk is loud and dumb so he gets most of the attention for this sort of shit but Zuckerberg seems calculatingly evil.

One way to avoid it is to prioritize GOG copies if they’re available. Since GOG has no DRM they tend to generally be untouched.

Jokes on you I’m using it to be disappointed in myself.

I have all my devices set to reboot once weekly a few hours after daily scheduled updates. I probably don’t need to do this, but I do. It’s a habit I got in with scheduling router reboots, and then started extending it to other devices. It’s nice to have some solid uptime, but I have three unbound DNS servers in sequence so they update and reboot on a staggered schedule so it’s like they never go down.

You never know when the odd cosmic ray is gonna hit and flip yer bits.

I literally had a friend breaking down over it and I suggested Fediverse alternatives and they looked at me like I had sprouted an extra head.

I even explained that US companies aren’t doing anything materially different than Tiktok (propaganda and spying on people), and they’re all bad. Still looking at me like I’m some kind of maniac.

Everyone bitches about corporations but so few want to actually stop sucking on their fucking teat.