I write a blog that focuses on public information, public health, and policy: https://pimento-mori.ghost.io/

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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2025

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  • Reality based community

    The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ […] ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’.

    I say this as a nobody with a very unimpressive IQ: Even I can see that these people are far too fucking stupid to keep getting away with this, unless society keeps allowing it.

    Push back when you can. Stand your ground when you can’t. You might not walk away unscathed, but you’re definitely less likely to fall when you stand together. If you don’t fall, you’re left standing stronger than ever before, and with first hand knowledge of how little strength a strongman actually has.




  • These people are mentally ill

    Yes and I don’t say this as a knock on mental illness. I say it because many conservatives are raised to believe that mental illness is either a supernatural force of the devil or a moral failing. I sincerely believe that if many conservatives would just give therapy a trial run, and try to unpack half the shit that they instead insist on holding on to then unleashing upon society, the world would be a much more pleasant and peaceful place.

    However, most will never do that because not going to therapy A. proves they’re totally not crazy otherwise they’d be in therapy, right? and B. Trying to control everyone else, provides them with their own sense of control.


  • But if the broligarchs don’t actually expect to ever get any of this “AI” shit actually working, then what is the end game?

    Obviously the majority of people are only in it to make quick money, but what about the psychos at the very top who are directing policy and building these giant nuclear powered “AI” data centers?

    If Thiel/Musk/Zuckerberg don’t actually have the expectation that “AI” will eventually work itself out, then it won’t matter how money the rich (but not broligarch rich) Wall Street bros and bankers dumped into the “AI” boom.

    It won’t be like the .com boom and the Internet, because it doesn’t actually exist. If the economy completely collapses, and dollar becomes worthless currency, the “money” the average rich asshole hoards away after investing in the 2025 “AI” boom, will have about as much value as monopoly money.

    Meanwhile the fucking Bond villain billionaires like Thiel (who have been dreaming of this exact scenario for over 20 years) hold all resources (including a recently purchased uranium mine).

    So, “hypothetically,” if that was Thiel’s endgame, and the “AI” jig is up, then they no longer have to pretend they’re trying to develop artificial intelligence or AGI. But they do already hold control of most resources, have mass surveillance capabilities, and each broligarch owns one or more of these giant supercomputers/data centers that have been built in cities all over the U.S. world and soon in outer space.

    In this totally fictional scenario, once the dollar collapses (likely followed by all of society collapsing along with it), what do the broligarchs actually use their giant nuclear powered “AI” data centers for?

    AI or no AI, they’re currently being built, so what is their actual purpose?


  • I mean, there is actual “AI” tech that exists, and isn’t just people working in sweatshops, like this: https://deeplabcut.github.io/DeepLabCut/README.html

    It’s just kind of difficult to get consistency between trials, and reliability seems to boil down to completely eliminating variability. So kind of useless outside of a lab setting (as is).

    I tend to feel like it’s more trouble than it’s worth and too unreliable (as is) to usually bother with it, but I know people who are just fellow lab rats (not broligarchs) and are super devoted to getting AI to work for their projects. Like most sectors in this country, even science is being forced to embrace AI. Regardless of if it actually makes sense for your line of work or not, the expectation is get it working or face the chopping block, and there are definitely people who are trying their hardest to really get this shit off the ground (because the alternative is be prepared to be out of a job for being obsolete).

    This is also why it’s kind of surprising to learn that even “AI” that’s simply comparing license plates from one camera to the next, is actually just due to human slave labor.

    So, do any of the broligarchs receiving these huge contracts actually believe that eventually they’ll get AI to work once enough data and money is dumped into it and the little people at the bottom figure out all the kinks for them?

    Or is it just that everybody at the top acknowledges this is a dead end, but once you’re in the secret club at the top of the food chain, and you’re making ridiculous amounts of money, your incentive is just to keep your mouth shut, keep making money, and fuck the consequences because once society collapses you’ll get to be kings of your own little monarchs anyway?

    If it is the second, and nobody at the top really believes AI is going anywhere, then what are all the giant, energy sucking data centers that are being built across the country actually for?


  • I mean there are legit companies doing good work that get passed over all the time.

    How did these 3 guys get hundreds of millions in government contracts for a product that didn’t even exist.

    And not only did it not exist, they were demanding everybody let them violate their privacy so that their non-existent product could “end crime.”

    I’ll just come out and say it, the “scandal” imo isn’t the company was a fraud part. The scandal is that people within the government wanted so badly to amp up surveillance and the police state within the U.S. they just went ahead and dumped all this money into A.I. that didn’t actually exist because “A.I. is already here and it will fix everything, and even if you don’t want it, too fucking bad.”

