AutistoMephisto

Right, back when they were just a bookstore. All I really know about Amazon is that they focused on long-term profitability over increased short-term profits to expand and capture more of the market, and it worked. The problem is that not everyone can do that. They spent every year since 1994 operating at a loss, when anyone else would have been snapped up by another company in the space, and it's not clear how that didn't happen. The landscape of e-commerce would have been very different if it had.

Exactly. A systemic issue with capitalistic markets is that they inherently select for short term thinking.

Does it make sense to destroy 90% of your profitability 5 years from now for a 20% bump in profit this quarter? Well, yes, it does, because that's 20% more profit to expand and take over the market.

Even if a business were to try to make good long term decisions, it would immediately be crushed and pushed out of the market by all of its competitors willing to make those shortsighted decisions for immediate profits.

Except in the case of Amazon, thanks to AWS they were able to make good long-term decisions with their e-commerce platform by making short term decisions with AWS.

CA better get their hands on some ICBMs. Keep one pointed at DC, and another pointed at Mar-a-Lago. It's pretty much the only way a state can keep its sovereignty.

I want to agree, but terms like "vice" and "virtue" are subjective. To label what Cuckerberg and his ilk are doing as "virtue" signaling lends credibility to their idea that their vice is virtue. Similar to how the GOP calls themselves the party of "law and order".

Thank you, Based Mod. Not every day, we see one.

FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL IN SILENCE,

CAST THEIR SPELLS,

EXPLOSIVE VIOLENCE,

RUSSIAN NIGHTTIME FLIGHT PERFECTED,

FLAWLESS VISION,

UNDETECTED

If we're going to be talking about badass bitches, we can't forget the Night Witches?

You know, I learned that a long time ago, Catholic Priests used to be allowed to marry, but because they didn't really have any of their own possessions or property, priests were cared and provided for by the Church. If they did get married, the wife also was cared for. And in a religion that sees birth control as blasphemy, that means that the kids would also be cared and provided for. And when you have a lot of priests, all getting married and having lots of kids, that gets expensive. So now priests have to be celibate.

Well, in those times they didn't really have dentists, so having all one's pearly whites in a adulthood was not common.

Even as a man, I don't understand my fellow men's aversion to seeking the ear of a licensed therapist/mental health professional. Cost is a concern, I get that. I have health insurance that covers it, so I don't have to worry about that too much. So it's gotta be something deeper. Like an aversion to confronting oneself? I understand that. Introspection can be frightening, especially if you're encountering parts of your psyche you'd rather weren't there. Or maybe there's past trauma you'd rather not unpack. But a good therapist will be in your corner. They'll be like the healer in an RPG party, dishing out buffs and heals for you, or maybe even inflict debuffs on your inner demons.

I mean, they have Alexa connected refrigerators with a camera inside the fridge that sees what you put in it and how much, to either let you know when you're running low on something or ask to put in an order for more of that item before you run out, or tell you if something in there is about to spoil, or if the fridge needs cleaned, so I imagine a washer would do something similar?

Exactly. I can code and make a simple game app. If it gets some downloads, maybe pulls in a little money, I'm happy. But I'm not gonna produce endless mtx and ad-infested shovelware to make shareholders and investors happy. I also own a 3D printer. I've done a few projects with it and I was happy to do them, I've even taken commissions to model and print some things, but it's not my main job as there's no way I could afford to sit at home and just print things out all month.