It is so much easier and comfortable to just close your eyes to the troubles of the world, but it also means that you won’t see what’s coming and will not be able to act. So this sort of sensory overload with negativity and craziness is kinda the point. The more people are tuned out and overwhelmed, the easier it is for assholes like Musk and Trump to push their agenda through. It’s also talked about in 1984, where the quote comes from

I feel like the original quote applies here pretty well, no real need to change it…

War is peace

Freedom is slavery

Ignorance is strength

Another company Microsoft bought and ran into the ground. It’s really incredible that they managed to get their lunch stolen. They had basically a monopoly and gave it away without a fight. Hell, the colloquialism for video calling someone was to Skype them for a looong time.

And then one small competitor comes along and it’s all gone. How can you fuck up this bad? Especially during the pandemic, in which they should have further entrenched their monopoly…

This joke has gotten pretty old by now and only helps downplay the seriousness of their dangerous ideas.

Don’t get me wrong, fuck Jeff Bezos’ pampered ass. But growing a giant dystopian mega corp out of 250k is kind of impressive.

I know quite a few privileged people with more money than that and every chance in life one could hope for. None of them would be able to achieve anything close to what he did. They simply aren’t ruthless and megalomaniacal enough.

Interesting… where I’m from most cabs are Mercedes limousines. I never heard about people thinking less of Mercedes because they are popular with taxi drivers.

Yeah, that thing about red states sending their homeless to you guys is absolutely fucked. Makes policies that would actually help seem like they don’t, because more desolate people keep showing up, even though you guys are doing your best.

Also agree about the billionaires obviously, and I think the whole silicon valley tech culture also doesn’t help. FAANG employees with their big salaries can just afford way higher rents and costs of living than the average american, driving up the prices. But I’m sure as a resident you know all of those issues better than I do.

I hope it gets better for you guys, it’s an incredibly sad situation, especially in such a beautiful city like SF.

Sounds absolutely horrible, and I definitely understand that residents don’t wanna live or work in these environments.
I don’t think there is an easy fix for this problem tbh. Or at least not on a local level. From what I see SF is doing a lot of social stuff right, or at least better than the rest of the country. On the other hand you have crazy inequality pushing people into desperation and addiction. This somehow needs to be solved, but it might get worse before it gets better. Idk man, it’s tough.

Where I think people can make a difference is on a personal level. A little kindness goes a long way, and those people are yearning for empathy. You said they are like 4 year olds, and I think they are probably just as vulnerable. Addicts don’t have the luxury of thinking about consequences, they just survive until the next fix. So the right thing to do is be as kind and understanding as possible, even though they might make it difficult.

If you don’t have it already, might I suggest you get some Narcan for your workplace? Sounds like you could literally save a life with it someday.

First, no they don’t give out free drugs. Even tho having clean drugs would help a lot in reducing the harms of addiction, I don’t know any government that would pass that.

Obviously fentanyl is fucking dangerous and toxic, no matter how you take it. Overdoses at those sites happen. That’s why they are equipped with Narcan, and also have a line to medical services. So users that would OD somewhere in private and not make it to the ER have a chance.

The second important part is all the stuff that goes with taking the drugs themselves. Usually addicts don’t have a ready supply of syringes and other paraphernalia to use their drugs. This leads to them sharing needles, using dirty gear and other behaviors that spread diseases like hepatitis c. By handing out clean needles and other things, a lot of those diseases can be avoided. They also hand out other medical supplies to treat the damage from the drugs and living in the streets.

Finally, they always offer addicts that want to quit support and help them find treatment. This is the most important part. Addicts trust the people at those sites, because they treat them like people, not junkies. So there is a higher chance that they feel safe enough to ask for help when it’s time for them.