    Like it was never that the government thought A.I. tech was that important, or the future, or whatever bullshit. They’ve just realized the tech industry allows them the ability to spy on people, control information, and make a shit ton of money doing it.


  • The history of the organization seems very odd

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_Safety

    It began as a side project in which the three co-founders built their first video surveillance cameras by hand around Langley’s dining room table. When a DeKalb County detective told Langley that his camera product had helped with solving a home break-in, Langley called the two other co-founders and told them to quit their jobs.

    What?? How did a detective use it to solve a crime? Who was he? And based off of this one dude you all 3 just quit your jobs??? What??

    Then we just jump ahead to 2022 and these cameras that didn’t even work had raised over $380 million in venture funding?

    Then by the next year they were being used to sub for actual police due to a shortage of police officers?

    So they just go from the Hardy Boys help solve a mystery in Georgia in 2017 and then suddenly by 2023 Marc Andreesen (big surprise) is suddenly funnelling millions into their business.

    Oh, good, this citation will probably help make clear what the fuck actually happened between 2017 and 2023: Flock Safety. “Media Kit: Our Founding Story”. Flock Safety. Retrieved April 8, 2022.



  • Wait, what? I was just making a joke.

    Unless you are the coked out billionaire? In that case I would like to know what you were thinking when you vouched for these people.

    I was just pointing out it’s definitely going to contribute to the bubble popping, but it’s even worse than other AI companies bc it was mainly government contracts (which means they’ll probably still be getting funded for the foreseeable future even while other companies go under).

    It’s insane they were ever allowed to receive a government contract for tech that didn’t even exist, so I would just really like to know how that happened? Like legally how could this have happened if not for somebody in some position of power helping these people get their foot in the door.


  • But it’s especially infuriating that this company has received so many government contracts from ICE and all over the U.S., and in some cases literally just gone into towns and put cameras up without permission. Then refused to get around to taking them down in some cases, so towns just started covering them up with trash bags.

    Its like an entire business model where some creepers with a cardboard box pretend lemonade stand just decided one day to start selling pretend AI instead. And we just let them? Who fucking signed off on this?

    Who is it that even helped them get their foot in the door in the first place? Who was the coked out billionaire who apparently just fucking picked their name from a list he glanced at for 5 minutes on his way to rehab? Somebody needs to find that person, and we all need to be allowed to give him a swift public kick in the ass.


  • I have to give the broligarchs credit for always somehow managing to leave me stunned. Every time I learn some unbelievable bullshit like this, it’s like falling in hate all over again.

    As we leave the stagnation of society behind in the ruins of regulations and democracy that only held us back, and the technocratic elite steer us full speed ahead through this “Renaissance” we are truly blessed to be forced to live through, the line between technology and magic continues to blur…

    Or maybe it’s just 700 sweatshop workers in a trenchcoat. Who’s to say?







  • Earlier this year, The Intercept wrote about surveillance contractors sought by ICE, who would be expected to perform algorithm- and AI-aided deep dives into social media users’ post histories, searching for, among other things, “proclivity for violence,” which could include “empathy with a group which has violent tendencies,” among other things. Hope you haven’t expressed “empathy” at any point for any group with “violent tendencies,” right? How does it feel to know that you’d be at the mercy of a freelance surveillance contractor’s mastery of “social and behavioral sciences” and “psychological profiles,” according to ICE’s statement of objectives?

    How fucking creepy is it to think about this psychological manipulation pre-crime bullshit and take into account that one of the briefings released yesterday took note of people in New Orleans seeming especially disturbed by videos with the sound of crying children.

    Officials track public sentiment, noting negative impact of ‘videos with sounds of children crying’ as parents arrested

    It seems very unlikely this is being noted in order to answer questions like “How do we tone it down a bit and keep things from boiling over?”

    Imo (and obviously feel free to take that with a grain of salt since I’m totally “overly-paranoid” about how evil these people are and the levels they would stoop to) it seems more likely this is to answer a question of “How do we use psychological warfare against the American people and send them closer to their breaking point?”




  • It’s really sad but also kinda fascinating that there are definitely people who could read this and believe it’s evidence of the downfall of modern society caused by equal rights, instead of realizing that this bitch was just understandably tired and making a humor joke in an attempt to lighten the burden of having to face another day trying to roll the boulder back up the bullshit mountain created by the people who want to take away her (and everyone else’s) rights, dismantle society, and cause it to collapse.