Amazon spent around 20 billion dollars cornering every conceivable market, and then successfully made all that money and more back by becoming the default online store for a huge number of people.

Investors want to recreate that unprecedented return on their investment.

But since Amazon already sells every real worthwhile product… remaining untapped markets included only new products of questionable worth.

Of the available new questionable products, AI is a really interesting one.

Now these investors have spent over $200 billion. And they have promised all that money back and much more.

Getting their investment back is important enough to these powerful influential investors that whether you or I actually want or need AI does not matter, to them.

These investors will strong arm everyone they have influence over until either they make their money back or they go broke.

I’m sad that I assumed this was a slop machine.

Local engagement: Partners curate community-specific content, helping spotlight emerging writers.

Local authors. Excellent.

The answer to most ultimatums is no.

Yes! It took me far to long to internalize this.

Ultimatums are never productive, and anyone issuing them is either desperate or an asshole. (Sometimes both.)

This is so true.

Choosing my introverted life partner was the best choice I ever made. Or the best choice they ever made for me…or somewhere in between. But great choice, all around.

Some very rich people who depend on others’ continued oil dependency to remain very rich own many media companies.

I mean, I played Pokemon with my kids. So maybe both?

Now we play Cassette Beasts - and soon Palworld - together.

My boycott pretty naturally applied to my kids.

We were day one buyers for multiple copies of the last Zelda game, and the last couple Pokemon before Nintendo legal went foul.

Now no one in my family has a Switch 2, and my kids are begging me to help them spend their allowance on Palworld.

I bought a shit ton of games from Nintendo until their legal department went rabid.

Untouchable companies do fall, when they manage to alienate diehard fans, such as myself.

Yes. I was a huge purchaser of both Steam games and Nintendo exclusives on Switch (as long as they got great reviews).

Then Nintendo’s legal team went crazy, attacking emulator developers and suing competing game studios over bullshit “patents” on game mechanics.

So it’s time to starve that beast. No more Nintendo games, for me.

Btw, Zelda on PC when?

Any time you want, if you float in the right seas…uh…circles. Or so I’ve heard.

Yes. Nintendo’s lawsuit was what made me decide to buy Palworld. Fuck Nintendo’s lawyers.

That security guard should be ashamed!

(edit: Yes, and arrested for assault!)

Canyoneeerrrroooo!!!

Yes. Cola, Orange Cola, Rootbeer Cola, Mister Cherry, or Zest!*

`* ~All colas except Zest and sold out. Pressing Zest! delivers Orange Cola.~

I would have gotten here sooner, but I had to take time to write a scathing review for that asshole Ea-nāṣir selling me bad copper.

It’s never too soon, really.

Yes. These might become my last words.

Which is bad, since I’m sure I’ll just keep repeating them every few hours, just in case.

Yeah. I just mention it because I’ve generally just used VNC myself; and wondered what the fuss with fancier tools was about.

But then I realized home Internet has getting worse for some folks, and so folks might be using a service to get VPN-ed together, or whatever.

I’m also a big VNC fan, but I imagine RustDesk is solving for CGNAT better? I’m not aware of anything in VNC that solves CGNAT being a PITA.

Yikes! You can’t just tell people about the