I hope that answers some of your questions. If you want to learn more, Channel 5 with Andrew Callahan has a great series on drugs and homelessness on YouTube. There’s one Episode where they go to a safe injection site, but the other episodes in Philadelphia and SF are definitely also worth a watch. You will see some absolutely harrowing and terrible shit tho. If you have the stomach I highly recommend them.

https://youtu.be/Ym7qS27oiHU

Edit: Reading some of your other questions in this thread I definitely recommend you watch those Andrew Callahan documentaries. They will answer a lot of your questions and hopefully clear up some misconceptions. Start with San Francisco Streets, then watch harm reduction facility and finally Philly streets.

They wouldn’t have to shoot up in the streets if SF still had the safe injection sites up. People who shoot up in the streets do so mostly because they want to get found if they OD.

Making it illegal to be high won’t make addicts want to stop getting high, it will just push them into dark corners where they die when they OD. Imo that’s way more unacceptable.

Iirc Dr. Oz used to be quite the renowned heart surgeon. Makes it even more tragic that he chose this life as a charlatan giving harmful advice, instead of using his talent for good.

It already does. Just not so much in the countries that are most responsible for the pollution.

Only time I heard about anybody asking for a 4 day work week recently was the GDL strike. So while I agree, it’s probably more of a tech thing, there are blue collar jobs fighting for it.

I agree with your comment, even though I have no idea on the technical aspects. What I can weigh in on is crisis management, especially communication.

Boeing needs to take control of the situation and actively start communicating and showing that they are working on fixing this thing. In Situational Crisis Communication Theory you would call it a rebuild approach. They tried denial, they tried downplaying, it’s not working. A rebuild strategy is usually the last resort, as things like admitting your mistakes and fixing them are rarely appreciated by investors. Furthermore it’s usually a huuuuge cost to do a recall on that scale. But Boeing need to show the public that they are actively working on improving the situation, to earn back their trust. So at least a partial recall should be considered.

You’re exactly right in your first paragraph about the news. The media and the public are very sensitive to Boeing quality issues rn. These articles won’t stop unless one of three things happen. Either Boeing gets their shit together and gets some effective crisis management and communication done, the company goes bust, or something else turns up in the news that replaces this. The third option will be the most likely, but it will also haunt them forever. It’s like that exploding galaxy note 7 situation. There were articles about that for every new generation of Galaxy Note, despite Samsung doing pretty well in investigating the issues. And while the following Note phones sold alright, the whole thing was a significant loss of trust and money for Samsung and enabled competitors like Huawai to catch up.

What they do right is having a duopoly with Airbus, and great military contracts. So investors know that even if things are shit rn, they will probably get better again.

Furthermore, while I agree that Boeing probably will not go bankrupt over this, the valuation sometimes is not a great indicator of what’s going on internally. Enron was worth over 60 billion. Half a year later they were at zero. Now I’m not saying Boeing is nearly that bad, but they are in some trouble for sure.

Working for Boeings PR department must be absolute madness right now… imagine having to somehow excuse all those fuck ups and every week there is a new one

I know the general gist of the situation. Low spending from domestic households, real estate bubble, excessive government influence on industry scaring investors, and so on.

My problem with it is that most headlines make it sound like it’s all gonna implode spectacularly tomorrow. The articles themselves usually paint a more reasonable picture of the situation, similar to your comment. But most people don’t read the article. They just see the headline over and over.

Feels like I’ve been reading headlines like this for at least 3 years now. If it all finally comes crashing down, it’s gonna be a big one I guess.

It’s the most popular and most hated newspaper in Germany. I would put it at a similar level as Rupert Murdoch’s shit rags.

They usually have dubious journalistic standards, write exaggerated headlines and harass their targets. They also constantly badmouth progressive or environmental causes because their shitty publisher, Axel Springer Verlag, has a very imperialist neoliberal agenda that they enforce in all their publications. I blame them in part for the popularity of AfD, even though they don’t directly endorse them (as far as I know).

You misread. They got scammed into paying 10$ shipping for a supposedly free product that will never arrive.