This guy telephones.

I guess video phones have survived by mutating into Zoom and Skype and Microsoft Felch and Google Rimjob and whatever. But that's fine, at least they usually make an appointment. If telephones had to make an appointment I wouldn't have minded so much.

It's also funny that "video phones" were such a futuristic idea for so long, and at almost the same instant that they became ubiquitous we were all "Oh, no, turns out we don't want to talk at all, much less look at the people we're talking to."

Now a "telephone" is really just one app among many. "Do you mind if I hang out with these other, much better, means of communication? Oh sure, it's fine if you completely mute me. I'll just take a message. Thanks, I really appreciate it."

🛎️🛎️🛎️

Study Questions:
1. Lore referred to Aslan as a "dead cat bounce," despite Aslan's resurrection. Is his metaphor appropriate? Why or why not?
2. Was the bacon analogy helpful or redundant? What dumb fad would you pick instead?
3. Hasn't Lore quoted Ozymandias enough for one lifetime? Why or why not?

Never forget that you started out as merely transgend.

Is this really late-stage capitalism? I wouldn't bet a stack of T-bills on it, mostly because how would I collect? But if age has imparted any wisdom, it's that even the fundaments of civilization are impermanent, and everything eventually ends up as two vast and trunkless legs of stone.

Now, predicting something isn't the same as wanting it. I don't want the economy to collapse, but if it does, I hold out hope it will land at Trump's feet and send MAGA back to the fringes until the next time someone comes up with a new way to say "rabid, slavering racism."

This leads to a dead cat bounce the size of Aslan, with the economy showing signs of coming out of a recession only to collapse into something that isn't exactly like the Great Depression, but which is certainly comparable.

If the economy collapses before AI, I'm not sure what will happen, but he point of this thread is to go on record, so I'm going to stick to my guns and my timeline. AI survives the crash and even thrives, because businesses are going to be desperate to fire people and still stay in business.

@dseitz.bsky.social Predicted a market collapse in six months, and he may be right. But I think six months is way too soon for AI to be the cause of the collapse. The Time Person of the Year embarrassment isn't the beginning of the end, it's the end of the beginning.

Think back to when corporations were putting bacon flavor in everything, because if they didn't someone else would. Bacon is still around, but bacon soda pop and bubble gum seem pretty silly now. I think AI will go in that direction but unlike bacon it will take the economy down with it.

AI doesn't go away completely--after all, tulips, Beanie Babies, and black-and-white comic books all still exist--but it becomes a sign of corner-cutting, rather than The Future. Sort of like automated menu systems are today. We know they suck, but they're so much cheaper that it doesn't matter.

I should define what I mean by "AI crash." Broadly, people finally realize that AI isn't actually useful for any serious enterprise, and the relentless push goes slack. The market tanks because it's being propped up by AI, and tech industry jobs become even more scarce than they are now. (thread)

Thanks!